What Dreams May Come
From the advertising, you may have gotten the impression that this is a sweet date movie - "Wildly Romantic!", the commercials claim. In a way, they're right. The movie is romantic in the classic sense of the word: imaginative, emotional, mysterious and even tragic. It is not a boy-meets-girl story that makes you want to cuddle. It is a dark and adventurous look at what happens to a man after his death, and the extreme lengths he will go to be with his wife in the afterworld.
Robin Williams is Chris Nielson, who has found a soulmate in his wife, the luminous Annie (Annabella Sciorra). Very early in the film, Chris is killed trying to assist at the scene of a car wreck, and finds himself in Heaven. Because his great love is painting, his Heaven is a self-created vision of oils and acrylics, a beautiful scene brought to life flawlessly by director Vincent Ward.
Chris is guided through his Heaven by a Virgil figure (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), but can't help visiting Earth to try and comfort his mourning wife, who is shattered by the loss, made worse because both their children were lost in a similar car wreck four years earlier. But she senses his presence and it tortures her, so he leaves her to mourn alone.
The film then finds Chris dealing in Heaven with unresolved issues from his life, reuniting with his children, and eventually defying the rules of Heaven to be with his wife. In the sense that he will venture - literally - to Hell and back to be with her, then What Dreams May Come is romantic. But the problem with the film is that somehow, despite a solid performance by Williams and a superb performance by Sciorra, they never connect on an emotional level with the audience.
The film takes amazing risks by daring to show what Heaven and Hell look like, and succeeds admirably. The images are taken from classical art and stunningly animated. Those who have read Dante know that Hell is infinitely more interesting than Heaven, which holds true here as well; the scene where the dead capsize Chris' boat is deeply disturbing, but even the scenes in Heaven are compelling. This is a film that uses its amazing special effects to enhance the story, instead of letting them be the story.
The Hollywood-fashioned ending helps to ruin the story with its quick crowd-pleasing riffs, but still, what the viewer is left with after the movie is over is not a sense of the couple's undying love, but the images. The visual effects are a triumph of the imagination, but the emotional core of the movie never rings true. It's all the more distressing because a number of times you sense that you are about to be moved…but aren't quite. For the chances the movie takes and the visions it brings to the screen I commend it, but for all the commitment to showing us visions of the afterlife, What Dreams May Come has a sadly disappointing lack of heart.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker