Waking Life

Waking Life follows a young man who cannot seem to wake from a dream. He drifts through shifting encounters with friends, strangers and public figures, moving from observer to participant as the conversations turn to reality, free will, reincarnation, perception and the meaning of life. A recurring idea frames the film: that a waking life is a controlled dream, and that dream is destiny. Rather than a conventional plot, the film unfolds as a chain of dialogues and monologues, with the protagonist increasingly aware that he is trapped in a dream state he cannot escape. Jesse and Celine, the couple played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise, reappear in a similar guise. Wiley Wiggins plays the main character, and the large credited cast includes Bill Wise as the boat car driver, Alex Jones as a man in a car with a public-address system, and Steven Soderbergh as a figure interviewed on television.

Richard Linklater directed from his own screenplay, working with producers Anne Walker-McBay, Palmer West and Jonah Smith. It was his sixth film as director, arriving between The Newton Boys and The School of Rock. Produced for about 2 million dollars and released in the autumn of 2001, it returned roughly 3 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.6 from around 69,000 votes, on TMDB 7.5 from roughly 981 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 7.8 from 144 reviews, placing professional assessment slightly above the audience scores.