...And for my soul, what can it (suicide) do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?... From Shakespeare's Hamlet
The title of this comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet; that soliloquy which starts:
"To be or not to be".
Hamlet is contemplating suicide, weighing the pros and cons; the cons being mostly an unknown factor.
I imagine just about everyone wonders what is beyond this life. Eventually most are able to see it as a mystery and thus avoid turning into a Woody Allen character; stewing over death, the expansion of the universe and other things over which we have no control...
"What Dreams May Come" is adapted from a book of the same name by Richard Matheson.
Among many others it stars: Robin Williams as Chris Nielsen, Annabella Sciorra as Chris's wife Annie, Cuba Gooding Jr. as Albert Lewis and Max von Sydow as The Tracker.
Chris and Annie are beautiful people, very much in love who suffer a tragic loss. The story relates to the consequences of their reactions to the loss. Their separate choices determine their separate destinies in both this life and in the after life.
Some interesting parallel themes between "Hamlet" and "What Dreams May Come":
-suicide "...For in that sleep of death what dreams may come..." Shakespeare
-ghosts or spirits
-immortality
-defying hell
-multiple calamities
"What Dreams May Come" in addition, embraces the theme of the transformative power of love. It emphasizes our power to choose and to accept consequences; not what happens to us but how we react.
It is a beautiful picture of one man's heaven.
..."We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all."...
Shakespere's Hamlet
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment