WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Vincent Ward Writer: Ronald Bass (based on the novel by Richard Matheson) Starring: Robin Williams, Annabella Sciorra, Cuba Gooding Jr., Max von Sydow, Rosalind Chao, Josh Paddock, Jessica Brooks, Werner Herzog
Watching "What Dreams May Come" is really one of the more bizarre evenings (or, in my case, afternoons) I've had at the movies in quite some time, and I mean that positively. It's unlike any big budget mainstream I've seen since "Dark City," and while they share the same brilliance in artistic and technical design, they also share a true hypnotism: sitting back and really taking everything this film has to offer in is like getting totally lost in a movie, and any real short comings, the amount of which may be the real difference between these two films, are easy to ignore until afterwards, the best time for problems to surface anyway.
The protagonist, Chris Nielsen, is played by none other than Robin Williams, the actor who has made an entire career out of playing bigger-than-life characters in bizarre fantasy worlds. This time, in what seems to be his current attempt to be taken more seriously as an actor (and by god we do, Robin), he plays it straight, as the entire story is a serious bit of pondering on what may happen after one dies. But the film is not necessarily about death, and when it begins, it's about Chris meeting his soon-to-be-wife in a Meet-Cute scene that turns into a joyfully happy marriage.
Although Chris and his wife, Annie (Annabella Sciorra), are happy and have two kids (John Paddock and Jessica Brooks), they are soon struck with tragedy when their kids are killed in a car accident. This sends Annie into a mental institution and somehow, Chris gets her out of it, nurses her back, and gets her into painting as a form of therapy...then he dies in a car accident.
The rest of the film, following this short exposition, is mostly following Chris as he learns more and more about what happens after one dies, like how we get our own heaven in which all of our desires come true. Personally, Chris ends up in one of Annie's paintings, a gorgeous landscape of where they first met, which at first is actually made up of acryllic paints, so when, for example, he picks up a flower from the ground and crushes it, it turns into acryllic right in his hands. As he learns more, it turns into a real landscape, and he soon learns all the other major perks of being dead: you can fly, you can breathe under water, and everything you wish is at your command, more or less. In other words, it's like a much more controlled and more stable acid trip. Glad to know I have something to look forward to.
Along for the ride is Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the Virgil to Chris' Dante. More or less, he explains things for him, though not everything and usually after he's already discovered things. And while he hangs with them and another Oriental woman, Leona (Rosalind Chao), who takes him to another heaven for a special emotional meeting, Annie is meanwhile suffering emotional breakdown, but still desperately trying to hang on. Although Chris is able to communicate with her partially before he ascends to his own heaven, it only destroys her more. By the mid-point, she has committed suicide, and has not wound up in heaven but in hell, which is reserved not for the morally wicked but for those who've committed the greatest sin: not being able to forgive one's self.
Chris ends up deciding to travel to hell to go find her, with the help of a mysterious man dubbed The Tracker (and played by the great Max Von Sydow, who with this, "The Seventh Seal," and "The Exorcist" - not to mention "Needful Things" where he played Satan himself - has fully shown he's a master of death, or something like that). This may sound like a typical Hollywood film from this point on, kinda like "Ghost" with unstubtle Orpheus undertones (all Chris needs is a harp), but strangely enough, this just seems to nicely blend with everything else as a magical excursion to a foreign land never tred in other movies.
Visually, "What Dreams May Come" is outstanding, and is undoubtedly the recipient of a nice Oscar nomination for Art Direction (too bad this and "Dark City" had to come out in the same year). The image of Chris' heaven is like living inside components of Renaissance paintings, the land of Myst, Angel memorablia, and Hallmark Greeting Cards. Hell is equally magestic, filled with an entrance that is as fiery and frightening as we all imagined it would be (like the use of a lake to surround the entrance to hell, as well as the use of Cerberus), while the main part is instead a sea of faces buried into the ground, a sight that is breathtaking and unnerrving.
This is all well and good, and luckily the rest of the movie is wonderful as well. The film, though obviously designed into a traditional three act format, actually flows together quite nicely. Each large sequence is like a mini-masterpiece unto itself of bizarro introductions and amazing sights, and there doesn't seem to be any filler. This makes for a film that just pulls us right into the moment, and works us over so much with bringing a brand new vision of the afterlife to us that we damn near forget about plot advancement.
Unfortunately, "What Dreams May Come" has come under some serious admonishment from other critics, who have been blasting it for its new age thinking, such as how we can control everything in our lives and our after-lives if we only concentrate. While some of this is true, it's sadly enough superfluous to the entirety of the film. The point of this film is not to invoke this kind of thinking onto you, unless you're so anal that you actually pay attention to some of Albert's perplexing explanations (did you really understand all that?), but to really take us on a journey that's a treat to the senses, and later on the emotions.
I will say that it does have its share of problems, though, especially in the emotion department. For most of the film, it's a pretty emotional experience, what with everyone in the family being dead, and Annie left to rot out her existence, feeling unfairly guilty that she didn't drive her kids to school the day they died and make Chris do an errand the day he did. In the early scenes, we really do feel a sense of love between Chris and Annie, and some of the jokes they tell aren't so much funny as they are sweetly romantic. And when Chris announces he will go get her from hell, it really has justified that decision, and we're right along with him the whole way.
In the finale, it does get in a bit of snag, coming up with an ending which is way too easy and chipper for a film that is so hypnotic and complex up until that point. With Chris seeing Annie, who doesn't recognize him at all, and desperately trying to get her to get over the distraught she has put herself in, it perhaps couldn't have come up with an ending that was either very satisfying or very logical (I will give it this, though: at least it didn't have Chris telling her "It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not you fault," etc. etc. etc.). It's as if it pulls us right up to the crevice, turns right around, and walks in the opposite direction.
Nevertheless, "What Dreams May Come" is a substantial success. Its power is that it hooks us in to its story emotionally and psychologically, and pleases all of our senses with imagery and scenes that are not to be believed. Maybe it's because of the technical reasons that I'm really recommending this, but at least I'm not stupid enough to take into any major consideration the new age thinking that it partially touches upon.
MY RATING (out of 4): ***1/2
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