Events Calendar

The Owl of Minerva Theater, sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, presents: Waking Life (2001, Richard Linklater). Waking Life is about an unnamed young man living an ethereal existence that lacks transitions between everyday events and that eventually progresses toward an existential crisis. For most of the film he observes quietly but later participates actively in philosophical discussions involving other characters—ranging from quirky scholars and artists to everyday restaurant-goers and friends—about such issues as lucid dreaming and our knowledge of an external world, metaphysics, free will, social philosophy, and the meaning of life. Gradually, the protagonist begins to realize that he is living out a perpetual dream, broken up only by occasional false awakenings. The film was entirely roto-scoped, although it was shot using digital video of live actors (e.g. Ethan Hawke) with a team of artists drawing stylized lines and colors over each frame with computers, rather than being filmed and traced onto cells on a light box.