This post contains spoilers for A24’s Dream Scenario, as well as our interview with director Kristoffer Borgli, and star Nic Cage. Part of this interview was conducted at Fantastic Fest 2023.
Paul Matthews (Nic Cage) is a simple biology professor just trying to live his normal life, with his normal family, and his normal ambitions. Sure, he might actually be deeply unhappy and has an extremely weird one-sided competition with his colleagues in his field, but otherwise he’s just a regular guy!
Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario follows Paul as people in his orbit suddenly start having dreams featuring him. First it’s his daughter, but then he starts noticing his students acting funny. Eventually it becomes a global phenomenon and, as it spreads, so does Paul’s confusion.
Then things take a turn for the worst.
Dream Scenario Ending Explained
Once the world realizes they’re all sharing dreams with one common denominator, they find it funny and charming. Paul is the belle of the ball, fulfilling his deepest desires to be recognized and acknowledged by more than just an errant professor and lackluster dad.
When the phenomenon starts, Paul is frustrated by his constant depiction as a passive player. He’s not a very self-aware guy, Paul, as the passivity mirrors his behavior in reality. Still, he’s thrilled that the extra attention from news outlets and ad-marketers could mean that he might finally see one of his papers published, getting him the real attention and praise he craves: that of the scientific community.
The shift in the dreams comes alongside Paul cheating on his wife with a young marketing associate. He’s enamored by her not just because she’s young and beautiful, but because she is turned on by his passivity as he stands in the corner watching her in her dreams. He doesn’t even really successfully cheat. But the deed is done.
As his role in the dreams changes, so does public perception. Paul is no longer a funny little man standing by in their dreams, but their murderer, aggressor or rapist (no rape is depicted in the film). In an attempt to regain public trust for something, in his mind, he had no control over, Paul issues a public apology via livestream. Unfortunately, it just happens to be the cringiest non-apology known to man.
His meteoric rise is met by a similarly quick fall from grace, and he finds himself touring his book in basements, divorced and alone.
But Dream Scenario is one of those movies where it’s not just the ending that needs breaking down. To understand it, you have to understand earlier points in the film. So we went right to the source and sat down with the film’s star Nic Cage and writer/director Kristoffer Borgli to help us make sense of it all.
The Apology Heard Around the World
So far as cringe apologies go, Paul's fake apology for something he feels like he didn't do belongs in the hall of fame. Of course, it’s easy to joke about it because it’s scripted rather than a real-life person bringing the fake sincerity as they often do with empty apologies like this one. Still, Nic Cage explains that while it was a funny moment, it was never meant to be played for laughs.
“That was all genuine emotion,” Cage starts. “But I also knew that it was wrong in every way, and the response you get from the family members in the movie kind of gives it a softer landing, because it is also never going for laughs, but it is also humorous. But I had to get to that place where I felt like it had some pathos, and as ridiculous as it was, it had genuine emotion.”
“In the beginning I was thinking about the gap between me and my father's understanding of the culture,” Borgli adds. “How different it is and that it would just be a comedic premise to look at someone who's unsavvy try to navigate this, and looking at comedic opportunities to slip on cultural banana peels.”
Is Dream Scenario About Cancel Culture?
As mentioned, the public turns against Paul after his role in their dreams turns nefarious. From Paul’s perspective, he’s done nothing wrong and there’s just no reason for this change to be happening. He’s being targeted! Just another victim of cancel culture who did absolutely nothing to deserve it.
But, as the audience, we know that the narrative shift in the film takes place immediately after Paul cheats. While we see things quite differently as the viewer, Borgli explains that he was never trying to make a film about cancel culture, just one that happens to feature it.
“The cancel culture aspect is just one of the many things that is thrown at this character that he has to navigate and try to do it as smartly as he can,” he explains. “But he's an antiquated man who doesn't really understand the current culture and has, unfortunately, start engaging with it and then can't find its way out.”
The credits on Dream Scenario don’t roll when Paul loses everything. Instead, we follow along with the lead for a considerable hunk of time after his wife has moved on and his kids keep him at arms length (when they see him, that is). While the instinct for many filmmakers would have been to cut away after Paul's comeuppance, Borgli stuck with the character during the aftermath for a reason.
“The movie is a character portrait and about a man who loses perspective of what's important in life and it ends up looking at a man who lost it all and who's trying to win it back,” Borgli explains of the decision to stick with Paul though it all.
“It's also a movie about a culture that is trying to reduce everything to right and wrong and easy bite-sized answers,” he adds. “And of course that can happen to a movie too, that people will maybe try to reduce it as a hot button issue. And I hope people see beyond that with the movie, that it's more than that. It felt like if the movie in this phenomenon lives in the current moment, all of these things would happen. That's what I feel. But it ultimately is something that reveals something about the character. And that's where my interest is and that's why we stay with him till the bitter end.”
Was It All A Dream?
According to some psychiatrists, you cannot change the light levels in your dreams. (Meaning, in short, that you cannot turn a light switch on or off.) In Dream Scenario, we see Paul shack up with a friend after losing his wife and family. Since said friend’s wife also had terrible dreams of Paul, he is given free reign of the basement where he won’t bother anyone. But, when he tries to head to bed for the evening, he is unable to turn off the light. Obviously, we had to chat with Borgli and Cage about what that meant for the film and whether or not it was all in Paul’s head.
“Exactly. That's cool. I think you were the first one to at least ask me about it or catch that,” Borgli says after I ask about the switches. (But, full disclosure, I saw the film at Fantastic Fest in September, so I had a leg up on the light switch sitch.)
“It definitely comes from reading about dreams and learning about the impossibility of turning off lights. And yeah, I think it could be seen as both. I don't think I want to say exactly what it is, but definitely there is a way to interpret the movie that might be beyond the initial read.”
Cage, of course, mirrored Borgli’s insistence that it’s up for interpretation.
“That's something that Kristoffer put a lot of thought into [...] so that the whole thing could work on that level. The whole thing could be a dream, and I think that's quite brilliant. But it can work on other levels, too. I think it's really up to you. It's whatever you want it to be.”
So, there you have it. It’s whatever you want it to be!
(I think it was a dream. Sound off with your thoughts in the comments!)
