dollop of solipsism

“what about the outsiders?”
“oooh, that’s a good one,” replied diana, looking up from her computer.
“but it’s a bit…masculine, don’t ya think?”
“it is. it’s one of the most masculine books in the history of literature. plus there’s a really good movie featuring a really young patrick swayze.”
“and all the boys will call themselves ponyboy.”

the heavy dose of masculinity is not fitting for classes where the majority of the students are girls (the ratio is about 2:1). i let out a sigh and created an incomplete list of books i read and was taught in elementary and middle school, plus a few others.

• the outsiders by s.e. hinton
• number the stars by lois lowry
• bridge to terabithia by katherine paterson
• where the red fern grows by wilson rawls
• there’s a boy in the girls’ bathroom by louis sachar
• the witches by roald dahl
• matilda by roald dahl
• coraline by neil gaiman

i had just finished reading jerry spinelli’s stargirl as i watched my class self-study (their midterms start this friday), and tried to avoid the falling of tears that, god only knows, had risen in my heart and gathered to the eyes. a review of stargirl to come; oh, the ending breaks my heart.

the first graders are to finish the novel at the end of the semester (july), but i want to pick their next text for the following semester now. at the moment, stargirl, which is at reading level 5.7, is a hair too difficult for the chinese and japanese majors, but about right for the english majors (yes, we have to teach the same texts to all the first years). thus, instead of pushing the students even harder on the second text, i want to keep the reading level about the same as stargirl.

the two roald dahls, while fun, are too juvenile; roald dahl is mainly known for his biting humour, which i don’t think the students are capable of grasping. matilda is one of my favorite books, though. and there’s a fantastic film version of the witches. mmm, a shame.

where the red fern grows is a beautifully told story about a boy and his two dogs; i remember crying for 3-4 hours straight after having finished it. diana did mention that american literature has a special genre of coming-of-age, ‘animal stories,’ which, i’m not sure if korea has…it’s up for consideration.

bridge to terabithia is nice, but i remember not liking it very much. plus, i feel it’s quite dated. i love louis sachar’s there’s a boy in the girls’ bathroom, but i think the reading level is a step back from stargirl. no and no.

last night, i had an early dinner with ros. after dinner we browsed through the english section of kyobo bookstore. i dismissed coraline based on its length and font size; i know, i’m a terrible person. i picked up number the stars, which, at 137 pages and a reading level of 5.2, would be an easy read for the students. the book’s content (the holocaust), however, more than makes up for its brevity. up for consideration.

louis sachar’s holes i can’t do because a few of them have read it in-depth. lois lowry’s the giver i can’t do because more than a few of them have read it in-depth (with me, through the gifted class). i revisited the idea of picking a novel with a drastically higher reading level—of mice and men, catcher in the rye, old man and the sea, flowers for algernon, edith hamilton’s mythology, animal farm, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time—but immediately dropped the idea. too difficult, and some of those books contain adult content.

earlier yesterday, diana had mentioned a book she had read and loved titled rules, by cynthia lord. luckily, i found the only copy at kyobo and read the first couple of pages. female narrator, good. topical issue (the main character’s younger brother is autistic). explores the definition of normality, which is related to stargirl. contemporary (published 2006).

i bought rules and read the first chapter on the bus ride home. initial reaction: the language is easier, but i’m not concerned about that; the narrator’s voice is clear, which will allow the students to identify with the main character; it’ll teach the kids about autism, which is needed because koreans (in general) are not fantastic when it comes to the disabled, handicapped or crippled.

i’ll finish rules over the weekend and see how i like it. if you have any good suggestions, fire away!

i love scary movies. i love curling up in a ball of fear. i love grabbing at friends’ arms when a jolt of horror comes onscreen. most of all, i love the feeling after the film is over when you have to readjust to ‘ghostless’ reality; you ask questions to yourself that begin with, “what if?”—

