Dream Scenario (2023)

Rated R for sexuality, violence, and language.  It's an upsetting movie at times with a character that is both unlikable and oddly elicits empathy.  (I was going to use the word "pathetic", which kind of means that, but it has such a negative connotation.)  While this is an A24 movie, it isn't nearly as upsetting as most of the things that A24 has offered in the past.  Still, definitely not for kids.

DIRECTOR: Kristoffer Borgli

I'm being productive well into the night.  I needed something that I really wanted to watch before I started Fanny and Alexander: The Television Cut.  I've seen Fanny and Alexander before.  I remember liking it.  That being said, after the string of homework-y movies, I just wanted to watch something that I was genuinely excited to watch.  The downside, for me, is that it's almost 1:00 am and I'm writing a blog instead of knocking out a few hours of a so-so Playstation game. (I've also been aggressively reading a book I dislike just so I can be done with it.  Really, I've let my downtime also become work.) 

It's always hard to write about things that I like.  I knew I was going to like Dream Scenario.  From the first trailer, I saw that it was going to be one of those movies that I absolutely adored.  And guess what?  It lived up to every expectation.  Nicholas Cage is going through a pretty sick renaissance right now.  I know.  He's still Nicholas Cage and I can't stop thinking that the protagonist is Nicholas Cage.  He's not necessarily doing the traditional performance that Cage puts on, but I kept thinking how miserable Cage must be doing the bald thing. In my head, he's bald with a hairpiece on for the receded hairline, but that's just me doing some guess work.  Do you know what?  It didn't matter that I kept focusing on Nicholas Cage.  There's almost a meta-narrative working with the idea that Paul Matthews became the most recognizable person on Earth and the same is probably true about Nicholas Cage right now.  (Okay, he's not the most famous person on Earth.  Like I said, he's having a good run currently.) 

This movie might get the rare perfect score from me, but it isn't a perfect movie.  There's a couple of things that are scratching at my noodle that aren't necessarily flaws, but I kind of wish that the movie just nuanced a bit.  Like many of the greats, especially from the avant-garde A24 movies of the past, Dream Scenario --for all of its high concept --has something quite timely to say.  As much as we focus on Paul as the protagonist, coupled with all of his flaws, the movie is more of a commentary on the fickleness of society.  Yeah, Borgli wrote a pretty complex character in Paul, who is kind of the worst and yet worthy of empathy (I already wrote this!).  It's weird that Janet loves her husband because the guy is completely self-involved.  He's kind of this pathetic (there's the word used tonally correctly!) because he's a guy who is always about to do something without actually doing it.  When people start having dreams about Paul, he's this completely passive element to the dream.  (I don't actually know why Molly is having sexual dreams about him when no one else is.  Maybe it's the notion that Janet thought of him in a sexual way, thus Paul projects that into people's minds?)   But we're kind of meant to hate Paul at times.  When he cheats on Janet in the most pathetic (again!) way possible, we're kind of meant to hate him.

But it is when the societal bullying happens, that's when the movie flips the script.  Borgli created this character that gets punished in spades.  We're never really meant to like Paul because he's kind of the most weakling version of ourselves.  He wants to be special without really doing anything all that special, shy of coining the term "antelligence". But Paul is mostly right.  The world starts hating him because he's become the subject of countless nightmares.  These nightmares, admittedly, are pretty brutal.  But there's this divide between the logical self understanding that the real Paul wasn't actually doing anything (besides feeling rage when reading that his ideas were lightly plagiarized) that caused people to be harmed, because they weren't harmed.  It's just that Paul Matthews the character lacks the self-awareness to see how he comes across to people.   This gets into the cancel culture stuff.  There's no red flag here, but there is a bit of a yellow flag for me.

See, as much as we can be annoyed by the waking world's Paul Matthews, he's not an evil dude.  The world doesn't know that he cheated on his wife.  His wife probably doesn't even know that he cheated on his wife.  I can see not liking a dude if his extramarital affair became public.  I'm actually kind of down being done with people based on bad behavior. But the world cancels Paul for something he actually didn't do.  On top of that, the cancelling is really mean.  I'm starting to split into different arguments, so give me a pass if this gets a little sporadic.  The movie uses the term "cancel culture," not me.  While Borgli claims that this isn't a movie about cancel culture, he couldn't dodge the parallels that happen in the movie.  The thing that makes me a little bummed in this movie is that Paul, from everyone's perspective, didn't actually do anything worthy of being cancelled.  (Again, we know the reality.)  There is a somewhat inherent message that victims of cancel culture are actual victims.  I do feel for Paul when people start bullying him. But I also want to stress that all of the actions against Paul are actual examples of bullying.

Instead of communicating more valid concerns towards Paul, someone scribbled "Loser" on the side of his car.  Not "Monster".  Not "Leave us alone!".  "Loser."  Yes, Paul is a loser.  He's an incredibly awkward dude who is convinced of his own superiority. That makes him a loser.  But people don't hate him for being a loser.  They hate him because he gives them nightmares.  The guy spits in his food.  The movie states explicitly that Paul isn't the character in people's dreams.  The sex scene with Molly kind of confirms that.  He's completely incompetent and non-threatening in the waking world.  It's just that character in people's heads that is horrifying.  I can't believe the guy spit in his food despite the association that he had with Paul in his nightmares.

What's really interesting is the odd track that this movie has on the concept of fame.  Early on, Paul learns the dark side of being famous.  When a mentally ill person breaks into his house and threatens him with a knife, you would think that Paul would want to distance himself from the dreams.  It's not like he has any control over them, but he doesn't take any pro-active steps to remove these dreams from his life.  Now, I almost can't begrudge Paul his attempts to get a book published with his newfound fame.  It's a lemons-into-lemonade thing that I completely understand. But the second half of the film gets incredibly dark and scary. It seems like Paul would want to get rid of this thing that is making him a social pariah.  But the one thing that stays consistent with Paul is that he never really wants this curse removed.  He hates it.  When he's sleeping in a propane soaked basement with a sterile light that won't shut off, it seems like Hell.  But he never really wants to get rid of this curse.  When the curse just disappears, he does anything to send himself into his wife's dream.  This is an amazing ending and pays of the David Byrne / Talking Heads Chekhov's gun that is introduced in the first act.  But I also think that he's still so unaware of his own place in society that he needs anything that would make him special.

By the way, of course someone would find a way to monetize dreams in this world.  I am a big fan of "unless you have a perfect explanation, don't have any explanation at all" in high concept stories.  You don't need to tell me why the dreams are there.  You don't need to tell me why they went away.  Nothing would really be a valid answer.  It is a bit of a shift to get behind the technology guru who figured all of the ways to invade people's dreams.  I accept it because it's great commentary on how people would market traumatic feelings.  But it's also this sad moment for society that we have to admit that we would come to that. Also, I love how the dream guarantee just doesn't quite work all of the time the way that it is promised.  I personally would hate ads in my head.  I'm not quite sure if the dreams are going to everyone or just to those who signed up for the service.  Regardless, they have to have some kind of premium rate going, right?

Anyway, Dream Scenario is a wonderful high concept drama that kind of hits a slightly more adult tone than something like Groundhog Day.  These two movies share DNA in the sense that they start off a bit silly, but hit some real truths about the human condition.  I dug this movie a lot.  Maybe if I play it smart, I'll have a break.  But I kind of just scheduled a watch of The Fall Guy with my wife for tomorrow, so I'll be back to writing soon.