Review of the film “The Hero of Our Dreams” by Kristoffer Borgli

Kristoffer Borgli’s absurdist comedy Dream Scenario, produced by the now fashionable independent film studio A24, is being released. The witty satire of cancel culture fizzles out somewhat towards the end, but it’s worth watching if only for the sake of Nicolas Cage, who plays a role that somewhat rhymes with his own acting path, says Julia Shagelman.

Nicolas Cage, as you know, from just an actor, albeit a famous one, has turned into a walking meme. He, of course, will forever remain an Oscar winner (for Leaving Las Vegas, 1995) and a number of less significant awards, but he is terribly indiscriminate in choosing roles, participating in numerous films that can only be called trash, and most importantly, His eccentric behavior off the set has long overshadowed his professional achievements. Now Nicolas Cage is a kind of thing in itself, a public persona who has completely merged with his bearer, but continues to arouse keen interest among intrigued viewers.

Of course, film producers also do not ignore this phenomenon, offering Cage another role. For example, in the recent “The Unbearable Weight of Enormous Talent” (2022), he literally played himself, or rather, the Cage we imagine when reading the tabloids. In “The Hero of Our Dreams,” where he replaced the original supposed Adam Sandler in the leading role, Cage’s trail of Internet fame also matters for the audience’s perception. Although at first glance there is nothing in common between the actor and his hero, professor of evolutionary biology Paul Matthews.

At one of his lectures, Matthews explains to students that evolution has endowed zebras with a color that seems paradoxical at first glance – bright black and white stripes, so that they blend in not with the environment, but with the rest of the herd. The predator cannot attack everyone at once, so each individual is safe. Matthews himself also blends in with the crowd on campus: an absolutely unremarkable teacher in a baggy sweater, glasses, a bald head and an unkempt beard. Even his loving wife (Julianne Nicholson) and two daughters (Jessica Clement and Lily Bird) find nothing interesting in him. Until the moment when suddenly, inexplicably, a variety of people start dreaming about it.

Matthews’s youngest daughter is the first to see him in a dream, which is not unusual. But then it turns out that he dreamed of a woman with whom he met and broke up in time immemorial, even before his marriage. Then – to students, friends, friends of friends and, finally, people all over the world who had never met Matthews in their lives. What is characteristic is that in these dreams he behaves as inconspicuously as in life: he simply stands and watches what is happening, an earthquake or crocodiles preparing to attack his student. But people begin to recognize him on the streets, a news channel makes a report about him, and the professor becomes famous.

Unlike most stories about fame suddenly falling on the average person, Matthews is not afraid of his fame. On the contrary, he takes it for granted, and not only because with its help he hopes to find a publisher for a book about the herd behavior of ants. But first of all, because deep down I always considered myself unique and was simply waiting for those around me to notice it. At first, fame brings him pure joy: students flock to his lectures, his wife regains her sexual interest in him, an old friend, an arrogant snob (Dylan Baker), finally invites his spouses to dinner, and a fashionable PR startup offers him an advertising contract. with a soda brand. The hero refuses because he believes that he deserves more.

However, just as unexpectedly as it all began, it all ends: innocent dreams involving Matthews suddenly turn into nightmares, and the dreamers blame him for this. Having experienced for himself how quickly in the age of social networks you can become a star without doing absolutely anything for this, the professor experiences an equally instant and unreasonable cancellation. Having stood out from the crowd like a lone zebra, he now attracts less than favorable attention. Students write complaints against him, claiming that the very sight of him traumatizes them psychologically, PR people, instead of meeting with Obama, offer an interview with Tucker Carlson, and then even advise them to go to France, where for some reason they are very fond of government-owned American celebrities.

All this is almost as witty as the first half of the film with its surreal premise, but the authors run out of fresh ideas, unfortunately, earlier than the film’s running time. The story about the quirks of the collective consciousness and the collective subconscious is replaced by attacks on consumer society, which do not convey anything new. The only one who holds out until the end is Nicolas Cage, who suddenly allows us to see in his character not a meme or someone’s stupid joke, but a living person who is truly hurt.