Sometimes They Just Happen

Incredibly weird and specific dream. I was watching a movie that seemed to have been shot in Denmark, like a Lars von Trier attempt at one of those "realistic", family-based, slightly goofy tragicomedies of family dysfunction and revelation made by the other Dogme directors. Nicholas Cage had returned after years abroad for the funeral of his older brother (Mads Mikkelsen), to find the reading of the will presides over by the brother's dignified, gorgeous girlfriend, Kristin Scott Thomas. Also present was his insane father, Stellan Skarsgard, who was obsessed with Runic magic. It ensued that the reason Cage had left Denmark was because his father made he and his brother worship daily at the altar of a creepily accurate-looking wax boy-doll marked with the rune for "increase" (here called "teg", though I don't think that's even a rune). His brother told him it contained the bones of the third brother his father had sacrificed in order to make the doll "work", and Cage believed him. Later, when Cage and Scott Thomas had already sort of fallen in love, the father revealed that the reason he and Scott Thomas didn't get along was that Scott Thomas had been born male. Incensed, Cage broke the doll in front of his father, and the father had a stroke and died.

In the latter half of the dream, I found myself defending the film's choices to other people, including my Mom and various friends. Also talking about the "first" time I'd seen it, supposedly at the Toronto International Film Festival. My dreams usually don't come with casting attached, I've gotta say, so...yeah, interesting.