Hell is a Dour Robin Williams; Heaven Can't Stand Him Either

The best moment in What Dreams May Come occurs when Max Von Sydow, the great staple of films specializing in theological torment, enters. The actor who challenged Death to a game of chess in The Seventh Seal appears as a Tracker to guide Robin Williams in his journey through hell. The casting of Von Sydow is uncannily perfect, suitably dramatic and humorous at once. Unfortunately, except for Von Sydow, Vincent Ward's film fails to reconcile its diverse tones. What Dreams May Come is a remarkably inconsistent work, failing at a very basic level to present uniform structure and characters.

Robin Williams, fresh from his Academy Award for Good Will Hunting, again leaves his comedic training behind him in his role as Chris Nielsen, who dies in a car accident and must travel from heaven to hell to save his wife (Annabella Sciorra) after she commits suicide in despair. The premise is fraught with difficulties. Although the plot is standard quest situation, it also demands that the film deal with questions of religion, God and the afterlife. The screenplay by Ron Bass gives the standard Hollywood compromise that eliminates God from the proceedings. By setting the film on earth, City of Angels and Ghost could avoid making definite spiritual claims, but having the film take place in heaven and hell makes the omissions in What Dreams May Come even more unsuitable.

Despite these omissions, Ward's version of heaven is stunning on purely visual terms. Eduardo Serra, the cinematographer who gave The Wings of the Dove a lush color scheme resembling fresh paint, goes further by setting the early scenes of heaven actually in a painting. The imagery is banal--must the perfect place be out of a paint-by-numbers watercolor?--but richly presented. The art direction suggests that PolyGram spent an inordinate amount of money on the film.

When Robin Williams enters hell, the movie's visual style lags. Like Ward's heaven, hell is a collection of schoolbook cliches, but without the visual flourish that marked the earlier passages. The hell that Woody Allen presented satirically in Deconstructing Harry is far more frightening than the absurdity in What Dreams May Come. Perhaps no director could reconcile presentations of heaven and hell successfully--David Lynch could certainly do the latter--and in this situation, Ward fails at both tasks.

What Dreams May Come does even worse by its characters. Early scenes of their courtship present Williams and Sciorra as a prototypical couple madly in love and without any discernible flaws. Williams is light and animated, while Sciorra is a placid beauty. They laugh and giggle, dance and frolic in slow motion as a means of establishing their love for one another. But as Williams and Sciorra age (and, in fact, die) they lose all traces of their original characters.

Robin Williams becomes morose and earnest, a man who cannot appreciate even heaven. Williams is known for his rapid delivery and wit here seems slow and dull. He barely moves his mouth throughout the film and refuses to raise his eyes. This dour performance becomes all the more evident when Williams appears with Cuba Gooding, Jr., who breathes some life into the story. Gooding, whose energy recalls Williams' early comedic work, is a constant reminder of what Williams lacks in What Dreams May Come. The role is a serious one, but Williams is too earnest even considering the solemn subject.

Annabella Sciorra has no room to do mediocre work, for her inscrutable character dooms any possibility for a good performance from the start. In various scenes she is a beautiful romantic, a warm mother, an edgy and depressed artist, a lunatic and finally a resident of hell. None of her various incarnations seem remotely connected to another, and in each she is given an outlandish haircut that does her acting for her. When she has the severe, cropped look of Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, you know that tragedy is imminent. We never know why Robin Williams would risk hell for her, simply because we don't clearly know who, or rather which, incarnation she is.

Without a compelling reason to go on this journey, What Dreams May Come can only provide random scenes that vary in effectiveness. A scene with a mysterious woman in heaven who chose the body of a beautiful Asian because of a fleeting memory from her childhood suggests fascinating possibilities left unexplored. But, most of the effective sections are marred by an egocentric focus on Williams' Chris Nielsen, as if heaven exists only for his sake. The film suggests that heaven for Nielsen is a place where all human lives have been shaped entirely by him.

What Dreams May Come is an odd, unsuccessful work. Its subject matter is likely something that could never have been adequately translated to film. Vincent Ward's refusal to provide a fascinating view of the afterlife dooms the film to purgatory. The more basic structural failures and unclear characters place it someplace far worse.