Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Dream, Dream, Dream

A haunting clip from Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf:



Can anyone think of another director or specific film that focuses on dream sequences. I've been poking around but there's a lot of mediocre dream movies and literature to sift through.

4 comments:

Maureen Gillespie said...

There's "Waking Life." I'm not sure if that falls under mediocre for you, though.

Ms. Feldman said...

Or "Science of Sleep." Or that crappy movie that I didn't see, where Sandra Bullock has nightmares but really their pyschic visions of people who are going to die. Or "Nightmare on Elm Street."

I think "Hour of the Wolf" is my favorite Bergman film I've seen yet. I was absolutely haunted by it.

joshua francis said...

not too keen on "Waking Life."

I think the thing that I really respond to in "Hour of the Wolf" and other Bergman dream films is how incomplete and disappointing he allows the dreams to be. As much as I enjoy "Science of Sleep" (apples and oranges, I know) the dreams are romanticized and distinctly undreamy. More an imagination film than a dream film? Maybe.

In my opinion, the best dreams are the ones that tread the line between realism and fantasy and never being entirely sure who or if anyone was awake in "Hour of the Wolf" left me wonderfully uneasy for a long time afterwards. I used to have these recurring dreams where I would wake up and start going about my day, sometimes making it quite a long time, and then something strange would happen to make me realize I was dreaming and I would suddenly 'wake up' and start the process all over again, repeating multiple times. I miss those dreams.

Christina Spinelli said...

Lest we forget "Inland Empire". What a nightmare!!