Caligula (1979)

AKA Caligola

Directed by
Tinto Brass

Writing credits
Gore Vidal

Caligula (Malcolm McDowell), the young heir to the throne of the syphilis-ridden, half-mad Emperor Tiberius (Peter O'Toole), thinks he has received a bad omen after a blackbird flies into his room early one morning. Shortly afterward, Macro (Guido Mannari), the head of the Praetorian Guards, appears to tell the young man that his great uncle (Tiberius) demands that he report at once to the Island of Capri, where he has been residing for a number of years with close friend Nerva (John Gielgud), Claudius (Giancaro Badessi), a dim-witted relative, and Caligula's younger stepbrother, Gemellus (Bruno Brive), Tiberius' favorite. Fearing assassination, Caligula is afraid to leave, but his beloved sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) convinces him to go.

At Capri, Caligula finds his uncle has become depraved, showing signs of advanced venereal diseases, and embittered with Rome and politics. Tiberius enjoys watching degrading sexual shows, often including children and various freaks of nature. Caligula observes with a mixture of fascination and horror. Tensions rise when Tiberius jokingly tries to poison Caligula in front of Gemellus. After Nerva commits suicide on the prospect of Caligula's rule, Tiberius collapses from a stroke, leaving Macro and Caligula planning a way to hasten the latter's ascent to the throne.

Late one night, Macro escorts all the spectators out of Tiberius' bedchamber to allow Caligula the opportunity to murder his uncle, but when he fails, Macro finishes the deed himself by strangling Tiberius with a scarf. Caligula triumphantly removes the imperial signet from Tiberius' finger and suddenly realizes that Gemellus has witnessed the murder. Tiberius is buried with honours and Caligula is proclaimed the new Emperor, who in turn proclaims Drusilla his equal, to the apparent disgust of the senate. Afterwards, Drusilla, fearful of Macro's influence, convinces Caligula to get rid of him. Caligula obliges by setting up a mock trial, in which Gemellus is intimidated into testifying that Macro alone murdered Tiberius. With the powerful Macro gone, Caligula appoints Tiberius's former adviser Longinus (John Steiner) as his right-hand man, and pronounces the docile Senator Chaerea (Paolo Bonacelli) as the new head of the Praetorian Guard. Drusilla endeavours to find Caligula a wife amongst the priestesses of the goddess Isis, the mystery cult they secretly practice. Caligula only wants to marry Drusilla, but when she refuses because she is actually his sister, he spitefully marries Caesonia (Helen Mirren), a known courtesan, but only after she bears him an heir.

Caligula proves to be a popular, yet eccentric ruler, cutting taxes and overturning all the oppressive laws that Tiberius enacted. The senate begins to dislike the young emperor for his eccentricities and various insults directed towards them. Darker aspects of his personality begin to emerge as well; he rapes a bride and groom on their wedding day because of a minor fit of jealousy and orders the execution of Gemellus merely to provoke a reaction from Drusilla.

After he discovers Caesonia is pregnant, Caligula suffers severe fever, but Drusilla nurses him back to health. Right after he fully recovers, Caesonia bears Caligula a daughter, Julia Drusilla, and Caligula marries her on the spot. During the celebration, Drusilla collapses in Caligula's arms from the same fever he'd suffered. Soon afterwards, Caligula receives another ill omen in the guise of a black bird. He rushes to Drusilla's side and watches her die. Caligula experiences a nervous breakdown, he smashes a statue of Isis and drags Drusilla's body around the palace while screaming hysterically. Now in a deep depression, Caligula walks the Roman streets, disguised as a beggar. After a brief stay in a city jail, Caligula becomes determined to destroy the senatorial class, which he has come to loathe. His reign becomes a series of humiliations against the foundations of Rome; senators' wives are forced to work in the service of the state as prostitutes, estates are confiscated, the old religion is desecrated, and he initiates an absurd war on Britain to humiliate the army. It is obvious to the senators and the military that Caligula must be assassinated, and Longinus conspires with Chaerea to carry out the deed.

Caligula wanders into his bedroom where a nervous Caesonia awaits him. The blackbird makes a final appearance, but only Caesonia is frightened of it. The next morning, after rehearsing an Egyptian play, Caligula and his family are attacked as they leave the stadium in a coup headed by Chaerea. His wife and daughter are brutally murdered and Chaerea himself stabs Caligula in the stomach, to which he defiantly whimpers "I live!"

