—credited to André Bazin in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963)
Bazin may or may not have actually said or written those words, but the above quote certainly explains a great deal about the universal appeal of the movies. Most of us would probably agree that, at its best, cinema can function not just as mere escapism, but also as a way of satisfying a desire to see characters or an entire world depicted on a big screen that reflects one's own yearnings. (Why, for instance, do some moviegoers sometimes find themselves half-admiring movie killers like Jef Costello, the lonely contract killer with the sharply honed senses in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967); or Jules and Vincent, the two talkative hit men in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994)? Often there's just something damn cool about them that makes you want to be like them.)
Even within that particular definition of cinema at its height, however, there is a certain category of cinema that I would like to propose—what I would call (somewhat reductively) the "cinema of the personal daydream."
What makes up a "personal daydream movie," you might ask? It is the type of movie that inspires—whether during the movie, days afterward, or both—a mood in the viewer of wanting to linger in the film's particular world for hours on end, in the same way one might desire to linger in a dream at night before having to wake up to eye-crust-ridden early-morning reality. It's the kind of movie whose mood might suddenly materialize in your mind as you sit during your lunch break at work (or, in my case, in a college classroom waiting for a lecture to start). One filmmaker's daydream, in other words, becomes your daydream. And perhaps your reaction to a filmmaker's vision reflects deep pools of yearning that the movie touches upon, whether consciously or subconsciously.
Of course, human beings are so varied that what one might find enchanting, another might find grotesquely whimsical. Consider, for instance, these two widely diverging reactions to Michel Gondry's recent film The Science of Sleep: Slant Magazine's Ed Gonzalez called it a "great punk record" to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's "good pop song," while a considerably more hostile Fernando F. Croce dismissed it as "a nightmare." (This writer loved it, by the way.) Dreaminess is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, it seems, and is thus subject to the whims and desires of the individual viewer, who is free to either reject a particular movie or to embrace it—to turn it into the stuff of one's own daydreams.
Now, I'm not talking about movies that necessarily leave you thinking about the state of the world we're living in, films that force you to reflect on a philosophical idea, or even films that get you to ponder the nature of cinema. Personal daydream movies, rather than being intellectually enriching, are much more visceral in their long-lasting effects, and as such perhaps cannot be described so much as felt.
I think everyone has their personal daydream canon. So, to start the ball rolling, here are five films that I would consider part of mine. These are works that I sometimes find myself thinking about at random moments during the day when I feel like mentally escaping from the drudgeries of my daily routine—works that inspire a particular mood, perhaps one that I wish I could recreate in real life. These films might not have the same effect on everyone, so I'll honestly explain what effect it has on me and why. (Honesty is important because I suspect these lists may end up suggesting more about the list maker than about the films themselves).
In no particular order:
1. Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe (2003). A strange mix of deadpan comedy, tragedy, surrealism and visual and aural poetry, this sublime, wildly original Thai film pairs two contrasting characters—a willfully withdrawn neat-freak male Japanese librarian (Tadanobu Asano), and an impulsive, messy Thai female free spirit (Sinitta Boonyasak)—as they tentatively strike up a complex companionship after both experiencing personal tragedies. That brief little plot description makes it sound like a classic screwball-comedy plot, but director Pen-ek Ratanaruang masterfully shapes the familiar elements into a time- and space-bending meditation on the ways people deal with real-world pain. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle's breathtaking, expressionistic/impressionistic visual tropes and the hypnotically spare, ambient drone of the film's electronic underscore (by Hualampong Riddim and Small Room) help to create a haunting world in which these two characters, trying to find comfort in each other as the world around them continues to turn, seem to be the only inhabitants. I haven't forgotten this film's beautifully moody aura of loneliness ever since I caught a glimpse of it late one solitary night on television sometime last year; sometimes I feel exactly the feeling Last Life in the Universe evokes, during those late nights when I am sitting in my room, alone and with only my thoughts of movies like this to accompany me.
2. Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels (1995). I have written at length about Wong Kar-Wai's glorious, underrated twisted sister to Chungking Express in this House Next Door piece, but even my intellectualized ramblings on this film's significance in the director's body of work can't hope to convey its sensuality. Especially for someone like me who holds a perverse curiosity toward what goes on in big-city nightlife, Fallen Angels abounds with glamorous, savory neon-lit imagery of Hong Kong at night. Combine that with a doomed, unspoken love affair between a killer and his assistant; desperate attempts at human connection in such an impersonal landscape; and a jukebox that plays both Laurie Anderson and Shirley Kwan, and you have a movie that, along with Last Life in the Universe, very nearly defines my own personal cinema of daydreams. (And is it a coincidence that Christopher Doyle lensed both films? Maybe not...) Also recommended: Wong's 1988 debut feature As Tears Go By, a powerful Mean Streets-inspired gangster drama that can be seen as a first draft for some of the nocturnal antics in Fallen Angels.
3. Luchino Visconti's Le Notti Bianche (1957). As perhaps one can tell from my previous two choices, I am often a sucker for tales of romantic longing among loners, and Luchino Visconti's Le Notti Bianche ("White Nights"), based on a Dostoyevsky short story, is one of the most enchanting romantic-longing-among-loners stories I have yet seen. It is also, as other critics have noted, an important work in Visconti's oeuvre, representing a tipping point between his early neorealist films and his vastly more stylized later works. One can immediately sense that stylization in its deliberately artificial sets and in cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno's expressive lighting in black-and-white (a snowfall towards the end of the film is its indubitable visual highpoint). The film's world may seem on the verge of the fantastic, but the emotions being expressed are oh-so-real: the solitary clerk Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) stops an emotionally impulsive, distraught woman, Natalia (Maria Schell), from killing herself, and as he hears her story about how she is waiting for a lover who promised to return to her a year ago, he finds himself slowly falling in love with her, maybe as much out of his own need for companionship as out of genuine affection. Well, this romantically deprived loner can certainly relate! The ending of Le Notti Bianche may be a downer, but, just as Mario is left to mere memories of his four days with Natalia, we lucky viewers are left with memories of this film's intimate moods and opulent images.
4. Michael Mann's
5. William Friedkin's "Self Control" (1984). A few weeks ago, in his New York Press feature story about his music-video "introspective" at
I know, I know: some of it is cheesy in a distinctly '80s manner, and those masked figures encounters as she wades perilously deeper into the night's forbidding waters now seem a bit like an unfortunate forerunner to the more grandiose cheesiness of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera musical. Still, I can't resist it any more than Laura can resist that masked man: director William Friedkin—yes, the same guy who directed The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973)—pretty much put my geeky fantasies about the simultaneous allure and danger of the wild, swanky nightlife into one five-minute package. I think the song is fantastic as well—surprisingly evocative for an overproduced '80s synth-laden pop tune—and Friedkin's video encapsulates the meaning of the lyrics pretty well through his images.
Though these are the ones that immediately come to mind, I'm sure that as I continue along my path to become more cinematically enlightened, my personal daydream canon will expand and grow. In the meantime, I open up the floor to more pathways for future daydreaming.
_________________________________________________
Kenji Fujishima is a contributor to The House Next Door, a Rutgers University journalism student and the publisher of My Life at 24 Frames Per Second.
I love this subject, Kenji.
It's one I'll probably be revisiting several times over the weekend. But for now, here is a short list of movies that I can daydream to — movies that have actually showed up, in some form, in my own dreams (and nightmares, and fantasies):
Silent Running
L'Eclisse
Dawn of the Dead
M
Jaws
E.T.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
On the Waterfront
The Element of Crime
Ran
City of Lost Children
Blade Runner
Alien
Map of the Human Heart
Apocalpyse Now
Pretty much anything directed by Terrence Malick.
Lots and lots of Japanese monster movies.
For some reason, I've had a number of dreams recently that play off of images in Silent Running. I am not sure what that means.
