WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

US, 1998, 113 minutes, Colour.
Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jnr, Anabella Sciorra, Max von Sydow, Rosalyn Chao.
Directed by Vincent Ward.

Angels and devils are becoming more and more popular on our screens, especially guardian angels. It certainly marks an interest in things of the spirit, a blend of new age and religion. Here, however, we have a film about death, heaven and hell.

New Zealander, Vincent Ward, made the spiritual journey film, The Navigator. He also made Map of the Human Heart. Both these titles are relevant to What Dreams May Come. Written by Ron Bass (Rain Man) and based on a novel by Richard Matheson, here is a film that dreams and imagines the afterlife. From a Christian perspective, it seems more of an imagining of a purgatorial experience rather than of heaven. It has a grim imagining of hell.

Robin Williams, in one of his subdued performances, is a paediatrician who is killed in a tunnel pile-up. We know that he is absolutely devoted to his wife (there are flashbacks throughout the film) and has grieved at the accidental death of his children. When he dies, he goes into the world of his wife's paintings and then an odyssey where he meets and understands his children and then descends into hell to recover his wife (memories of Orpheus). The screenplay blends themes from theology, psychology, reincarnation and visualises the sets from a range of classic artists. (After seeing hell, I will not use the phrase, 'sea of faces' again.)

This is a disturbing film as well as one of love and hope. It takes death and suicide seriously and reflects on them. My main difficulty was what one critic has called the 'squishiness' of the screenplay. The film is both profound and squishy.

1.The title and the quotation from Hamlet? Transferred to the after-life? A Hollywood treatment of life, death, the after-life in the style and the imagination of the 1990s?

2.The impact for an ordinary audience of a treatment of the after-life? At what level was it working? How profound? How shallow? At the level of the imagination, the heart, the mind? An understanding of the meaning of death, the meaning of the hereafter and the consequences of lives in Heaven or Hell?

3.The importance of the visuals (Oscar-winning)? The contrast between the ordinary physical life on Earth and Heaven and Hell in the eye of the beholder? The characters within the visual effects? Their paintings? Happiness, sadness, actions transcending what was possible on Earth - falling and flying etc? Characters taking other bodies? The musical score?

4.The credibility of the plot, the focus on death? The credibility of the characters in themselves, their relationships? The credibility of the events? The credibility of belief and life after death?

5.The American style of the film, the emphasis on sentiment, laughs and tears? The popularity of the film in the United States?

6.The opening with Chris and Anna, their meeting, instant falling in love, the mountain scenery? The romantic overtones, their love and the wedding? The importance of the theme of soul mates? Their having a family, the possibilities for life? Chris and his work, Anna and her art?

7.The children, the relationship with the children, the boy and his studies, the girl and her worry about herself? The build-up to their deaths, the impact? Chris and his accepting their deaths? Anna and her blaming herself, her depression, wanting to kill herself? Wanting to separate? Their coming back together and their mutual support? Chris, his work, the suddenness of the crash - and the impact of the authentic special effects? The sub-plot of the dog, the children's love for it, especially Marie's, her grief at the dog's death?

8.The theme of suicide: Anna's initial attempt, her finally killing herself? The belief that suicides go to Hell? Issues of choice for life or non-life? Blame and responsibility? Hell and no exit? The possibility of love redeeming and bringing people from Hell?

9.Chris and the experience of death, his after-death experience, watching his funeral, trying to help Anna? Her writing and his trying to guide her pen? Helping her with her sense of life? Each of them remembering the children? Marie and the chess, the boy and his worries about school? Albert appearing in the form of Cuba Gooding Jnr as a guide? His explanations, creating our own Heaven, pain and remembrance, beauty, flight, transcending ordinary experience? Chris and his immersion in Anna's paintings? Their becoming real as he accepted them and finding his own Heaven? His learning about Anna's death? The meeting with the flight attendant, the memories of meeting her, of his daughter wanting to be like her? The two guides as being the embodiment of his two children?

10.Anna, her breakdown, her art, blaming herself for all the deaths? Killing herself? Her going to Hell? Her appearance, Chris and his quest, going with Albert into Hell? The visuals of Hell, the sea of faces? Anna not able to recognise Chris? The experience of the damned? Their going to the house, trying to elicit the memories, the experience of the house, Anna finally appreciating what Chris had done? Her being saved?

11.Cuba Gooding Jnr as the guide, the memory of Chris's mentor and all that he meant? The son assuming his shape? The Asian flight attendant and the reasons for her daughter taking this shape? Chris recognising each of them, the reconciliation?

12.Max von Sydow as the Tracker, going to the inferno, the sea of faces, warning Chris, yet the power of love and drawing Anna from death?

13.The transition to a Heaven for both of them? The possibility of reincarnation and their starting their love and romance again?

14.The various religious traditions represented, Buddhism, Zen, Christianity? The 1990s and the millennial imagination? Issues of death? The possibilities and styles of afterlife? Popular metaphysics dramatised in imagery, romantic story, story of redemption - and special effects?