I saw a movie about Pomona. Or at least about the exhausting, confusing conversations of questionable relevance and applicability in which I always find myself involved. Waking Life is Richard Linklater’s most recent film; his eclectic past credits include The Newton Boys (1998), Beavis and Butt-head Do America (1996), as well as Dazed and Confused (1993).

Waking Life is about a young man who becomes caught in the lucidity of his own dreams. As he tries to escape from his never-ending dream, he encounters dozens of characters. The movie, made up of a series of vignettes, presents in each one the belief system of one character. Each character is independent of the previous one. It was as though I was watching the cinematic version of my classes at Pomona College: each character basically goes off on his/her own perspectives in a long, often confusing monologue, leaving you to do the work of making connections between the characters. Much like the way, I at least, am left to try to figure out what my classes have to do with each other. But aside from the form of the movie, it was a little disconcerting how several of the topics addressed were almost directly from my classes. In one scene, several young men discuss the translation of their theories of existence to their actual actions. All I heard was the voice of Professor of Politics Jackie Stevens in my head. In another, nameless characters began to outline the problems of determinism and responsibility. It was as though Professor of Philosophy Baron Reed was up on that screen. When one character explained the reason for people’s inability to utilize their entire intellectual potential as simple laziness… it was my own guilty conscious talking at me. I should have been at home studying.

Of course, just as there is always that one person in the back of your class asking "What is the point?" there are those who might justifiably characterize the conversations of the movie as "mental masturbation" as did one viewer who posted on the film’s website www.wakinglifemovie.com. Because of the often pat, and always ideologically dense script, this is definitely a movie you should be prepared to see several times to totally understand. But even without the difficult content, the visuals of the movie are more than enough reason to want to see it more than once.

The technique that Linklater created and introduced with this movie, rotoscoping, is done by filming the actors with digital cameras and superimposing the action with computer animation to create visuals of a hand-drawn cartoons. The effect is one of incredible realism in the gestures and expressions of the characters while at the same time utilizing the flexibility of animation to shape the environment and often the appearance of the characters themselves to compliment the dialogue.

Characters’ faces change color, eyes bulge, sparks appear, and images float from mouths, all to emphasize, compliment and illustrate the ideas and moods of the monologues. The viewer is never allowed to forget that the movie is all a dream, as he/she constantly has to contend with faces and clothes and backgrounds that never hold still. It is the incredibly expressive visuals of the movie that create a wonderful counterpoint to the cerebral emphasis of the script.

So let’s recap: Waking Life is reminiscent, of the conversations and classes of Pomona College, but cooler to look at than a blackboard. Trust me, you’ll like it anyway. Don’t pretend like you don’t want to go.