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Edit summary: Added bolded section + citation for this section. I also linked to the Alex Jones and IndieWire pages in the added section. Copied from Waking Life.

Reception

The film has an average score of 82/100 ("universal acclaim") on review aggregator Metacritic, based on 31 reviews. Based on 145 reviews compiled by Rotten Tomatoes, 81% of the critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.44/10. The website's critical consensus reads "Waking Life 's inventive animated aesthetic adds a distinctive visual component to a film that could easily have rested on its smart screenplay and talented ensemble cast." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, describing it as "a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas". Ebert later included the film on his list of "Great Movies". Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weeklyawarded the film an "A" rating, calling it "a work of cinematic art in which form and structure pursues the logic-defying (parallel) subjects of dreaming and moviegoing," while Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote it was "so verbally dexterous and visually innovative that you can't absorb it unless you have all your wits about you". Dave Kehr of The New York Times found the film to be "lovely, fluid, funny" and stated that it "never feels heavy or over-ambitious".

Conversely, J. Hoberman of The Village Voice felt that Waking Life "doesn't leave you in a dream... so much as it traps you in an endless bull session". Frank Lovece felt the film was "beautifully drawn" but called its content "pedantic navel-gazing".

'''In 2018, Richard Linklater addressed the potentially controversial inclusion of Alex Jones in the film. In an interview with IndieWire, Linklater states, "I just thought he was kind of funny." He notes that he never imagined Jones would one day be taken seriously and that at the time, he didn't think much of including him. '''

Nominated for numerous awards, mainly for its technical achievements, Waking Life won the National Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film", the New York Film Critics Circle award for "Best Animated Film", and the "CinemAvvenire" award at the Venice Film Festival for "Best Film". It was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:


 * 2008 – AFI's 10 Top 10: Nominated Animation Film

Edit summary: This section of the article lacked any kind of citation so I added a reference/citation for the DVD description. Copied from Waking Life

Home media
The film was released on DVD in North America in May 2002. Special features included several commentaries, documentaries, interviews, trailers, and deleted scenes, as well as the short film Snack and Drink. A bare-bones DVD with no special features was released in Region 2 in February 2003. A Blu-Ray was released in Germany and the UK.

Edit Summary: I wanted to add images, but I couldn't find any that were licensed appropriately to use from the film itself, so I added an image of Linklater here instead. I added a link to an article for the term "rotoscoping". Also edited sentences for style/flow purposes and corrected grammatical errors throughout. Removed first sentence of second paragraph due to redundancy. Copied from Waking Life

Production
In a 2001 interview, Linklater explained that the idea for the film came "before I was even interested in film, probably 20 years ago". Despite the long gestation process in his head, Linklater noted that before he came up with the idea of rotoscoping, the film "didn't quite work". He felt it was "too blunt, too realistic" and stated that "I think to make a realistic film about an unreality the film had to be a realistic unreality".

Animators overlaid live action footage (shot by Linklater) with animation that approximates the images filmed. This technique is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi. Rotoscoping was not Bakshi's invention, but that of experimental silent filmmaker Max Fleischer, who patented the process in 1917. The film employed a number of different artists with varying styles so that the film's visuals would change over time. The result is a surreal, shifting dreamscape.

The animators used inexpensive "off-the-shelf" Apple Macintosh computers. The film was mostly produced using Rotoshop, a custom-made rotoscoping program that creates blends between key frame vector shapes, which also makes use of virtual "layers", and designed specifically for the production by Bob Sabiston. Linklater used this animation method again for his 2006 film A Scanner Darkly.

Edit summary: I was most interested in editing the synopsis of the film, as I felt it could read more smoothly. I eliminated a number of unnecessary phrases and words. I felt that the original was quite wordy and awkward. To be honest, I wanted to do a rewrite of this section, but I don't recall enough of the movie to trust myself on accuracy for that one. I also added a link for "God". Copied from Waking Life

Plot
An unnamed young man navigates events in a dreamlike state, culminating in an existential crisis. He observes, and later participates, in philosophical discussions involving other characters—ranging from quirky scholars and artists to everyday restaurant-goers and friends—about such issues as metaphysics, free will, social philosophy, and the meaning of life. Other scenes do not include the protagonist, but rather, focus on a random isolated person, a group of people, or a couple engaging in such topics from a disembodied perspective. Along the way, the film also touches upon existentialism, situationist politics, posthumanity, the film theory of André Bazin, and lucid dreaming, and makes references to various celebrated intellectual and literary figures by name.

The protagonist begins to realize that he is living out a perpetual dream, broken up by occasional false awakenings. He begins as an onlooker until a chat with a passing woman who suddenly approaches him. After she greets him and shares her creative ideas with him, he reminds himself that she is a figment of his own imagination. After this scene, he converses more openly with other characters. Throughout the course of the film, he begins to despair about being trapped in a dream.

The protagonist's final conversation is with a character (played by Richard Linklater) whom he briefly encountered earlier in the film. This last conversation reveals the other character's view that reality may be only a single instant that the individual interprets falsely as time (and, thus, life). Linklater's character states that living is the individual's constant negation of God's invitation to become one with the universe-- that dreams offer a glimpse into the infinite nature of reality. In order to be free from the illusion of life, the individual need only accept God's invitation.

The protagonist is last seen walking into a driveway when he suddenly begins to levitate, paralleling a scene at the start of the film of a floating child in the same driveway. The protagonist uncertainly reaches toward a car's handle, but is too swiftly lifted above the vehicle and over the trees. He rises into the endless blue expanse of the sky until he disappears from view.

Edit summary: The "Soundtrack" part of the article links to a separate article (Waking Life (soundtrack)) which feels unnecessary. I understand the perspective that since a soundtrack is an album in itself, it's fair include a separate article for it, but here I provided a way that this information could potentially be included in the main article below. Copied from Waking Life and Waking Life (soundtrack).

Soundtrack
The Waking Life OST was performed and written by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra, except for the sixth track, Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, and the ninth track, composed by Julián Plaza. The soundtrack was relatively successful. Featuring the nuevo tango style, it bills itself "the 21st Century Tango". The tango contributions were influenced by the music of the Argentine "father of new tango" Astor Piazzolla.

((Track list and credits can go below))

notes/references