“what if there are people who can see dead people?”
“what if you can have the devil’s child growing inside of you?”
“what if there is an evil videotape floating around somewhere?”
“what if nightmares do come true?”
“what if i get lost in the woods with my buddies and end up in the corner of a witch’s house?”

i believe in ghosts. i’ve always believed in ghosts. i think it might be because i was brought up by asian parents. i grew up watching movies featuring 귀신 (korean female ghosts with long black hair who wear white dresses) and 僵屍 (chinese vampires). consequently, i adhere to the opinion that asian horror films are usually straight-up ghost stories whereas american horror films are more psychological (they try to make sense of everything). i guess it doesn’t matter which side of the ocean makes scarier movies; as long as the picture is scary, who the hell cares?

in the summer of 2006, a little independent horror feature from great britain (of all places) got some buzz in the states. the descent, directed by neil marshall, was about a caving expedition gone horribly awry, according to the previews. the idea of caving induced claustrophobic panic attacks in my head, so i recognized the ’scare’ potential in the movie’s concept. additionally, the critics raved about the descent (a strong 85% on rotten tomatoes), so i was game.

two of my friends accompanied me to the theatre that muggy august night. the lights went out in the air-conditioned theatre, the movie started. immediately my attention was held by the deft direction of marshall; the inciting incident was filmed and edited so precisely (and effectively) that i knew i was in great hands. the following twenty minutes were slow but i could feel the deliberate, gradual buildup in the undercurrent. the all-female cast lowered themselves into the cave and…well, let’s just say that their plight becomes worse and worse.

at around the 30 minute mark (the end of act one), i just about lost my mind. i wasn’t expecting the movie to be this kind of movie. for the next sixty minutes, i could feel my heart consistently at the brink of explosion. the tension never stopped. each new scare added on top of the previous scare. big strong man-friend jay uttered under his breath, “this is the worst vacation ever!” i had never been willingly trapped inside a theatre with so many excited, screaming moviegoers. i thought to myself, this is how you make a scary movie. at the end of the film, i felt like people do at the end of roller coaster rides: exhilarated, exhausted and ready to ride again.

i saw the descent a few more times. with each viewing, i was struck by the level of craftsmanship (it being a low-budget thriller and all) as well as the potency of the scares (they never get old). to this day, i don’t understand why the film made so little money (a paltry $26 million in the states). eh, what do i expect? americans have bad taste. the descent is great for an all-girl sleepover or a movie night with your lover (make sure you know nothing about the plot going in). hold tight to your pillow and never let go. it’s a wild ride, this one.

ms. shin and i attend the same gym. on some mornings, she gives me a ride home so i can take a quick shower before work (i don’t shower at the gym because that is what gross people do). oftentimes, a car has trapped her kia sephia into the parking space. in america, this would provoke lots and lots of anger, but in korea, there is no need to panic. all you gotta do is push the car that’s blocking you in a few meters away, for koreans double-park their car in neutral.

they’ve got it figured out. they live in a small country (their words, not mine…i think they have a ’short’ complex), so space is limited. apartments tower into the sky and department stores are 10+ floors up. we americans build horizontally (for the most part), koreans build vertically. because land is a limited resource, the korean driver adapts to tight situations, navigates through confined passageways, and has developed mutual parking rules with fellow koreans.

such as the aforementioned double-parking. nobody gets angry that their car has gotten blocked in; they just get to the business of pushing said car out of the way. and if the situation is worse and there is no way for you to get your car out of the parking lot, then you resort to contacting the owner of the car that needs to be moved. how do you do this, you ask? it’s easy. just look through the windshield.

you see, 95% of cars on the road have one thing in common—the cell phone number of the driver is fully displayed somewhere on top of the dashboard. it could be simply written on a scrap paper and taped to the glass, or it could be elaborately cross-stitched on the cutest pillow you’ve ever seen (see picture). you call the owner of the vehicle, explain the situation, and they calmly and politely appear to remove their car. “and koreans always answer their phone. it’s insane. they could be at the most important meeting ever, and they’ll still answer their goddamn phone,” diana added. and that’s why you can always expect the parking problem to get solved.

