Hollywood Detritius

Rating: 1/10 (25 July 2010)

Terrible film. There are way better iterations of dream films than this. Mulholland Dr. by David Lynch is one of them.
Like some others have posted around the web, it was too long, and too confusing. Not that there was any depth or cleverness to the film. Too much repetition. They kept 'trying' to explain everything over and over again.
It was just a stream of Hollywood trash. Didn't really seem like any of the subjects were dreaming at all. Just explosions and dumb dialogue, with shallow characters and a convoluted storyline.
SPOILER ALERT...
The film is a film about a man, Leonardo... an Architect, who falls asleep on a plane in first class. It's a long flight to LA, so the movie shows what he is dreaming about during that time that he is asleep on that flight. The only real part of the film is when he wakes up at the end in the plane. He looks around, sees a cabin full of people in first class, then gets off the plane, and goes home with Michael Caine, either his father, grandfather, or caretaker for his two children.
The people in first class were in his dream because he saw them in the cabin before he fell asleep. They then each took on a part in his dreaming, but none of them have any connection to his real life. And no, he is not a thief. He is not hired by some black corporation to extract information from people through dreaming. There is nothing of the sort. The movie is just a dream.
Supporting evidence:
1. First, the movie is just shallow trash. Horrible illustration of a dream film just down to its core. It's so bad that it is obvious how hard they tried to make it look like a dream.
2. Reference to Architects... a dream architect is simply what Leonardo is in real life: an Architect.
3. Projection... they must have said projection 100 times. It's obvious that the movie is telling you that Leonardo is just projecting his own subconscious onto the others in his dream. This is the only part of the movie that is decent academically. The fact that the filmmakers understand what psychological projection is. But also, the fact that they repeated the concept of projection so many times it just lost its value. Anyway, Leonardo projects his wants, fears, and desires, in a convoluted way, onto the other subjects. For example, "Fischer" takes on his own self in relation to his father. Also, the girl who keeps telling him to move on is another projection of his own mind telling himself to move on from his wife's death...
The movie progresses and gets ever more deeper into Leonardo's subconscious, where the root of his anxiety resides. He finally discovers that it is OK for him to be his own man, to be an Architect, and not try to live up to what his father was. So we have a set of problem(s) that reveal themselves ever so slightly as the dream progresses, in the form of Leonardo projecting his fears, etc. onto other subjects, until he goes so deep as to arrive at a place where he has a feeling it is really about him. Like a sort of solution. But like anything, the problems need to be apparent before a solution can be revealed. Dreaming is like this. Your mind weaves together a series of experiences, and projections, and if you understand them enough, you'll know what the problems really are, and you can then begin working on a solution in real life...
He then wakes up. Reality is there. It was a cathartic release.
4. The dream sharing... there is no literal dream sharing, getting into the minds of others and extracting their thoughts. This is a metaphor... the movie is telling us that there are a group of people in a small area (cabin of a plane) who are all dreaming... and they may have a bit of a spiritual connection to each other... so one person feeling anxious, another may 'feel' this while dreaming and some sort of shared experience results. It's a bit of a play on the idea that people can dream together and sort of experience similar or even the same things. But that's pseudo-science and mostly fiction.
5. Recurring nightmare about his wife. Obviously this is another clear marker that it is just a dream. His recurring nightmare about his wife. Looks like she killed herself, perhaps jumped out of a hotel room window because Leonardo didn't show up for their anniversary. Perhaps he was not a good husband and wasn't around enough... he then blamed himself. The girl in the film kept telling him to move on...
So Leonardo's major life issues were revealed in a convoluted way within a long dream. Like any human being, those issues are complex. The ending showed how he seemed relieved when he got home to see his kids. It looks like it was a very important dream because it pushed him over a threshold and helped him to realize a set of things to make his life better.
Also, can we please stop with all the discussion about the tenability of the things seen in the film? Most of it won't make much sense: it was just a dream. Therefore, defying gravity, ending up in different stages of life so quickly, etc.... it all makes sense when understood from the perspective that: it. was. just. a. dream.
Now, after such a lengthy review and explanation, you might be wondering why I only gave it 1 star. I'll end how I started: it's Hollywood trash. Too basic. Too stupid. Too obvious. And to someone how dreams every night, and the fact that there are way better films about dreaming out there, there is nothing to see here...