With a surreal premise and intensely committed star turn from Nicolas Cage, “Dream Scenario,” in theaters now, has become a critics’ favorite and prompted its Oscar-winning veteran into this year’s Best Actor Oscar race.
Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s movie finds Cage’s Paul Matthews, an evolutionary biology professor, suddenly appearing in people’s dreams. Initially, it’s weirdly just family and friends but the phenomenon soon expands and Paul haunts many dreams.
Then, as Herald film critic James Verniere noted in his review, “Dream Scenario” becomes “the art house version of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street,’ the 1984 horror film sensation” to become “A dark fantasy about fame, cancel culture and the dangers of ‘going viral.’”
“When I read the script,” Cage, 59, said in a virtual global press conference last week, “I have to say it’s one of the five best I’ve read scripts I’ve ever read — and I’ve been doing this for over 42 years.
“The others were ‘Raising Arizona,’ ‘Leaving Las Vegas,’ ‘Vampire’s Kiss,’ ‘Adaptation’ — and ‘Dream Scenario.’ I knew right there I had to do it. I felt I had the life experience to play Paul.
“I don’t look like Paul. I don’t sound like Paul. I don’t move like Paul,” he said while his baby daughter yelled in the background, “That was by design, between my interpretation and the character. What had happened to me –virally really, I think I was the first actor – and this was in 2008, 2009, I woke up one morning and made the mistake of Googling when I went online and there was this mash-up ‘Nic Cage loses his you know what.’ Just cherry picking all of these crisis moments of different characters that I have played, without any regard for the narrative or how the character reached that point.
“I guess I coined a new word ‘Me-mified’! I was like” – and he laughed – “What was happening to me?! And I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t control it. There was nothing I could do – it just started growing exponentially.
“I thought, ‘Boy! I don’t know what to do with this.’ But when I read ‘Dream Scenario’ I thought, ‘Yeah! I could apply that experience to this person because people are dreaming about him and he has no control over that either.’
“Behind the design of the character – the voice, the movement, the look – was genuine emotion. I’ve noticed that lately I want to get more personal with my work.
“I want to play characters that I can take, like ‘Pig’ or now ‘Dream Scenario’ and kick it into high gear, switch it into glide and not feel like I have to act too much. Get that ‘real’ feeling.”
