What Dreams May Come: Deep Thoughts About the Cosmology of a Painted Afterlife, Misogynistic Romance Tropes, and 90s Era Casual Racism

Thought is real. Physical is the illusion. Ironic, huh ?

The thoughts are deeper (and potentially more upsetting, so mind the CWs) than usual on this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, where Emily shares her film analysis of the 1998 cult classic What Dreams May Come. Based on the novel by Richard Matheson (who had some truly fucked up views of women, romance, and gender dynamics), director Vincent Ward and leads Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Annabella Sciorra make a concerted effort to elevate the source material beyond its misogynistic roots, giving us a visually stunning examination of the afterlife and a compassionate look at the difficulty of loving someone with mental health challenges. But the trope that Williams' Chris and Sciorra's Annie are soul mates keeps their romance from being something to emulate, erases Annie's agency, and recreates Matheson's misogynistic belief that women are nothing without their men.

Additionally, although casting Gooding as Chris's deceased mentor may have seemed progressive for the 90s, finding out that the actual mentor was cosplaying as Max Von Sydow, a white German actor, while Chris's daughter took on the form of Rosalind Chao because of a casually racist comment Chris once made about the beauty of Asian women, feels rather less worthy of nostalgia from the vantage point of 2026. That said, while Matheson's view of women is foul, the romance and imagination of the afterlife he envisioned and Ward put on the screen is nothing short of captivating and thought-provoking--and this film offers an lovely and compassionate take on how to support someone when there is nothing you can do to make things better.

Your brain may be nothing but meat, but it's meat that's craving some stimulation in the form of a delightful podcast conversation between your favorite Guy sisters! So take a listen!

Content warning: Discussions of child death, suicide, and depression. Take care with this one, y'all.

Tags:

deep thoughts about stupid sh*t, romance, pop culture, women, mental health, psychology, cult classic, cultural commentary, film analysis, movies, movie reviews, feminism, film, nostalgia, 80s and 90s movies, robin williams, cuba gooding jr, richard matheson, annabella sciorra, rosalind chao

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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We are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find. 

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Transcript

A Personal Heaven Explained

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What I I liked about the idea of heaven and how it's different from like heaven in like the good place is that it doesn't require like infrastructure from the outside. Like in the good place, heaven didn't work because people got bored. Right. Whereas here, heaven is what you create with your own mind. And so it's there until it's not anymore. Like basically. That to me fixes that issue. Like heaven, you like you can't get bored because it's what you create. And I really appreciate that. It's this sense of like you are creating what is meaningful to you and joyful for you. It's a view of heaven that I feel like is is kind of organic in a way that works for me.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about. And so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I'm Emily Guy Birken, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts

Welcome To Deep Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 1:19

About Stupid Shit. Because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1998 film What Dreams May Come with my sister, Tracy Guy Decker, and with you. Let's dive in. So, Trace, I'm pretty sure you've never seen this film. It came out after we, you know, had both left the nest. Tell me what, if anything, is in your head about it. Yeah, I've never seen this film.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

So if it was 98, that's the year I graduated from college. So

Why This Film Still Haunts Us

SPEAKER_00 1:48

I was busy doing that and like trying to get a job and all those things. So what's in my head actually is I have an acquaintance, a friend, the couple is about 10 years older than I am, I think, 10, 10 to 15 years older than I am. And they told me that they went to see this movie on like their second date or something. She took it real hard and like was crying and stuff. And like she told me that the way he handled it was how she knew he was the one. They've been married for whatever, 30 years or something since. Yeah. So I know Robin Williams is in it, and I know he's dead, or they're dead, or everyone's dead. There's death. I know there's death in Robin Williams, and they're in heaven, and that's it. That's all I got. So why are we talking about it today?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

