So Was Leo DiCaprio Asleep at the End of Inception or Was He Just Watching Waking Life

Waking Life, a drama that follows a man who seems to be muddling the line separating the dream world and the real world attempts to philosophically address the question: Is there really a difference between those worlds? This trippy experience is unique to say the least, offering many points of view that suggest a lot of abstracts about the meaning of dreams and their presence on our “waking life.” While it is inherently different from most other animations and is an uninhabited frontier for both the director Richard Linklater and the production company Fox Searchlight (Searchlight had previously never made an animated film), it’s definition leans more to the influence of developmental animation than experimental. The generally recognizable story arch is evidence to an orthodox style while it’s unique animation style would have been at the time slightly experimental (later, Linklater would make A Scanner Darkly, done in the same animation style). The combination of these experimental and orthodox styles contributes to its innate developmental style.