The tantalizing trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Inception baits viewers with the ambiguous tagline “your mind is the scene of the crime”. A later trailer would clarify that its focal protagonist works as memory thief, going into the minds of individuals and stealing their ideas, but he has recently been assigned with implanting a memory (known as Inception). But Leonardo DiCaprio’s Agent Cobb is far from the only character whose cinematic journey has taken them through the farthest reaches of the mind. Here are five categories under which many of the most well-known and well-received dream-based films can be classified.

Dreaming Bouts:

What better way to see into the heart and mind of a character than to see what they are thinking, and what better way to see what they are thinking than to show their dreams or daydreams?  The critically acclaimed films Dancer in the Dark, Precious, and the sci-fi classic Brazil take intermissions from the depressing/mundane lives of their main characters to enliven them through the power of the imagination; as does the illustrious film-about-filmmaking 8 1/2. Other movies such as Shutter Island and Heavenly Creatures take similar detours to provide the audience with glimpses into the id. Daydreaming/Dreaming is obviously a frequent motif in comedies as well (ala Doug, Scrubs or the darkly humorous Six Feet Under) with American Beauty, The Girl Next Door and A Christmas Story making plentiful use of the introspective device.

Surrealism:

Un Chien Andalou, a pioneering film in the surrealism genre, is said to have been inspired by the dreams of surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Likewise, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona was supposedly based on an image the celebrated director witnessed of spinning overlapping faces while lying in a hospital bed “half dead” ailing from pneumonia (detailed in the Turner Classic Movies online database). Thus, the entirety of these may be interpreted as extended dream sequences without preface or epilogue. Similarly, other contributions in the genre could be regarded the same way – giving the dream-movie subgenre many adored features to add to its inventory. David Lynch takes spectators on dreamlike odyssey with Mulholland Dr. (reminiscent of his earlier abstract TV series Twin Peaks). Roman Polanski’s surrealist horror feature Repulsion set the groundwork for Lynch decades prior with his isolation tale that would serve as the first part of a thematic trilogy. Jacob’s Ladder, Videodrome, A Scanner Darkly and Waltz with Bashir also take pages from the formerly established surrealist model though – as seen with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – heavy surrealism (outside the fantasy genre) has a tendency to limit mass appeal.

Induced Dream State:

A surprising number of highly successful films have capitalized on the notion of the controlled sleep state. The Matrix and Abre Los Ojos (or “Open Your Eyes”, remade by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky) examine the concept of unawareness frequently associated with dreaming. Abre Los Ojos ultimately also touches on the idea of blissful ignorance amid the serenity of dreaming along with its counterpart of intended dreams becoming nightmares; two ideas also utilized in sci-fi/action hit Total Recall as well as critical darling Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In the horror realm, The Cell cinematically constructs (or deconstructs) the mind of a psychopath, and as with the others in the category it demonstrates the dangers of trying to control the freeform nature of dreams rather than surrendering to it as in surrealist cinema.

Dreaming or Not?

Vanilla Sky / Open Your Eyes and The Matrix bring to life some of the fears associated with not knowing whether one is dreaming or awake. But before both of them existed there was A Nightmare on Elm Street. Now on his ninth outing, Freddy Krueger has had teens and the occasional adult questioning their consciousness since the mid-80s. Fellow horror film In the Mouth of Madness followed suit in the mid-90s while some lighter takes on the subject have also been realized. The 2001 rotoscoping dream adventure Waking Life blurs the lines of differentiation between lucid dreaming and living within a dream. Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep treads the same territory of hazy delineation, injecting humor into the typically troublesome circumstance.

Dream Worlds:

Not to be confused with surrealism (though they are often surreal in their own way), films that create dream worlds often create their own set of rules to balance out the juxtaposition. This is made abundantly clear in the recent blockbuster Alice in Wonderland adaptation, though in most films situated in dreamscape setting those governing rules are much more subtle (such as in The Neverending Story, Mirrormask or Pan’s Labyrinth). Dreamscapes also regularly take shape through animation, as displayed in the acclaimed stop-motion-picture Coraline and Japanese Academy Award winner Spirited Away. Perhaps the most famous dreamscape to fill the silver screen is The Wizard of Oz, with its iconic it-was-all-a-dream conclusion. However, it is worthy of note that many fantasy features could perceived as dreamscape cinema, including Where the Wild Things Are and the Chronicles of Narnia franchise.

It has been said that dreams are the gateway to the imagination. If that is the case then films could be seen as a potential bridge to that gateway. Regardless, so long as dreaming is popular, dreams will continue to have a hand in the crafting of some of Hollywood’s most imaginative works.