Chasing Sleep (2001)

True: the atmosphere of the movie is great, while Jeff Daniels is an tremendous actor. But.. why would someone go through the heavy work of making such a good-looking movie, if it doesn't really have a point? Daniels' character is clearly going through a nervous breakdown; it's possible that he had killed his wife, or maybe she had left him and he imagines a revenge. So what? This ambiguity it's been done a thousand times. If you watch the movie trying to find out what happened, but in the end the director/writer doesn't let you find out what happened, it's not "artsy", it's gross cheating. So it's a movie for those moviegoers who don't care they will not have an answer; they are happy with the atmosphere, they don't need closure. But for the people who need an explanation, because that explanation would give the movie a reason to exist, it's a pretentious fail.

Although (Chasing Sleep – 2000) is less commercial than Christopher Nolan's (Insomnia – 2002), another movie about a sleepless lead, but (Chasing..) says more.Purposely it doesn't answer "did the lead kill his wife, or not ?". Because it shows all the time that he already killed her, several times, by his failure and incapacity to provide a decent life. It relates this with his being as the poet who didn't achieve a prestige or stature in society (poetry doesn't pay the bills; as he says sarcastically), and since he couldn't succeed materially in a material world, he got himself into a cocoon, became silent, and lost his wife as long as she lost everything in him. That lead killed himself when he stopped fighting his reality and got defeated by his circumstances, so his creativeness discontinued as a poet, lover, then human being. And losing his love, by that surrender, was something unquestionable. He killed her, metaphorically, when he forced her to leave him, and cheat on him, while her noticing that she became beaten as him (I became fat; as the diary tells smartly). Which makes killing her, actually, something trivial, or integral at best. And even if it never happened, the lead is gone, being a prisoner of his tormenting world and violent helplessness (his remaining in the flat wasn't for granted). I liked that the blame gets also the logic of the world around him; see well how the university is shown through the secretary as a senseless obnoxious business firm that despises the artist.This movie is nothing but a long and painful qualm's moment in form of successive nightmarish daydreams for a man who lost the gift of being alive. It's unique and effective plot to demonstrate the turning of the human into a killer of himself, then consequently of others. The script expressed the tragic nature in its own different way. The overlapping of the dream, the awakening, the nightmarish daydream together embodied the lead's unbalanced condition, while being vague and intellectually exciting (we didn't know till the very end was the sheriff's phone call about the assurance of the wife's murder, or the psychiatrist, are true or just other hallucinations ?). A moving finger, the lead kills a devilish kid / his incapacity's future, etc.. are suitable images to picture the lead's insanity. The lead views, read : reviews, his story through alleged neighbors; as he judges himself while being afraid of confronting the truth. The disposing of the torn-off limbs in the bathroom, the pipes' explosion, the basement's sinking; all informed visually that the lead is like a sinking flat himself, these pipes are what he lives of suppression (for his anger and regret), and the bathroom, as a place to purge, just expels his persevering tries to get rid of his crime. Then finally, that hole in the ceiling, it's a proof of incompleteness or deformation in his wife / love / conscience. Discovering killing the wife at the end doesn't parallel the appearance of that scary hole in the middle of the dreamy blue sky, in the wife's room, for no reason. It's an evidence that the pure area in the main character got a damage, and all of that wonderful ingenuity wasn't in anywhere but his head, so that's why he used to see that hole in his room only.Well, everything was beautifully ugly, enjoyably dark; namely perfect for the subject matter. Except few points on their top is no small one : Jeff Daniels. On one hand he was extremely cold, as if he has no background to perform such a character, or no ability to invest his tools to make us watch that dead who's so worried in his grave, living watchful asleep and tortured all at once. And on the other, he lacks the charisma, which sure made undertone, yet felt, bore; especially in a one-man-show like this. Aside from looking repellent the always-yellow cinematography dyed the whole movie with one constant color; which is another factor of bore. And the scene of the lead's mother, in which she damns him from her deathbed, seemed strange, as if a lousy trick to get out of the home's set for once. OK, this is a daring independent cinema which didn't incline to stupid subjectivity. Instead it showed a sophisticated issue in a simple way. And it carried out being a mystery, sometimes horror, movie with the psychological analyzing and the painful meaning as well. Still its big problem is the casting of its lead actor. Daniels – sorrowfully – wasn't up to anything this movie has.

If you can't sleep, you might as well watch a movie. If you make that movie "Chasing Sleep", you might even learn a thing a thing or two: (1) Don't skip class. Especially not if you're the professor. It'll be held against you. (2) Don't pick up the phone. Chances are it'll be trouble. (3) Don't go to the basement. Or the bathroom. There be demons. (4) Get the plumbing fixed before it's too late. And whatever it is, don't just flush it down. It's gonna come back up. (5) Don't trust pretty strangers who bring you soup. They have ulterior motives. And don't pretend we didn't warn you. (6) Don't trust your friends. They're not your friends. (7) Don't trust yourself. You're unreliable. - Finally, and most importantly, don't watch this movie alone at home at night.

"Chasing Sleep" is from the first minute it rolls over your screen a perfect and decent psychological thriller. We have an amazing and excellent acting "Jeff Daniels" as the leading role. A little unconventional role for his being but surprisingly enough it suits him perfect. The movie like I already wrote starts from the first second on when you hit the play button as a damn good quality thriller! While the movie takes off and creates minute by minute a perfect dark story it will take you at the same time on a ride onto that downwards spiral of loosing every inch of sanity a human being can possess. Also we have pretty weird scenes into the film such as the oversize baby in the bathtub, blood running out of tabs and toilets as very strange water stains on walls and ceilings. The plot line is based on the mysterious disappearance of his wife, what happened with her? This is the whole intention of the movie, the complete 89min of running time; "What happened to my wife?" Not only this question will pop up but so many more questions will arrive! And then we have the promised minute, the 90th minute of the running time and you're waiting for those answers, as for the biggest one of them all, "What happened too the wife?"And you wait and,and wait,and wait,and wait,…end credits pop onto your screen!If not for such a big disappointment of an ending. Which is so mysterious and open that even the "Bermuda Triangle" would disappear in it, I would have giving it an 8 outa of 10. But this overall serious bummer of an open ending sucks so big time I bombarded the movie without any shame to a 1 outa 10. Did I miss something in the movie; do I need to give it a second view? Well I think I'm not able because I was so disappointed the first time. Can anybody maybe help me out? What did I miss, if I did miss something in the first place!Dario/