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Careful What You Dream For

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:22:58 +0000

Careful What You Dream For Chet Kozlowski June 24, 2024 - 08:22

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At what point does imitation become homage? Does “homage” even figure in when the hallmarks of a genre master’s style become tropes, and supply a well of motifs for young filmmakers to dip into, even though they may have no idea where those tropes came from? They’re not nodding to the masters so much as breathing the air that they provide. And in this age where the parameters of plagiarism have become hazy, is it invalid for those young filmmakers to use those tropes to craft a personal statement?

These thoughts came to mind while watching Somnium, a new film that presents itself as psychological horror, but gets at something much more interesting.

Starry-eyed smalltown Gemma arrives in LA to become an actor. She takes a job in an experimental sleep clinic called Somnium, which promises to literally make their clients dreams come true. Clients sleep in sensory-deprivation pods while Somnium technicians mine deep-seated dreams of success either to be achieved, or to implant the belief that they have already been achieved (Gemma questions the ethics of the practice: “Does it actually change their reality or just their perception of it?” and her coworker Noah replies, “What’s the difference?”)

Gemma goes about her life, working, auditioning, and in flashbacks relives her breakup with Hunter, a talented but unenterprising musician. Strange things start to happen to Gemma at home and at work: suspicious noises, ominous shadows, and a menacing pale figure.

Depressed and lonely, Gemma finds an angel in the back alley of an arcade: the mysterious Brooks, who offers to guide her budding career. Is he a talent agent or a devil? Alone in the nightshift, she discovers odd selfie videos of Noah, who appears in them to victimize women in Somnium’s sensory deprivation chambers. Additionally, there is the prospect of an “accelerated dream program” called Cloud Nine that forces clients to confront desires and motives.

Writer/director Racheal Cain cites Wes Craven as an influence—and one can see it, especially in The Nightmare on Elm Street—but David Lynch is clearly the template. Though set in the present day Somnium has Lynchian flourishes of the past: furtive meetings in diners, outdated computers, boyfriends styled on James Dean. Gemma gives a stunning audition á la Mulholland Drive. Gemma’s apartment contains a dark hallway which suggests a portal to hell, as in Lost Highway. A bar band is even named “Twin Peaks.”

Which is not to accuse Ms. Cain of imitation, or even homage. She uses familiar tropes, established longer ago than she’s been alive, to tell a story that questions her own motives as an artist. Gemma is her surrogate. Why want celebrity? At what cost? Why is Gemma so willing to sacrifice what she loves and debase herself in order to get fame? Ms. Cain comes to some unique and intriguing conclusions in Gemma’s trajectory.

As Gemma, Chloë Levine gives a layered performance, going convincingly from innocent to desperate. As comically innocent as she appears in LA, in flashback she shows realistic passion with her boyfriend Hunter, played by an equally fine Peter Vack (Ms. Levine’s voluptuous features contrast nicely with Mr. Vack’s lean look). She is uncertain in her growing reliance on the punk-coiffed and hedonistic Brooks (played by Johnathon Schaech; good to see him again) who challenges her to become her true self. Will Peltz as Noah and Clarisa Thibeaux as Olivia, Gemma’s enigmatic coworkers, also do admirable work.

Besides her well-chosen actors, Racheal Cain’s vision is ably realized by the production design of Olivia McManus, the score by composer Peter Ricq, and Lance Kuhns’ cinematography.

Ms. Cain’s direction is succinct. She lingers on settings for a few beats more than usual after characters have left the frame, allowing us time to fully consider what we’ve seen. Is it innocuous or sinister? She peppers her horror-centric scenario with big questions: are we following dreams or are dreams following us?

Am I reading too much into this? I don’t think so. Ms. Cain has said the idea for Somnium has been simmering for years. Either way: if Racheal Cain followed the David Lynch tropes just because they’re there, she artfully honors the canon. If they bubbled up from her subconscious, even better. Maybe they came to her in a dream.

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Somnium. Directed by Racheal Cain. 2024. From Untold, Rabid Rabbit Films, and Allred. 92 minutes.

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Why Do We Know So Much About Lindsay Lohan?