So I saw this movie within like around when it came out. I'm not sure if I saw it in the theater or not. I can't remember. And it really stuck with me. There were aspects of it that now, first of all, it is just visually gorgeous. And the view of what the afterlife is like was something that I really appreciated and really liked. So it stuck with me. And then I also, you and I both loved Robin Williams. And I really loved when he did serious roles. And this role was really a good one for him because it allowed him to show that kind of big joy that he could show, but also gave him the opportunity for the like the depth of his dramatic chops as well. But I have complex feelings about this film because it is there's some ugliness within it that I didn't necessarily see when I first saw it, having to do with race. And it is based on a Richard Matheson novel. Now, Richard Matheson, if you're not familiar with the name, he also wrote I Am Legend. Oh, I have read I Am Legend.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yes. Yeah, that's definitely there's so you have to just sort of like just put aside, like, yeah, it's there's some serious misogyny in misogyny.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yes. So Richard Matheson was a major influence on Stephen King. And so in the early 2000s, I went through a kind of Richard Matheson tear at our local library in Columbus, Ohio, because of his influence on Stephen King. And Richard Matheson had this incredible imagination when it came to the fantastical. But what was truly fantastical to him was the idea that women were people. He didn't. I mean, I only read that one. Yes. That run I am legend, but like, yeah, no, they were not. And despite the fact that every single time I read one of his books, I was just like, what the fuck, Dick? Every single time I dove back in. I think this was probably the first one that I read because I I knew the movie, and I was horrified by the way that the characterization of Annie, which they updated and made better for the film, but it's still in the film. And so unusually for our format, I am going to be talking about the book because it's part of why I have complex feelings about this film. That's why this movie is important to me, why it ended up on the list. It is, I had only seen it once before seeing it again this weekend to prepare for this, but I thought about it for years. And there were years in between when I saw the film and when I read the book.

Plot Walkthrough And Afterlife Rules

SPEAKER_01 5:23

So that to me is the mark of good storytelling, good filmmaking. And so something reminded me of it recently. And I was like, oh, I really want to re-watch this. I want to talk about this. So I want to give you some postcards from the destination. Since it takes place in heaven, it's about what the afterlife looks like. I am going to be talking about what the idea of like the kind of theological implications, the cosmology of it. The cosmology, thank you. That's the word I'm looking for. The cosmology of this story, which I is part of the reason why I really liked it so much. And I also really liked Matheson's version of it, even though he couldn't comprehend the idea of women being people. So I want to talk about parenting because the first time watching it, that is what I took away from it was about Robin Williams's character, his relationship with his children. And so I'm going to want to talk about mental health because there's a big portion of that, and suicide is an aspect of it as well. So just trigger warning to anyone listening, and we'll put this in the show notes as well. But there's also issues with some weird things with race in this film and misogyny that are some vestiges of Matheson's work. And then there's also art throughout. So there's a lot in here. It's it's it's a it's a rich text, let's put it that way. Since you haven't seen it, I'll give you the kind of broad strokes. There's actually, it's a fairly straightforward story. We meet Chris and Annie. They have a meet cute on a lake that is somewhere near Switzerland where Chris is in a boat that is, it's just a little like rowboat, and it is banged by a sailboat that Annie is on, and she is speaking to him in Italian, saying, like, which way is Switzerland? They end up realizing they're both American, and he says, I think it's that way. They then end up meeting on a hill nearby, and we hear some from voiceover Chris saying, When I was young, I met a beautiful woman. And this is their very brief meet cute. We are made to understand that they are soulmates, that they they meet, they instantly know that they are the ones for each other. And we see very briefly them getting married, and then it is almost immediately