I’ve coincidentally been thinking about this a lot in the past week, and about the fact that whatever information we are processing is typically done with a dominant half of our brain (this dominance varies from person to person). And I think the Lynch and a long line of artists and storytellers fascinated with “dream narrative” and “dream logic” have been probing, over the course of centuries, the possibility of a symbiotic, subliminal dream reality concurrently created by the non-dominant half of our brains to mirror or shadow whatever rational, concrete experience we primarily perceive. And film as a medium has, in the words of Murch’s IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, provided a technological quantum leap in civilizations ability to express and explore this phenom. Lynch being one of the best and most consistent at it (with, I’d say, BLUE VELVET, LOST HIGHWAY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, and INLAND EMPIRE in particular…FIRE WALK WITH ME too, though I haven’t seen it).
EYES WIDE SHUT also.
EDIT: VIDEODROME, NAKED LUNCH, and EXISTENZ. Cronenberg really nails this state of consciousness as well, often reminding me very much of Lynch when their senses of humor align with each other.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Welles’ The Trial (maybe, I suppose)
Waking Life
Nostalghia
The Sacrifice
Phenomena
Last Year at Marienbad
Don’t Look Now
Jacob’s Ladder
Brazil
Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
Dead Ringers
Perhaps Gus Van Sant’s “experimental” work would also loosely fit into your definition. Of all of Lynch’s work, Eraserhead seems the most dreamlike (to me at least). Bunuel comes to mind also, perhaps Jodorowsky, Svankmejer’s work. Other terms relating to “dreamlike” might be magical realism or surreal – might assist in your search.
Of topic a bit…Just got PHENOMENA at a yard sale for two bucks. Can’t wait.
PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES, agreed. Warts and all, it absolutely achieves a profound dreamlike state.
Yeah, not all those films are masterpieces (Piano Tuner has quite a few problems). Also, Nightmare on Elm Street? Heh.
Well, I’ve seen a few of those… like, you’re definitely right about Brazil, especially in the part toward the end where dream logic is especially relevant. You’re also definitely right about Don’t Look Now. Good calls on these.
However, I should also throw in another tangent: I think there are some movies that want very badly to be “dreamlike,” but that actually don’t quite cut it. In this category I’d put Waking Life, The Cell, and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, both of which I didn’t think had the plausible-but-twisted logic of a dream… both were too aggressively weird/unreal. In fact, I’d say Satoshi Kon’s earlier film, Perfect Blue, felt more dreamlike than Paprika.
I don’t know yet, but I’m willing to bet that Inception will be an amazing movie, but, like the examples above, won’t really be successful at feeling like a dream.
@Deckard Good list!
Super question. I always get kind of pissy whenever movies try and “do” the whole dreamscape thing and pretty much do straight-up realism with like more jagged shadows and some confused look on a character face.
Malick and Lynch are great examples of those directors who submerge the entire film in that kind of hazy ambiguous wonderland of dreams.
Herzog (Bad Lieutenant, Aguirre, especially) does this well and so does Tati, I’d argue. Aguirre has this total disonnect with reality both in events (arrows just kind of melting into bodies, instead of being flung at them, for example) and the way it’s shot (how each event just appears instead of melting away from the previous scene — similar enough to be continuous, yet strange and jarring enough to kind of frighten). And in a film like Playtime, the sense of clinical observation with myriad details aflutter blends to make the whole experience arresting like a really fun dream but also kind of sad and wistful, knowing, I guess, that it has to end.
Kubrick, most of the time, like Deckard says: but especially Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. 2001, to me, is more so commanding and goal-oriented than the others and probably wouldn’t make a dream list in my own personal books.
Cheers.
True, few films convey the true experience of a “dream” (Eraserhead is probably the closest to my own dreams as a child, especially the soundtrack, of all things – probably why I’m screwed up today). Even though I’m not a fan of Waking Life, the fact that it discusses dreams extensively and the non-linear structure of the film itself was done pretty well – it certainly fits the OP’s definition. Perfect Blue is a great suggestion. Dark City would be another one if no one’s suggested that yet.
I don’t think it’s necessarily to think of a ‘dreamlike film’ in terms of ‘achievement,’ but if a film has the appropriate characteristics, regardless of the quality of the film itself, it’s still ‘dreamlike.’
EDIT: I didn’t even realize that you ARE the OP, Jesse M, heh. I’m referring to you as two different people … ignore my ignorance.
Anthony – good call on Aguirre. I think that suggestion is particularly pertinent to this conversation, since that film had such a strong influence on Malick’s The New World. Interesting to hear you mention Tati… I’ve only seen Mon Oncle, and I wouldn’t put that in this category (too purposeful and logical and slapsticky). I’d definitely like to see Playtime, though.
