Dream with the Fishes

I hope you are all as tired as I am of seeing the same repetition of trite films that we are bombarded with. Your local blockbuster new release wall is a shrine full of such poor excuses for film making. When you have a medium so rich and so full of posibilites it is sad to have to suffer through such recycled garbage or non stop toilet humor. This film does neither. This is a movie that for a change explores something that should be meaningful to all of us, life. It does not do it in a cynical and overly oh I am trying to be clever way like The Last Supper. Rather this film has a philosophy and does not cop out like say City of Angels where Nicholas Cage decides who cares if God doesn't care as long as I can go swimming naked. Sure the actors are not the best but then Top Flight actors do not play peeping Tom perverts or dying hill billies for the most part. What you do get is a good story that is worth your while. It is listed as a comedy but film's like this defy genre because it is a story. It is a story with its own points and messages that is not carefully placed into a three act dramatic structure. Go watch October Sky if you want heart warming.

Dream With the Fishes is an original and daring movie. It deals with very serious topics of death and when life is worth living and a touching and often funny manner. Besides, what other movie can claim to have naked bowling?

Dream With The Fishes accomplishes what so many small independent films fail to do: it adheres to the reliable simplicity of storyline and character without getting bogged down in gimmickry or its own cleverness.

The casting and performances are perfect - it's a shame that David Arquette has disappeared into his wife's shadow - his performance as self-loathing/suicidal Terry is the perfect foil for Brad Hunt's desperate and free-spirited Nick. Both actors are brilliant in this film yet they've both remained relatively obscure in the years since it's release.

Perhaps Finn Taylor's direction has a lot to do with it. Aside from the performances he wrangles from his actors, Dream With The Fishes is also beautifully filmed, from the shots and camera angles to the lighting and even film stock he chooses for different moments to highlight shifts in character and story.

Add to this a haunting soundtrack (which I can thank for my introduction to Nick Drake) and you have a charming, heart-breaking, inspiring ride that serves both as an entertaining couple of hours viewing and a fine example for aspiring filmmakers.

Terry (David Arquette) is a very sad, lonely man who spends his days watching other people live their lives rather than trying to make one of his own. Rather than do this, he decides that the best thing to do is to commit suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge.

In what he thinks are the final few moments of his life along comes a very confident man, Nick (Brad Hunt), who notices that Terry can't seem to find the nerve to actually go through with it, and persuades him that this kind of suicide would actually be quite painfull, and might not even work, and suggests that he overdose on pills. Nick makes an offer of a jar of sleeping pills that he has at his apartment, in exchange for Terry's watch.

Once the pills have been downed, Terry suddenly has a drastic change of heart and makes Nick take him to the hospital where it is revealed that they were actually vitamins.

Angry, Terry wants to confront Nick to get his watch back and finally tracks him down at the hospital where he finds out that Nick only has a short while to live himself.

The next day, Nick leaves the hospital with a proposal for Terry. If he will help Nick to live out all of his life long fantasies in the few weeks before he dies, Nick will pay him back by killing him.

Determined to go out with a bang, Nick takes Terry on an adventure and teaches him how to live his life to the fullest, including robbing a bank with an unloaded gun and nude bowling with prostitutes (whatever turns you on Nick!!)

It may seem that Nick is doing this all for him, but this film is about not taking life for granted and he is trying to open up a new world for Terry, one where he wouldn't want to die. This is what makes this a fantastic movie with many highs and lows. Mainly, a great story of love, friendship and adventure.

It's a strange little movie, continually shifting focus, at the end perhaps not amounting to much more than a whimsical playing with odd offbeat lives, but generally quite appealing: some of the ideas - like that of a general malaise trying to elevate itself by identification with a specific loss - are particularly intriguing. The evocative title sums up the generally lilting approach toward dreams and fantasies and self-definitions, although the movie as a whole is in many ways oriented more towards grunginess and weirdness, almost verging on exploitation at times. A major reservation must attach to the marginality of the women - Erbe has some very striking moments, but her agenda and feelings aren't explored much. On the whole, not distinctive enough to stick around particularly in one's memory.