Dream a spectacular dream of heaven
What Dreams May Come A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman
**** (Out of ****)
Philosopher physician Deepak Chopra has a story about two people who ride a roller coaster. For the first, this is a frightening experience and it fills his body with unhealthy adrenaline. The second loves the thrills and his body creates healthy endorphins. "It's not the ride," he says, "it's the rider."
That we create our own realities is a concept the "New Age" -- whatever that means -- borrowed from eastern religions and has become accepted as truth even among the western medical community. Stress and attitude are thought to be the leading cause of illness. How we see the world is how the world is. We control the ride, not the other way around.
Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) can create his own realm. Literally. The only problem is that he had to die first.
Chris and Annie (Annabella Sciorra) have the perfect marriage. Soulmates, he is a pediatrician; she, a painter. They have two wonderful children. Then things fall apart. The kids are killed in a tragic car wreck and full-of-life Annie is devastated with all of her joy wrenched away. After an attempted suicide, she is institutionalized.
Four years later Annie has recovered and is back at work. Chris stops to help an accident victim and is killed when a car flips over onto him. When he comes to, he is in a wondrous afterlife where anything he imagines comes true. He can have anything he wants. Except Annie.
The death of her life partner sends Annie into a depression spiral and she succeeds in her second suicide attempt. People who kill themselves don't go to the same place that Chris did. He's informed that he can never see her again.
Chris refuses to accept this and begins his Orpheus-like journey into the underworld to rescue his lover.
Before I go on, I have to tell you that this is the most visually stunning film in recent memory. The movie is extraordinary. Far too often, special effects cause the audience to think "That's cool. I wonder how they did it." More successful movies evoke "That's cool" without pulling you out of the film. "Dreams" only allows "That's…" as you sit, mouth agape, in astonishment. You are not watching the film, you _are_ the film.
Chris' heaven is based on paintings. Before he understands how it works, his Monet surroundings not only look like paint, they _are_ paint and not quite dry. When he picks and squeezes a brilliant blue flower, it liquefies into pigment. As he runs down a hill stepping on bright reds and yellows, the ground squishes beneath his feet flowing into streams of combined colors. At first his world looks like someone went overboard with Photoshop on a Macintosh.
The heavenly city is a wonderful living Maxfield Parrish poster. Hell is a frightening combination of H. R. Giger and German Expressionism. The hundreds of condemned souls surrounding Chris' boat is more chilling than even the similar scene in "Titanic". When he reaches Annie, the color palate becomes monochromatic reflecting her state of mind.
The team of director Vincent Ward ("The Navigator"), effects supervisors Ellen Ward, production designer Eugenio Zanetti and cinematographer Eduardo Serra have given us a film that visually is beyond words. I'm wearing out my thesaurus looking up synonyms for "awesome."
Like myths of old, the story is a metaphor for life. Chris' afterlife is brilliant and full of wonders because that is how he sees the world. Annie's is gloomy and without hope because that's her view. The one message that I have doubts is that it is possible to save the damned by joining them in hell. That path leads not to salvation, but madness.
Annie's willingness to accept responsibility for the deaths (her housekeeper drove the children on their fatal trip because Annie was too busy, Chris was running an errand for her) is symptomatic of the depressed. She believes that she is so powerful that everything is her fault.
Every actor in the film is excellent. Williams exhibits none of his manic over-the-top personality yet is intense, determined and at the same time filled with joy. Sciorra is remarkable as Annie sinks further and further into the depths. Before her melancholy, there is a scene on a hill near Switzerland where, dressed in gauze, she is one of the most alluring women in cinematic history.
Chris' first heavenly guide is Albert, played likably by Cuba Gooding, Jr. In another excellent effect, when he first appears, he is blurry, out of synch with Chris. As he comes more into focus, he explains to Chris that "Thought is real. Physical is the illusion. Ironic, isn't it?"
Max von Sydow is the "Tracker," Chris' guide through hell. His extreme screen presence prepares us for the trip into the abyss. In another film he would stand out but here there is no character that it is possible to take your eyes off of.
Like the movie itself, the reviews for this are all over the spectrum from people who hated it to those who were amazed. Aside from obvious technical aspects, movie-going is often a subjective experience. What one person finds trite, another may experience as profound. What you bring into the theater is an important part of what you take out.
I suppose that I was ready for this film. There are problems: the final scene is a bit corny, some of the truisms are simplistic. But I didn't care. It blew me away.
After leaving the movie, I was in no shape to drive home. Walking over to the edge of the parking lot and gazing into the moonlit forest across the street, I lighted a cigarette and wondered why so often we chose to live in the gray world of hell when there is so much Maxfield Parrish out there.
(Michael Redman has written this column for over 23 years and has never seen anything like this on the screen before. You are free to disagree if you like, but you'd be wrong. Send spectacular visions to Redman@indepen.com.)
[This appeared in the 10/8/98 "Bloomington Indpependent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com]
-- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review at http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman
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