The Third Man

Dream a Little Dream of Me

The subconscious imagination can be fertile breeding ground for fantastically innovative stories, just as Christopher Nolan’s Inception (review linked) so capably proves. Over the years there have been many films that take place within the infinite confines of the human mind, these are just a few of the notables.

Dreams can be marvelous like a certain Kansas girl’s (and her dog’s) adventure on the yellow brick road to the Emerald City. The Wizard of Oz (1939) is a musical fantasy that still never fails to evoke a sense of childlike wonder. Alice in Wonderland (1951) and more recently, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) also extolled the virtues of imagination and fantasy and its necessity within an increasingly bleak reality.

Not all dreams are filled with whimsy and occur in Technicolor sepia however. Dreams can be frightening and no other franchise tapped into the power of that better than A Nightmare on Elm Street. The iconic Freddy Krueger became the embodiment of the unconscious bogeyman for following generations. It takes a lot more than clicking your ruby red shoes to escape Freddy’s bladed glove as Wes Craven presents the scarier end of the slumber spectrum.

The Matrix (1999) is widely recognised for popularising bullet-time but it doesn’t receive enough credit for introducing postmodern philosophical concepts such as Solipsism, which is just a fancy term for scepticism of one’s reality, into mainstream vernacular. “Is this reality really real?” is the fundamental question perpetuated repeatedly in Inception as well as The Matrix.

1999 was the year of the existential crisis it seems because besides The Matrix, two other movies dealing with virtual reality were released the same year. eXistenZ and The Thirteenth Floor dealt with similarly heady themes of disembodied perception. It’s too bad they weren’t filled with enough cyberpunk aesthetics or expensive groundbreaking action sequences to win over more casual popcorn-poppers.

If perception is reality, as digital dreamers such as Neo suggests, then memories whether they be real or false are equally able to define a person as well. Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, Total Recall (1990) was a sci-fi film that dealt with the leitmotif of fake experiences and (once again) reality versus delusion. Whether Douglas Quaid’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) Martian adventure really took place or are simply figments of implanted memories is still one of cinema’s classic open-ended conclusions.

Abre Los Ojos (1997) and its Cameron Crowe helmed remake Vanilla Sky (2001) were reality warps analogous to Total Recall, just a little more psychological rather than action/adventure. Are the surreal struggles of self-discovery that the protagonists in both movies face actual experiences or are they experiencing lifelike lucid dreams while kept in a coma by a company called “Life Extension”?

Identity (2003) was initially a clever murder whodunit that devolved when it used the old split personality deus ex machina to explain everything. As it turns out, the events and characters of the narrative all take place within the fractured psyche of the real killer. It’s strange that a movie would use the “he’s the killer and the cop” twist especially after Charlie Kaufman so mercilessly mocked it’s stupidity in Adaptation (2002) - so it comes as no surprise that Identity eventually comes across as a poor man’s Fight Club.

Tales set in the subconscious allow a storyteller greater flexibility to get creative with chronology or logic. However the best stories that take place within the mind aren’t just cases where the dream world context is used as an excuse for a filmmaker to defy physics, add in a cheap plot twist or wax lyrical about philosophy.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tells the simple story of a heartbroken couple’s attempt to erase the memory of their relationship - only to belatedly realise that some memories are worth cherishing. Is wiping out the pain worth it when the cost is forgetting why you loved someone in the first place? The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007) depicts Jean-Dominique Bauby’s (former editor of Elle) life after suffering a massive stroke. Suffering from locked-in syndrome (paralysis from the neck down), Bauby’s only escape was into his mind. The film poignantly juxtaposes Bauby’s cruel reality with the regrets of his recollections and the beauty of his fantasies.

The best stories are the ones that affect you not just intellectually, but emotionally, which is why Inception works so brilliantly. As evidenced, the heart and mind aren’t as mutually exclusive as you’d imagine.

Honorable Mentions: The Cell (2000), Dreamscape (1984), The Fall (2006), The Good Night (2007), The Science of Sleep (2006), Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990), Donnie Darko (2001), Repo Men (2010)