Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them, only to find themselves woefully unprepared for the consequences.
At least that’s the case in “Dream Scenario,” a black comedy that follows evolutionary biology professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) when he inexplicably begins appearing in the dreams of strangers around the world. An otherwise unremarkable man becomes, quite literally, an overnight celebrity.
Softly lit and slightly grainy, the film’s atmosphere is appropriately dreamlike, allowing the audience to slip smoothly between the sleeping and waking world. Without any of the mind-bending setpieces of a movie like “Inception,” the dream sequences here still capture the surreal logic of many a nighttime adventure. Dream Paul rakes leaves while his daughter is beset by falling objects, strolls by his ex-girlfriend as she holds a dying man and ducks out of a room where alligators hold a student atop a piano captive. The only common denominator between these initial dreams is that he’s there, and he has no effect on the narrative.
The phenomenon is initially a pleasant novelty for Paul, an unfulfilled academic who has until now struggled to gain recognition from the people around him. His lecture classes are suddenly packed, news outlets want to interview him and he catches the attention of a PR firm that he hopes will land him a publishing deal for the book he always meant to write.
But even this first brush with fame has unexpected consequences: the students’ dreams reinforce Paul’s frustration with his own perceived passivity, the media buzz prompts a mentally ill man to break into his home with a knife and Trent from the PR firm (Michael Cera) is more interested in making people dream of Sprite than promoting a book about ants.
Things take a turn for the worse when Paul accepts an offer to recreate the erotic dream of Trent’s assistant Molly (Dylan Gelula), leading to a mortifying almost-sex scene that borders on unwatchable.
Paul flees, humiliated, but the dreams don’t let up. Instead, they become violent, grotesque experiences that deeply disturb the dreamers, leading to Paul’s alienation from his students, coworkers and family.
These first two acts, with Paul as the bemused bystander to his own notoriety and then the indirect architect of his own downfall, make for compelling cinema. “Dream Scenario” succeeds when it’s a character study of a decidedly unlikable everyman, a wallflower who takes to his newfound fame with anything but grace.
Unfortunately, this is where the film loses steam. After Paul hits rock bottom, the third act is rushed and tonally inconsistent, introducing a sci-fi aspect in the form of a dream-travel bracelet that feels like the premise of a scrapped “Black Mirror” episode.
Make no mistake — “Dream Scenario” is a triumph for Cage, who imbues Paul with a captivating cocktail of insecurity and entitlement. For all his flaws, Paul ends up as a tragic figure, someone who would have been perfectly fine as long as he was ordinary. Instead, he loses control of his own narrative in a truly spectacular fashion, getting the recognition that he so desperately wanted but losing the right to have a say in how he’s portrayed.
Cage has spoken about how his extensive career in film and the subsequent experience of being “memefied” informed his portrayal of Paul, asserting that being famous is not unlike gambling. This question of agency is at the core of the movie, with Paul’s predicament taking the reality of being unable to manage the perceptions of others to the extreme as the main character drifts between resentful and pathetic, alternately bitingly funny and devastating to observe.
Watching “Dream Scenario,” you may laugh, you may cry — you’ll certainly cringe. And like any good dream, it leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