we see them in this gorgeous house with their two children, who are about a 13-year-old boy named Ian and about a nine or 10-year-old girl named Marie. And we see them on a very normal morning having the conversation about what they're going to be doing that day. The Marie asking the mom, can you please drive us so I don't have to wait forever in the afternoon? And Annie saying, like, no, I'm sorry, I can't. The nanny is going to drive you. We see them riding off, and Chris's voiceover saying that's the last time we saw them alive. And we later come to find out that there was a terrible car accident. It was not the nanny's fault. There was a semi-truck driver. We don't get the details, but Annie blamed herself because had she been driving, she has this irrational and she knows it's irrational, but there's this irrational belief that she, because of her like maternal instincts, would have been able to find a way to avoid the crash. We then see four years later, Chris is a pediatrician. We see him with a patient. He is clearly very good with children. And he gets a phone call from Annie, who is kind of freaking out. She works at a museum and she's saying there are eight paintings that are not going to make it in time for the exhibit. I don't know what to do. And she's clearly kind of fragile. Chris says something to his patient about he's asking her to do something, like see if you can do that for longer than she talks. So, like it's gentle teasing. So he says, No worries. You've got this, that, the other. I can grab this. I'll go home and get them and bring them to you. And she says, okay. And she's like, I'm really sorry, it's double D Day, but I I won't be home in time for dinner, but I will be home. And we don't know what double D Day is. We see Chris driving, and there is a terrible car accident in front of him. He grabs his doctor bag and goes to help. The accident happened in a tunnel. Another car like spins out of control and hits him. And so he is then killed. He wakes up and there is this blurred image who Chris keeps calling Doc, who is telling him you are dead. And he is observing his funeral. And he's trying to stay around Annie. He's saying, Doc, what happens now? I've been to my funeral, what's going on? And he's trying to tell Annie, I'm still here, I'm still with you, babe. And she like freaks out every time he gets close to her. It's like she he's haunting her. And Doc finally tells him, When you decide to stop hurting her, you can move on. And so once he realizes it really is hurting her to be close to her, he leaves and he wakes up in heaven. And his heaven is clearly one of the paintings that Annie has painted. We have seen that in addition to she's a museum curator, she does art restoration, but she paints her own paintings as well. And so it's a painting that she has made. And he wakes up, it's a landscape, but everything is paint. And so like it's getting coming off on him. We've seen in flashbacks their dog Katie, who had been Marie's dog, who they'd had to put down, and they'd seen a flashback of that about how we are doing this because we love her. Katie is young again and comes barking up to him, and he's like, Oh my goodness, you're young again. And he's like, I screwed up. I end up in dog heaven. Um so he starts exploring and he sees on the water, walking on the water, a man played by Cuba Gooding Jr. saying, You didn't think I'd stay 63, did you? That's the last time you saw me. He realizes it is his mentor, Albert Lewis, who was the doctor who mentored him during his residency. Albert kind of shows him around and helps him understand that if you think it, it happens here. And he tries to get him to walk across the water and Chris can't do it. He's blocking under the water. And he's saying, you know, well, what? Are you your body? Well, yeah. You know, are you your arm or your leg? Well, if you lose your arm and your leg, are you still you, you? It was like, okay, well, I guess I'm my brain. Well, brains just meet. And, you know, trying to talk him through what the cosmology of this is until he starts to understand it. At one point, Chris sees a stuffed animal that had belonged to Marie, and he says, Where's my daughter? I want to see my kids. And Albert says, You'll see them when you're ready to see them. Chris goes to sleep in the house that was in the painting that Annie had painted. We meanwhile see that Annie is not doing well, obviously. And these things are interspersed with some flashbacks to what was happening with them when the kids were alive, and then in the four years between when the kids passed away and when Chris died. And so the next morning, when Chris wakes up, there is a woman named Leona who is dressed kind of like a flight attendant.

