In Dreams (film)

{{Infobox film

| name = In Dreams

| image = In dreams.jpg

| caption = Theatrical release poster

| director = Neil Jordan

| producer = {{plainlist|

}}

| screenplay = {{plainlist|

Bruce Robinson
Neil Jordan

}}

| based_on = {{based on|Doll's Eyes|Bari Wood}}

| starring = {{Plainlist|

}}

| music = Elliot Goldenthal

| cinematography = Darius Khondji

| editing = Tony Lawson

| studio = Amblin EntertainmentCopyright Application for In Dreams (January 27, 1999). United States Copyright Office. Retrieved November 8, 2012.

| distributor = DreamWorks Pictures

| released = {{Film date|1999|1|15|United States}}

| runtime = 100 minutes

| country = United States

| language = English

| budget = $30 million{{cite web|url=https://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=indreams.htm|work=Box Office Mojo|title=In Dreams - Budget|access-date=August 30, 2018}}

| gross = $17 million{{cite magazine|magazine=Variety|date=March 20, 2000|last=Hayes|first=Dade|title=Bombs away: Biz disavows duds|page=7}}

}}

In Dreams is a 1999 American psychological thriller film directed by Neil Jordan. It is an adaptation of the novel Doll's Eyes (1993) by Bari Wood. The film stars Annette Bening, Robert Downey Jr., Aidan Quinn, and Stephen Rea. Its screenplay was co-written by Jordan and screenwriter Bruce Robinson. Filming took place at various locations throughout New England as well as on the Baja California Peninsula.

In Dreams was released in the United States on January 15, 1999, by DreamWorks Pictures. On a reported budget of $30 million, the film grossed $17 million at the box office, making it a box-office bomb. It received varied reviews from critics, with several praising its visuals and Bening's performance, while others criticized its lack of narrative coherence.

Plot

Claire Cooper is a suburban housewife and mother, who in her free time, illustrates children's stories. Her husband, Paul, is an airline pilot, and is frequently away from home due to work (and possibly an affair with an Australian co-worker), leaving Claire to care for their eight-year-old daughter, Rebecca. Claire begins experiencing bizarre, vague dreams involving an underwater city and the murder of a young girl. Shortly after, Rebecca goes missing during an outdoor school play, and is later found dead at the bottom of a reservoir.

Believing these dreams she has had since girlhood may be premonitory, Claire attempts to involve herself in the police investigation, but is met with increasing resistance. Her dreams and visions intensify, and she believes she is witnessing the movements of her daughter's murderer, a serial killer named Vivian Thompson. She uncovers that the underwater city she has experienced in her dreams is a former town, Northfield, that was flooded when the reservoir was formed.

The visions drive Claire to the brink of insanity, and she seeks help from a psychologist, Dr. Silverman, who diagnoses her as psychotic. She is subsequently committed to a psychiatric institution after cutting her wrists, but remains plagued by visions, including one of Vivian murdering Paul. When she experiences another vision of Vivian kidnapping another girl, Claire manages to escape from the institution, hoping to stop him from claiming another victim. She steals the vehicle of a security guard, and tracks Vivian to an abandoned fruit factory situated along the lake.

Upon arriving at the factory, she is met by Vivian and the young girl, Ruby. The childlike Vivian, who was severely abused as a boy by his mother, kidnaps little girls to be his "playmates"; when they resist, he becomes enraged and kills them. He is holding Claire hostage at the factory, and wants her and Ruby to stay with him as his "new family". Police manage to track Claire to the factory, where they have a face-off with Vivian, holding a gun to Claire's head. While a SWAT team attempts to snipe Vivian from a helicopter, he chases Claire along a bridge crossing a tributary waterfall, knocking both her and himself over the guardrail. Claire and Vivian plunge below the falls. In the water, Claire has a vision of being reunited with her daughter before drowning.

Later, Vivian, who survived the fall, is committed to the same psychiatric institute where Claire had been incarcerated. While lying in his bed, he has horrific visions of Claire's spirit haunting him and the phrase "Sweet dreams, Vivian" being scrawled in blood on the ceiling. The phrase emerges across the walls of his cell, and he screams in horror.

