Rando List: A Quincunx Of Dreamy Movies

August 19th, 2010  |  Published in Moving Imagery, Mysteria, Oneiromancy, The Madness Of Lists  |  4 Comments

Five points, five elements, five fingers, rubbing the tired eyes back to reality…

There are so many more dream movies, of course. 8 ½ is a personal favorite, if more a flashbacky/daydreamy movie than a dreamy movie pur sang. The movie is, overall, a beautiful way to send someone into that dreamlike state, the demi-torpor of the child-whose-attention-has-been-captured, the lover affixed to the beloved’s inscrutable, lovely eyes.

Here I would be remiss not to mention the dream literature (De Quincey, Kafka’s journals) that has inspired so many of these dreaming–am–I–dreaming? acts of cinephrenia, in which we descend continually through layers of the dream, searching for that paradoxical oneiromancy that will, oroboros, cast us back up from the dream, into that waking dream, consciousness. (In Inception, this dream-extinguishing is called the Kick.)

Frankly, looking back at recent dream-cinema, I’m surprised they still haven’t made/fucked up a Sandman movie yet…

Tigers, sexuality, and massive plants—yep, that sounds about right. Here we have The Dream by Henri Rousseau…

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  1. David Wiggin says:

    August 19th, 2010 at 4:04 pm (#)

    Speaking of “Paprika”, it’s based on a book by Yasutaka Tsutsui, who I recommend you check out some time. They only have a novel (”Hell”) and a short story collection (”Salmonella Men on Planet Porno”) of his out in english but they’re pretty insane.

    And Neil Gaiman has claimed in a recent interview that a Sandman movie ain’t never gonna happen nohow. He’s directing the “Death” movie last I heard though…

  2. David Wiggin says:

    August 19th, 2010 at 4:06 pm (#)

    Also, isn’t “Vanilla Sky” a remake of “Open Your Eyes”? Should they count as separate movies? Nitpicking. I’ll move along now.

  3. admin says:

    August 19th, 2010 at 5:20 pm (#)

    Correct on all fronts.

    Tsutsui is the man; I feel like I can say that even before reading Paprika or the Salmonella stories. And Abre los ojos is indeed just Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise. I thought about that, but they’re both decent movies, and I like, in my mad lists, tracing the genealogies of para-culture (not how we dream, but how we look at ourselves, dreaming, on screen — which is a form of dreaming after all) in full, as best I can, in five minutes.

    Yaddah yaddah. Maybe I’m just rationalizing my laziness in not researching more dream movies… It just occurred to me, after buying Paprika, how strong the am-I-dreaming/not-dreaming? genre is. Deep roots, a colorful wardrobe, many masks. But we return to these same questions: How do we know Tom Cruise isn’t just a butterfly, dreaming?

  4. David Wiggin says:

    August 19th, 2010 at 7:08 pm (#)

    I feel like that last line should be a bumper sticker.

    Some other goodish dream movies:

    *The Cell (I love this movie but the story is kinder crap)
    *In Dreams
    *The whole NIghtmare on Elm street series of course.
    *Mulholland Drive (some might debate this…)

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