Nicolas Cage plays Paul Matthews, a fairly bland and passive professor who hasn’t ever pushed himself out of his comfort zone. His career path seems steady, his home life likewise, if a bit tired, and he tends to see others making progress while he stays in the same spot. This all changes when he starts to appear in the dreams of other people. He doesn’t do anything in these dreams, not initially anyway, but he becomes a presence in the nocturnal slumberland of many people, giving him a strange kind of celebrity. That is all well and good while the dreams are pleasant enough, but it’s not so good when things turn darker.
Although it makes great use of dream logic and enjoyably cinematic vignettes, Dream Scenario is a very clever way of exploring the modern problem of “going viral”. If everyone views you in a certain context then they start to think they know you, and anything changing their perception of you, real or imagined, can lead to a real backlash. Keep being successful and many people will want to watch you fail. Make one mistake and many people will rush to judgement, a whole tide of opinion turning against you quicker than you can send out a carefully-worded video apology.
Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli has crafted one of the best movies of 2023 here, a clever and pointed exploration of our modern society that has us all putting ourselves into the lives of others, eager for connections and validations that can appear or disappear with one keystroke or touch of a phone screen.
Borgli is helped by another fantastic Nicolas Cage performance, once again performing the kind of schlub he has shown us in one or two of his other films. Cage perfectly embodies the full journey of his character, from curiosity to cockiness, from nervousness to narcissism, and the various dream incarnations of his character allow him to consider his waking life in ways he would never have done before. Julianne Nicholson and Lily Bird are very good as the affected family members, wife and daughter respectively, and there is an excellent supporting cast that includes Kate Berlant, Tim Meadows, Michael Cera, and Dylan Baker, but the film rests on the shoulders of Cage, and he admirably carries it with ease.
I thought I was going to like Dream Scenario since I heard of the concept. The trailer just made me even more keen to see it. It absolutely surpassed my expectations, and is a perfect blend of humour, drama, commentary, and movie magic. I would hope that people are now well aware of how great Cage can be onscreen (he is enjoying a recent renaissance, but I have been a fan of him for decades, regardless of the times when the bad movies far outweighed the bad). If you somehow still doubt his talent, this may very well convert you.
9/10
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Interesting movie.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
DeleteI heard about this but I don't think it was streaming where I could watch it "free" yet. The funny thing for me is the concept is similar to a novel I wrote back in 2005 and self-published in 2012 where a blind guy finds out as a child that he can enter dreams but then he accidentally kills his parents when he enters their dreams and things go wrong. So then he goes to a mental hospital for a long time until budget cuts kick him out and then while at a regular hospital to check in with sort of his parole officer, he enters the mind of a woman in a coma and tries to "fix" things for her, which becomes increasingly difficult. I always thought it'd be a good movie, though I always imagined Tim Burton doing it but maybe this director would do a good job too. https://www.amazon.com/Higher-Power-P-T-Dilloway-ebook/dp/B008E6QV1E
ReplyDeleteThis director certainly has a good way of mixing the fantastical with grounded elements that comment on human nature and modern society. I look forward to whatever they do next.
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