What Dreams May Come

There is always a danger in using so many special effects in a film, for the effects can take over so that the human characters are lost as the viewer marvels at how well the effects crew have created the illusion of reality. There is no doubt that a great deal of the interest the viewer feels in What Dreams May Come derives from the power of the effects, but the story tries to create human characters of interest and to make the story of the love of one man for his wife and so to give the film a dimension beyond the effects, though the filmmakers are not entirely successful in this endeavor.

The key metaphor in this film is art as a healing force, and this becomes n

. . .
l fashion by the filmmakers as well. Many of the people Chris meets in the afterlife seem foolish in the way they dress, change identities, ride bicycles, and so on, and this also reduces the impact of the film. The effects in the film are very good and make you believe in what you are seeing, but the film as a whole leaves you feeling that the story has not been developed as well as it could have been and that the characters are not as fully developed as you might like. The theology underlying this vision of heaven and hell is also not clear, perhaps out of a fear of offending one religion over another. 1. George Felton in "Wrestling with Myself" says that he loves wrestling and gives a number of reasons why this is so. First, he says that he loves it because it transports him "from civilization and its discontents" (46). He repeats this in different ways, but it means that wrestling allows him to go back to a more primordial era before civilization imposed rules and separated the civilized man from his more bestial emotions. He further notes that the wrestlers stand in for Felton himself--he lives vicariously through their actions. He says of the wrestler Stan Hanson that "he's doing it all for me--getting himself disqua
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Stan Hanson, Chris Albert, Chris Annie, Vincent Ward, , Felton Wrestling, heaven hell, wrestling allows, human characters, world viewer, Robin Williams, special effects, create world, effects film, main character, felton suggests, suggests wrestling,
Approximate Word count = 1652
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

More Essays on What Dreams May Come