Let me walk the streets of Vienna and Paris exchanging clever banter with Julie Delpy for eternity, with the promise of a little more than talk at the end of the day, and I think I might be livin' the dream. So, it's Before Sunrise and Sunset for me.
" perhaps your reaction to a filmmaker’s vision reflects deep pools of yearning that the movie touches upon."
Ummm…yeah, I'd hafta say mission accomplished.
Certainly Miami Vice, for the adventurousness and freedom of the nights contrasted with the quotidian obligations of the days.
The New World and The Thin Red Line, for the sensations of nature experienced by astonished humans.
I muse about Sanjuro and The Last of the Mohicans quite a bit.
From time to time, the teenaged nerd who nowadays wears my shirts to the office lapses into a daydream of living in Middle-Earth.
Good topic, Kenji. I have to admit that I haven't seen any of your choices, though if Fallen Angels is anything like the Wong films I have seen, I can understand why it was chosen.
For me: chaulk another one up for The New World – the Indian village, not the Jamestown settlement.
And anything Lubitsch or Ozu – I love to dwell on their movies.
And when I'm hungry, there's no world I'd rather be in than the one in Tampopo. Just once I'd like to meet a panhandler that could make me a delicious omelet.
After that, I'm not sure. Most of it would be pretty adolescent – westerns or samurai or Bond. I can sit dumbly and reminisce for entire workdays on that stuff. In fact, I think I'll do just that after lunch.
I'd add that for me, certain novels are more prone to be fodder for my daydreams than movies.
This is a fascinating topic, the films that most urge us to pull a Sherlock Jr. and clamber through the transparent screen–but watch your, you know, step, son.
Per the rules, five preliminaries, but like Matt implies this topic is practically endless. Which is both magical and, I confess, a little sad, if so many fictional worlds present situations preferable to my own.
1. The Long Goodbye. Probably the Altman I can most imagine dissolving myself into, wandering aimlessly through an L.A. whose seeming disconnectedness is belied by the secret stitching provided from echoing shots of glass, snatches of a musical score, and the elusive insight to the meaning of it all that lies on the periphery of a dope haze or pleasant afternoon drunk. I'm too out of shape to work for Augustine, would grow sick and tired of Wade rather quickly, and Marlowe has all the partner he needs in his cat. But I could hang with the girls next door, or push a cart through the all night grocery while I hum along.
2. Ed Wood. Running with my band of friends from cocktail-hour fundraisers to midnight trespasses of soundstages, having a grand old time along the way and quality be damned. Our surroundings, half dilapidated, half miniature-model exuberant, glow with a silvery sheen and swallow their shadows. And who's that fat guy at the back of the bar….
3. …why it's Mr. Arkadin. He must be between flights to the seedier tourist destinations of Europe: Spain so drenched by sun you feel the weight of it pressing your sweat-soaked shirt against your shoulders; Germany all snow and shabby flats, with no one open to sell goose liver save the finest restaurant; even that elegantly raucous Christmas party with its inconguruous beachball. Nothing–no matter how commonplace or sunbright–passed Welles's eye without being made an endlessly fascinating labyrinth full of dark corridors to explore.
4. Big Trouble in Little China. Adventure down every alley! Magic and swordplay! Magical swordplay! "What! What come no more!?!" Egg and Wang can go ahead and save the day, I'd share beers for hours with unaware sidekick Jack Burton. Hell, more than be in this movie, I'd rather sit at a trucker's stop somewhere outside Salinas for five hours over multiplying bottles and rice and beans getting cold to hear Burton tell his own version of how he shook the pillars of heaven and got, then gave up, the girl.
