Living in Dreams

After seeing 'The Science of Sleep' this weekend, I feel the need to point out the recent thematic phenomenon of what I can only call dream movies. I'm not sure when or how it started, but film-makers have been possessed by the ability to recreate dream-like visions a lot lately. A few examples:
* Mulholland Drive
* Momento
* Waking Life
* Vanilla Sky
* Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (thanks, Joe)
The technical possibilities of the film genre allows these artists to show us exactly what goes on in the deepest parts of their psyches.

I recall the first time I saw Mulholland Drive. I hardly "got" anything about it, and I loved that! The style of the narrative -- the ordered chaos of it -- made me appreciate the filmmaker as an individual whose understanding of the world was very different from my own. A few weeks after seeing the movie, however, I read some reviews that analyzed the plot and events in the movie and explained which parts of the narrative were dream, and which parts were reality. I was frustrated with the reviewer for applying a resonable solution to what I had enjoyed as a rich and chaotic glimpse into the filmmaker's brain, but I also wondered if the movie was supposed to be just that -- a puzzle to be solved and be done with.

There are, certainly, different ways of responding to art -- if you squint at an impressionist painting, you get a better idea of the particular objects depicted in the scene; but if you stand and absorb the painting for a while, you begin to understand the painter's emotional response to his setting. The fact that the artwork is able to portray a feeling is powerful and important. In the same way, dream movies allow the viewer to understand the way real-life occurances affect the subconscious, and how unique our responses are to the experiences we share.

I love the chaos of dream movies, and I can only assume that they are a thrill to make -- showing an audience the most accurate vision of every strange detail of your dreams. But I do wonder where this genre is going. Will the visual of another's imagined world give voice to our own imagination? Or will the chaotic scenes overpower and confuse our creative energy?