Children, Identity, And Reveals

SPEAKER_01 12:58

She is Asian, she's got a flower in her hair, who says, Albert had to work. He sent me. You seem a little isolated here. Would you like to see a city? And he's like, I don't know, travel makes me a little nauseous. And she said, Don't worry, just close your eyes and closes his eyes and he opens them. And he is in a like very stylized city with people on like penny farthings and people flying and there's stairs and canals. And it is very much like artwork that was in his daughter's room. And they get into a boat, Leona and Chris. She asks him about his children, and she he tells her about playing chess with Marie, how he taught her to play chess, and she said, I like that I haven't won yet when they'd been playing for like three hours. He said, Well, you're new. She said, No, I like it because it means you're not, you're not being easy on me. You're not cheating. I want to play until I win. And he said, We played every night for three months. It was before she died, and she never won. And then he realizes that Leona is his daughter. And he said, Do you play chess here? And he she said, I was waiting for my partner. And then she turns into Marie. And she says, explains why she looks like Leona. And she says, We went to Singapore once, and my daddy said, uh, smiled at the flight attendant and said something about how Asian women are so graceful and lovely and intelligent. And I wanted to be like that when I grew up. And Chris says, I didn't mean only Asian women. That's a moment I want to come back to. Whoo! I know. Okay, I know. It's a moment I want to come back to. So he's reunited with Marie. Albert comes back and tells him that Annie has died by suicide. And unfortunately, there is a hell in this place. And it's not a hell of punishment. It is a place where people don't know that they're dead. And specifically, you stay stuck in the mental loops that you were stuck in in life. Because Chris, his first reaction is like, This is awful, but okay, she's here. When can I see her? You can't. Okay, well, at least her her pain is over. It's not. And so he says, All right, I'm gonna go get her and bring her here. And Albert says, That's not possible. You can't. And he says, I don't care. I'm gonna do this. All right, well, let's go find a tracker. There's someone who can help track her. You think about her, and that will help find her in that part of the afterlife. And so we go from these beautiful, like wonderful heavenly images to like kind of hyonymous Bosch type places. As they're going through this, the tracker, whose name we never get, the movie calls him the tracker, who's played by Max von Siddau. He's older, like German kind of guy. He's one of those you'd know him if you saw him. Got it. He is talking to Chris about like, were you proud of your children? And he goes, Of course. And he says, that's a an easy answer. The tracker says, I was a psychiatrist in life. And Chris is saying, like, Albert is like a really sweet kid. I mean, I guess I didn't know him when he was a young man. And we start seeing intercut some things about Ian, his son, who was struggling in school and did not do well and felt like he couldn't live up to his father, who was this, you know, pediatrician who was who was apparently very, very smart and accomplished. And there was a time where he took him, they lived in apparently California, took him out to the Redwoods and like they went hiking together and were having fun, and was telling him, I want to take you out of the school where you are because it's not good for you. And and Ian was angry about it. He's like, Don't take me out of the school. Like you taught me never give up. You're making me making it feel like I'm not good enough. So as they're trying to find the way, the tracker saying, I've lost the trace of Annie. Chris keeps looking at Albert, and you see in the flashback, he says, If I had to go through hell, the only person I'd want by my side is you, Ian. And that's when he realizes that Albert is actually Ian. They get to a point where it's like a gate and like terrifying. And Albert is trying to break in there. And Chris grabs him and is like, No, your mother's not in there, Ian, and grabs him and is like, I know who you are. And the tracker says, We need to leave Ian behind because he's distracting you. You need to go, just the tracker and Chris need to go get get Annie. And Chris and Ian try to argue with him, but finally the tracker convinces Ian. Ian says, I took the form of Albert because he's the only person you ever listened to. I think he says he's the only man you ever listened to. So listen now. Go with him, find mom, bring her back. So they go, they find Annie in a house that is like a mirror, like nightmare image of the house they lived in in the real world. The tracker reveals that he's actually Albert. Oh. And he says, Do you recall what my specialty was prior to becoming a pediatrician? It was pediatric psychiatry. And so there's a conversation about like why we changed change our forms here. It's so that people don't have preconceived notions about us. And one of the things he

Rescue Mission And The Nature Of Hell

SPEAKER_01 18:41

says, like, he says, When you knew me, something like these glasses were a different shape, something like there was no hair, and my skin was black, something like that. So he explains, like So I'm sorry, wait, who what does he look like?

SPEAKER_00 18:59

It's like I thought you said it was Cuba Gooden Jr. What does he look like?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So Maximon Siddow is is playing the tracker. Oh, right, right, right, right. Okay. Yeah. So the tracker makes it clear that he has brought Chris there just to say goodbye because there is no way he is going to convince Annie to come out of her her madness. And that he has three minutes before he joins her in her madness. And then he will not be able to, they will not be able to get him out either. He will be stuck there as well in her madness. So he's going to be there and then we'll take him back to heaven.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

So we see him go in, she does not recognize him. And we know that that's not gonna happen. We then start to see intercut what happened after the children died. She ended up in a facility because she just her mental health was so bad. And at one point she said maybe that they needed to divorce and then did not speak for a month. So he came back and said he brought a ticket saying it was a one-way ticket to go away because he says, I'm not making you better. And this is D-Day for a decision. We need to make a decision about divorce. And she said, and it's the first time she spoke in a month. Isn't that a double D Day? And so they decide to reconcile and she tears up the ticket. And so from then on, they they celebrate double D Day as an anniversary. And it's clear that she felt abandoned because he kept going while she couldn't in life. So he is in there, he tells her this story, and he's in the madness in there in the house with hello. Tells her this story, seems to be getting through to her, and then doesn't. And then he comes and he's she's like, like, get away from me. And he says to her, thank you for beautiful life. Thank you for our children. Thank you. And he says a couple of different things. The one that I really loved is thank you for the fights. We had such glorious fights, and I thank you for them. And you know, a couple other things, I love you. And then he leaves, and you think that he's leaving, but he goes back to the tracker and he says, I'm staying with her. I'm coming back to tell you to go back to the children and tell them I'm staying with their mother. I won't leave her alone in this. And he goes back into the house, and he you see him start to lose his memory of who he is. And he said, basically says, Like, I can't fix this for you. I can't keep going. There is nothing I can do, but I can join you. And so I will. And there's a moment where she kind of like, as he's losing himself, she recognizes him. And then we have the super happy Hollywood ending. Where for no particular reason they both end wake up in heaven. Because she What? Because he broke her out of her madness, she is able to for some reason bring them both back to heaven? Bring them, bring them both both back to heaven. Oh. Oh, okay. There has been some discussion about the fact that you can be reincarnated if you choose. It's it's entirely optional. And he says, What if we go back through again so we can we can enjoy meeting each other again and you know make different choices because they'd always said they wanted to grow old together and they didn't get that opportunity. And so the end of the film is we see a little boy and a little girl with toy boats meeting each other, and that's the end of the film. Okay. So let me start with the misogyny because that's that's the thing that really pissed me off about Matheson's book. In the original book, Annie dies by suicide because Chris dies. That's it. She is the mother of six children. The children are all fine. They are young. They need Wait.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

