THE STORY – In an Armenia after war, yet before peace, an itinerant well-digger is mistaken for an enemy and killed by villagers. Wanting to withhold the news from their daughter Claudette, the victim’s family requests a haggard soldier named Atom to take Claudette away on a road trip until the funeral is over. On the road, as Atom and Claudette find themselves increasingly drawn to each other’s mysteries, their journey turns into an intimate drift through the scarred spaces of a war-torn country.
THE CAST – Veronika Poghosyan & Davit Beybutyan
THE TEAM – Christine Haroutounian (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
Within its first few seconds, “After Dreaming” tells you exactly what kind of movie it’s going to be. The opening shot lingers on the obtuse image of a white horse submerged in water. As the film will soon show to be a habit, it doesn’t leave this practically static image when most films would cut. With a title like “After Dreaming,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Christine Haroutounian’s film departs from typical logic, time, and space. But too often, the film seems to revel in abstraction for the sake of abstraction, practically prodding the audience to try not to feel frustrated, mystified, or stumped with what it presents and why. Despite some truly gorgeous imagery shot in stunning fashion, “After Dreaming” floats so far away from the structure as to feel pointless.
Set in Armenia, the film focuses on a pair brought together by misfortune. Atom (Davit Beybutyan) is a young soldier hired by the family of Claudette (Veronika Poghosyan), whose father has recently been killed. Atom is tasked with driving Claudette away while the family can finish the funereal processes without Claudette learning of her father’s death.
This may seem like the start of the type of road trip adventure that has been a mainstay in film for as long as cars have been widely available. Not so. It’s as if the pair is driving into an upended mirror world that operates outside of known logic despite taking place in a very real location. Indeed, their journey calls to mind that of Orpheus and Eurydice into the underworld, where their understanding of existence is corrupted away from them. And so is the audience’s grasp on what is happening and why.
To visually underline the displaced, untethered overarching feeling of the film, Haroutounian’s camera makes great use of varying focus. At times, it even appears as if the lens has been smudged, giving the images a distorted feeling of unreality. The way Evgeny Rodin’s cinematography calls attention to itself gives a sense of dissociation to the story being presented to viewers as if Haroutounian never wants audiences to feel that what they’re watching is in any way an accurate representation of our world. This use of cinematic form to constantly remind audiences of the film’s falsehoods is, without a doubt, the greatest accomplishment of “After Dreaming.”
The two central performers – both of whom are making their film debuts – also do a lot of heavy lifting to keep the film even somewhat engaging. Beybutyan is an intimidating presence, leaning into an aggressive indifference that’s also somehow magnetic. Poghosyan creates a guileless character who never manages to be frustrating in her naïveté.
Later in the film, a pivotal wedding takes place, leading to a dialogue-free performance by the wedding band of instrumentalists that lasts for more than 15 minutes, mostly shot in one long, continuous take. Incredibly, this is both the high point of the film (the music itself is exciting and well-performed) and also represents all that makes it such a tiring experience. “After Dreaming” breaks away from the expectations of cinematic art to tell a story that’s more about feeling than narrative. And much like a dream, despite its aesthetic and sensory delights, it ultimately feels fleeting and weightless.
