Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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to appeal to people from different religious backgrounds and even cynics like myself. It
embraces a lot of different beliefs and you can fill it up with what you believe, I
think”. 946 The film can also be read “purely as a psychological journey, as someone
coming to understand themselves and their relationships. Then there’s the smaller idea
that the dead grieve for the living”. 947
The notion of those who have committed suicide going to Hell is an orthodox Catholic
belief, but Hell in the film is depicted as a psychological context of the character’s own
making. Ward believes that “in almost every religion and philosophy that I know of,
except perhaps ancient Roman culture, [suicide] is normally considered as going against
some kind of life force principle […] and it’s normally discouraged”. In his view, since
this attitude to suicide crosses many different cultures, the film does not take a
moralistic stance but explores the debate of whether a person should be damned for
committing suicide because they loved too much. 948 The film’s title is a quote from
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but Ward thinks it should not be interpreted too literally except
in the sense that the afterlife may be what you imagine it to be - subjective, based on a
person’s own experiences. The idea of someone attempting to rescue a loved one from
Hell is rooted in both myth (Orpheus and Eurydice) and religion (Christ going to Hell in
order to save humanity, the Tibetan Book of the Dead). The universal nature of this
story is one that appealed to Ward because he has lived “in a lot of different
communities, whether it’s in the Ureweras or it’s in the Arctic [or] investigating a film
set in nineteenth-century Japan”. 949 Ward linked the film’s concern with spirituality
with German Romanticism: “The German Romantic [element] I respond to, and I
thought it was appropriate for the story. I always had a sense of some force that you
can’t quite put a name on, some sense of the sublime”. 950
Another characteristic trait that is evident in What Dreams May Come is Ward’s interest
in outsiders. According to Robert Ward: “What Dreams May Come takes Ward’s theme
of outsiders confronting alien worlds to its furthest extension: Williams’ character
Chris and his wife Annie […] both die and encounter heaven and hell. The afterlife
Ward creates unites his two passions, art and film-making […], his training as a painter
946 O'Toole, "The Navigator," 82.
947 Ward quoted in Newman, "Never Say Die," 21.
948 Sam Gaoa, unpublished interview with Ward, 17 October 1998.
949 Sam Gaoa, unpublished interview with Ward, 17 October 1998.
950 Sam Gaoa, unpublished interview with Ward, 17 October 1998.