In the book, she has six living children and six living children. And dies by suicide because her husband dies.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

And dies by suicide because she cannot live without her husband. It's disgusting. So the film made it much, much, much better for her choice like is much more comprehensible.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I mean, yes, even before Chris died. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

To lose your kids is so like, and that to me, like, I remember reading that, going like, what the fuck is wrong with this book? And there are tiny elements of that still within the film because it is men who mount the white horse and go to rescue her.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

You know, Marie's not among the the group going to rescue her. Now, she's supposed to be nine or ten. Mm-hmm. But it's but a brother's only 13, right? Yeah, yeah.

Misogyny In The Book vs Film

SPEAKER_01 24:12

So that sense of needing to be rescued is still in there. And then the the meat cute, the way that Matheson had them meet was they were on vacation, but Chris in the book saw her and wanted to meet her and asked her for the time. And she was so shy, she pointed at a nearby clock tower because she didn't want to, she she couldn't speak to him.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Because it was him, or she was that way with everybody? Because oh my god, a man. So any man would have had that effect. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

So, and then the final thing that really pissed me off about the book was in the the cosmology of the book, she was only going to stay in the hell realm until the time when she would have naturally died. So, yes, she would have been in a horrible state, but considering the fact that she left her children alone, I'm like, no, she needs to stay and think about what she did. I mean, I don't want to make light of mental illness, and I don't want to like well, but that's just it though.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Like the the way that Matheson wrote it, it wasn't even mental illness.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

It was like I can't live without my man.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Like a a just like a yeah, a male fantasy that like you're so all-consuming to your woman. She would rather die than live without you, even with the responsibilities of motherhood, which are supposed to, in that kind of toxic male worldview, supposed to trump everything, but yeah, yeah, apparently not the love of your man.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yeah. So, so all of that is frustrating. Now, we do have like I feel like Annie has more agency in the film. There's a scene we see between Annie and Chris where they're arguing about Ian and his school, and she's saying to him, like, how fucked up is it that our kid thinks he is he's disappointing you? And like we and and that that moment where he says, Thank you for our fights. Like there is this sense of, there's a a clearer sense of equality. Annie's played by Isabel Skorina, Ski, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name right, who is just a stone called fox. And that's not to say that Robin Williams isn't a handsome man, but I think he was older than her. And there's a definitely when they meet, there's a sense of like, man, this woman's pretty. So it gets into this kind of ickiness, which I also feel like by explicitly describing them as soulmates where it's insta-love, that just hits wrong because it feels like it removes the agency.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah. I mean, I think the notion of soulmates does remove agency.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

It also like makes the stakes super high. Right? Like if if shit doesn't work out, like they almost got divorced because things were so hard, and yet they're soulmates.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Like, yeah, if you can't make it work with your soulmate, like well, I mean, to be fair, it's very difficult for a married couple to survive the loss of a child, let alone No, that's not what I'm suggesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Yeah. But like I'm saying when you put the pressure of like God and the universe wanted you to be together, and that like that's and especially because at least the way I understand it, like that's it. One and done. Like, there isn't, there aren't like you don't have multiple soul mates out there, yeah, right. In most of these understandings, they think it's like one soul that got split in two. Yeah. So when you layer that kind of understanding of your romantic partner on top of how hard it is, like relationships are hard. They take hard, they take work, you know? Yeah, yeah. It just feels like unfair pressure, is is what I'm getting at. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

