Patron Pick – Dream Scenario

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Dream Scenario (2023)
Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli

I first encountered filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli in 2022 when I saw his film Sick Of Myself. While it was a stylish satire with such a specific tone that showed Borgli’s control of his picture, the underlying themes were troublesome. In that film, the director appeared to be mocking visibly disabled people on the internet. He frames it as two horrible humans feigning disability for online attention, but the big wrinkle for me is that people with disabilities are never shown in any other light. I would conclude that he’s rolling his eyes at online influencers who are rabid attention seekers? I would hope he wasn’t suggesting that people who are openly disabled online are vapid? This film also has some ideas I’ve been wrestling to pin down.

Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) is going through an extraordinary predicament. The mild-mannered evolutionary biology professor has been showing up in people’s dreams worldwide. Not everyone’s dreams, though. It’s a random segment of the population. He’s a passive bystander in every dream, often looking on as the dreamer is harmed. As the news of this phenomenon spreads, Paul’s life becomes understandably complicated. People want to talk to him about this dream figure, yet that’s not who Paul is. He can’t really say much because this is something that exists in the dreamers’ minds. This strains his marriage; his wife Janet (Juliette Nicholson) doesn’t dream of him and thinks this means something about their relationship. A mentally ill man whose condition is exacerbated by dreams breaks in and tries to kill Paul. Then, the tone of the dreams shifts dramatically, and so does the public’s perception of this schlubby & neurotic professor.

It’s safe to say Borgli is a fan of Charlie Kaufman’s work (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). Dream Scenario has the same touches of the surreal as that filmmaker’s pictures, a social satire paired with dreamlike imagery. Borgli is far more on-the-nose in his storytelling. With Kaufman, I have to unpack the work over the following days and connect ideas. Dream Scenario seemed centered around one thing that made me uncomfortable while watching. I don’t think the film is totally about this, but it’s undoubtedly central: cancel culture.

The public’s image of Paul is one in their own heads, yet they impose this onto him as a person. When the dreams take a sudden left turn and become nastier and crueler, this is projected onto Paul. He emphasizes that he’s just someone who wants to get his book on ant colony behavior published. The third act of this film centers mainly on the public’s sudden turn against Paul and how he doesn’t know what to do as he has no power to change what happens in their dreams. It takes little effort to draw the line between this and the ongoing effort to hold celebrities accountable for their actions. Borgli frames this as the delusions of the masses, and I can’t agree with him on this point.

To be fair, Paul is not a flawless character. His worst trait is his sniveling pettiness. A former colleague from his university days is about to publish a paper conspicuously similar to Paul’s own work. Well, Paul has never published his work; he has got a book. That’s not entirely true; he has a book in his head and needs to sit down and type it out. Our protagonist certainly tries to leverage this coincidental fame to his advantage. The public isn’t as interested in his lifetime of scientific research as they are hearing wild speculation about what it might mean that this guy shows up in their dreams.

As time goes on, so do the dreams, but they start to change. Paul becomes more active in the dreams of some people. Dylan Gelula plays a media executive’s assistant whose Paul dreams have turned sexual. Meeting Paul when he is invited by her boss to spitball some ideas leads her to want to make those nighttime fantasies real. This was a very well-done sequence, mirroring her fantasy against the reality of this very awkward dude. Paul knows his wife is drifting away towards another man and assumes this is his chance to rebel. As you can expect, it goes poorly, but I applaud Borgli for not being too broad with his humor and keeping things nuanced.

My takeaway is that a lot of what Borgli is commenting on is the fantasy of the wronged white male. I might not have reached that conclusion if I hadn’t seen his previous film first, but I find a troubling thread here. He is a highly talented filmmaker who knows how to block & frame shots, get fantastic performances out of his actors, and tell stories with evocative, surreal imagery. But at the end of the day, Borgli is propping up extremely conservative talking points. It’s as if The Daily Wire could make technically pleasant films and use nuance. 

He doesn’t flesh out the hook of this film enough. Instead, he creates small moments inspired by it. I never felt everything came together, so I’m left with this interpretation of the movie that I’m not even sure is correct. I certainly will be open to watching what Borgli makes next, and this is the best realized of his two films I’ve seen. Hopefully, he will continue honing his craft, and the next can provide a more cohesive experience.