♦ diana and i are officially proofread out (mid-term exams are just around the corner, so the two of us have the exciting job of looking over what seems like 80,000 test problems). if someone comes to me with another english grammar question, i think i’ll implode. since our high school is officially daegu’s leader in english education, big heads often dump translation work on our english teachers. subsequently, diana and i have to take a gander at all this bullshit stuff. it is no fun. i hate english grammar.

♦ next week, most of the teachers are devoting class time to students’ self-study. basically that means i stand at the front of classroom and watch students study. their pain is my pleasure. we love exam time.

♦ so far, i’ve really enjoyed teaching the kids acting for our school’s theatre project/festival. this past week, i introduced them to ’method acting,’ meisner’s repetition technique, and ‘substitution.’ after doing exercises related to those concepts, i gave the students characters and they had to do an ‘impromptu’ with a fellow classmate. some performances came out flat, but some were wonderfully hilarious. so much fun.

♦ kelly clarkson’s “my life would suck without you” is the shiznit.

♦ i have been consistently going to the gym in the mornings before school. i’m confident that this new regimen will continue.

♦ i finally found a copy of noah’s arc: jumping the broom, a film based on the now-canceled LOGO series noah’s arc. the show was a low-budget, terribly-acted dramedy about four black guys who like guys (yes, groundbreaking). all the technical stuff is crap, but it’s still mad fun.

♦ i stumbled upon this site today, and it is hilarious (especially if you are korean).

♦ i’ve been thinking, if a few dependable teachers and i open up a hagwon (cram school/private learning institution), we’d be able to make a few bucks. just a thought.

“I against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin; I, my brother, and my cousin against the stranger.”

-arabic saying

asian mothers are notorious for planting the concept of ‘winning’ in their children’s minds. it’s not good enough to be ‘good,’ you have to be ‘better.’ better than they were as children. better than your siblings. better than your cousins. better than complete strangers. i think most parents want their children to succeed, but the asian folk, they want their children to succeed over others. i’m not here to judge whether that’s good or bad; i just think it’s kind of funny.

my students reminded me of a korean term the other day: 엄친딸 (uhm chin ddal), which is an abbreviation of 엄마 친구의 딸. the direct translation: my mother’s friend’s daughter. i love this term; i think it’s hilarious. it represents a korean mom’s constant comparing of her own daughter to the mom’s friend’s daughter. “you know, so-and-so’s daughter is number 1 in her class…you know, so-and-so’s daugther is already on suzuki book 8…you know, so-and-so’s daughter is 175 centimeters tall…”

my female students use the term in tongue-in-cheek fashion, but underneath the joke, there’s psychological discomfort there. i can relate to that somewhat. though my parents rarely compared me to others’ children, i do remember being pitted against jeff, the son of a friend of my mom’s. he was broad-shouldered and sporty; i was frail and timid. according to my mother, she doesn’t get a sense of ‘big strong man’ when she looks at me. i suppose it’s because i’m not an oaf. but i never developed any weird ‘my parents don’t love me’ issues because, well,  i was usually the child other parents compared their children to…you know, because i’m so fantastic.

a prime example of asian parents using their children as weapons is in the joy luck club. chess champion waverly gets paraded around town by her mother lindo. the pair attend a piano recital where june, the daughter of suyuan, plays dvorak’s humoresque no. 7. the voice-over:

when i was young, auntie lindo was my mother’s best friend and archenemy. their weapons of choice were comparing their children. mom was sick of hearing auntie lindo brag about her daughter waverly, who was chinatown’s chess champion. that night mom figured i’d redeem her with my international piano debut.

