Visually Translating Dreams

I've recorded my dreams in journals since I was a little kid and have worked my way up to a basic skill of lucid dreaming. As a universally human element, I think it's important to notice how filmmakers interpret dreams visually. And it's tricky. What filmmakers must do is literally explore the visual unconscious of a fictional character. At first that might seem easy-dreams don't make sense on the surface, they're pure fantasy and they're unrestricted. However, a dream sequence should never be put in a film, unless it's meant to explain something important about the plot and the character-which means the screenwriter, director, DP, production designer, wardrobe and editor are all responsible for figuring out how to psychoanalyze their characters with props, pacing, design and atmosphere.

There are basically 2 different ways in which films have tried to visually establish dreams. Christopher Nolan's brain child Inception is grounded in the concept of realism. Yes, there are scenes which call attention to the fantasy world, however for the most part, it's based on the fact that the mind creates a realistic world in which things seem normal. As Cobb says in the film, it's after awakening that we realize something seemed strange-and that's what the film capitalizes on.



After multiple viewings, I realized this scene takes place in a dream-
but no blatant visuals establish this.

The film's fantasy elements appear when attention is called to the dream, or when a character manipulates the world in a lucid state. In order to depict this, the film had to avoid overtly fantastical visuals and stay in a believable environment until the dream itself was an important element. Because of this, most of the film could be taken out of context as a simple crime thriller. Most shots are tangible in the sense that people are running around in buildings, sitting in cafes and in comprehensible environments which state "this could be the waking world"- in a few scenes there aren't any visual cues which tells the audience the characters are dreaming, which is how dreams can be at times. 

The Science of Sleep by Michel Gondry takes the absolute opposite approach of Inception-however in a completely different style of film. The audience sees the utter ridiculousness the sleeping mind can cook up at times. A dream can be illogical in all ways, but the dreamer simply drifts by as if nothing is strange. Gondry's indie film uses in-camera tricks, stop-motion animation and amazing production design to create worlds that are, in my opinion, the most convincing at achieving the bizarrity of the the dream world. Meanwhile, the character explains his troubles and fears through the crazy visuals. He doesn't exactly have a goal like the characters in Inception, but his psychological state is explored in the chaos of the subconsious because he doesn't control it. (This theme of lack of control also appears in Inception when the protagonist Cobb begins to lose control over the dream and a freight train crashes through the world, and his wife and children continuously appear).

In THIS film, there's no question whether this is waking or sleeping life.

It's interesting to note the philosophy of both directors. If they can do it in-camera, without special effects, they will. Both Nolan and Gondry believe strongly in the importance of realism and the fact that the audience responds on a stronger emotional level to real props, real places as opposed to computer generated objects. Obviously when necessary CGI is a fantastic tool to create the sense of the fantastical, but both directors don't abuse the tool or use it as a shortcut.

                           

A bridge film between the two dream styles is The Good Night (2007) directed by Jake Paltrow, in which a man sees a woman in his dreams and discovers she's a real person in the waking world and becomes obsessed with her. However, he spends his nights lucid dreaming about her continuously-consiously entering dreams to be with her in his wild fantasies where she controls him. In this film, both the strangeness of the dream world is mixed with the sense of reality. The environments could for the most part exists, but the events which take place in the dreams are definitely fantasy. He balances between recognition that he indeed is dreaming and not knowing, but the film is not a topsy-turvy dramedy like The Science of Sleep, nor an edgy crime-thriller like Inception. It is a simple drama of a lonely man, trying to escape reality. I recommend it simply to see the interesting, grounded way lucid dreaming is discussed.