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What Dreams May Come

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(idea) by Big Willy (4.3 y) (print)   ?   (I like it!) 1 C! Mon Jul 24 2000 at 14:53:37

All these writeups failed to identify this as a famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's part of act III scene I during Hamlet's famous soliloquy:

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.

"...what dreams may come..." and many other lines from this monologue alone are common references throughout the art world.

(idea) by mr100percent (5.3 d) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Fri Jun 07 2002 at 0:06:01

A great romance/drama movie that made me cry. I believe based on the book of the same title by Richard Matheson. Starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Annabella Sciorra.

Robin Williams is a doctor, with a wife and kids. His kids are killed in a car accident, and a year goes by, the husband and wife together.

Suddenly, Robin Williams is hit by a car and dies. He goes to the afterlife, Heaven. It's beautiful, a paradise of his imagination, but it feels empty and lonely without his wife, who is still alive on Earth. It turns out they are soul mates, they share each other's emotions and feelings, like their souls are together. When she is unhappy on Earth, heaven changes for him.

He meets his children in heaven, and they both relive memories together, and see the beauty of each others' paradise as he waits for his wife to join him one day.

It's a very beautiful story, and one that shows me the power of love. The imagery, seeing each person's idea of heaven, is amazing, the daughter has one of flying people and a beach. Williams has a world inside one of his paintings. Each one is mostly CGI, but they look good. It illustrates the story, and I fell into the idea of the Heaven the director showed me. If I was compiling a top 100 movies list, I think this would make it somewhere, it's quite an underrated movie.

Spoiler:
His wife, torn by loneliness of losing her family piece by piece, commits suicide. Suicide is a mortal sin, but it's a dementia, where suicides go to hell, they don't know how to get into heaven.

Robin Williams decides to leave Heaven, and not return until he brings her to heaven with him. He passes through strange places, it almost resembles The Cell in imagery. Finally, he sees her, she's in her own world, it looks like their home, but ravaged, and her a sobbing hulk in the center. He tries to take her back, but her soul is too insane, tortured by feelings to go. She doesn't even recognize him. If he stays long enough, he won't be able to leave. Since he can't save her from hell, he decides to join her.

This itself is the one and only possible thing he could have done to save her. They both magically return to heaven, where they are reunited as a family, in a perfect heaven where anything they imagine happens in front of them.

They are soul mates, and decide to return to heaven together, be reincarnated, and meet up again on earth.

Directed by Vincent Ward, rated PG-13 for themes of death, some disturbing images of hell, and language. I still think it's a good movie, it "tugs at your heartstrings" (said by an IMDB reviewer).


printable version
chaos

Hieronymus Bosch /me misses happiness Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead What happens when we die?
The Cell Something Wicked This Way Comes Beautiful things that have made you cry I've frequently not been on boats
The Garden of Earthly Delights To sleep, perchance to dream Richard Matheson Six Degrees of Separation
Annabella Sciorra to touch the parts of you that I cannot see thefez haunts the node mountain To be or not to be
succubus How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Hamlet Dementia
Soliloquy computer graphics suck Dream Log: February 20, 2005
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