What Dreams May Come
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What Dreams May Come is a 1998 drama film, starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Annabella Sciorra. Max von Sydow also appears. The movie is based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson.
The film was released by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.
Characters
Williams plays Chris, a pediatrician. Sciorra plays his wife Annie, who runs an art gallery. They have two school-age children (Ian and Marie), a housekeeper (Angie) and a dog (Katie).
Cuba Gooding plays Albert, a character who proves to be more complex than we are initially led to believe.
Plot Summary
The movie opens with Chris and Annie's meeting on a lake near Switzerland. The viewer is then treated to a quick montage describing their courtship and marriage.
When Chris's son and daughter are killed in a car accident, Annie becomes mentally unstable. She attempts suicide by cutting her wrists, and enters a mental hospital. Chris helps her the best he can, and finally she recovers. However, on an anniversary of her recovery, Chris is killed in a yet another car accident.
Chris experiences life after death, although it takes him a while to accept that it's more than a dream. A handsome black man, Albert, (Gooding) guides him through his grief and confusion, and then shows him the beauty of the heavenly realm. At first, Chris thinks it's his friend and mentor from his medical residency, who he calls "Doc", but later on we find out it's someone else who borrowed his mentor's form. Albert guides Chris to an understanding of his condition, but even he is surprised when a glorious purple tree appears in Chris's personal section of heaven. It turns out that the tree matches a new painting of Annie's; the two are soul-mates, and anything she paints appears in Chris's heaven. Unfortunately, Annie destroys the painting in a fit of despair, and the beautiful tree withers.
After getting adjusted to the spirit world, Chris meets a beautiful Asian woman who shows him a children's realm in heaven. She asks Chris to share a memory with her, and he tells her about teaching his daughter, Marie, to play chess. In turn, she explains that she took the form of a stewardess because her father once admired that stewardess' special beauty. Suddenly, Chris recognizes their location as a diorama his daughter loved in life, and she reveals she is Marie. On earth, she was tom-boyish and wanted to look more feminine when she grew up. In the heaven of What Dreams May Come, a person is able to achieve their lifelong desires, and appear however they wish.
As this is happening, Annie's depression deepens, and in her torment, she takes poison. Albert sadly breaks the news to Chris of his wife's death. At first Chris is able to find joy in the terrible news, as he thinks that his wife is now free from her emotional pain on earth and that he can soon meet her in the afterlife. His hope quickly turns to anger when Albert explains the reality of the situation. In the afterlife of What Dreams May Come, suicides are trapped by their own despair into hell. Chris rebels against this, but Albert claims there is no judgement, no laws; it is simply the nature of suicides.
Chris boldly resolves to journey into hell itself and rescue his wife. Albert is infuriated, wanting Chris to forget such a painful and impossible quest. According to him, no one has ever brought a suicide back from hell. However, Chris is undaunted, and Albert agrees to help find Chris a "tracker". (Very appropriately played by Max von Sydow.) A tracker is a soul who can help find other souls; he provides Chris spiritual guidance to help him "tune in" to Annie's presence in hell.
The group then descends to hell. The damned are pictured acting out their sins, failures, and fears over and over again, without any hope of understanding their situation or breaking free of their misery. Chris attempts to focus his concentration on Annie, but finds himself instead remembering his son, Ian. The brilliant and meticulous Chris had always found it difficult not to show disappointment in his less-gifted son, and in a rain-swept woods one day, they had it out. Despite their differences, though, Chris and Ian achieved a resolution that day, with Chris telling his son, "If I was going through fucking HELL, I'd only want one person in the whole god damn world by my side."
Chris snaps out of his memories when he sees Albert, searching for Annie, about to risk approaching a dangerous-looking group of the damned. Suddenly, Chris sees through the disguise, and snatches "Albert" back, calling him "Ian". When he asks his son why he chose to appear as Albert, he replies that Albert was the only authority figure that Chris would ever listen to. Chris is impressed by his son, but the Tracker demands that Albert return to Heaven, while he and Chris carry on. In parting, Albert instructs Chris to think about what happened when Ian and Marie died, and what Chris said to bring Annie back from her mental crisis.
In the topsy-turvy ruins of hell, Chris finds a field full of the faces of the damned, eternally moaning and muttering to themselves. One of them claims to be his father, but it seems to be a case of mistaken identity. Suddenly, he spies Annie's face, but running towards her, the ground crumbles beneath his feet, and Chris falls into a vast, upside-down cathedral. At the bottom of it is a twisted mirror-image of their home. The Tracker is surprised that Chris found her; she's inside. However, he warns Chris that if he stays with her for more than several minutes, he may become permanently trapped in hell. Before he enters, though, the Tracker reveals a final secret: he is the REAL Albert, who has been waiting for many years to do Chris a favor.
When Chris enters the house, he finds that she doesn't recognize him. Pale, gaunt, and miserable-looking, Annie isn't fully aware that she's dead. He talks to her gently, pretending to be a neighbor, before he is able to gain enough of her trust to reach her for a moment. In guilt and disbelief, Annie screams and pushes him away, and a saddened Chris realizes he has failed. He tells his insane wife a last good-bye, and leaves the house. The Tracker consoles him, and Chris tells him he has given up.
"But," he adds, "Not the way you think."
He asks the Tracker to give his love to his children, and re-enters the house. Taking his wife's hand, he tells her he won't leave her. He's decided to stay forever in hell and join her in madness rather than leave her again. Somehow, this sacrifice reaches Annie when nothing else can, and she and Chris pull each other out of the miasma of hell, narrowly escaping.
At the conclusion of the movie, Chris and Annie are reunited with their children, but Chris is dissatisfied. He inspires Annie to join him in reincarnation, so they can experience the joy of meeting and falling in love all over again.