CHASING SLEEP
US, 2000, 106 minutes, Cover.Colour.
Jeff Daniels Molly Price, Gil Bellows,
Directed by Michael Walker.
Chasing Sleep is one of those films where audiences are unsure whether what they are watching is reality, dream, hallucinations or a mixture of all of these. The action is confined to the one house – although there is a sequence in a hospital corridor and room when the protagonist goes through a hole in the wall. He sees his mother dying who threatens him with hell.
He is in some kind of hell. When he wakes, he realises that his wife has not come home from work at school. He suspects her of having an affair with another teacher. He contacts the police, they talk to him on the phone, an officer comes in person, the detectives come to investigate. A psychiatrist also visits him. Further, the man with whom the wife is allegedly having an affair also comes to house and physically attacks him. And there is a university student who has no friends but is devoted to her lecturer and wants to help – ultimately a sexual encounter which may or may not be imagined.
Jeff Daniels gives an interesting performance as the disturbed university lecturer, being present in all the sequences of the film.
It is over to the audience to decide about what they have experienced, reality or imagination.
1. The immediate impact of the film? Tantalising? Sufficient clues as to whether this was reality or imagination? The total effect?
2. The action confined to the house, Ed’s apartment, the different rooms, the basement? Yet the holes in the walls and his moving through into the hospital? The effect of this claustrophobia for Ed and for the audience? The atmospheric musical score, evocative and suggestive?
3. Reality and unreality?
4. Ed waking, the hair on the bed, his absent wife and his concern? The reality of Ed waking, his ordinary activities and encounters, especially with the police, the student, the psychiatrist? His phone calls? Yet, the theory that he had murdered his wife, concealed her in the building, with the clue of the finger, his being unable to get rid of it, in the toilet, its movement down the corridor? His sleep-disturbance because of what he might have done?
5. The background story? His wife, teaching, music, the piano? At school? The relationship with George, the PT instructor? Affair or not, or in Ed’s imagination? Her not returning home after school? Ed cooking the dinner for her? Her car found near George’s house? His not going to the University, the phone calls, his being missed, his angers, unreasonable, his being fired?
6. Ed and his personality, age, experience, work? His concern, his friend ringing? His ringing the police? The initial discussions on the phone? The detective calling in? The detectives coming later? His reaction to them? Generally friendly? Their examining his house, looking for clues about his wife, finding her diary, reading it, upset, keeping it, burning it? His searching in the house, the holes in the wall, his going through, the incident in the hospital, his mother dying and telling him he would go to hell?
7. The university student, her insistence on coming over, bringing the food, the mark for her essay, and not making friends, the bathroom, the blood, his giving her his wife’s jacket? Her leaving? Becoming the second time? Food? His asking her why she put the bloodstained jacket under the bed? Her explanation that she was a loser and did things like this? The seduction, the sexual encounter? Real or in Ed’s imagination?
8. The psychiatrist, his coming to the door, his talking about Ed’s condition, his own experience, insomnia, the tablets, the prescription? Ed asking the girl
to get the prescription? His taking the tablets, saying they did not work?
9. The detectives, the interrogations, his phone off the hook? Searching the room, the jacket, his wife’s diary? His asking them to leave?
10. The arrival of George, his aggression, attacking Ed, the police response, making charges? The car near George’s house? His being in custody?
11. The overall impact of this experience, sharing with Ed, reality or not? If realism, his insomnia leading to hallucinations? Or the whole thing a dream and hallucination?