I’ve heard this of Eyes Wide Shut. I should definitely see it… it’s one of the only landmark Kubrick movies I haven’t sat down with yet.
One of the most interesting aspects of a dream film is that it is often closer to reality than a naturalist one. Most of us experience life as a mystery never understood, like a puzzle. I think dreamlike films often mirror our absurd consciousness, which is really sort of schizophrenic and contradictory. Our personalities are made up of separate parts that don’t fit together properly.
Like all good directors, Tati just made one really amazing film again and again with slight (or more than slight) variations on it. I think Playtime is at one end of his spectrum of filmmaking, Mon Oncle’s definitely on the other.
Though consider: the scene when JT is at his own house, walking up and down stairs, and we’re watching from the outside as he passes people and smiles etc. at birds … that scene is the same sort of deal that I was referring to: kind of objective but incredibly personal all at once.
OH MAN I should’ve said something about Tarkovsky — thanks @Elston for indirectly reminding me of that. … Umm: TARKOVSKY. Stalker, The Mirror, Ivan’s Childhood, Solaris. And such and such. (Sorry, I don’t mean to turn this into a list-generator, I just can’t believe something that fits this definition so well never occurred to me in blazing neon signs in my brain.
Yeah.
Yeah, I’ve only seen Stalker, but it’s a great example. Full of images that are totally dug up out of the bottom of the well of the subconscious. Right down to the disconnected, but somehow logical, concluding moment… it’s the everyday world, restructured to act on non-linear right-brain logic.
GREAT call on AGUIRRE. I don’t think of PLAYTIME as dreamlike as much just because the rules within the frame seem so concrete, so physical and seem to have clear, logical reactions within the logic of the movie. Dream-logic movies tend to have rules that I can never get a grasp on. AGUIRRE just keeps getting more and more fevered over the course of 90 minutes.
Speaking of which, JESSE, you should probably watch HEART OF GLASS by Herzog IMMEDIATELY.
Also, a lot of Giallo does this too, if you’re not too upset by gore. SUSPIRIA and EYES WIDE SHUT might as well always be screened in a double feature, as far as I’m concerned. INFERNO for that matter one-ups SUSPIRIA in full-blown phantasmagoria, but admittedly there’s something about it that doesn’t quite click as strongly with audiences as SUSPIRIA does, and as a result you either dig it or loathe it (I originally fell into the prior camp and now am in the latter).
I’d say Malick films don’t try to resemble dreams but rather memories. I can’t articulate the real difference between dreaming something and remember it (some psychologist/neuroscientist around?) but I’d say that as memories are erosions of factual events and dreams are (on the contrary) free-logic constructions upon random details this implies a very different mood. It’s also the matter of time: the evocations keep a sense of the past and resolution and the dreams a sense of endlessly present. Then I feel Days of Heaven and Badlands are quite different to the others films mentioned…
Sample scene, from The New World: the two lovers meet in a field, Mozart is playing, and they sort of converse. In, as you say, @M, an endless present.
There’s always something that feels new and startling about this scene, in a way that’s also familiar.
Whether this falls into “memory” territory or “dream” really depends on how you see each.
To me, “memory” has a lot more of a charged feeling, one more filled with desire and intent paired with a rigidity of facts and paralyzed action — you can’t change a memory, but you can adapt it. “Dreams” are more in one’s control, though never in the way one would like.
Maybe Freud has a good definition of this someplace. #todolist=readmorefreud
I haven’t seen The New World. I’ll keep atenttion to that scene when I watch the film.
I understand though why these films are called dreamy but just wanted to distinct them.
To me, “memory” has a lot more of a charged feeling, one more filled with desire and intent paired with a rigidity of facts and paralyzed action — you can’t change a memory, but you can adapt it. “Dreams” are more in one’s control, though never in the way one would like.
Yeah exactly. Memories to me have a static nature and dreams a dynamic one. I felt Days of Heavens as static (I always knew it was something that already happened) and erored while Mulholland as dynamic and sharp (the weird element: anything could happen in an endless present).
In the fisrt category I’d place Beau Travail and in the second L’intrus both by Claire Denis. Both dreamy in the most broad sense of the word.
Days of Heaven is, as far as I can figure, based on the biblical Old Testament story of Abraham and Sara (Sarah? … who cares) telling Pharaoh they’re brother-sister so Pharaoh wouldn’t kill or banish Abraham — so in a way, yeah, I guess it has more “myth” than “imagination” in it.
Beau Travail is a great mention. I haven’t see L’intrus but damn well plan on it.
