Dream Sce­nario review – easy to enjoy, hard­er to remember

Already this decade Kristof­fer Bor­gli has estab­lished him­self as a satirist of the brand­ed self. His call­ing card short For­mer Cult Mem­ber Hears Music for the First Time took a quite sav­age swing at a Vice-like doc­u­men­tary crew pack­ing edgy con­tent into a bite-sized pack­age, and last year’s Sick of Myself, in which a woman achieves micro­celebri­ty by infect­ing her­self with a dis­ease, going lit­er­al­ly viral, stopped short of full sav­agery but dis­played a deep famil­iar­i­ty with the smug­ly on-trend styles and val­ues of cre­ative mar­ket­ing. With Dream Sce­nario, he warps the fun­house mir­ror more aggres­sive­ly, for­ay­ing into a Char­lie Kauf­man-esque high-con­cept set­up about a man who becomes a meme. Nico­las Cage plays Paul Matthews, a pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy who sud­den­ly starts show­ing up in the dreams of peo­ple around the world.

At his sparse­ly attend­ed lec­tures, the tenured but unpub­lished Paul lec­tures about zebras’ cam­ou­flage — not stick­ing out from the herd is a good defen­sive mech­a­nism, but a dis­ad­van­tage for mat­ing. He has dis­ap­point­ments about not mak­ing more of him­self, and not being known in his field, but he has a nice life, with a ner­vous wife (Julianne Nichol­son) who does him the cour­tesy of feel­ing jeal­ous over women who dis­play an obvi­ous lack of sex­u­al inter­est in her hus­band, and eye-rolling daugh­ters who most­ly ignore him but as adults will prob­a­bly post a pho­to of him every Father’s Day with a ten­der cap­tion that they real­ly mean. There are advan­tages to not stick­ing out from the herd — but some­thing about this unmem­o­rable los­er has become inex­plic­a­bly replicable.

At first, in the dreams, Paul is a pas­sive bystander, as he is in life — con­tin­u­ing to rake the leaves in the yard as his daugh­ter los­es con­tact with the earth and floats sky­ward, say. In many of the dreams he pops up amid the usu­al anx­i­eties, ter­rors, and unre­solved psy­chic residues, but the nov­el­ty of his uni­ver­sal pres­ence makes him a celebri­ty, a nobody who becomes a somebody.

As Paul becomes increas­ing­ly famous for being famous, cameos from the alt-com­e­dy world sharp­en Borgli’s satire to a snide edge: Michael Cera and Kate Berlant as cre­ative mar­keters who want to enlist Paul for an influ­encer part­ner­ship with Sprite, as well as their assis­tant, Dylan Gelu­la, per­son­i­fy­ing the temp­ta­tions of fame and the ten­den­cy of the mil­len­ni­al-Gen Z cusp on to per­for­ma­tive­ly latch on to inex­plic­a­ble thirst objects.

As played by Cage, with bald pâté, fake bel­ly, voice pushed up into the noise and giv­en a bit of a wheeze, bun­dled up in a duf­fel coat whose lined hood exag­ger­ates his hunch, Paul is a type of per­for­mance we’ve seen before the actor, a man­nered schlub, like his Char­lie Kauf­man him­self in Adap­ta­tion. He’s an appro­pri­ate­ly height­ened every­man for Borgli’s exag­ger­at­ed alle­go­ry, an osten­ta­tious­ly emp­ty ves­sel for pub­lic projection.

As sleep becomes more trou­bled, with Paul over­stay­ing his 15 min­utes and becom­ing a more malev­o­lent dream-life pres­ence, the pub­lic turns on him; Paul is enraged by the accu­sa­tion that he has trau­ma­tized his stu­dents, who demand a space safe from his trig­ger­ing pres­ence. (Filmed in the park­ing lot by a group of stu­dents who are right­eous­ly scared of him for what he did to them in their sleep, he is con­front­ed by a lit­er­al woke mob.)

As Paul rages against the indig­ni­ty of his can­cel­la­tion, and Cera pops back on the phone to offer him guest appear­ances on right-wing talk shows, Dream Sce­nario looks with a mix of sym­pa­thy and cold bemuse­ment at his feel­ings of per­se­cu­tion, his sense of shame and anger. Paul is ​“feel­ing a lit­tle bit too seen,” as the say­ing goes; hav­ing sought wide val­i­da­tion, he has attract­ed atten­tion that over­pow­ers his abil­i­ty to con­trol his narrative.

The fan­ta­sy of being known is also the fear of being exposed; Dream Sce­nario touch­es on some of the same issues as this year’s Beau Is Afraid did, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its end­ing sequence — and in fact, Beau Is Afraid writer-direc­tor Ari Aster is a pro­duc­er here. If this cyn­i­cal and fun­ny con­sid­er­a­tion of the dis­tance between a per­son and their curat­ed image in the col­lec­tive (un)consciousness comes with any caveat, it’s that it, itself, feels ever so slight­ly syn­er­gis­tic. Walk­ing out of the year’s sec­ond A24 mag­ic-real­ist night­mare about the tra­vails of a Beau-like sad­sack, you may won­der if the end-cred­its Talk­ing Heads nee­dle-drop isn’t actu­al­ly gueril­la mar­ket­ing for the studio’s upcom­ing rere­lease of Stop Mak­ing Sense. Maybe that’s the point.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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