11) What Dreams May Come (1998): Chris’ First Experience of Heaven
There really is only one word with which to describe the reception of Vincent Ward’s 1998 fantasy drama What Dreams May Come: Extraordinary. Being as it is a story of almost incomparable tragedy – following a dead man’s journey to rescue his dead wife from the hell that she created for herself due to the deaths of their two children – many viewers could barely watch it. Others however, could barely watch it. That is, the multiple deaths, the constant themes of loss and sorrow, and the unending heartbreak and sacrifice combined not to produce one of the most profoundly moving films of the 1990s, but an hour and half that some viewers would cheerfully have rather passed sticking their fingers down their throats – which is mainly what they felt they’d spent the movie doing anyway.
Basically, the most notable thing about the reception of this movie was that its defenders and critics didn’t use different aspects of it to support their positive or negative views. In most cases, they were divided over exactly the same points. For some, the story conveyed hope, imagination and true love; for others – such as American super-film-critic Leonard Maltin – the story was “off-putting gobbledegook.” Some viewers found the central performances from Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra to be heartbreakingly powerful; others thought that watching them might have actually given them genuine tooth decay. Of all the movies that drastically divide opinion, What Dreams May Come remains to this day a fierce contender for first place.
The feature of What Dreams May Come that wasn’t in dispute, however, was the triumph of its artistry and visual creativity. In amongst all the car crashes and the dying and the nervous breakdowns, the film finds time to portray various conceptions of Heaven and Hell, as perceived by whichever character is imagining them – and they are astonishing.
After having lingered on earth after his death in an effort to remain close to his anguished wife Annie, Chris (Williams) finally realizes that his presence is only causing her further pain, and decides to leave. He wakes up lying down, surrounded by flowers of the most vivid colours, the air full of birdsong. When he sits up, the background appears to be made of paintbrush strokes. Taking one of the flowers in his hand, he finds that it is made of paint. He is then joyfully met by his old dog Katie (who, of course, was dead), whose paws are shown to be mixing paint on the ground wherever she stands.
As Chris gets up to run around with Katie, a wider shot shows the surroundings to indeed be an entire painting. Chris and Katie run through the landscape until they reach a tree in the foreground of a beautiful mountain vista at sundown. A short cut-away shot shows Chris in an actual painting, standing underneath the tree, before swiftly changing back to inside the painting. Looking out over the mountains and water, with the breeze blowing and the clouds moving, Chris finally realizes that he is in his own version of Heaven – a landscape painted by the hand of his beloved Annie.
There are many other moments like this, that show the cleverness of the relationship between Chris and the painting – including one in which a tree appears as Annie paints it, only to disintegrate again as she decides that Chris can’t really see it, and erases it – and the film deservedly won the Academy Award for best visual effects. But this first experience of Heaven is probably the most beautiful, at both at the technical and the emotional level. The realness of the painting detail, and the fact that Chris can interact with it (there is even green paint on the back of his coat, from when he had been lying in the grass) are immensely imaginative, and the quality of the effects match that vision.
Then, of course, there is the poignant idea that Chris somehow remains close to Annie, through the medium of something that she has created. As the scene ends with the camera pulling away to show the wider landscape, accompanied by Michael Kamen’s stirring score, it is impossible not to be struck by the grandeur of both the artistic vision and execution, and its meaning.