Friday, February 8, 2019

What Dreams May Come (1998)




What Dreams May Come (1998)

First and foremost this movie is visually stunning, I will say that immediately. Usually when a movie looks this good the story doesn't quite live up in the same way. Not here, this movie will rip your fucking heart out and show it to you while it's still beating.


What amazes me is the amount of people I've talked to over years that have never seen this film. I don't know how this is possible because it hits across so many lines all at the same time. Any how.... on to my review.


The story centers around Chris Nielsen (played by Robin Williams) and his life, meeting his perfect wife, having children, building a home together, losing his children, losing his life and what comes after. Chris is a doctor that runs into the woman of his dreams by accident while traveling. Later we are shown that he is a doctor and she works for a museum and paints. They get married, have kids and build that perfect but all to busy life together. Then we here Chris voice over as his kids drive away “That was the last time we saw our children alive” and this is where the movie starts to really become what it is.


This movie is about death. Losing the ones we love and how we deal with it. What happens after we die. How those we love can be destroyed by our passing. It doesn't do all this in one long shot, there are flashbacks perfectly timed throughout the movie giving us all these glimpses of how the death of their children almost tore Chris and his wife Annie (Annabella Sciorra) apart. What happens to her once he is gone as well.


This movie is about life. Between all the death and terrible consequences of it we are also shown the life of those involved. The love they shared and how much they meant to each other. Coming into understandings of each individual, husband to wife, parent to child. Again this is scattered throughout the movie in a series of flashbacks that set the pace throughout.


This movie is about heaven and hell without beating us in the head with angels and demons. Mentioning only a couple of times the idea that there may be a God watching. It puts everything on a much more personal level than any other movie I've seen.


Chris builds his own heaven based around the paintings that his wife had done. Their meeting and hopeful future. With the help of his guide Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.) on how to make what you want become a reality along with coming to terms with his own death. Later he is helped by Leona (Rosalind Chao) with dealing with the personal heavens of others.


But when the unthinkable happens Chris decides to travel across hell itself and will not be talked out of it by Albert who eventually decides to come with and recruiting a guide named The Tracker (Max von Sydow). Traversing the nightmare landscapes and littered with dangerous obstacles they finally reach their destination and we see that not only do people make their own slice of heaven, but they can create their own hell as well.


Now onto the visuals. Stunning is best work I can find to describe it. Everything has it's specific look from Chris' heaven being built out of paint and slowly becoming more solid. To the childs dream that is Leona's personal place. The library where we find the tracker gives us much foreboding and it helps tell you so much about the character. Then hell itself will leave you wide eyed and staring, especially that final personal hell that we venture to in the end. One that feels like we could end up there ourselves on our worst days.


Directed by Vincent Ward who does an outstanding job. So much so that I forgive him writing Alien 3, and trust me that's a big leap for me. Written by Ronald Bass who adapted it from a book by Richard Matheson. I cannot recommend this movie enough to anyone that has an ounce of human empathy or is a parent themselves. It is a hard movie to watch as bad things happen to good people with nobody at fault and nobody to blame. But in the end we find that the entire journey, including that after death, is what really matters.


If you like this material and want to see more please support my blog, you can find out how by hitting the Support tab at the top.  Or you can click on the Ko-Fi link on the side as well.

"Sometimes it's hard to get ahead."

No comments:

Post a Comment