And I also it also feels like it doesn't give us the opportunity, us mere mortals, the opportunity to have a meaningful connection. Because part of what we how we know they're soulmates is she paints something after he's died that he can see in heaven. And like I would love in this cosmology to believe that someone I'm connected to would be able to reach me through that veil, you know, even if we're not soulmates.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Right. Yeah. I sometimes will talk about like, I think this metaphor must have come from literature somewhere, but like the idea of like the red thread between sternums. Like I think we stitch those with our shared experience with people. Like we build that connection. It's not like zapped there by God. Like we do that.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yeah. And so that to me, like that, that's the other aspect of it, is like soulmates means that they didn't have to do anything for it. And that's not true. We see that they built, they worked hard. Yeah. They worked really hard to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

To thank her for

Soulmates, Agency, And Pressure

SPEAKER_00 29:20

the fights makes proof of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah. And then the fact that at the end, the way that he solves their crisis is to join her in her suffering, which is part of the reason why I like this movie, is like that is beautiful to me. That like when there is no solution, when all there is is pain, you can be there with the person you love in their pain. That's gorgeous. That is gorgeous and like life-affirming and meaningful. And he calls himself, he was like, I was a coward in life because he didn't join her in her pain. And to be fair, I don't know how he could have. Like after the children died? After the children died. She says, Why are you not in here with me? And like someone had to pay the bills, you know, someone had to keep going. And he says, I was a coward. And, you know, never giving up was the easy way for me. You know, getting up and putting my shoes on and going to work and paying the bills was easy. But there were other ways he could have joined her in her pain that she he didn't. Right. And he recognizes that. That's why I think this movie stuck with me for years, even though I also have very complex feelings about it. And to that end, let's I let's go to that moment with his daughter. So when I saw this movie, so it came out in '98. I was about 19 when it came out. I'm not sure that's when I saw it, but around then, I identified with Marie. As the daughter, I have always had this sense, be careful, your parents don't know what throwaway line they say is going to stick with you. And because of that, and because of like this moment in this movie, I have tried very hard to be cognizant of what throwaway lines I say in front of my kids that might stick with them. Can't always know. Because you can never know, frankly. Never know. But I try, try not to have, if I realize that I've said something that is not something I want my kids to hold on to, I try to go back and readdress it.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

So that whole thing about the like Asian women isn't is new to the movie because in the book, the I honestly cannot recall.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Okay. I cannot recall if they took on a different I I have no memory of that whatsoever in the book. Okay. So because I think I definitely in 1998, and again in like 2001 when I read the book, or 2002, I definitely did not have the same kind of understanding of racism and microaggressions that I do now. So at the time it was like, oh, I can see where a little girl would internalize that. I didn't would not have noticed it in the book. But are his children in the book? Yes. Oh gosh. Oh, right, right, right. It wouldn't have been in the book because the children, children didn't die. Right. That's why I'm asking.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I was assuming it was new to the movie. Because the children live. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole thing with them changing form and stuff, presumably.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Yeah. I think Albert was probably in the book, but good point. Yeah. I was thinking about Rosalind Chow, who plays Leona. Mm-hmm. And what it would have felt like to take that part. It's gross. I was also thinking about like Cuba Gooding Jr., who has like he's he is the second billing after Robin Williams. He's got a like a significant part of this movie. And in 1998, it would have been progressive for Robin Williams's character mentoring if he's been a black man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

But then the real Albert took the form of Max von Sitau. Right. Right. And it like just race is a mess.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yeah. Especially because there's a sense that like you think it and it happens. So then if we extrapolate the implication is that Albert like thinks of himself as a German dude, a white German dude. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

It's kind of weird. Let's while we're staying on this, like, you think it and it happens. Can we talk about like more about the nature of the afterlife and the cosmology of it and and sort of where you landed with that?