5. Secret Beyond the Door…. Written off mostly as minor Lang, but I find it one of his most hypnotic and entrancing. The roving camera–pulling lazily back to reveal a Mexican streetfight as ominous and inexplicably unavoidable as the one in Borges's "The South", wandering the walls of a hotel garden, frozen to shocked immobility by the revelation of Lamphere's murder rooms, hovering in the silhouetting mist–draws on me as powerfully as Antonioni's, calling for further exploration of the backrooms and hallways locked away from sight. I'm one of those people who doesn't remember his own dreams–I merely wake up more or less refreshed from an indefinable but rather pleasant blackness–so I couldn't speak to how accurately this film compares to the oneiric. But this itch to go further, even when you're vaguely dizzy from the certainty it's a bad destination, I'd guess that's close to what dreams are supposed to be.
The New World just missed being in my listed five, but I still find myself fondly remembering the spirituality of its imagery, so I'll give a shout-out to that, too. (I still have to see Thin Red Line though!)
Along a similar line, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, oddly enough, seems to inspire a comparable dreamy effect on me when I think about its moods and its gorgeous nature imagery, standing as it does in stark contrast to some of the human characters' ugly actions.
Most of it would be pretty adolescent – westerns or samurai or Bond.
Hey, whatever inspires you to dream, right! Adolescent, mature, whatever.
I'd add that for me, certain novels are more prone to be fodder for my daydreams than movies.
That's cool—and perhaps only logical, since reading words on a page is arguably more prone to firing up one's own imaginings than seeing another's imagination depicted on a screen. For me, certain types of music can be pretty powerful daydream-inspiring stuff, too—sometimes classical does it, sometimes modern-day electronic music.
I probably should have mentioned "The Third Man" — particularly those incredible, deeply dreamlike underground sequences — seeing as how a shockingly large number of my own dreams seem to have been directed by Orson Welles or Carol Reed. Because of those guys and Frankenheimer (who stole from both of them) I fantasize through a wide-angle lens.
Come to think of it, Lars von Trier's sick sci-fi picture "The Element of Crime," which is both an awesome and awful film, is hugely indebted to Reed's classic, and to "M" and "Blade Runner" as well. So it's sort of one-stop-shopping for some of my visionary preferences.
If we're talking nightmares as well as daydreams, it doesn't get any more pervasive than Romero's original Night of the Living Dead for me.
When I used to DJ, I would often get the person in charge of the projector to throw "The Element of Crime" up there. I think it was the ideal way to experience it.
You're right!
In response to the actual thread, a lot of good choices already mentioned on here. Especially "Last of the Mohicans", whose music I hear in my head more than any other.
Whenever I'm walking down a long hallway of any sort, I drift into Kubrick and Alcott's roving steadicam in "The Shining."
Might be closer to the "what movie music do you get stuck in yr head" discussion that was up a bit ago, but the music from Punch Drunk Love usually lodges itself in my brain a few times a week, to the point where objects and occurances seem as deliriously orchestrated as they were in the film. Given this, if I wasn't so conscious of how crazy Sandler and non-existent Emily Watson were in the film, I'd probably be a more romantic guy.
James: What kind of music did you DJ out? I'm trying to picture an "Element of Crime" night…
Brad: Electronic-industrial, like Front 242, Covenant, Underworld.
Another good one that played better in that environment than as a narrative to pay attention to was "Ghost In The Shell."
JJ says:
–Hmmm…Personal daydream movies…films you just want to linger in forever. The ones that, after you see them, you can't get out of your head, that absorb you and leave you missing them like a freind.
I've always suspected that the real magic of cinema is that movies fool some basic, primitive part of our brains into thinking that it's dreaming while we watch them, and that's what gives them their true power: that even as we watch them up on the screen, they seem to be playing out inside us too.
–Heh…What's that thing in "The Conformist"? Plato's Cave or something?…
–Anyway…Daydream movies…
–Everything directed by George Lucas (even THX 1138 and Revenge Of The Sith, which are not pleasent dreams; especially American Graffiti)
–The Abyss
–Aliens
–The aforementioned Lord Of The Rings films
–Practically everything scripted and or directed by Quentin Tarantino
–Clerks and Chasing Amy
–The Road Warrior
–The 13th Warrior
–Master and Commander
–The Dark Crystal
–The Lost Boys (and I'm not alone here…I mean, it seems to have the same effect on Joss Whedon, to the point where he turned HIS daydreams about it into a truly great work of fantasy adventure…which is also a perfect daydream story.)
–Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks on TV
–The Searchers
And I left off a bunch that Matt mentioned on his list.
I think the unifying thread in everything I listed above are two: either characters that feel remarkably real and appealing–the kind of people you would want to hang out with in real life; or, they plunge you into a new world you've never seen before, never known about–which, of course, can very often be this one. They're "escapist" in the best sense of the word; they allow you to escape the limitations of your mind and body and life, set you free to dream, in a limitless realm of possibility.
"Escapist" may not even be the best word for what such stories do. It implies fleeing, a basic state of dissatisfaction. A better word would perhaps be, "Exploratory".
Of course, when I was kid, ALL movies felt like this…. : )
It frequently happens that after seeing a great film, its power doesn't register with me until days or weeks later. Then I find myself drifting into day and nighttime reveries about it.
North by Northwest has that peculiar dream logic that makes perfect sense as it moves along, but upon waking makes no sense at all. I always imagine describing the plot to someone as if I was Roger O Thornhill and I just woke up.
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover created a dreamworld that haunted me. In real life, somebody (anybody, please!) would have killed Michael Gambon in the first reel, but in the nightmarish world the movie posits, his power reigns supreme. I felt trapped and helpless. I couldn't wake up. All Greenaway is ridiculously pretentious. One reason The Cook, etc. works so well for me is that, unlike his other films, it's able to work on a level as basic as its title.
Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala functions like a wordless, lived in experience. I was right with those guys at every step.
Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur haunts me with its idyllic family picnics. My family outings are never like that. The peaceful serenity of Francois' day job as a carpenter also intoxicates. And the family's simple room looks so nice. Why is it only the French can take a cheap, spare room, tack a couple of postcards on the wall, and have it look so warm, classy, and inviting?
It's been said that some soldiers in the trenches during World War I who read Tolstoy's War and Peace found the battles recounted in that great tome more vivid and real than their actual wartime surroundings. I got that factoid from one of Paul Fussell's books. Rossellini's Paisan does something similar, methinks. Especially the episode where Harriet White runs through Florence trying desperately to reach her lover. The whole sequence is probably my favorite ever put on film. It gets life dead on. It feels more real than reality. Things back then must have felt just like that. It feels so true that I swoon whenever I think about it.
Wagstaff: Glad you mentioned "The Cook." I've actually had dreams about being in that restaurant. The place is huge but densely packed and intricately textured, and every room is a different color.
In fact, a particular recurring dream that I have about getting lost in an enormous nightclub with color-coded rooms was influenced by that Greenaway film. In my first movie, there's a scene where somebody recounts that dream to a stranger and gets it interpreted. It is, in many different ways, the center of the movie.
I don't think I realized until just now how significant "The Cook" was to my development as a person and an artist, and what an enormous impact it had on my subconscious. Thanks, Mr. Greenaway.
Quite a marvelous subject, Kenji, and thanks for the mention.
It's late, I just got home from work, and I'm about to go to bed. Here are, off the top of my head, a few films I tend to bump into in dreams:
Yolanda and the Thief
Nightfall
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
The Color of Pomegranates
Theorem
Fata Morgana
Amarcord
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Wings of Desire
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Raising Cain
The Thin Red Line
Eyes Wide Shut
Kill Bill
"A shockingly large number of my own dreams seems to have been directed by Orson Welles or Carol Reed."
That's snazzy, Matt. Most of the time I'm lucky if I can get Brett Ratner to direct my reveries.
Marvelous topic for a thread. If you ever catch me with a far-away in look in my eyes I'm probably somewhere herein:
Bullitt
Three days Of The Condor
Thief
The Passenger
In The White City [did Tanner walk through the door opened by Antonioni?]
