Review of What Dreams May Come (1998) by Johnny F. O — 18 Nov 2014

Everyone's got that movie. You know, the one that makes you cry every damn time without fail. This shit right here...this is the holy grail of tearjerkers for me.

I don't remember when I first watched this movie. I had to be incredibly young, because it shook me to my core, and the aftershocks still resonate within me to this day. I mean, sometimes, if I think about it too long, I cry. It's just that real for me.

But then, one time, I thought about why I was crying. What had really upset me about this movie? Why does it unfailingly bring tears to my eyes?

In this movie, based off a book I can't bring myself to finish, a family is devastated by death. It haunts them. A couple destined to be together lose their children in a car accident. The wife loses herself for a while, then her husband in another car crash. She's left alone on earth. She commits suicide shortly after. All of them, wiped off the earth.

The main character is the husband, Chris, who wakes up after death in heaven. Or rather, his heaven. Everyone gets their own piece of the pie, in this universe. There's a little separate heaven for each soul, then there's a gathering place. All souls can get together and make merry in the center of heaven. Everyone can appear as they wish. Construction and perception of their personal heaven is left up to the souls themselves. For example, his daughter Marie, chose to wear the appearance of a Hawaiian flight attendant in heaven. Everything is malleable, it seems.

The movie then follows Chris on his quest to rescue his wife from the place that suicides go and bring her with him to heaven. In the end, he succeeds and they are born again. All is beautiful.

I cry because it's sad, it's tragic, it's heroic and soul mates are my weakness. Yet when it's over, I continue to feel this strange despair. I feel helpless in the face of this version of heaven.

There's been so many takes on what heaven really is that it's hard to form an opinion for yourself on what it truly is. I am so afraid that somehow, by the weirdest twist of fate and the craziest odds in the world, this movie got it right. I'm scared of this heaven. You do get to see your loved ones again, you have complete control over yourself and your heaven, you can frolic around in bliss for the rest of eternity. But there's just something about the way no one really stays the same, the way people are admonished for suicide, the way a life can be blank slated and restarted by being born again that makes me endlessly sad. I do not want this to be my heaven.

From all the options I've been given, I don't want to pick this one to be the one true take on the afterlife. I've dismissed interpretation after interpretation of heaven, and this one has made the list of discarded afterlifes. This movie turned me away from yet another possible way to believe in heaven.

There's too many versions in this world for a young, impressionable, wondering mind to take. This one didn't stick with me.

Still one hell of a movie, though.