“i ask my daughter…help me carry grocery. she think this too much ask. all day long she plays chess. i dust off all her trophy. appreciate me? no. you lucky you don’t have the same problem.”

“my problem worser than yours. if i tell june time to wash dish, she hear nothing but music. it’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.” 

a little friendly competition never hurt anyone, for sure, but i think there’s something weird about parents knowing that the competition is friendly, and their children not knowing exactly what is what. you know, since they’re children and don’t understand much. which is why later in the film, waverly has all these “nothing i do can ever, ever please you” hang-ups. yeah, don’t do that to your kid…

unless she sucks. at which point you can switch her out with your best friend’s daughter.

so koreans are kind of anal about trash. on paper, they are. you’d think with strict recycling laws, korea would resemble the picture in my head of current-day singapore, but there’s still litter everywhere. on the street, in the park, sometimes on mountains…so much litter. especially around where i live (it’s a college area). but you can’t say the koreans don’t try.

here, you have to purchase specially colored trash bags (each district has a different color—my district is light orange) from supermarkets or convenient stores to hold garbage. the truck won’t pick up trash not in these designated plastic bags. i think they cost around ₩1,000 for a 50-liter bag. the idea is easy to understand: the more trash you throw away, the more you have to pay.

not only do you have to pay to throw trash away, you have to separate the recyclables from the non-recyclables. plastic containers, metal cans, glass bottles and paper must be recycled. i’ve heard from a lot of other foreigners that older korean women (ajummas) go apeshit crazy on your ass if they catch you failing to recycle. i haven’t had such encounters with ajummas, but then again, i recycle. also, if you’re caught not recycling, you can be heavily fined. i’m told there are spies out there…

furthermore, your trash cannot contain food products. food products have to be thrown out in yellow bins strategically placed around every neighborhood. you lift these bins and dump your food waste in there. cucumber peels, apple cores, animal lard, eggshellsㅡi assume anything that decomposes (so, no chicken bones). the concept is nice, but i really dread walking up to these yellow bins. it’s just so gross.

curiously enough, my neighborhood food waste bins have disappeared. subsequently, my landlord handed me a red plastic container in the shape of a pot the other week. i couldn’t understand the korean written on the lid, but someone informed me that i should put my food waste in this pot and leave it at my building’s doorstep (like in the picture). the truck will come and take care of the contents and leave the pot behind. the system is so new that i haven’t witnessed it in action yet. i’m also under the impression that i have to pay to use this more convenient service. yeah, i don’t want to pay to dispose of leftovers. where are those mothereffin’ yellow bins? i gotta figure this out.

the disposal of waste gets more interesting at fast food restaurants. but let’s leave that for another day when i have some pictures to prove this story of korea’s beautiful garbage.

i obsess over the small details. i always have, and i suspect i always will. when i was young and living in korea, a mere lad enrolled in kindergarten, i double—er, quadruple—checked to see that my knee-high socks were indeed knee-high. if either sock had, god forbid, slipped down a quarter of an inch or lower, i made sure to yank that sock back up to the level of its twin.

this obsessive behavior has followed me throughout my elementary, middle and high school, university and work days. ms. gardner, my high school world history teacher, made us color maps (sooo many maps). i’d lay out the map pencils on my desk and go to town. i’d color in poland in light purple, first shading left to right. after laying that first coat of purple, i’d recolor the same area, this time shading top to bottom. comforted by the fact that no one could determine in which direction i’d colored, i’d take a sheet of kleenex and forcefully rub the entirety of poland, giving the area a glossy finish. my classmates thought i was nuts. “gosh, you must have a lot of time,” they’d say.