As Caligula and his family's bodies are thrown down the marble steps and their blood is washed off the marble floor, Claudius is proclaimed the new Emperor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/

Begotten (1990)

Directed by
E. Elias Merhige

Written by
E. Elias Merhige

The story opens with a robed, profusely bleeding "God" disemboweling himself, with the act ultimately ending in his death. A woman, Mother Earth, emerges from his remains, arouses the body, and impregnates herself with his semen. Becoming pregnant, she wanders off into a vast and barren landscape. The pregnancy manifests in a fully grown convulsing man whom she leaves to his own devices. The "Son of Earth" meets a group of faceless nomads who seize him with what is either a very long umbilical cord or a rope. The Son of Earth vomits organic pieces, and the nomads excitedly accept these as gifts. The nomads finally bring the man to a fire and burn him. "Mother Earth" encounters the resurrected man and comforts him. She seizes the man with a similar umbilical cord. The nomads appear and proceed to rape her. Son of Earth is left to mourn over the lifeless body. A group of characters appears, carry her off and dismember her, later returning for Son of Earth. After he, too, is dismembered, the group buries the remains, planting the parts into the crust of the earth. The burial site becomes lush with flowers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101420/

Gummo (1997)

Directed by
Harmony Korine

Written by
Harmony Korine

 

The film is set in Xenia, Ohio, a small town hit by a tornado in 1974, although it was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee. The film portrays Xenia as the home of various oddball and somewhat disturbing backwater characters. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other denizens of the town.

The film opens with a grainy voiced narrator recounting the events of the tornado while disturbing home-movie images play — mostly of the town's people. Following the narration, the credits roll over a montage of an adolescent boy, known as Bunny Boy, wearing only pink bunny ears, shorts and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain.

The next scene opens with a cat being carried by the scruff of its neck by a teenage boy. He drowns the cat in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with the same boy Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts.

Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. The narrator introduces Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona", whom some people call "downright evil". Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. His friend Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a house cat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters, two of whom are teenagers and one who is pre-pubescent.

The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon, who are hunting feral cats. They bring the cats to a local grocer, who intends to butcher and sell them to a local restaurant, and the grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat killing business. They then buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing.

The film then cuts to a scene in which two young boys dressed as cowboys curse and destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys shoot him "dead" with cap guns. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored of this and leave him sprawled on the ground.

Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley is poisoning the cats rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find photos of the young teen in drag and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic and attached to life support machinery. The poacher Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting." Tummler's original intention was to hurt the poacher for killing the cats that they were killing for profit but he was not home. He then discovers the grandmother laying in her bed, opines that it is, "no way to live," and turns off the life support machine.

A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man (played by Harmony Korine) flirting with a gay dwarf; a man pimping his Down Syndrome afflicted sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering a child molester; a pair of twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADD; a long scene of Solomon eating dinner while taking a bath in brown water; a drunken party with arm- and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. A number of even smaller scenes depicting satanic rituals, racist conversations, and some disturbing hygiene round out the film.

The final scene in the movie is set to the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older brother would sing (the brother eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). The final scene involves Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain with jump cuts to Bunny Boy kissing the teenage girls in a swimming pool. The film ends with Bunny Boy running towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he displays prominently.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119237/

The Piano Teacher (2001)

AKA La pianiste


Directed by
Michael Haneke

Writing credits
Michael Haneke
Elfriede Jelinek (novel)

Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although already in her forties, she still lives in an apartment with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot); her father is a long-standing resident in a lunatic asylum.

The audience is gradually shown truths about Erika's private life. Behind her assured façade, she is a woman whose sexual repression verges into full-fledged desperation and is manifested in a long list of paraphilias, including (but by no means limited to) voyeurism and sadomasochistic fetishes such as sexual self-mutilation.

When Erika meets Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), a charming 17-year-old engineering student from a bourgeois background, a mutual obsession develops. Even though she initially attempts to prevent consistent contact and even tries to undermine his application to the conservatory, he eventually becomes her pupil. Like her, he appreciates and is a gifted interpreter of Schumann and Schubert.

Erika destroys the musical prospects of an insecure but talented girl, Anna Schober, driven by her jealousy of the girl's contact with Walter — and also, perhaps, by her fears that Anna's life will mirror her own. She does so by hiding shards of glass inside one of Anna's coat pockets, damaging her right hand and ruining her aspirations to play at the forthcoming jubilee concert. Erika then pretends to be sympathetic when the girl's mother (Susanne Lothar) asks for advice on her daughter's recuperation. (The sub-plot of the pupil and her mother, mirroring the main relationship in the film, is absent in Jelinek's novel.) In a moment of dramatic irony, the girl's mother rhetorically asks Erika who could do something so evil.

Walter is increasingly insistent in his desire to start a relationship with Erika, but when she finally acquiesces, he is unwilling to indulge her violent fantasies, which repulse him. The film climaxes, however, when he attacks her in her apartment in the fashion she let him know she desired, beating and then raping her. She discovers that the reality of her desires does not match her conception of them.

Erika takes a kitchen knife to a concert in which she is supposed to fill in for the injured Anna. She meets Anna and Anna's mother, and Walter, in the foyer of the concert hall. Minutes before the concert is due to start, Erika stabs herself in the shoulder and leaves the foyer. Her onscreen injury is not especially severe, but the implication is that further self-harm will ensue.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254686/

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

AKA Såsom i en spegel

Director:
Ingmar Bergman

Writer:
Ingmar Bergman

The story takes place during a twenty-four hour period while four family members vacation on a remote island, shortly after one of them, Karin (Harriet Andersson), who suffers from schizophrenia, was released from an asylum. Karin's husband Martin (Max von Sydow) tells her and Minus's father, David, that Karin's disease is almost incurable. Meanwhile, Minus tells Karin that he wishes he could have a real conversation with his father, and cries because he feels deprived of his father's affection. David (Gunnar Björnstrand) is a second-rate novelist who has just returned from a long trip abroad. He announces he will leave again in a month, though he promised he would stay. The others are upset, and David gives them bad, last-minute presents. He leaves them and sobs alone for a moment. When he returns, the others cheerfully announce that they too have a "surprise" for David; they perform a play for him that Minus has written. David takes offense (although approving on the outside) at the play, which can be interpreted as an attack on his character.

That night, after rejecting Martin’s erotic overtures, Karin wakes up and follows the sound of a foghorn to the attic. She faints after an episode in which she hears voices behind the peeling wallpaper. David, meanwhile, has stayed up all night working on his manuscript. Karin enters his room and tells him she can't sleep, and David tucks her in. Minus asks David to come with him out of the house, and David leaves. Karin looks through David's desk and finds his diary, learning that her disease is incurable and that her father has a callous hunger to record the details of her life.

The following morning, David and Martin, while fishing, confront each other over Karin. Martin accuses David of sacrificing his daughter for his art, and of being a self-absorbed, callous, cowardly phony. David is evasive, but admits that much of what Martin says is true. David says that he recently tried to kill himself by driving over a cliff, but was saved by a faulty transmission. He says that after that, he discovered that he loves Karin, Minus and Martin, and this gives him hope.

Meanwhile, Karin tells Minus about her episodes, and that she is waiting for God to appear behind the wallpaper in the attic. Karin has repeatedly teased Minus sexually, in a subtle way, and Minus is somewhat sexually frustrated. When Karin sees that a storm is coming, she runs into a wrecked ship and huddles in fear. Minus goes to her and she grabs him. There are strong hints that they have sex, but it is unclear whether they do. Given the hints in the movie, it is possible that Minus is homosexual.

Minus tells the other men about the incident in the ship and Martin calls for an ambulance. Karin asks to speak with her father alone. She confesses her misconduct toward Martin and Minus, saying that a voice told her to act that way and also to search David's desk. She tells David she would like to remain at the hospital, because she cannot go back and forth between two realities—she must choose one. While they are packing to go to the hospital, she runs to the attic, where Martin and David observe her actions. She says that God is about to walk out of the closet door, and asks her husband to allow her to enjoy the moment. The ambulance, a helicopter, flies by the window, making a lot of noise and shaking the door open. Karin moves toward the door eagerly, but then she runs from it, terrified, and goes into a frenzy of panic. Karin vanishes, and, reappearing in a frenzy, is sedated. When she stands, she tells them of God: a stone-faced spider who tried to penetrate her. She looked into God's eyes, and they were "cool and calm," and when God failed to penetrate her he retreated onto the wall. "I have seen God," she announces.

