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What Dreams May Come

In this film we have a rich, magic realist tapestry staring Robin Williams in the afterlife, pursing his wife who has commited suicide, following her to the underworld of despair. The magic realist aspect is that the story is told through the mediium of art, of painting -- literally entering the paintings. "Art" becomes a metaphor of life and life's journey through love, loss, pain, despair and hope once again. The use of the metaphor of painting is absolutely integral to the story -- that element is so essential. It is the metaphor on which the story rests can not be removed from it.

This movie is more than "visually stylized". It is the visual references and images that makes the story work as it does: the art in the film and the use and manipulation of it takes the story to deeper and sometimes disturbing levels. The use of art not only becomes the movie, but is the movie in terms of both exploring life's questions through art, while also becoming a vehicle for those questions to be explored.

The same with the previously mentioned work An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge(Go to Big Fish for related discussion): a soldier, caught up in the Civil War, is captured and is to be hung. We see him, through his viewpoint, looking down at the creek below him as he walks the plank afixed to a bridge. Then the point of view (POV) is third person -- we see him as the plank is pulled and the rope breaks. He falls into the creek. He's free. The soldiers fire at him from the bridge, but he runs, splashing through the water, and sucessfully escapes. The POV shifts again to his point of view as he's running -- we hear him breathing, then we sense his exhaustion, but also his exultation at being alive. He looks to the sun, the grasses. We become aware of him discovering how precious -- magical -- life is. Then we see his lover or wife running to him and just before they embrace -- bang -- we are back to third person. We see the plank pulled, the rope not breaking. As he hangs we understand by this movement between points of view that what we were really watching was his fantasy about escaping and rediscovering what life meant to him, his realizing how truly precious life is. While point of view shfts are not entirely the domain of magic realism, they work to show how this fantasy fits well within the magic realist realm.

 

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