In Dreams Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)January 13th, 1999
1 IN DREAMS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D.
Dreamworks
Director: Neil Jordan
Writer: Bruce Robinson & Neil Jordan
Cast: Annette Bening, Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea, Robert Downey Jr., Paul Guilfoyle
Hamlet contemplates suicide but gives pause when he questions "what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil." For him, the Long Sleep might not end "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." What happens when the decision to live does not solve the problem--when the ills we bear include the most dreadful nightmares that flow on unceasingly? Claire Cooper (Annette Bening) faces this plight in Neil Jordan's Hitchcockian, adult horror tale, "In Dreams," a piece that is edited (by Tony Lawson) is such an abrupt and choppy style that the audience cannot avoid being bewildered by the narrative line. Strange to say, this disjointed mess was directed by a man whose credits include the sensational "The Butcher Boy."
"In Dreams" borrows from the usual conventions of the horror tale--the individual with psychic powers, the concerned spouse, disbelieving authorities, the deranged killer whose loneliness leads him to serial murder. Writer-director Jordan winnows a measure of innovation but lets it float away like the detritus of a flood which destroys his New England town during the 1960s. The screenplay, which borders on incoherence, occasionally draws inappropriate laughter from the audience. Still, Annette Bening's fleshed-out performance dares to give some integrity to the film, as she carries virtually the full load of the fable in the role of a woman whose recurring nightmares cause disbelief from the police, skepticism from the medical profession, and an unhealthy instability to her marriage.
The fragmented nature of the film begins with the opening scene, with its images of divers searching the wreckage of a village which had been evacuated, rendered into a ghost town by a flood which buried everything in its path. Neil Jordan cuts to a present-day vista, a spacious New England home at the foot of a forest, unnecessarily concealing its connection to the flood until midway into the movie. Until then we wonder whether he has patched together two altogether distinct tales whose only commonality is its Massachusetts whereabouts.
The camera hones in on Claire Cooper whose idyllic life as the wife of 747 pilot Paul (Aidan Quinn) and loving relationship with her nine-year-old daughter Rebecca (Katie Sagona) are sullied by a succession of disturbing dreams. She observes an innocent little girl walking hand-in-hand to an unknown destination with a man whose intentions appear to Claire to be malevolent. Her husband, who is home only sporadically between flights to Australia and other parts, is annoyed with Claire's obsessiveness, complains that she is "not there" when he returns, and who feels justified in having a near-affair a woman he has met Down Under. As Claire's recurrent nightmares convince her that her daughter is in mortal danger and that some lunatic killer is feeding her his own fantasies, she goes off the deep end, and is hospitalized. Soon she receives counseling from an incredulous neurosurgeon, Dr. Stevens (Dennis Boutskikaris), a psychiatrist, Dr. Silverman (Stephen Rea), and police detective Jack Kay (Paul Guilfoyle). The diabolical killer Vivian Thompson, a character perhaps inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Norman Bates, does not appear until the final one-third of the film, giving cinematographer Darius Khondji the chance to portray some startling images of hospital rooms, foggy groves, and a haunted house, as Claire migrates through a sequence of nightmares so steadily that we scarcely know when she is awake and when she is
unanchored.
If Bruce Robinson and Neil Jordan's screenplay were as carefully structured as the movie's visuals are astonishing, "In Dreams" would have been that rare find: a genuinely adult contribution to the genre of horror now dominated by adolescent piffles like "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer." Bening's performance as a woman driven to psychosis by a madman's exploits and Robert Downey Jr.'s achievement as a Norman Bates without that psychopath's charming, other self would have carried the show. But Rosco, a burly nurse whose job consists primarily in restraining raving patients at the psychiatric facility, mirrors the feelings of the audience. When the authorities explain the whole situation to him, he looks puzzled and replies, "I'm lost."
Rated R. Running Time: 112 minutes. (C) 1999
Harvey Karten
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
