Finally, one of the most anticipated films of this year will hit theaters: ‘Dream Man’, an interesting story starring Nicolas Cage, directed and written by Kristoffer Borgli (sponsored by Ari Aster from ‘Hereditary’) that takes up one of the most popular urban legends of the 2000s and that could easliy be an episode of Black Mirror.
What is ‘Dream Man‘ about?
This comedy-drama film follows Paul Matthews (played by Nicolas Cage), a college biology professor who, out of nowhere, becomes very, very popular around the world because thousands of people claim to have dreamed of him without even knowing him.
Despite being a failed man and little respected by the people close to him, very soon he will become a celebrity, however, very soon, he will know that fame is not everything, and just as he can be at the top of the world, he can also fall into a bottomless pit from which he could never get out.
This man: The internet urban legend
One of the great successes of this film is that it uses an interesting urban legend that you may have heard of: ‘This Man‘, a man who, during 2006, became quite popular for the same reason: many people around the world claimed to have dreamed of a man with those characteristics but had never really seen him.Taking this interesting urban legend as a basis, the film shows us an interesting analogy of a social phenomenon that we currently know very well: cancel culture, and how fame, the passage of time, and the speed at which we live today, can affect us to dangerous levels, never before imagined.
As much has been said, Nicolas Cage’s performance is one of the great jewels of this film, as he was now given the freedom to explore much more his facet as an actor and has given us a different character:
Paul Matthews is a complete loser who dreams of fame, yet he doesn’t know that being exposed to the public eye can be a double-edged sword that normal people like us don’t know how to deal with. It’s not easy to be famous overnight, and no one knows that until you’re in that position.
Talking about cancel culture, this film tackles the subject without addressing it, that is, the film confronts the character with the honey of fame, but, at the same time, with the hatred of millions of people around the world that could end someone’s career and even life. Like many cases that nowadays we know very well in real life and that do not need to be mentioned.
Finally, as we mentioned at the beginning, this film could be another episode of ‘Black Mirror’, the uncomfortable and successful Netflix series, since it presents us with a slightly sobering story, but very consistent with its character, whom the director orphaned in the first minutes of the story.
This article was written originally in Spanish by Alan Cruz in Cultura Colectiva
