The film’s hero, not given a name, is played by Wiley Wiggins as a young man who has returned to the town where once, years ago, a playmate’s folding paper toy (we used to call them “cootie catchers”) unfolded to show him the words, “dream is destiny.” He seems to be in a dream, and complains that although he knows it’s a dream, he can’t awaken. He wanders from one person and place to another (something like the camera did in Linklater’s first film, “Slacker”). He encounters theories, beliefs, sanity, nuttiness. People try to explain what they believe, but he is overwhelmed until finally he is able to see that the answer is–curiosity itself. To not have the answers is expected. To not ask questions is a crime against your own mind.

If I have made the movie sound somber and contemplative, I have been unfair to it. Few movies are more cheerful and alive. The people encountered by the dreamer in his journey are intoxicated by their ideas–deliriously verbal. We recognize some of them: Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, from Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” continue their conversation. Speed Levitch, the manic tour guide from the documentary “Cruise,” is still on his guided tour of life. Other characters are long known to Linklater, including Robert C. Solomon, a philosopher at the University of Texas, who comes onscreen to say something Linklater remembers him saying in a lecture years ago, that existentialism offers more hope than predestination, because it gives us a reason to try to change things.

I have seen “Waking Life” three times now. I want to see it again–not to master it, or even to remember it better (I would not want to read the screenplay), but simply to experience all of these ideas, all of this passion, the very act of trying to figure things out. It must be depressing to believe that you have been supplied with all the answers, that you must believe them and to question them is disloyal, or a sin. Were we given minds in order to fear their questions? – Roger Ebert