M – I see where you’re coming from. From what I’m hearing, it seems like nothing feels “dreamlike” to you unless it has the fluid, intuitive, but irrational occurrence of a dream, where things don’t seem to follow in a clear cause-and-effect sequence. I could potentially add that as a third criteria for a film to be “dreamlike”…
DREAM LOGIC – The events in the dream don’t follow from one another according to normal rules of continuity or cause-and-effect. In Lynch in particular, this means sudden changes in identity, chronological contradictions, and transgressions of physical laws. This makes the space of the film seem absolutely fluid and unpredictable, as situations in dreams tend to be.
The only reason I’m still inclined to consider Malick as “dreamlike” is that his pseudo-realism provides a feeling of plausibility, which is essential to dreaming: the illusion of things actually happening… even being commonplace… isn’t broken in dreams. If Lynch could include all of his surreal twists, but also somehow convince us to feel like it’s completely plausible… i.e. keep us from feeling weird or alienated from the film space… then he’d be a perfect dream filmmaker. But this is impossible, so I’m still giving Lynch and Malick equal scores for the dreamlike-ness of their films.
Incidentally, I don’t really experience any film as a “memory” per se… for me, a film is an experience as I’m watching it, and a memory once I’m finished with it and looking back on it. Both the experience and the memory can be dreamlike, if it’s the right film.
Aleksandr Sokurov: Mat I Syn
(1997)
Northfolk..memory travelling at it’s best.
Yeah^ , I loved Northfork, not too many people do….
Me too.
Not only do I love northfolk, I love all the work by those directors (two brothers) including Manure and The Astronaunt Farmer
@Anthony. Beau Travail is a great mention. I haven’t see L’intrus but damn well plan on it
L’intrus is far superior to Beau Travail IMO. I strongly suggest you to watch it :)
@Jesse M.
…provides a feeling of plausibility, which is essential to dreaming…
Yeah… it’s essential and then a necessary condition for a dream (except lucid dreams as you said) but not a sufficient one to me. But anyway I understand what you mean. I see It’s just a matter or words.
If Lynch could include all of his surreal twists, but also somehow convince us to feel like it’s completely plausible… i.e. keep us from feeling weird or alienated from the film space… then he’d be a perfect dream filmmaker
It seems Lynch ask us to presence the dreams of other subject rather that experience them. Then the weird feeling. The only one not feeling weird would be the subject. Sometimes the subject is a character (Mullholland Drive) but in general I think the subject is HIMSELF.
Brewster McCloud. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia!
Mother and son and father and son..some folks insisted on gay undertones but Sokurov denied it…
Jesse M
Watching a series of Terrence Malick films, and it made me think of an adjective that we hear applied constantly to interesting films: “dreamlike.” I wanted to use this post to interrogate this idea a little more directly, and to see who has suggestions for other films that can broaden my understanding of it as a style.
The experience of dreaming is a very elusive one to capture and describe. In dreams (at least for visual/narrative dreamers) we often experience events that are completely unrealistic and disconnected from reality, and yet we tend to accept those events without question (unless we’re lucid dreamers).
The two filmmakers I think have done the best job here are Lynch and Terrence Malick. Of course, they evoke very different kinds of dreams… Lynch (especially in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive) evokes the mounting, paralyzing anxiety and displacement of a nightmare. Malick, creating a hazy, heightened, disconnected reality, evokes more of a reverie, or a dream remembered upon waking. I also think the general movement of Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky did a good job of evoking a dreamlike/nightmarish state.
I think there are a few distinctive methods that filmmakers use to evoke this state of mind:
HEIGHTENED REALITY – The visual world of the film is reduced to things that have significance; details are trimmed down, perceptions seem pre-filtered, objects in the narrative space are already selected for their meaning. In the worlds of Malick and Lynch, there’s a lot of isolation of objects and people, open spaces centered on one or two significant elements, etc. This is why Greenaway’s films may be surrealistic, but IMO, they are NOT dreamlike: they are practically bursting with objects and details; they are very corporeal, rather than cerebral.
EMOTIONAL DISCONNECT – In the world of dreams, emotions tend to be simplified and muffled. Joy and anger tend to be felt as pleasantness and discomfort; even in nightmares, terror tends to happen only as a crescendo of building anxiety. Again, I would argue that Lynch and Malick achieve this… in Malick (Badlands, at least), there’s a constant lingering confusion as to how you should react emotionally, whether with sympathy, or sense of release, or fear for the future. In Lynch, there are bizarre, alarming events happening at all times, and yet they don’t seem to be directly connected to the general atmosphere of anxiety; everything just blends into the general nightmarish texture of the film.
Anyone care to riff on this, elaborate a bit, give me some suggestions for other reading on the topic, mention other films or filmmakers I might check out, etc?