What Dreams May Come

The blissful existence of Dr Chris Nielsen (Williams) and his wife Annie (Sciorra) shatters when their children are killed in a car smash. Later, Chris too dies in an accident. But, as it says on the poster, 'The end is only the beginning': we follow Chris to a celestial afterlife, where his burning will to be reunited with his family is complicated by his guilt about the kids and the discovery that Annie has committed suicide. How to find her again, when her soul has been consigned to the underworld? Ambitious is too small a word for Ward's film: it encompasses a visionary journey into the beyond and considers the power of emotions to contend with death itself. Since Annie is a painter working in traditional landscapes, the film allows Chris to construct his own heaven out of the art history they shared, from Caspar David Friedrich to Salvador Dali. Even in today's effects sated market, this conjures a real sense of wonder, imagining hell as a Sargasso Sea of twisted metal and doomed human faces. On the downside, the script spews Californian psycho-babble as friendly guides (Gooding and Sydow) explain the ground rules of paradise. As we make an Orphean trek towards a conventional finale, Ward dazzles the eye and boggles the mind, but leaves the heart relatively untouched.