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What Dreams May Come

What Dreams May Come
Directed by Vincent Ward
Certificate 15

A devoted family man dies in a freak car crash. Tragically, he and his wife had already been battling to come to terms with the deaths of their two children. Yet there is life after death!
After vainly trying to reassure his beloved Annie (played by Annabella Sciorra), Chris Neilsen (Robin Williams) is escorted to heaven - of sorts. He embarks on an amazing and frequently terrifying journey through a variety of worlds. First he seeks his children. Then, on learning of his wife's suicide, he begins a desperate and seemingly doomed quest to rescue her.
Hollywood is big on death and afterlife at the moment. Most of it is rather bizarre! ( e.g. Meet Joe Black.) Could this be part of some near-millennial search for answers? Here, in a nutshell, is this film's self-consciously pluralist theology of heaven:

* Heaven is an embodied, physical state, but with additional powers and abilities. You can soar above vast landscapes, leap from high precipices, all without fear of injury. You are already dead, of course.

* Heaven can be as solitary or as social as you choose. Heaven for you is literally what you dream it to be. Everyone is free to dream their own personal heaven. Hence the film's title.

* You can also choose your own persona. Neilsen fails to recognise his own children at first because they look like someone else.

* Entry qualifications are quite broad. Religious conviction is not relevant. There is, however, one notable exception. Having lost her children and her husband, Annie is broken by despair. She takes her own life. Now at last they can be together, he reasons. But he is wrong. 'Suicides are different.' In this film, suicides go to hell.

Thus the dramatic climax is reached, as a now-heartbroken citizen of heaven begins a frantic journey from heaven to hell in search of his beloved. The imagery leans heavily on Dante's Inferno, descending through ever more wretched chambers of the dead. Most horrifying of all is a vast sea of helpless faces, crying out for deliverance. Our hero's mission of redemption is confined to one individual, however. As he spots Annie's head amidst the crying masses he is warned of the impossibility of effecting such a deliverance. Yet such is the depth of his love, and such are the demands of a Hollywood romance, that he succeeds where others have failed. His harrowing of hell effects a post-mortal redemption and a family reunion.
The film concludes with a further twist of the plot, as husband and wife decide they would like to live their lives again, but avoiding fatal choices. Heaven above had its moments of joy, but it was as nothing compared with a second chance of life in this world.
This really is a consumer-orientated, individualistic heavenly superstore. There's something for everyone. The resurrection of the body rubs rejuvenated shoulders with New Age self-actualisation and reincarnation.
What is missing is the personal and tangible presence of God. Early on, Neilsen asks: 'Where is God?' He is told that God is 'up there somewhere . . . trying to let us know that he loves us'. In days of renewed fascination with life after death and the idea that heaven is only for 'good people', what better time for Christians to declare the gospel of the Lord Jesus?

Andrew Bryant

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What Dreams May Come

Andrew Bryant

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