Karin and Martin leave in the helicopter. Minus tells his father that he is afraid, because when Karin had grabbed him in the ship, he began leaving ordinary reality. He asks his father if he can survive that way. David tells him he can if he has "something to hold on to." He tells Minus of his own hope: love. David and his son discuss the concept of love as it relates to God, and the factor of human father-child relationships in the perception of God, in the stretching final chapter of the film. Minus seems relieved, and is tearfully happy that he finally had a real conversation with his father: "Father spoke to me."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055499/

Kids (1995)

Directed by
Larry Clark

Writing credits
Larry Clark

Harmony Korine

Seventeen-year-old Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) and an unnamed 12-year-old girl (Sarah Henderson) are kissing. Telly convinces the girl, who is a virgin, to have sex with him. Afterwards, he meets his friend, Casper (Justin Pierce). Telly tells Casper about his sexual experience in graphic terms. They go inside a local store, and Casper shoplifts a bottle of malt liquor as Telly distracts the cashier. They then steal a peach, using the same set-up just outside the store from a sidewalk display. Looking for drugs and food, they head to their friend Paul's apartment, though they express dislike of him on the way there. They arrive at Paul's house, talk about sex and smoke marijuana while watching a skate video (Video Days) (Casper inhales nitrous oxide out of balloons, which Telly considers dangerous). The scene intercuts with a group of girls, among them Ruby (Rosario Dawson) and Jenny (Chloë Sevigny), talking about sex and smoke--each gender contradicting what the other gender says, especially about oral sex.

Ruby and Jenny mention that they were recently tested for STDs at Ruby's request. Ruby's test is negative, though she has had multiple sexual encounters, many of them unprotected. Jenny tests positive for HIV. She says she has had sex only once, with Telly. Jenny spends the rest of the film trying to find Telly, who has taken to only having sex with virgins on the premise that he cannot get STDs this way. Telly and Casper walk to Telly's house and steal money from Telly's mother. They go to Washington Square Park and buy a "dime bag" of marijuana from a Rastafarian. They then meet up with a few friends, one of whom gives a blunt-rolling tutorial, to talk and smoke. Casper rides on a skateboard and carelessly bumps into a man (Ellsworth "Cisco" Davis), who furiously threatens him. He pushes Casper, but is struck in the back of the head with a skateboard by Harold (Harold Hunter), a friend of Telly and Casper's, causing him to collapse. A number of other skaters join in, beating, stomping, and hitting the man with skateboards, until he is unconscious.

Telly and some of the group from the park pick up a 13-year-old girl named Darcy (Yakira Peguero) while discussing whether or not they killed the man at the park. She is the younger sister of an acquaintance and Telly wants to have sex with her because she is a virgin. He convinces her to go with them to a pool. The other girls engage in pseudo-lesbian kissing and flirtation, but Darcy is restrained, though not shocked by the others' behavior. Telly and the group go to another friend, Steven's, house to smoke, drink and talk about sex. Meanwhile, Jenny goes to a rave club called NASA trying to find Telly. She runs into "Fidget" (Harmony Korine), who gives her a pill: which he refers to as "a euphoric blockbuster drug that is supposed to make 'special K' look weak". It turns out to be a depressant (a downer). She eventually finds out that Telly is at what has become a party at Steven's house.

Jenny arrives at the party to discover Telly having sex with Darcy, thus exposing her to HIV. Exhausted by her ordeal and with the drugs still affecting her, Jenny passes out on a couch among the other sleeping party-goers. A drunken Casper proceeds to rape Jenny as she sleeps, unknowingly exposing himself to HIV as well. The film ends with a soliloquy by Telly about how without sex he would have nothing to live for, as well as a poignant look at several early-morning junkies in the streets of New York. The final scene features a naked Casper looking at the camera and saying "Jesus Christ, what happened?"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113540/

The Seventh Seal (1957)

AKA Det sjunde inseglet

Director:
Ingmar Bergman

Writers:
Ingmar Bergman

Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a knight, returns disillusioned, with his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand), from a Crusade and finds that his home country of Sweden is being ravaged by the plague. To his dismay, Death (Bengt Ekerot) has come for him, as well. He challenges Death to a chess match. Death agrees to the terms: as long as Block resists, he lives. If he wins, he shall go free.
The iconic scene of Death and Antonius Block in a chess game

Master and squire ride across a mossy heath beyond which the sea lies shimmering in the white glitter of the sun. Jöns seeks directions from a man who appears to be sleeping, but is actually dead. An actor, Jof, is shown sleeping in a wagon with his wife, Mia (who is also an actress), their son, Mikael and their manager, Skat. He wakes, ventures outside alone, and sees a vision of the Virgin Mary amongst the wind in the trees; however, when he tells his wife of this encounter, she appears not to believe him.