Brandon Judell — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:53:17 +0000

Why Do We Know So Much About Lindsay Lohan? Brandon Judell June 6, 2010 - 08:53

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Little more than a week ago I was going Hollywood in mid-Manhattan with dozens of other Big Apple critics. In other words, cabbing from a 6:00 p.m. midtown advance screening of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to an Upper West Side 8:30 p.m. S.R.O. showing of Sex and the City 2. Yes, from a surprisingly charisma-less Jake Gyllenhaal in search of a magical dagger to a rancid Sarah Jessica Parker seeking empty post-marriage passion in the Middle East. Verdict: both stars should avoid sand. Jake, so good bottoming in Brokeback Mountain, here lacks top appeal. Too bad gravitas can't be sprayed on like a tan. Indifferent editing, a plodding plot line, and witless banter don't help the boy. In fact, a bewildered ostrich mirroring the audience’s sentiments offers the best performance.

As for Miss Sarah, who looks like what the cat dragged in and then spit out, she’s simply forgotten how to act. Both here and in the God-awful Did You Hear About the Morgans?, whenever the sweet miss is on screen, an immediate lack of energy is apparent. It's as if the screen becomes a black hole sucking up life like a Bounty towel on baby drool. Miss Parker who's extremely attractive in person and unbelievably kind, warm, and sincere, appears to be treading dangerous waters when leaving the safety of the boob tube. Cinematographers can no longer capture her charm, and that's fatal, especially during those moments when Mr. Big (Chris Noth) swears that her Carrie Bradshaw is "hot," and you wind up wondering if you missed an anal insertion shot. But worse is how humorless, dramatically flaccid, anti-feminist, and bigoted this whole production is. In a cruel takeoff on reading Lolita in Tehran near the finale of Sex 2, Arab women are no longer risking their lives to get together and critique the forbidden classics of Nabokov and the Brontes. Instead, Suzanne Somers is their god, and their real dream is to be garishly swaddled in designer labels. Thank heavens for Parker's costars, who can still add a bit of zing to the zingless mindlessness this whole enterprise has dissolved into.

This brings me to Phillip Montgomery's superb new documentary, ReGeneration, which is currently being screened at the Seattle International Film Festival, the longest film fest in the United States and clearly one of the best curated. ReGeneration, which is narrated and co-produced by Ryan Gosling, is an exploration of America's current ethical vacuum. How did we get this way? Why did the hippies think they could change the world? And why are today's youth's goals far less ambitious, mainly relegating their lesser Utopian fantasies to those realizable with a stroke of daddy's credit card? What's happened? Why did the malaise set in? One teacher interviewed notes that her students, when confronted with current events, ask, "What can I do? I’m only one person."

According to Montgomery, the culprit here is the media, which are collectively our country's main educator. We are apparently preached a culture of powerless individualism that throws societal values by the wayside. We're brainwashed that "nice guys finish last." Why? Corporations want us to excuse their C.E.O.s' greed and make heroes of Trump and his peers. Also, in the end, self-sacrifice doesn't drive up sales. True charitableness is almost un-American. Just recall how Ronald Reagan avowed, "You can always have more," and he was worshipped for doing so. His rival, the oft-belittled Jimmy Carter, asked Americans to stop kowtowing to self-indulgence. Ask not what one owns, but what one does, and he lost the election.

ReGeneration opens with a Martin Luther King quote: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." Silence and "buy me" and ignorance. Where does it lead? An indifference to war? Is this why George W. disallowed the media from photographing the dead of the Iraq war? He didn't want another Vietnam on his hands. If it's not on the 6 o’clock news or CNN, it doesn't exist. And his policy worked.

According to a study quoted in ReGeneration, most Americans believe less than 10,000 people were killed in the war, not the hundreds of thousands that the experts agree upon. But Death has to step aside on TV for the far more significant antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Consequently, we can't tell the real tragedies from those manufactured by Hollywood. One teacher recalls here that when she turned on the TV in her classroom while 9/11 was occurring and that plane was crashed into the second World Trade Center tower, one of her students yelled, "Cool!" "This is not a special effect," she replied.

But how can we tell anymore? And how will future generations? Clearly, the film argues, "Culture shapes identity." With hope, this heartfelt, unendingly stimulating documentary might just salvage a few minds that would otherwise have been Jaked and Sarah-ed into complete idiocy.