Filmikaze!

By: Jason Matzner (director) and Tom Willett (writer)

Starring: Agnes Bruckner, Kelli Garner, Justin Long, John Corbett, Gina Gershon, Brian Klugman, Chris Mulkey

A young woman who lives in a desert trailer park must choose between caring for her hapless father and sick friend or fulfilling her own destiny.

I started watching Dreamland without any idea of what it was about; I had set it aside several days ago for the purpose of watching it today, but recalled nothing about why I made that particular choice aside from that it looked vaguely interested and featured Justin Long, who I generally enjoy.

Dreamland focuses on Audrey, a recent high school graduate living in a tiny desert trailer park the film is named for, and her internal struggle between what she’d like for herself and the devotion she carries for an alcoholic father who suffers from intense anxiety attacks anytime he leaves the park and a best friend with multiple sclerosis. While the film’s plot is clearly delineated by Audrey’s personal awakening, it is not plot-driven so much as a series of compelling vignettes stitched together to create a multi-layered story that manages to be both surreal and honest.

All of the characters in Dreamland are refreshingly well-rounded and immensely likeable despite their faults; these are characters who you could imagine knowing in real life, and they add a tangible weight to the otherwise dreamy setting. Watching the film, it was easy to believe that somewhere out there, there actually are genuinely good people living in the desert and being mostly content with what little they have and the blessing of each other’s company. The film’s only major fault was the tidy Hollywood ending, wherein everyone finds themselves and are able to move on into the proverbial sunset, but this is scarcely a unique scenario for any movie, and everything up until then makes it easy enough to forgive the heavy-handed “water in the desert” metaphor at the end.

The cinematography deserves special mention, each scene seeming lovingly framed without edging too close to “arty,” and awash with faded-out desert colors that contributed to that paradox of the familiar and otherworldly. All of the performances were steady and well-done, but Kelli Garner gets extra props for her portrayal of the enchanting Calista, a character who is seamlessly both strong and fragile.

Ultimately, Dreamland is one of those quiet gems of an indie feature: not perfect, but thoroughly engaging and the sort of movie you come out of terribly glad you took the time to watch.