Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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creating and building up decisions […]. When we let Vincent’s ideas overflow,
then we get something wonderful that we would not get otherwise. 941
As in Map of the Human Heart, the central element of What Dreams May Come is the
love story. Ward believes that his parents’ successful marriage has made him curious
about long-lived relationships: “When two strong-minded people live together, there’s
always this thing of negotiation. I’m interested in how people communicate, how they
try to find a way to get past the terrible things that happen to them, and the needs that
drive them to be together. Sometimes it’s actually worse being without the other, so
you have to find a way to stick together. I’ve explored that in this film, where the
couple are successful, and in Map of the Human Heart where they aren’t”. 942 While the
film revolves around Chris and Annie’s relationship, it also depicts Chris’s spiritual
awakening and discovery as he journeys through the afterlife to find Annie. As Leslie
O’Toole acknowledges, “Ward has consistently explored the nature of spiritual and
emotional journeys in all his films. In particular, his films are about relationships and
their psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions”. However: “Emotional
journeys are never easy to capture on film. It’s always a particular challenge to a
filmmaker to accurately depict the roots of an emotion and the intensity of feeling it
produces in the subject. Harder, still, is the depiction of a spiritual journey”. 943 Peter
Matthews has also commented on the difficulty: “Special effects aren’t the best way to
conjure an ethereal atmosphere, since they can’t help conferring a certain literalmindedness
on the proceedings. As André Bazin once remarked, cinema imposes its
own irresistible realism”. 944
Ward’s view of a subjective afterlife was that it is “the only kind that makes any sense
to me - why would a Native American’s afterlife be the same as yours or mine?” 945
Although the book on which the film was based was written twenty years ago and
optioned eighteen years ago, he believed the project did not come to fruition then
because people were less interested in spirituality than they are today. Ward quoted a
recent Time Magazine poll as showing that “eighty percent of Americans believe in an
afterlife”, but pointed out that the film does not have a religious message. “It is designed
941 Magrid, "Dream Weavers," 44.
942 Ward quoted in Wong, "Development Hell," 35.
943 O'Toole, "The Navigator," 80.
944 Peter Matthews, "What Dreams May Come," Sight and Sound 9.1 (1999): 61.
945 Ward quoted in Newman, "Never Say Die," 21.