nascent
I'm glad that the publisher finally decided to release a Region 2. It's bizarre to me that it took until 2012 for a DVD release, and I hope it doesn't take another 10 for a bluray.I saw this film on Sky around 10 years ago, at around 4/5am during my insomniac period, which of course is very fitting for this film. The way it played on the psychology of sleeplessness, and the way that fantasy (and therefore horror) and the loneliness of existing during a time where you feel most detached, was very well orchestrated. It's a simple film, and probably doesn't help explain the condition to those not fully aware of what it's like not to sleep for an extended period of time, but I feel that this movie was made for insomniacs. This is my favourite Jeff Bridges role, and I am looking forward to watching the director's upcoming works.For those that enjoy this movie I recommended the following films: Bringing Out The Dead, Cash Back, The Machinist, Insomnia, Fight Club, Donnie Darko.
elshikh4
Although (Chasing Sleep – 2000) is less commercial than Christopher Nolan's (Insomnia – 2002), another movie about a sleepless lead, but (Chasing..) says more.Purposely it doesn't answer "did the lead kill his wife, or not ?". Because it shows all the time that he already killed her, several times, by his failure and incapacity to provide a decent life. It relates this with his being as the poet who didn't achieve a prestige or stature in society (poetry doesn't pay the bills; as he says sarcastically), and since he couldn't succeed materially in a material world, he got himself into a cocoon, became silent, and lost his wife as long as she lost everything in him. That lead killed himself when he stopped fighting his reality and got defeated by his circumstances, so his creativeness discontinued as a poet, lover, then human being. And losing his love, by that surrender, was something unquestionable. He killed her, metaphorically, when he forced her to leave him, and cheat on him, while her noticing that she became beaten as him (I became fat; as the diary tells smartly). Which makes killing her, actually, something trivial, or integral at best. And even if it never happened, the lead is gone, being a prisoner of his tormenting world and violent helplessness (his remaining in the flat wasn't for granted). I liked that the blame gets also the logic of the world around him; see well how the university is shown through the secretary as a senseless obnoxious business firm that despises the artist.This movie is nothing but a long and painful qualm's moment in form of successive nightmarish daydreams for a man who lost the gift of being alive. It's unique and effective plot to demonstrate the turning of the human into a killer of himself, then consequently of others. The script expressed the tragic nature in its own different way. The overlapping of the dream, the awakening, the nightmarish daydream together embodied the lead's unbalanced condition, while being vague and intellectually exciting (we didn't know till the very end was the sheriff's phone call about the assurance of the wife's murder, or the psychiatrist, are true or just other hallucinations ?). A moving finger, the lead kills a devilish kid / his incapacity's future, etc.. are suitable images to picture the lead's insanity. The lead views, read : reviews, his story through alleged neighbors; as he judges himself while being afraid of confronting the truth. The disposing of the torn-off limbs in the bathroom, the pipes' explosion, the basement's sinking; all informed visually that the lead is like a sinking flat himself, these pipes are what he lives of suppression (for his anger and regret), and the bathroom, as a place to purge, just expels his persevering tries to get rid of his crime. Then finally, that hole in the ceiling, it's a proof of incompleteness or deformation in his wife / love / conscience. Discovering killing the wife at the end doesn't parallel the appearance of that scary hole in the middle of the dreamy blue sky, in the wife's room, for no reason. It's an evidence that the pure area in the main character got a damage, and all of that wonderful ingenuity wasn't in anywhere but his head, so that's why he used to see that hole in his room only.Well, everything was beautifully ugly, enjoyably dark; namely perfect for the subject matter. Except few points on their top is no small one : Jeff Daniels. On one hand he was extremely cold, as if he has no background to perform such a character, or no ability to invest his tools to make us watch that dead who's so worried in his grave, living watchful asleep and tortured all at once. And on the other, he lacks the charisma, which sure made undertone, yet felt, bore; especially in a one-man-show like this. Aside from looking repellent the always-yellow cinematography dyed the whole movie with one constant color; which is another factor of bore. And the scene of the lead's mother, in which she damns him from her deathbed, seemed strange, as if a lousy trick to get out of the home's set for once. OK, this is a daring independent cinema which didn't incline to stupid subjectivity. Instead it showed a sophisticated issue in a simple way. And it carried out being a mystery, sometimes horror, movie with the psychological analyzing and the painful meaning as well. Still its big problem is the casting of its lead actor. Daniels – sorrowfully – wasn't up to anything this movie has.
Angus
Just one meaningless, inscrutable scene after another. I was quite confident that it would all come together in the end, which is why I was looking forward to its conclusion. There are several ways to interpret everything that was seen (almost none of which may have actually happened) but I wasn't able to come up with anything harmonious. So my consternation spiked when all I saw was a dark hole, and the credits rolled.The main character has a lot of episodes which are clearly delusions, but then there are many rational-looking scenes some of which are contradicted by other rational-looking scenes.Anyone who likes this movie cannot care one toss about the plot, since in the end, the only thing we can be sure of is that Jeff Daniels thinks therefore he is.
richard_sleboe
If you can't sleep, you might as well watch a movie. If you make that movie "Chasing Sleep", you might even learn a thing a thing or two: (1) Don't skip class. Especially not if you're the professor. It'll be held against you. (2) Don't pick up the phone. Chances are it'll be trouble. (3) Don't go to the basement. Or the bathroom. There be demons. (4) Get the plumbing fixed before it's too late. And whatever it is, don't just flush it down. It's gonna come back up. (5) Don't trust pretty strangers who bring you soup. They have ulterior motives. And don't pretend we didn't warn you. (6) Don't trust your friends. They're not your friends. (7) Don't trust yourself. You're unreliable. - Finally, and most importantly, don't watch this movie alone at home at night.
