Dream Film Analysis Essay

Dreams are often used in the film industry, because dream sequences allow characters to imagine events and actions that may be impossible in the real life, for example they can become a hero, or famous person etc. First time this technique of using character’s dreams appeared in 1920s, in silent films. One of these silent films called Sherlock Jr. used the dream sequence to the full capacity. In this essay I’d like to compare and contrast two films that explore the dream sequences technique; the first film is Sherlock Jr. (1924) and the second is Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) (1997).
Let’s start with a basic description of the first movie and an explanation of the role that dream plays in it. An American comedy silent film – Sherlock, Jr. was directed by Buster Keaton in 1924. Brilliantly artistic Sherlock, Jr. was named “a piece of native American surrealism” due to the fact that this silent comedy was set mostly in a dream. It’s somehow even feels like a modern movie in a way that modern audiences quickly understand and enjoy the complex film-within-a-film motive. In my opinion, the director’s ability to show surreal gags in a dream framework is the most distinguished feature of this silent comedy.
The film displays main character who is a projectionist of small-town movie theatre that despite his official job position dreams to be a master detective (audience see him reading a step-by-step guide how to be a detective). The main character (Keaton) is also in love with a local girl (Kathryn McGuire), whom has another admirer, Keaton’s rival.
The watch is stolen by another man (Ward Crane) from a pocket of girl’s father. The hero is blamed for this stolen watch, and is refused from the girl’s house.
The dream/reality opposition appears straight away, when the main character returns to his work and falls asleep there in the booth. Our hero enters the movie screen, into the film with the same love-triangle scenario. In his dream, Keaton’s character becomes the famous detective Sherlock Jr., who is able to solve the case and bring this thief to justice.
The thing that was stolen in the dream (or rather a film within a film) is not a watch but a pearl necklace. The major characters of the film are transformed in this dream, therefore
Keaton’s character gets a chance to reenact the situation of his real life, but with a positive outcome. In the dream he manages to recover the stolen pearl necklace and win the girl of his dreams.
Besides it, the same as in a reality, his rival sets up obstacles, but it doesn’t help. These obstacles (for example, the poison) are much more dangerous and more scary that in a real life, and that portraits the character as a hero, and not as a fool. Meantime, in reality his fiancee finds out the truth and shares it with her father.
Of course I should note that Sherlock Jr. is comedy and it doesn’t deal seriously with love (the main hero behaves in the beginning of the film like a fool), on the opposite to our second film, Abre Los Ojos, which is a thriller. Among the similarities of these two films we can indicate that both films’ major feature is a dream sequence, also, for main characters, it’s all about getting the girl that they want.
Open Your Eyes starts with the scene set in prison cell in Madrid. The main character is called Cesar, he wears a prosthetic mask, and he tells the story to psychiatrist. In the result of Cesar’s troubled love life and the car accident Cesar’s face is disfigured and he gets awful nightmares. The thin line between dreams and reality is disappearing.
This film includes many elements, such as love, suspense, horror, and science-fiction. It’s very emotional and all kinds of emotions are mixed in this film, it’s feels like a river, where different feelings are floating, influence by a thread of psychological intrigue: sexual desires, friendship and betrayal, self-betrayal, guilt, the start of one love and the end of another, the strange combination of a dream and reality.
The difference between reality and dream, the appearances are discussed in the Open Your Eyes. Everything that happens in the film, all events actually take place in the mind of the main hero.
This film makes us deeply immerse into the different ways of reality’s perception and to think what do we know about the surrounding environment.
After a number of disorienting experiences, Cesar falls asleep in the street and when he awakes the surrounding situation is totally changed. The girl that he loves, Sofia, is in love with him and his look is restored by surgeons. Then the dream and reality plays with the main character again, he sees that Sofia is now has an appearance of Nuria, his jealous ex-girlfriend that caused that car crash. Cesar smothers her with a pillow, and later he understands that Nuria was indeed the woman everyone else calls Sofia.
We see the fragments of Cesar’s life like in dream, his experiences from the middle of the film spliced retroactively into his actual life and replacing his true memories.
Despite the fact that these layers of subconscious is very to differentiate, our hero realizes that reality is no more than a state of mind. Cesar’s chooses to wake up and be resurrected at the end of the film; it’s almost an unthinkable solution that he needs to make in order to solve his unbearable life situation.
Sherlock Jr. and Open Your Eyes should be reviewed and compared, because both films are extraordinary study of illusion and fantasy. The dream subject was used in both of them by directors in order to show and play with dream & reality differences. It’s interesting to see the different movie techniques, one is from 1920s and another is quite modern which try to demonstrate the dream and it’s consequences.
What is substantial is also a different aspect of using the dream sequences in a funny and heroic situations and also in an intriguingly complex and depressing thriller. Both films, despite the fact that they are they are so different, are considered to be the huge influences in the films industry.
I need to compare the main characters as well. Young, handsome, rich and charming Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is an opposite to the poor projectionist (Keaton), who is considered to be a fool. The first man initially has an big success among the women, he’d fallen in love with Sofia and she felt for him as well. On the contrary, the character Sherlock Jr. is not lucky at first.
These two films collide in the mind of the viewer, pushing him toward one reality‘s perception, then switching to another, until reality itself is called into question.
Sherlock Jr. is an example of new filmmaking technique and it’s avant-garde for 1920s. This movie is centered on illusion Jr. centers on movie illusion itself, especially when Keaton’s character exits his sleeping body and walks into the screen. Its a absolutely new fantasy world that was created by Keaton. The comic physical prowess and clever visual wit of this movie created a combination that confirms Keaton’s status as most imaginatively cinematic of the silent film comics. Woody Allen was inspired by his works, as well as many others.
Open Your Eyes takes an advantage of the modern movie technique and of course it’s also very avant-garde, first of all in terms of it’s plot. Some critics insist that the Open Your Eyes movie is Alejandro Amenabar’s “remake” of Vertigo, by Hitchcock. This director is a cinema sensation is frequently compared to Alfred Hitchcock. A complex psychological thriller about a womanizing egotist who is disfigured in an accident, Open Your Eyes, has brought the first international success and Sundance Film Festival prize to Amenabar. I mush mention about a very positive reaction of critics to this film, as James Berardinelli of ReelViews said that movies “of this intelligence, audacity, and complexity come along so rarely that it’s mandatory to cry out their arrival” and that “those who see it will not quickly forget the experience’. The other opinions included the phrases “a jaw-dropping psychological thriller” and “beautifully orchestrated.”. Richard Scheib of The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review has called it ‘quite a remarkable film.” as well.
A very simple language and short quotes are used in Sherlock Jr., probably because it’s a silent film. But it also helps to emphasize the comic accent and atmosphere of the whole film. ‘We are lost! He is sending for the world’s greatest detective – Sherlock Jr.!’ says one of the characters of the hero’s dream in Sherlock Jr.
As for Open Your Eyes, of course, it uses all the films means like speech, etc, which helps to get deeper into the thrilling environment and that strange situation that happens with the main character.
The music to the films had also a great impact on the both films’ successes. Both directors achieved the required atmosphere through the appropriate soundtrack.
While Sherlock Jr. is very playful, fully and influenced by American entertaining culture, Open Your Eyes is modern film that is complicated, mind thrilling and is set in a very different background and culture that deeply affect this film’s atmosphere.