"What Dreams May Come?"

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2001)

One reviewer back there mentioned holes in the plot that seem to keep the film from making complete sense.
Probably the only way _Vertigo_ really makes sense is if Scotty *did* fall and *really died*. And all the rest is some long and terrible, perhaps purgatorial, dream that comes to him in that sleep of death. Like in Hamlet's famous soliloquy:
To die, to sleep;/ To sleep:perchance to dream; ay, there's the/ rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may/ come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil/ Must give us pause...
-- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, Lines 65-71.
On this theory _Vertigo_ might be best compared to 1990's _Jacob's Ladder_.