Dream scenario, Kristoffer Borgli, 2023

The man of dreams is not the man of dreams. Nightmarish, violent and apocalyptic scenarios have as their sole protagonist Paul, professor and evolutionary biologist, common man, husband, father with an anonymous appearance. Paul begins to visit the dreams of many in an almost epidemic manner, without his knowledge. The side effects are unpredictable: from an explosive fame for having done literally nothing, to isolation due to the fear of people who cannot distinguish the fruit of their dreamlike imagination from the image of the real Paul in reality.

And again, the attention of the media, the sponsors and then the oblivion, the haters. Fame which, instead of becoming an opportunity, becomes ruin. A real life, that of Paul, destroyed by the dreams of others. Like Magritte's pipe which was not a pipe but the graphic representation of him, the Paul of dreams is not the anonymous and insignificant professor that everyone (not) knows, but the image of him generated by the minds of dreamers.

And after oblivion, Paul's patented experience becomes a technology that uses dreams to influence the needs of consumer-dreamers, a bit like that 'if you can dream you can do it' declined and interpreted badly, in a purely materialistic perspective and consumerism linked to trends, algorithms and 'influences' which in the same definition hide the infectious, viral and unhealthy character.

The scenario of Kristoffer Borgli's dream has the same reflective surface capacity as those black mirrors which, although virtual, have long been an offshoot and part of an augmented reality that goes beyond the tangible, so much so that the side effects are more than concrete: the wounds to prove it. Borgli's dream scenario is a waking nightmare that does not leave us indifferent because in some ways we are already in it with one foot. The way out is always and only in that free will which is the critical and discernment capacity that saves us from every artifice and every deception.

Dream Scenario is finally a film that does justice to an actor, Nicolas Cage, who over the years of his career has misinterpreted him because he has been misinterpreted and there is a lot of Paul in this.