i’m not nuts, i just like to do things…i don’t want to use the word “perfectly”…but perfectly. or as perfect as i can make them. in the grand scheme of things, i realize that it doesn’t matter how i color maps; ms. gardner was going to give me a hundred on them anyway. it’s map-coloring, not rocket science. but that extra scribble of “wonderful!” or “beautiful!” written directly beneath my 100 made me feel…relieved ::sigh::

this obsessive attention to detail has served me well (employers usually consider me a good worker), and has served me not so well (co-workers usually dislike me). and not just at work, but in life, too. my shirts appear too crisp and my korean pronunciation sounds too natural (perhaps people just don’t like me?). hey, i’m just trying to do my best, y’all. stop hatin’. this need to do my best frequently takes me into dangerous places. relationships, friendships and common courtesy go by the wayside because i’m too blinded by the goal: finish the job. work, to me, is serious. if i didn’t take it seriously, i wouldn’t do it. but life isn’t all about work, now is it?

work is work and life is life. i don’t know when we started to separate the two. i thought life encompassed every part of your existence, which includes work, but we now differentiate ‘working’ from ‘having a life.’ when work rears its ugly head into ‘life’ territory, loved ones start to complain. you hear about it all the time—a workaholic wrecks his family because he loves his job more than he loves his family. i roll my eyes when i hear stories like that.

i am reminded of that one instance in sex & the city where mr. big decides to move to paris. he makes this decision without carrie’s input; she goes berserk. “this [decision] isn’t about us,” he argues, “this is about work!” does she get it? no, she doesn’t. true, he’s using work as a means to distance himself emotionally from her, but his heart is in the right place. screw her (she’s crazy in the first two seasons!); work is more important. besides, isn’t that what she finds so attractive about him? his confident, cocky, sexy douchebaggery? okay, muddy example.

in the devil wears prada (a movie i love to have on in the background), andy sachs works for the devil miranda priestly, a woman who basically works around the clock. subsequently, andy, who has a job a million girls would kill for, has to work around the clock as well. but nuh-uh-uh, andy’s (idiotic) boyfriend nate doesn’t like that. he says (dumbass) things like “the person whose calls you always take? that’s the relationship you’re in” and essentially makes andy feel guilty for having to work really late. god, he is such a loser.

i know members of the audience are supposed to empathize with the nate character, but i just hate him because he’s such a dingbat. doesn’t he realize that she has a job? and a job that a million girls would kill to have? i never really understood the ending; i thought andy was doing the right thing, selling her soul to the devil, paving the road to a high-powered career. why did she ever leave miranda?

work is work. you do work because you have to do work. perhaps it’s to get a paycheck. perhaps it gives meaning to your ‘life.’ it is my opinion that when you commit to work, you commit 100%. like my mother says, “if you’re going to do something, don’t do it half-assed.” i fully believe in that statement. so i sit in the school office and work on lesson plans and powerpoints and class materials. i laminate, i cut, i type, i delete, i think, i write, i rewrite, i imagine, i execute, i repeat. not because my job requires me to be obsessive about every single detail, but because i require that of myself.

i work smart and hard. i don’t know how to work any other way. even if my job was picking up garbage (not that there’s anything wrong with picking up garbage), i’d do it to the best of my ability. because…why not? i really resent people for questioning my motives to strive for ‘perfection.’ you just care about yourself and leave me alone. stupid classmates making fun of me for coloring maps well.

so the ‘life’ side of life is really important. i know that. i’m not sitting in my studio thinking about tomorrow’s workday. i watch tv, i unwind, i watch 30 rock, i eat, etc. i’m in a healthy relationship, my parents love me, i pay my bills, i read (sometimes), i pick out what outfits to wear…this is my life. the balance between ‘work’ and ‘life’ is delicate; the two sides aren’t mutually exclusive. ‘work’ bleeds into ‘life’ sometimes, and vice versa. when you work too long and hard, life will somehow put things into perspective—your boyfriend will break up with you, or you get addicted to amphetamines.

but ladies and gentlemen, if your co-worker is working too hard (meaning, working harder than you), then just leave them alone. what business is it of yours if they work themselves into the ground? i mean, really. and if your beloved stays at the office until midnight, just let him/her be. do you want to be that person? “it’s either work or me. choose.” gross.

in case you were wondering, those maps from 10th grade world history class? i keep them in a shoebox that’s labeled, “things i can’t bear to throw away.”

warning: this post contains expletives and exudes anger. read with caution. and no, i don’t apologize for any of this.

