Taking its lead from Descartes' musings about the distinction between dreams and waking life, Richard Linklater's film explores many of the ideas, debates, theories, and imaginings that pervade modern philosophy. What was your impression of the film? Was there a particular scene or conversation that stood out for you more than any other? What does the film say about the human experience, both in general and perhaps in particular? Perhaps the dream world has more to offer than our waking lives are willing to admit!
2 comments:
Aside from the dizzying imagery, this movie definitely left an impression on me. The next morning when I woke up to my alarm and hit snooze to get some more sleep within a minute of real time I experienced what felt like a couple of hours of dream time, similar experience the couple in bed discussed about earlier in the film. I found it ironic. The concept in the movie of the main character trying so hard to wake up but can't I found really intriguing, it didn't click right away that he possibly could be experiencing the 6-12 seconds of brain activity that occurs after the body stops, really trippy to think about. Another scene that struck a cord with me was when he met the redheaded girl and he was just a brief passing until she decided she really wanted to get to know him, meet him, know who he was, what he was thinking not just pass him by like "an ant". She said "we go through life...with our antennas bouncing off one other, continuously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival.All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along... in an efficient, polite manner. " Here's your change." " Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me.”
It’s so true! I’m a cashier at Stop and Shop and my shifts contain these exact quotes, maybe not the ketchup but I do ring it up often. We all have these little “run-ins” with people daily, we meet hundreds of people daily but only really know a small fraction of them. Just something to think about, what can we do to change this or are we happy in this kind of social environment? It’s kind of a Hobbesian way of being social.
This movie blew my mind. Apart from the extremely trippy animation, the theories and ideas discussed in each scene left me asking questions and wanting to ask more. I really enjoyed the guy who was having a discussion of free will. The imagery explained his ideas in an entertaining way and I personally enjoy the debate of God versus free will. The question of whether both free will and an omnipotent being is powerful and makes us wonder, but can never truly be answered. Overall I thoughroughly enjoyed the movie, and have recommended it to my friends. I only wish I could experience this dream life and ask these mind-boggling questions.
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