Life, Death, and What Comes After
What Dreams May Come is a Thinker

As one might expect, the performance by Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come is not a typical one -- if anything may be called typical for Williams. He has played such a range of parts in his career, but here he tackles a very unusual role by playing a man who dies and goes to heaven.

What Dreams May Come tells the tragic and heroic story of Chris Nielsen (Williams), a doctor who has a lovely wife and two children. Their happy life nearly falls apart when his children are both lost in a car accident. Four years later, as he rushes through town to help his wife at an art gallery opening, he loses his own life in a traffic accident.

This of course, is only the beginning. What Dreams May Come is a fabulous, expressive, and thought-provoking film that is set almost entirely in the afterlife. Chris' life -- his relationships with his wife Annie (Annabella Sciorra) and his children, Marie and Ian -- are seen mostly through flashbacks. But in his heaven, Chris finds that leaving the world behind is not such a terrible thing.

Heaven, as seen here, is a place where thought becomes reality. For Chris, with his love of art, heaven is an impressionistic painting like something from the minds of Van Gough, Munch, and Dali. He touches a flower and blue paint smears onto his hand. He holds a coffee cup and it bends and folds, unwilling to keep its shape. As his guide and mentor, Albert (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) says, "I've seen people paint their own reality, Chris, but you're the first one to ever use real paint."

Ultimately, Chris must face a very unpleasant reality. His wife, Annie, has -- in her grief over losing first her children and then her husband -- committed suicide. As Albert tells him, suicides go to "another place" where they are trapped for eternity by their own self-loathing. Chris, unwilling to accept being apart from her for eternity, attempts to find her and save her. On his quest, he enlists the aid of The Tracker (played marvelously by veteran actor Max von Sydow).

To help paint the picture of the afterlife, both the enchanting vision of Chris' paradise, as well as the horrible depths of Hell, some amazing, unearthly special effects were created. Nevertheless, this movie is not just eye-candy. There are some wonderful themes of love, loss, and redemption woven into the fabric of this tale. Chris' memories of his children are some of the most poignent, but ultimately it is Annie who becomes the center of his -- and our -- attention.

What Dreams May Come -- with its liberal use of flashbacks -- may confuse some moviegoers. I, for one, was dissappointed to see such a boring, cliché vision of Hell, after the amazing and original concept used for Chris' version of heaven. Nevertheless, this is an excellent movie which is sure to generate dinner conversation as well as some deep soul searching regarding one's own mortality.

MY RATING: 8 out of 10.

RATED:
RUN TIME: 113 min.

Life, Death, and What Comes After What Dreams May Come is a Thinker

Life, Death, and What Comes After
What Dreams May Come is a Thinker