“Dream scenario” (The man of dreams)

The collaborators of the cultural section of Proceso, whose edition became monthly, publish in these pages, week by week, their critical columns (Art, Music, Theater, Cinema, Books).

MEXICO CITY (process.com.mx).– The independent production company A24, specialized in film and television – more New York than Hollywood – has had a key role in proposing a new big screen model, which eliminates the distance between art and commercial.

He has managed to create a promotional space for directors such as the Greek Yorgo Lanthinos (associated with Wierd Cinema), Alex Garland (Civil War), Darren Aronofsky, or the sick and fascinating Ari Aster (The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, Misommar), David Lowery (he of the splendid Ghost Story), and others, most of them associated with New York culture.

Increasingly ambitious, A24’s projects include underutilized actors, or who have somehow fallen from Hollywood’s graces, such as Nicolas Cage, delighted with the script and direction of the Norwegian Kristoffer Borgli with Dream scenario; United States, 2023), where he discovered the possibility of reinventing himself as the good actor that he is…

Like the protagonist, a professor of evolutionary biology, shot to fame, only to suffer, without owing it or fearing it, the scourge of the so-called cancel culture, whose main weapon is the social network. Fame, somewhat involuntary in the case of Professor Paul Matthews, becomes the worst nightmare.

It happens that Paul Matthews, a character that Cage designs as a man who takes refuge in the role of a professor, bald and bearded, frozen in 90s clothing – just before the rise of social networks – and barely bearable for his students, begins to appear. in the dreams of other people, of many, and as if by accident people recognize him when they come across him. Thus he rises to fame: selfies, videos, his classes become popular, until the viral peak goes down, towards the type most hated and punished by the vigilantes.

Paul Matthews, well married and with a couple of teenage daughters, would only aspire to write his book about ants, as the strange situation disrupts his life and the faint-hearted side becomes evident: an ex-girlfriend writes an article based on an original idea that one day he had, and in a hilarious scene (the best the actor has given in his career, the attempt to recreate an erotic dream of a young woman who dreams of him), becomes an uncomfortable and grotesque farce, with a strong problem. Interesting departure for director Borgli, who manages to avoid, as well as ridicule, what would be a risky scene today in terms of MeToo.

Kristoffer Borgli, possessor of a great talent for making his actors embody characters between reality and nightmare, as he demonstrated with Sick of Mysel (Sick of Myself), or himself in a mock interview where he receives a couple of bullets, He understands American culture well from within, he knows about absurdity taken seriously, narcissism and sideboard sentimentality. Thus, the viewer of Dream scenario might wonder to what extent the culture of social networks, without denying its great achievements, is still an amplification of very American ideals and values ​​adopted globally.

Hilarious as well as creepy, the film is a symptomatic fantasy of the time; Of the explanations that Borgli offers, that of an illustration of Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious is forced and against the grain; The concern that he felt after meeting several academics banished from his work, who never understood why, sounds more plausible; The film does not seek an answer, it only raises the issue… deep down, in a very serious way.