Now, you must REALLY shut the fuck up now, please—shut the fuck up.

-linda partridge, magnolia

even though three of my classes got rescheduled for later this week (because diana took the day off) i still had a crappy day at work. first, like three hundred teachers needed me to proofread english-related things (for midterm exams, for whatever) and each of them had dozens of questions.

second, i hate the new vice-principal at my school. at exactly 12:20pm, he ushers everyone out of the office, ensuring that we all eat lunch at the same friggin time (lunch officially begins at 1:00pm and ends at 1:50pm). if he spent the rest of the day doing work, i wouldn’t mind as much, but i swear the man doesn’t do anything but wait for 12:20pm to roll around. EVERY. DAY.

and third, i received a message in my facebook inbox from hans, of the “hey, did you know that bangladesh was a country?” fame, who teaches english (english!), soon-to-be shunned acquaintance of mine. the message read:

It came out Negative…its party time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

how gross does a person have to be in order to be classified as really gross? i mean, seriously. do i care whether he’s negative or positive for HIV or STDs? dude, if he died tomorrow, would i even show up at his funeral? no, people. in case you were wondering, that is how i evaluate my relationships with folks—if i would show up at their funeral. i said to a despicable former co-worker at the toxicology lab i worked at in deer park, texas a few years ago—”if you died tomorrow, i wouldn’t go to your funeral”—and he totally flipped out on me, called me a “bad person” or whatever. whatEVER.

the anger has been building for days. i’ve been sick of people for days.

last week, another english teacher in daegu hit me on gchat and ran. i HATE it when people do that, especially people i don’t consider being friendly with—start a conversation and then disappear. asshole, you started a conversation with ME. this is what he typed to me:

Donna and I are famous
it’s amazing
the world is our oyster from here

do i know what the eff he’s talking about? no, i don’t. he was probably smoking some low-grade marijuana. and i couldn’t ask him about his message because after he left that in my gchat window, he went offline. which is bullshit. yeah, maybe he thought he was being cute. no.

i blocked his british ass.

why haven’t people learned to shut the fuck up? “what is it there to talk about?” (quoting sally of the hours again) why is there so much yammering going on in the office? if people would just shut up, mind their own businessessessess, we’d all complete our work earlier.

okay, i’m being unfair. it is totally natural for me to not say anything to people. i don’t really do small talk and i don’t really chat about my weekends. “hey, how was your weekend?” “fine.” “what’d you do?” “nothing.” that’s as much as i’m willing to give at 8:30am. call me a withholding bitch.

i work with a lot of co-workers who talk a lot. and very loudly. and who interrupt the few conversations i have with people. who make whatever i’m talking about their businessessessess. because i asked for your opinion.

most of these people have an “i have to be right” complex. they just can’t sit there quietly knowing that others are doing something wrong, or to their standards, or to the way they like to do it. these people are called nosy whores. they like to put their dirty schnozzes in everyone’s smelly asses. for what reason? i dunno. a) because they can’t shut the fuck up and b) they have no real friends.

i miss my friends. my friends speak before they think and they almost always mean what they say. like carol the waitress from as good as it gets. people like carol the waitress are above all the bullshit spewing out of assholes’ mouths; and people like people who are like carol the waitress. i wish i was more like carol the waitress. i wish i had that kind of quiet authority.

the worst thing about people who won’t shut the fuck up is the neediness. they are so. needy. they need others to agree or disagree with them. they need to show others how smart they are. they need to be right. by god, they need to be right. it’s like that bitch who was on tim gunn’s guide to style. that rude bitch who bought fugly clothes and justified her purchases by saying the clothes were designer. she was rude. to tim gunn! that bitch deserves to burn in jewish hell.

i hate needy people. i am not the person to go to when you are seeking the comfort you need, you needy needy person. go talk to someone else. or start a blog.

exhale.

let’s end the post on a good note:

I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you’re the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, “Spence,” and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me.