SPEAKER_01 33:47

There's never really any true explanation of like how it is that you continue to exist after death. You know, there's the conversation between Albertslash Ian and Chris where, you know, like, are you are your arm or your leg? You know, if you lose those, you're still you. Your brain is just meat, meat rots, but

Race, Representation, And Forms

SPEAKER_01 34:09

you're still you. And what I I liked about the idea of heaven and how it's different from like heaven in like the good place is that it doesn't require like infrastructure from the outside. Like in the good place, heaven didn't work because people got bored. Right. Whereas here, heaven is what you create with your own mind. And so it's there until it's not anymore. Like basically, that to me fixes that issue. Like heaven, you like you can't get bored because it's what you create. And time doesn't mean anything. And I really appreciate that. It's this sense of like you are creating what is meaningful to you and joyful for you. It doesn't require maintenance in the way that like heaven in the good place does. And then that also to me tells me that there is a point at which it ceases to be because whatever you are ceases to be. And that's fine too. You know, it's a view of heaven that I feel like is is kind of organic in a way that works for me. And then the other thing that I liked is that when Albert has to work, Chris says to Leona, like, there's work here, I like that. And she says, Yes, if you choose to. I work with animals. Albert works with with souls that have trouble getting here. He helps them, helps them traverse here. And so it's very idiosyncratic. And I read there have been a couple of Christian commentators who talk about this film. One was saying that in a kind of a negative way, that it's a very American view of the afterlife. Okay, yeah, fair. I think that that's a that's a fair way of uh viewpoint because it is very individual and idiosyncratic. Marie's afterlife looks like the artwork in her room. But I think that is also what makes it meaningful because it's what's meaningful to the individual and it's what's joyful for the individual.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Let's talk about the artwork component then, right? So, like the actual like visual arts from life becomes an important player in afterlife, which you and I both have a lot of art in our homes. Like I can imagine some of the paintings in my place, but not everybody does. Like, I don't know how how does the it's like an interesting take, but then when I extrapolate it out, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 36:45

When they go to find the tracker, he's in this giant like canal area that is lined with libraries' books. So different parts have different things based on what's important to different people, presumably. Huh. Okay. And nothing's ever entirely explained. Presumably, if you can think it, it becomes, and it can become for other people if they're willing to, you know, share the thought with you. They make a comment at one point that art is is so important to Chris. That's part of it and would explain why that is what's going on with all the members of his family. And you know, would help explain why he experiences hell as like a herous Bosch painting.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Yeah, let's talk about hell and and mental health, right? So we've got Annie in a form of hell, which is like a nightmare version of the real world. Yeah. And she doesn't recognize Chris at first. She doesn't recognize him at all until he has joined her in her suffering. Oh, so as an outsider, she does not recognize him. Hmm. Misery loves company. Literally. Yeah, exactly. Huh. That feels kind of dangerous, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah, I um in Roger Ebert's contemporaneous review, he he said that he loved the movie until the end. He felt like the end, like it was building towards something and didn't get there.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

And yeah, I mean, if a person is drowning, like drowning with them doesn't feel like the solution. And so the implication that the drowning person can't even recognize who you are until you get in and start drowning with them. I mean, I heard what you said, and I don't disagree about kind of the idea of like sitting in the hole with the person just to be present and witness. But there's a difference between being present and witnessing and like actually drowning with them.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Hence my complex feelings about this film.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Yeah. Yeah, I see why.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

And what they say about hell is like it's the people who don't know that they're dead.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

But that still doesn't like the complaint, it remains. Like she doesn't know she's dead and she doesn't recognize the man whose

Art As Cosmology And Meaning

SPEAKER_00 39:15

death was part of what caused her to give up on living. I don't know. That like even sort of his I was a coward, I hear that. I ran from my feelings. That's what I hear, right? I ran from the grief rather than feeling it. And still, like, I don't know. Like, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing the way it's described is like he has to stay and go mad with her, is not the kind of like, you're shouldering a heavy burden, let me help you carry it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

At the same time, I would have a hard time understanding how if she's going to be there forever, how he could turn around and go back to heaven.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Agreed. But I feel like our critique here is not with his choices, but with the cosmology. Sure. Like he was the cosmology as the filmmakers and I presumably Matheson understood it, like made this the only choice that the viewer would accept. But like Newsflash, we don't actually know what happens. Like we could have written it differently. Yeah. Could have could have written it differently. I don't know. Yeah. And like, especially because like the extrapolation for mental health and like how he should have, I'm putting quotes around the word should when he was still alive in those four years between when the children died and when he died, in his naming his cowardice. Like, I'm not sure what we're meant to extrapolate. I mean, in terms of how he should have, I'm putting quotes again around that word, behaved and you know, worked through her mental health issues. It sounds like we did see him, like sh she was getting support from professionals in the in the facility.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

