"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates

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• Resources
• Assignments
• Cast
• Notes

Resources:

• What Dreams May Come on the Internet Movie Database - The Internet Movie Database is one of the basic tools you need to do any research on a film. It is a rich source of information about most films.
• Roger Ebert's Review of What Dreams May Come - I don't always agree with Roger Ebert, but I find his reviews intelligent and insightful.

Assignments

You will write a work of fiction with a minimum of three hundred words. The premise of this work of fiction is this:

• I, your teacher, die at the ripe old age of 198.
• You died first a week earlier. 
• I wake up in the afterlife.
• I see you. 
• You are my guide.
• What do I see?

Please describe the afterlife you want to show me. You are the writer so you get to set the tone and mood of the work and you get to use all of the artistic license you want to change the situation as long as you follow the basic premise of the assignment. Your only constraints are good taste and manners.

 Cast

• Chris Nielsen: Robin Williams
• Annie Nielsen: Annabella Sciorra
• Albert Lewis: Cuba Gooding, Jr.
• The Tracker: Max von Sydow

Notes

What You Should Know Before Seeing This Film

 Theme: First, keep in mind that this film is a story. It is fiction. It does not tell us about what happens when we die because no one knows what happens when we die. So what is the purpose of the story? It must be about what happens to us when we are alive. Watch the characters, watch the story, and be prepared to discuss what the film has to say about life and how life should be conducted. Once you know what the film has to say about life, decide whether you agree or not.

So, my question to you will be: what do you learn about life by watching this movie about death?

Remember, what the film or book or play or song or painting is about is never the plot.

 Narrative Focus: Narrative focus tells us whose point of view we are getting. In this film, the narrative focus comes from Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams). Almost everything we learn about the characters comes from what he knows. Therefore, everything about what happens after the accident also comes from what he either knows or thinks will happen. Remember, there is no evidence to prove that the events after the accident in the tunnel even happen. They are the events that the character thinks will happen. What does he expect to discover if he dies?

Let me give you an example: Tomorrow, I die. What will happen? I'll tell you what will happen. The school will close -- for a month. The grief will be too terrible for people to bear. The tri-town area will go into mourning. Black swathes of fabric will cover every doorway and at nine o'clock every night the lights of the tri-town will dim for fifteen minutes. When the month away from school is over and all of you return to Tom Trevenen Memorial High School, there will be a portrait, a really big portrait, in the main lobby of the school which all of the students, as they enter the school each morning, will delicately touch, closing their eyes and take inspiration from the remembrance of my life.

Like it? Yeah, me, too. But let's face it. This is strictly from my point of view. This is how I see it. The above paragraph is entirely from my narrative focus. The reality is probably going to be much different. It will probably be grander, but my own herculean humility prevents me from venturing any guesses.

Now, what does Chris Nielson think will happen when he dies? If the afterlife is a thing we create ourselves, then where and when he meets people is entirely under his control. How they behave is not how they behave, but how he thinks they would behave if he met them. He is a great example of a solipcist.

 Allusions: An allusion is a reference to something in literature or history that the audience is supposed to know. (It is not seeing something that is not there; that’s illusion.) For this movie, it would be helpful for the audience to know something about Dante’s Inferno. It would also be useful to know the story of Orpheus [ORE-fee-us] and Eurydice [you-RID-uh-see]. Another piece of information would be if you knew where the title of the movie came from. It’s from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is a phrase from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy “To be, or not to be. . .” speech. Here is the text:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

E-mail Thomas Trevenen

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