I'd go for Waking Life, only because of the notion that in this digital age, it's hard to tell what's real and what's a dream anymore. Our generation are bombarded with images and stories and information every day - more information than any other generation before us - and I think our dilemma is trying to process it all into something meaningful.
Someone said that the 90s were "more real" than this decade. That's something in itself that is quite disturbing, the idea that reality is being deseminated. I consider myself a 90s person, seeing as I was born in 1985, and also because the nineties were better, because in a way they really were more real. The Internet is this generation's gift, and yet it is also a curse. Films are becoming computer games; computer games are becoming films. The gap between high and low culture, good and bad, talent and non-talent are all growing smaller and smaller and smaller.
Anyway, enough rambling. Waking Life is definitely cool. Richard Linklater seems to really have a great mindset and understanding of how people think. Before Sunset sums up love for both the X and the Y Generations in cool ways. They're the same, only our generation I think has more problems than X, namely trying to juggle so much crap. There can no longer be a 'generation' because even as the Internet and media try to pull us together, they actually push us further apart. In the nineties there was one music channel in England: MTV. Now, there are dozens and dozens, all catering for different audiences. Everyone sticks to their own channel, their own genre, their own crowd, and we all become more and more estranged from one another, more unwilling to embrace new and different things than ever. We post on forums, talking to people hundreds of miles away, not ever really meeting them, and yet by staying on our computers we lose the chance to socialise in real life, and make real friends (whatever 'real' means). A generation plays Second Life to escape reality, and so exacerbates this problem, rather like gamblers putting more and money in with each defeat. This is our generation's dilemma. Another film that sums it all up it Todd Stolz's "Happiness". It's kind of messed up, but at the same time is a good example of showing this separated state.
But that's just my opinion. I'm sure someone out there on the other side of the Atlantic will reply to me, and I'll reply back, and we might argue, and yet we'll never see each other's face or know each other's name but we'll share a lot of vitriol.
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