Waking Life was one of the buzz films at the 37th Chicago International Film Festival, and for good reason. For starters, the film features an innovative method for turning live action footage into animation. The result is a fluid, rotoscoped motion, that is rendered further into artiface by animators. The colors float in and out of the lines, in a style sometimes reminiscent of 1960s watercolor ad illustration. These unique visuals are combined with a very "live" audio, making for a mix of reality and fantasy unlike anything you've ever seen before. The film is both more and less real then live-action, a mind- bending effect that makes for an oddly refreshing experience.

Even better, the style is entirely suited to the material. In fact, director Richard Linklater says that while he had the idea for this film years ago, he had to wait for a technology to enable him to tell the story as he thought it should be told: and the story is the quest for reality, the journey between dream and waking, or, more precisely, the journey between dream and dream. Just as the colors jump in and out of the lines, so the main character (and viewer) jump in and out of dreams until we're all pleasantly confused whether our experiences are real or a dream.

The actual story is a little thin, though the director insists the narrative is there, even if it unfolds slowly. For most of the film, an unnamed seeker merely wanders in and out of dreams listening to people talk to him, trying to figure out what's up. Plot is beside the point. Any excuse to hang out with all these interesting people to hear what they have to say is fine with me.

And do they EVER talk: even moreso than the heavy non-stop verbiage that made the director's earlier Before Sunrise such a pleasant excuse to listen to stimulating conversation. We simply are thrust into the middle of one rambling monologue after another, given in many cases by non-actors who Linklater found facinating. The improvisational style of generating the material, says the director, made for an extremely open mode of creation not usual for big films. It all comes off improvisational, I should hasten to add, but it's all so dense and relentless it's like we had the supreme luck to catch some unforgettable speakers on a very good night.

Waking Life treats viewers to a diversity of perspectives, each speaker is passionate and usually upbeat -- though the film is certainly not without frequent acknowledgement to the nightmarish side of human experience. You get the feeling you're wrestling together with these amazing thinkers about what it means to be human in general, and especially at this particular moment in history.

One speaker worries about postmodern irresponsibility, and the consequent abdication of personal authenticity and passion. Another is facinated by language and symbolism, the difficulty in communicating emotions. One guy rhapsodizes about the possibilities of the ongoing bio revolution, our chance, so to speak, to grab evolution by the horns. This perspective is balanced by the guy who says man is the creature who loves chaos and proves his point in a disturbing way.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what the outpouring of ideas amount to -- whether they make for a unified philosophical perspective, or whether that perspective expresses the opinion of the director. I'm not sure that's the right way to view this film anyway, like a puzzle to decode. The effect of philosophical overload had about the same effect on me as the violence in Fight Club: I wasn't about to turn that film into a recipe for living, but I sure appreciated the metaphysical wake-up call.

And that's the point: one leaves Waking Life with a sense of being awakened to a world worth being awake for: along with a renewed passion to stay awake, live responsibly, and remain open to both others and to wonder. "This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have ever hoped to be alive," says one character. "Things are just starting."

If I had to boil down the film to a general message, it would be something along these lines: Hey, we ALL feel like we're experiencing a great transitional moment in human history. It's scary, yes, but why face the world feeling like the next chapter has to be worse than what came before? Why not choose to think it will actually turn out to be better?! The point of view is optimistic without being utopian, a vibrant championing of humanity rescued -- on the farside of the posmodern divide -- from the stale ideology of humanism. And, despite the caveats one speaker has about postmodernism, it's clear that whatever the next chapter consists of, it will feature a new approach to reality, and an ability to be comfortable with disunity: paradoxically, this might be the starting point for a new commonality.

There's plenty of discussion in Waking Life about dreaming, especially so- called "lucid dreaming" -- the notion that there's a way for a person to realize they're dreaming and somehow take control of their dreams to make them better. I don't know how literal the director takes these ideas; it doesn't matter. As a metaphor, lucid dreaming is perfect for examining the reality quest, which is everybody's problem, and living with everybody on their own individual quest is also everybody's problem. Taking control of our own dreaming -- the world we each perceive as reality -- is our own unique individual responsibility and all anyone can really do.

Of course, all this optimistic blather rings just a little tinny in the wake of September 11th. As if that tragedy could be compounded, I find myself wondering -- as I've picked up a certain glimmer in more than one recent film -- Is it possible that we were on the brink of a new Post postmodern hopefulness when the terrorists blew the last shards of trendy despair out of our lives?

If so, then such a change in cultural mood arrives not a moment too soon. It remains to be seen whether any such new Will to Hope will carry us beyond the nightmares of the post-WTC present into new dreams. But I guess that's the personal responsibility of each of us: facing an unexpected next chapter that looks very scary indeed, and refusing to believe it is the End of the World.