Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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The title of the film (What Dreams May Come) refers to another important Romantic
preoccupation – the interest in the irrational and the subconscious. In the film’s
depiction of Hell, this interest manifests itself in the grotesque in the sense of being
“something ominous and sinister in the face of a world totally different from the
familiar one”. 931 The landscape of Hell is a nightmarish one, not only because it is
unfamiliar and unpredictable, but also, particularly in the Sea of Faces scene and the
scene where hellions attack Chris’s boat, because it creates an atmosphere of terror. For
Annie, however, Hell is not a nightmare where she has to combat tangible threats but a
psychological Hell where she must combat her inner fears. This too is an expression of
a gothic sensibility where an atmosphere of unease is created by the fear of the unseen
Like Malfred Signal in A State of Siege, where props and furniture start disappearing
from the set as Malfred becomes increasingly unhinged, Annie’s decaying physical
surroundings are created by her psychological state.
Both Annie and Chris literally live in an afterlife world of their own inner emotions, a
concept that has resonances with Expressionism. As in Wiene’s 1919 film, Das
Kabinett des Dr Caligari in which the distorted angles of the sets reflect the madness of
the film’s protagonist, the gloomy colours of the broken-down building inhabited by
Annie indicate her depression. Like many Expressionist films, What Dreams May
Come uses lighting to create what Lotte Eisner described as Stimmung (mood or
atmosphere) and this is evident not only in Annie’s Hell, but also in Chris’s Heaven.
Arguably, the film’s aesthetic is motivated at least in part by an Expressionistic
subjectivity, by which the world is literally constructed from the particular perspective
of the individual character, and by an Expressionistic rejection of a naturalistic
depiction of the world, and of everyday truth. What also links the film to
Expressionism are its carefully-composed images and its expressions of intense
emotion. The latter characteristic fits with Ward’s own definition of Expressionism,
which is that in such a work of art the emotion is the most important essential element
and “the technique is only there to serve the emotion”. 932 As discussed in Chapter One,
this emphasis on emotion does not preclude thought or philosophical reflection, and in
What Dreams May Come, philosophical reflection on the nature of life and death is
strongly linked with emotion.
931 Previously quoted in Chapter One of this thesis: Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature 21.
932 Previously cited in Chapter One of this thesis from an interview with Ward,