And uh well, and and that's part of it too, is like there is no guidebook. There's there's no like stereo instructions that tell you what you how you know what to do to have how to help. And he's going through it too.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Right. They were right. His kids are also dead.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Yeah. So this is a very, very heavy film in a lot of ways, even as it's also a very joyful film in a lot of ways. So, like I really appreciated that he stays with her at the end because he's he what he says is I'm giving up because throughout he says, I don't give up. Like that's you know, you keep going. And when he when he goes to the tracker and he says, I'm giving up, but not in the way that you think I am. I'm not giving up on her. And I appreciated that because it was there is something about that about the like he does it after he's dead.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

When it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

They're not no stakes. I mean eternal suffering.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

It's eternal suffering, but it's only his. It's his eternal suffering. His kids, it's gonna be upsetting for his kids, but he has the tracker to go back and tell them like what's going on, and that he's doing this because he doesn't want her to be alone. Right. And so there is something so affirming about that, about that choice. I I don't know. I it just it hits me right in the feels. And I don't want that to be because they're soulmates. I want that to be because they built a life together.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Yeah, agreed. We are running short on time. So I'm gonna ask you to save any additional thoughts for the shit we forgot to say that we will share with our patrons as bonus content. And I'm gonna see if I can't reflect back to you some of the things that we talked about. So, this film, we spent a lot of time talking about sort of the misogyny in the Matheson original and the ways that even sort of vestiges come through in this film. And the way that that manifests is in essentially removing agency from Annie to a large extent. In the Matheson, it was in like writing this character who was just unrealistic, so much so that like the love, it's it just reads a self-insert to me that like Matheson wanted desperately for a woman to love him so much that were he to die, she couldn't keep going, regardless of what uh what else was in her life. So we spent a good amount of time talking about that. We talked a bit about race and some of the choices in this movie that sort of read really problematic today. In 1998, when it was made, no. Doubt it was progressive to imagine that a doctor who looked like Robin Williams's mentor was a doctor who, at least as a young man, looked

Mental Health, Suffering, And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 44:09

like Kubik Getting Jr. And then that person, that soul, chooses to look like a German dude whose name I don't remember.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Max von Sidau.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

That guy. I was gonna say von Helsing, and I knew that was wrong. It's a different, different German thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Does not sex with him.

unknown 44:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Yeah. So like that's a weird like the implications when we extrapolate are that Cuba Gooding Jr. like would rather be Von Siddao. Like, what? No. The other piece, like the the little girl who sort of comes to her dad as an Asian woman, the little white girl who comes to her dad as an Asian woman because of his offhanded comment about how much he admired the way Asian women look and move, which is kind of ugly in Rewatch. Yeah. We also talked a bit about art and like the idea of art as a part of the afterlife, the cosmology of the afterlife. And that's really sort of interesting. Like I asked the question what about people for whom art is just not that important, visual art, and presumably other things that are important to them would show up in their heaven, like I don't know, video games. Yeah. We talked too about mental health and sort of the idea that this film makes necessity, that kind of suffering alongside is the highest and best response, which this film sets up that that's the punchline. That is the only only acceptable punchline. And I question whether or not that is, in fact, the only acceptable punchline. Speaking of only acceptable, like the idea of a soulmate, that there is one true person with whom you are supposed to be, is really somewhat problematic for both of us, I think, insofar as it removes our agency as human beings and removes the significance of the very hard work it is to build long-term relationships, whether they're romantic or otherwise, and sort of stitching our cell, our lives together as opposed to just having, you know, the universe kind of zap it together. Did I forget anything?

SPEAKER_01 46:28

The cosmology of how hell is a place where you don't know that you're dead and the the meaning behind that. I find that very interesting and worthy of thought. And I do want to nuance the idea that like suffering with someone who's suffering, they do make it clear. Like it is it happens when it's low stakes, not no stakes, but low stakes. So I do want to make that yes.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

And he talks about having been a coward when there were more stakes. So there is still judgment of the earlier time. Yeah. So and next week, it's my turn, and I don't remember. Enemy mine. Right! I'm gonna bring you my deep thoughts about enemy mine. Huh. Better figure out where I can stream that. See you next week. See you next week. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompitech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?