the Science of sleep (film with trailer)

The science of sleep

Stéphane (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a lucid dreamer. His lucid dreams started when he was a kid. He confuses dreams with waking reality. When he moves back to an apartment in Paris, the one he grew up in he meets a lovely lady Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and falls in love with her. Being introvert and struck into his own dreamworld, the films deals with him trying to connect with Stéphanie and get her involved in his vision of the world.

Film is the modern way of making mythology.

I like the way this film handles our rational view on the sleeping mind versus the waking mind. The hero in our mythology is this very cute, clumsy boy in love with this gorgeous girl. Being an introvert who has been in love and also a lucid dreamer I could easily connect with the theme of the film. The title “The science of sleep” is a contradictio in terminis. In our current society dreams are seen as random fire patterns of the neurons and only geniuses like Carl Jung can capture their nightly visions in a scientific analysis.

In my recent article: What does my dream mean? Four ways of looking at a dream I mentioned the ways people have -from the last century until this day- looked at dreams. It can be rational: dry and scientific: dreams are but waves of your nervous system you brain knits a little story with once you are awake (and remember your dream. It can by physical: dreams respond to the inner and outer changes of the body and the last is displayed in this film too: the romantic notion that dreams are messages. From a higher being or your own higher self. This ilm seems to embrace the last view but then harshly shows that the real world and the dream world are hardlycompatible.

Will this couple be able to sustain as a twosome in this waking, rational cold word? The strangeness of Stéphane and Stéphanie, gets highlighted in the strange changes of languages in the film (French/English/Spanish). The couple has equal names written in the male and female version: Stéphane means the crowned one Stéphanie means “she knows”. And even thogh they are so much alike and make a good couple, in that little difference lays the plot. See the trailer here. Do yourself a favor and watch this film. I would love to hear your impression of it.

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