- melvin udall, as good as it gets

♦ receiving a little bit of stress at work making exam questions for the mid-term. i find that i’m more effective as a teacher in the students’ eyes if, at some point, they’re tested over the stuff i teach. that didn’t happen at the middle school until my last term there; i suggest to all the foreign teachers to really push to have your test questions on the exams.

♦ have been going to the gym consistently in the mornings and have noticed a big difference in my posture and carriage. plus, i have more energy at work and i’m not stressed during the day about going to the gym after school. this is a positive change. futhermore, i’m less strict with my diet because i’m getting exercise almost every day.

♦ the song of the week is definitely super junior (슈퍼주니어)’s “쏘리, 쏘리 (sorry, sorry),” which sailed to the top of the charts this week. the thirteen-member pop act (the largest boy band in the world) is known for their youth, charm and dance moves. their latest hit borrows heavily from justin timberlake, i gather, what with the suave suits and distorted vocals. music video below:

♦ my desk mate mr. do was watching a video that caught my eye. i love this kind of stuff. watch from this site (i’ve just spent an hour trying to figure out how to embed videos from korea’s top search engines, daum and naver, and failed. if anyone knows the trick, do let me know!). i am a genius. watch the video below:

♦ i think that scottish woman susan boyle (of britain’s got talent fame) is going to save the world. seriously.

♦ i’m tired of my favorites shows being on hiatus. i need some grey’s anatomy, people. and some ugly betty. and two weeks without lost? that’s just cruel. darn it to heck, abc.

a man who loves his wife so much he goes to hell and back for her—that is what dreams may come in a nutshell. released in the fall of 1998, vincent ward’s visually stunning film earned a moderate $55 million in box office receipts and garnered mixed critical reception. most praised the special effects (it won best effects/visual effects at the oscars that year) but found the story “sentimental,” “banal” and “weepy.” i don’t know about you, but i love me a “weepy” and “sentimental” story. and susan stark of the detroit news, this film ain’t “banal” at all.

annie (the underrated annabella sciorra) and chris (a wonderfully serious robin williams) meet and fall in love. he’s a doctor and she works in art. they have a beautiful home and two children. one day, tragedy strikes the happy family—the kids are killed in a car accident. chris and annie are devastated; annie suffers a nervous breakdown. their love, though, is powerful, and he nurses her back to sanity. and then tragedy strikes again. what follows can only be described as a modern-day retelling of orpheus and eurydice from greek mythology. no more plot points from me.

in what dreams may come, we visit both heaven and hell. these two places are illustrated so viscerally that, even after ten years, i can still recall numerous detailed images. the film borrows heavily from paintings, so if you know your art history, make sure to note the references to bosch and dali and raphael. overall, the look of the film, including the visual effects (the highlight is chris’s initial encounter with heaven), is astonishing. this picture is definitely made for artsy fartsy, imaginative types.

as for the screenplay, it’s been called “ludicrous.” it’s true; a cynic has enough material to mock what dreams my come for weeks. but if you suspend your disbelief through the duration of the movie, you receive the many emotional returns. there’s a scene halfway through involving a painting and a purple tree; that scene is nothing short of masterful. at the end of that sequence, williams says those three words all actors have uttered, “i love you,” but he expresses them with so much passion, so much need, that only in this film, those three words hit me like a bullet train. and i end up in a puddle.  

the final act of what dreams may come is a bit too hollywood movie ending for my taste, but…so what? films are seldom perfect; this one is no exception. if you dare to take on this wildly maudlin and fantastical tale, i suggest you look straight, go forward, and take that leap of faith.