Nicolas Cage invades the global population's dreams in a high-concept comedy that doesn't quite stick the landing.
Have you ever dreamed about Nicolas Cage? Given how many oddball and outrageous roles the actor has played over the course of his 41-year career, in good and bad movies alike, his infiltration of your unconscious mind might be no surprise.
Just in the past couple of years, Cage has played a high-end chef turned reclusive truffle hunter (Pig), a movie star based on himself (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) and Count Dracula (Renfield). Now he stars in Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli's Dream Scenario, in which his role hinges, ironically, on his not standing out from the crowd. The film is currently playing at the Savoy Theater, Essex Cinemas and Merrill's Roxy Cinemas.
The deal
Paul Matthews (Cage) is a schlubby middle-aged professor of evolutionary biology. He's an underachiever in his field and ignored by his students, though he does have a comfortable home, a loving wife (Julianne Nicholson) and two daughters.
When his youngest reports seeing her dad in a dream, Paul doesn't think much of it. Then Paul's ex (Marnie McPhail) reconnects to announce that he keeps making cameo appearances in her dreams, too. With his permission, she publishes an online piece about the phenomenon, which provokes a flood of reported dream sightings of Paul. All over the world, strangers have been seeing him in their sleep — but always as a walk-on player, an unimpressed observer of their dream dramas.
In short, Paul is the dreamland version of the Bernie Sanders mittens meme. He's just kind of everywhere for no apparent reason, and everyone, including him, is eager to capitalize on his virality. But as Paul's role in the collective unconscious shifts into a more sinister mode, his sudden fame starts to threaten everything he holds dear.
Will you like it?
Dream Scenario is worth watching for its clever premise alone, and the casting of Cage is inspired. Few actors are equally believable as a socially awkward everyman and a menacing figure who has the potential to go full-on homicidal. One of the cool (and terrifying) things about dreams is that nothing in them is stable, so it makes perfect sense for Paul to transform from a benign, amusingly random presence into a Freddy Krueger-ish bogeyman. And Cage, with his plentiful experience playing villains, makes that shift chillingly plausible.
But the blessing and the curse of a brilliant high concept for a movie is that it has limitless potential, much like a dream. The story's creator has to make tough decisions about where to take it, and in this case, Borgli seems to struggle with what he's trying to say.
As Paul's virality reveals a dark side, Dream Scenario becomes a satire of online culture generally and cancel culture in particular, with the collective unconscious standing in for social media. So far, so good. The film shows how the crowd's attitude toward a public figure can morph rapidly from indifference to love to vilification. While Paul bears no responsibility for that transformation, he's no innocent victim, either. He's comically eager to reap the rewards of his celebrity until things go wrong — at which point he delivers a world-class example of the insincere online apology.
Around this point, however, the focus of Dream Scenario starts to wobble, and viewers' attention may wander. While the film's first half maintains an intriguing balance between mild observational comedy and horror (Hereditary director Ari Aster coproduced), the second half makes a half-hearted dive into science fiction.
An interlude reminiscent of "Black Mirror" raises all kinds of fascinating possibilities, but none of them comes to fruition. An intense scene involving Paul and a young woman (Dylan Gelula) who's been having erotic dreams about him poses thorny questions about reality, fantasy and agency. The tensions of that scene should keep building; instead, they dissipate as the movie reaches something of an anticlimax.
Dream Scenario is bursting with witty character sketches — Michael Cera is especially good as the millennial head of a PR firm called Thoughts? But it seldom digs very deep. One problem is that Paul himself doesn't rise above his conception as a pretty basic guy; while his generic qualities make him funny, they also limit his potential for change.
The premise of Dream Scenario may be implausible on the literal level, but it hits on something real. In the past, politicians and celebrities were the only strangers who got to invade our dreams. Today, thanks to our webs of parasocial relationships, any random person we encounter on social media might take up residence in our head. This movie barely scratches the surface of that rapidly evolving reality. But it does give us plenty of nightmare fuel.
If you like this, try...
Butcher's Crossing (2022; rentable): If you're interested in the whole oeuvre of Cage — and who's not? — check out this recent VOD release based on a cult novel by John Williams (Stoner). It's a dark, revisionist western in which the actor plays a frontiersman determined to hunt down a prized herd of bison.
Adaptation (2002; rentable): The premise of Dream Scenario feels like something that might have been dreamed up by Charlie Kaufman, who gave Cage one of his great roles as a flailing screenwriter (and his twin!) in this absurdist comedy.
In Dreams (1999; YouTube Primetime, rentable): Trippy movies about dreaming range from Christopher Nolan's blockbuster Inception to Akira Kurosawa's anthology Dreams. But I can't resist an opportunity to plug this elegant, underrated horror flick from Neil Jordan, with a memorable turn by Robert Downey Jr. as a serial killer.
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In addition to The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, here's what is playing in Northern and Central Vermont movie theaters this week. Listings include new movies, vintage films and a directory of open theaters.
In addition to La Chimera, here's what is playing in Northern and Central Vermont movie theaters this week. Listings include new movies, vintage films and a directory of open theaters.
Bio:
Margot Harrison is the Associate Editor at Seven Days; she coordinates literary and film coverage. In 2005, she won the John D. Donoghue award for arts criticism from the Vermont Press Association.
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