Dreams (1993)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

An Exercise In Nonsense

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Wow, what a boring and anti-interesting movie. A late 19th century countess Prizorova, wife to a high-ranking official, starts having bad dreams: she lives in the year 1993 and works at a dirty canteen. She has to fight off her boss' attempts to molest her. Her 19th century husband appears in her dreams as the canteen's accountant. In the 19th century, Prizorova is consulting with her doctor who tries to rid her of the terrible dreams.This is where the plot pretty much ends. It's not like anyone got interested in it anyway - the characters are so boring and you don't even know anything about them to get really immersed in the plot. The dreams are also not interconnected - they're more like vignettes where the same main characters appear - Prizorova, the accountant and the canteen boss. The dreams are utilized by the maker to drive home the political point: Yeltsin's times were pretty bad. He's not going to explain much of it though, because this is a movie from 1993 to people in 1993. Don't expect this movie to be anything more than a vignette montage. Now, IMDb has this movie under the 'Comedy' category. That's a complete lie. Okay, maybe my taste is different but I honestly haven't found anything to actually laugh at. I guess there are some very abstract moments that can get a small giggle out of you, but that's it. It's more of a political movie which requires the viewer to know at least some history of the Russian 90s and the culture of that time. It's a political movie because it constantly tries to show the viewer how bad 90s were and pokes fun at the government. Closer to the end of the movie, the 19th century characters also start remarking how horrible the 90s look. This is honestly a very weird movie. It feels like a movie made after 1993 about 1993. It tries to drive home the point that the 90s were bad because of the crisis, because of the decadency and the government having new ministers every few months. But what's the point of it really? If you lived in 1993 and went to see that movie, you wouldn't find anything special. In fact, you'd probably avoid seeing this movie because it's a waste of money that you could use to buy food.

Time travel is often amusing and is at the core of Russia's most popular comedy "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession"(1973). "Sny" or "Dreams" is masterful comedy director Karen Shakhnazarov's riff on the same theme. In "Sny", a beautiful countess finds herself in present day Moscow, which continually horrifies and astonishes her.Amalia Mordvinova is gorgeous in the lead role.As ever Shakhnazarov's adroit sense of the absurd delights. Unfortunately, some of the humour demands an understanding of the cultural context of modern and Soviet Russia -- but many American comedies are equally self-referential.And frankly, Russian absurdity is a lot funnier than anything that Tarantino or his boorish friends and loutish imitators could ever dream up.Occasionally production values disappoint -- signs of the times, 1993 wasn't a good year in Russia. Shakhnazarov's "Kurier" is perhaps a more accessible, more evenly brilliant film.