Cast

Annette Bening as Claire Cooper
Katie Sagona as Rebecca Cooper
Aidan Quinn as Paul Cooper
Robert Downey Jr. as Vivian Thompson
Geoffrey Wigdor as young Vivian Thompson
Paul Guilfoyle as Det. Jack Kay
Kathleen Langlois as Snow White
Jennifer Holly Berry as Hunter
Amelia Claire Novotny as Prince
Kristin Sroka as Wicked Step-Mother
Robert Walsh as Man at School Play
Denise Cormier as Woman at School Play
John Fiore as Policeman
Ken Cheeseman as Paramedic
Dennis Boutsikaris as Dr. Stevens
Stephen Rea as Dr. Silverman
Margo Martindale as Nurse Floyd
June Lewin as Kindly Nurse
Pamela Payton-Wright as Ethel
Krystal Benn as Ruby
Dorothy Dwyer as Foster Mother

Production

=Screenplay=

The film is ostensibly based on the 1993 novel Doll's Eyes, by Bari Wood, even though the finished film and screenplay bear practically no resemblance at all to the book, with the exception of the protagonist being a well-to-do woman who abhors her psychic abilities, which put her in contact with a serial killer to whom she becomes mentally linked. The project originated as a script titled Blue Vision, written by Bruce Robinson. Neil Jordan came aboard to direct the film as one of the first projects at DreamWorks, having worked with David Geffen on his previous three films. Jordan rewrote the script and re-titled it In Dreams.{{cite book|author=Carole Zucker|title=Neil Jordan: Interviews|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VLhprOJ9FSIC&dq=%22in+dreams%22+script+%22neil+jordan%22&pg=PA134|date=16 February 2022|publisher= University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1617037450|pages=134}} Commenting on what the film's overarching theme was, Jordan stated: "I don't think the world behaves in a rational manner, but we all write about it and talk about it as if it does. I think that's what a lot of stories I've told have been about. How people try and make sense of their own lives with the tools available like logic and a sense of consequence, and these forces erupt into lives that make no sense."{{sfn|Pramaggiore|2008|p=71}}

=Filming=

Filming took place in multiple locations in New England, including several Massachusetts cities: Northampton (at the Northampton State Hospital and Smith College), Southampton, Northfield, and Florence in 1997.{{cite web|work=Massachusetts Film Office|title=Made in Massachusetts|url=http://www.mafilm.org/made-in-mass/|access-date=August 28, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160701094212/http://www.mafilm.org/made-in-mass/|archive-date=July 1, 2016}} Additional photography took place at the Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle, New Hampshire.{{sfn|Ocker|2010|p=300}} The underwater sets were created and filmed at 20th Century Fox studios on the Baja California Peninsula, in the same water tank used for the underwater portions of James Cameron's Titanic (1997). The film's production budget was approximately $30 million.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji applied filters on the camera lenses to achieve lush accents on the film's autumnal imagery, noted by critic Nick Pinkerton as "hysterical and hyper-real."{{cite web|work=Museum of the Moving Image|url=http://www.reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/211/dreams|title=In Dreams|series=Symposiums|date=November 7, 2005|access-date=August 30, 2018}}

Release

=Box office=

In Dreams was released in the United States on January 15, 1999,{{cite web|url=https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/61187?sid=37e2b966-d19b-429a-a387-e96715a7f084&sr=2.128972&cp=1&pos=0|work=AFI Catalog of Feature Films|access-date=August 30, 2018|title=In Dreams}} across 1,670 theaters. During its opening weekend, it grossed $3,992,449, ranking at number 11 at the U.S. box office.{{cite web|url=https://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=indreams.htm|work=Box Office Mojo|title=In Dreams - Total Gross|access-date=August 30, 2018}} It had a final gross of $11,927,682 in the United States and Canada and a worldwide gross of $17 million.

=Critical reception=

The film holds a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. The site's consensus states: "Some interesting visuals, but the movie is as confusing as a dream."{{cite web |title=In Dreams (1999) |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_dreams |access-date=March 26, 2021 |work=Rotten Tomatoes}} Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of "C−" on an A+ to F scale.{{Cite web |title=Home |url=https://www.cinemascore.com/ |access-date=2022-04-02 |website=CinemaScore |language=en-US}}

Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the film's cinematography and Bening's performance, summarizing: "At heart In Dreams is just a campfire story, and a pretty loony one at that. But Neil Jordan has directed it furiously, with a lush, insinuating visual style that gets right under the skin."{{cite web|work=The New York Times|author=Maslin, Janet|author-link=Janet Maslin|date=January 15, 1999|access-date=August 28, 2018|title=FILM REVIEW; Want to Share Dreams? Be Careful; It's Murder|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/15/movies/film-review-want-to-share-dreams-be-careful-it-s-murder.html}} {{closed access}} Some critics, such as Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, commented on the film's dubious plot, deeming it "the silliest thriller in many a moon, and the only one in which the heroine is endangered by apples. She also survives three falls from very high places (two into a lake, one onto apples), escapes from a hospital and a madhouse, has the most clever dog since Lassie and causes a traffic pileup involving a truck and a dozen cars."{{cite web|last=Ebert|author-link=Roger Ebert|title=In Dreams|newspaper=Chicago Sun-Times|publisher=Sun-Times Group|location=Chicago, Illinois|date=January 15, 1999|url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/in-dreams-1999}}

Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times likened the film to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but criticized it for its lack of realism. However, Mathews praised the film's underwater visual sequences, noting that they "have the haunting atmosphere typical of Jordan's past horror films," and wrote that "Bening works this role like a sore muscle, or a tooth that needs pulling. It's a courageous, anti-glamour effort, one of those sweat-and-drool "Snake Pit" performances that drives hair and makeup crazy, not to mention mental-health-care providers."{{cite web|work=Los Angeles Times|author=Mathews, Jack|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jan-15-ca-63683-story.html|title=Silly Psycho-Thriller 'In Dreams' Offers More Laughs Than Gasps|date=January 15, 1999|access-date=August 30, 2018}} {{closed access}} The Washington Post{{'}}s Desson Howe similarly praised Bening for "an exhausting, breakout performance," as well as the film's "surrealistic" visuals.{{cite news|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/reviews/indreamshowe.htm|title=Nightmarishly Good 'Dreams'|date=January 15, 1999|access-date=August 29, 2018|last=Howe|first=Desson|author-link=Desson Howe}} Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly awarded the film a C-minus rating, deeming it a "dismayingly schlocky and literal-minded thriller."{{cite magazine|magazine=Entertainment Weekly|title=In Dreams|author=Gleiberman, Owen|date=January 22, 1999|access-date=August 30, 2018|url=https://ew.com/article/1999/01/22/dreams-3/}} Emanuel Levy of Variety characterized the film as "dark, scary and uncompromising," and surmised that criticisms would result from the film's "convoluted narrative with a downbeat tone and shockingly unconventional ending, which doesn’t provide the genre’s customary pay-off."{{cite magazine|magazine=Variety|publisher=Penske Media Corporation|location=Los Angeles, California|url=https://variety.com/1999/film/reviews/in-dreams-1200456472/|title=In Dreams|first=Emanuel|last=Levy|date=January 14, 1999|access-date=August 30, 2018}}

Co-writer Robinson criticized the film the year after its release, stating: "It was a complete and utter mess from top to bottom. I thought Jennifer Eight was a low point, but Christ almighty, this hit the floor and dug."{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/nov/25/film|date=November 25, 2000|title=Studio knives and FBI plots|author=Lezard, Nicholas|access-date=August 30, 2018|work=The Guardian|location=London}} In a retrospective review, critic Nick Pinkerton referred to the film as "a fundamentally miscalibrated movie of rather piquant badness, the work of a preternaturally talented hack, if such a thing can exist."

Film scholar Maria Pramaggiore notes In Dreams as one example in Jordan's filmography in which popular songs are employed to "disestablish time and place to convey the notion of time as a cyclical process."{{sfn|Pramaggiore|2008|p=96}} Pramaggiore also stresses the importance of the uncanny in the film, citing it as one of several in Jordan's filmography{{em dash}}along with The Miracle (1991) and The Butcher Boy (1997){{em dash}}in which "dreams assume the status of reality."{{sfn|Pramaggiore|2008|p=22}}

Soundtrack

The soundtrack to In Dreams was released on January 12, 1999. Songs are by Elliot Goldenthal featuring London Metropolitan Orchestra, except where noted.

{{Track listing

| extra_column = Artist

| total_length = 49:27{{cite web|work=AllMusic|title=In Dreams Soundtrack|url=http://www.allmusic.com/album/in-dreams-mw0000048161|access-date=August 30, 2018}}

| title1 = Agitato Dolorosa

| length1 = 4:59

| extra1 =

| title2 = Claire's Nocturne

| length2 = 2:38

| extra2 =

| title3 = Pull of Red

| length3 = 2:07

| extra3 =

| title4 = Appellatron

| length4 = 3:33

| extra4 =

| title5 = Wraith Loops

| length5 = 3:27

| extra5 =

| title6 = Rubber Room Stomp

| length6 = 2:00

| extra6 =

| title7 = Pulled by Red

| length7 = 1:11

| extra7 =

| title8 = Scytheoplicity

| length8 = 2:26

| extra8 =

| title9 = In Dreams

| length9 = 2:50

| extra9 = Roy Orbison

| title10 = Rebecca's Abduction

| length10 = 4:32

| extra10 =

| title11 = Premonition Lento

| length11 = 1:42

| extra11 =

| title12 = While We Sleep

| length12 = 2:36

| extra12 =

| title13 = Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)

| length13 = 2:17

| extra13 = The Andrews Sisters

| title14 = Andante

| length14 = 3:38

| extra14 =

| title15 = Elegy Ostinato

| length15 = 4:11

| extra15 =

| title16 = Dream Baby

| length16 = 4:30

| extra16 = Elizabeth Fraser

}}

References

Works cited

{{cite book|last=Ocker|first=J.W.|title=The New England Grimpendium|year=2010|publisher=The Countryman Press|location=Woodstock, Vermont|isbn=978-1-581-57862-1}}
{{cite book|last=Pramaggiore|first=Maria|title=Neil Jordan|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Champaign, Illinois|year=2008|isbn=978-0-252-07530-8}}