L'Intrus
Secret Defense
Some of my daydreaming time-outs have lead to quite peculiar stories. A double reward.
after watching Last Days, I felt drugged up and lost, wandered around the Lower East Side, sat on a bench and fell on my side before falling asleep.
Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand, Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows (and, oddly enough, The Soft Skin), Albert Finney's Charlie Bubbles, Michael Winner's I'll Never Forget What's'isname — and, when the dreams turn into nightmares, Michael Mann's Manhunter.
Joe: Thanks for citing "Charlie Bubbles" (so many great refreshers in this thread!). I discovered that one via a 16mm print while working at the Southwest Film Archives at SMU nearly 20 years ago. I'd never heard of it before. What a strange, alluring movie.
Matt:
To the best of my knowledge, Charlie Bubbles has never been available in any homevid format in the US — even though you'd think some people would want to see it just for the curiosity value of Liza Minnelli in her first movie performance. But it pops up on cable from time to time. Indeed, I saw it again last month on Retroplex. And I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well it holds up. In keeping with the spirit of this thread — it's possible to interpret the whole movie as a daydream of the physically and spiritually exhausted title character.
This is great, everybody—you've given me plenty of new avenues of explorations for future daydreams. (I looked at a DVDBeaver review of the Criterion DVD of The Element of Crime and, simply judging from the sepia hue of the images, it looks like something I'd really like to check out soon.)
And I was happy to see you respond to this, Fernando. Love your reviews, love your Web site, and love your colorful daydream-movie choices (haven't heard of your first four choices, to be honest…but I'll check them out wherever I can find them). Oh, and I thought about mentioning Eyes Wide Shut in the article; again, its scenes at night are particularly haunting to me, just because—well, mostly because they're set at night, a time of day which always seems to hold a perverse fascination for me. That it didn't end up among my listed five doesn't mean I think it's in any way lesser than my choices (it's probably greater than most of them, really). Great film—one of my favorite Kubrick films (and, to be honest, I tend to run hot and cold with Kubrick)—and great pick.
Keep 'em coming!
I have an allergy to "cool" and a craving for melancholy places and weather. Some of the films I love to inhabit in my daydreams:
Summer Interlude
Summer with Monika (Monika)
Scattered through these two early Bergman films is the perfect summer day. I've fantasized about the mild, dry, breezy days (and that clear water!) in "Summer Interlude" since I first saw it on tv in the late 70′s.
Les Vampires
Boudu Saved from Drowning
L'Atalante
Whenever I see these films I always long to step outside the frame and explore the streets and rooftops of early 20th century Paris.
Goodbye Dragon Inn
A rainy night in a cavernous, haunted movie theatre in Taipei. What could be more dreamlike?
Days of Being Wild
Happy Together
Ashes of Time
Wong Kar Wai & Christopher Doyle have a knack for capturing (or maybe creating) the mood of a location and I'd like to daydream Leslie Cheung back to life.
Suzhou River
Sad, gritty Shang Hai. The large Asian cities seem to have the kind of excitement, vitality and sometimes mystery that you see in films featuring the streets of NYC and LA in the 30′s, 40′s and early 50′s.
Hud
To Kill a Mockingbird
Screen door stories. Elmer Bernstein set the melancholy mood in both films. Two very different small southern towns in the early 60′s. Hot, dusty days in "Hud" and magical summer nights in "Mockingbird".
Carnival of Souls
Dellamorte Dellamorte (Cemetery Man)
Black Sunday (Bava)
Suspiria
Mood you can cut with a knife
Stromboli
If some hot Italian guy had taken ME to his ocean view bedroom on a volcanic island, I'd have been much sweeter to him than beautiful douchebag Ingrid Bergman. I wonder what that house would sell for today?
Assorted Chaplin, Keaton, Hal Roach films
Day of the Locust
Dreamy orange grove neighborhoods and early streets of Los Angeles.
Almost any Fellini, Antonioni, or Tarkovsky film