The knight and squire enter a grey stone church in a strange white mist where a fresco of the Dance of Death is being painted. Jöns discusses the plague with the painter, then draws a small figure to represent himself. "This is squire Jöns. He grins at Death, mocks the Lord, laughs at himself and leers at the girls. His world is a Jöns-world, believable only to himself, ridiculous to all including himself, meaningless to Heaven and of no interest to Hell." The knight Block approaches a priest in the confessional booth: "My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning. I feel no bitterness or self-reproach because the lives of most people are very much like this. But I will use my reprieve for one meaningful deed." He goes on to confess his doubts about the existence of God, and, by consequence, his fear that life is ultimately pointless. The knight tells the priest that he is playing chess with Death and reveals his strategy, only to find that the priest is Death, hidden in the shadows. Upon exiting the church, Block sees a girl in chains who has been condemned for being a witch in league with the devil and is to be taken away and burnt at the stake. He asks her if she is really familiar with the Devil, but she does not answer.

Shortly thereafter, Jöns walks into an abandoned farm looking for water, where he saves a servant girl (Gunnel Lindblom) from being raped by a robber. He recognises the robber as Raval, a theologian (Dr Mirabilis, Coelestis et Diabilis) who ten years ago had convinced the knight, his master, to leave the wife he loved and join "a better-class crusade to the Holy Land." Jöns threatens to brand Raval on the face if he catches him again. Shaken, the girl agrees to come along with Jöns as his house keeper. Block and Jöns ride into town, where Jof and Mia are performing in front of a crowd, although their performance is interrupted by the arrival of a group of flagellants. In the confusion, Skat comes across a woman from the village, and is persuaded to run off with her.

Later, at a public house, Jof comes across Raval and Plog, a blacksmith, who is grieving because his wife had recently left him for an actor (later revealed to have been Skat). Knowing that Jof is an actor, Raval accuses him of being the one, and attempts to humiliate the innocent performer by forcing him to dance on the tables like a bear. However, Jöns appears and stays true to his word, dealing a rough justice by cutting Raval with a knife from forehead to cheek. Jöns then consoles Plog, and convinces the smith to come along with him.

The knight and Death continue their game, but Block sees the evening light move across a wagon to the actress Mia and her little child. He walks over. She tells him that the actor Skat has run off and left them and that they plan to visit the saint's feast at Elsinore. He warns them against this as "the plague has spread in that direction...people are dying by the tens of thousands." When Mia's husband Jof returns, the knight finds solace in a quiet, pleasant picnic of milk and wild strawberries with the family. Antonius Block explains how much he loved his own wife before he left her for the Crusades. He also shares with Mia his ongoing burden, the burden of faith, which he describes as loving someone in the dark who never comes. However, it is the simple and harmonious moments like this in which he states he is able to find comfort and which he wishes to remember: "I'll carry this memory between my hands as if it were bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk...And it will be an adequate sign-it will be enough for me." He invites them to his castle, where they will be safe from the plague.

Block, Mia, Jof, Mikael, Jöns and Plog head through the forest, and along the way they come across Skat and Lisa (Plog's wife). After being threatened by an enraged Plog, Lisa quickly leaves Skat and returns to him. Skat then stabs himself to avoid receiving the brunt of Plog's wrath. Shaken by the actor's sudden suicide, the group moves on; once they have gone, Skat sits up, unharmed, having faked the stabbing with a trick knife.

Death finds the missing actor Skat hiding up a tree and begins sawing it down. Skat protests but Death insists his time is up. "No, I have my performance", says Skat. "Then it's been cancelled because of death", is the reply. "Aren't there any special rules for actors?" "No, not in this case."
The final scene depicting "dance of death".

They next come across the young girl from the church, who had been declared a witch. The Knight demands of the monk: "What have you done with the child?" Jöns' conscience is sympathetic to the girl and he contemplates killing her executioners, but decides against it as she is almost dead anyway. Block asks her again to summon Satan for him; he wants to ask the Devil about God. The girl, in a state that Block describes as her "terror", claims already to have done so, but Block (and the audience) cannot see him. He gives her an herb which he says will take away her pain, and then leaves, his dilemma unanswered.

The robber Raval that Jöns branded later appears dying of the plague, pleading for water. The mute servant girl attempts to bring him some, but is stopped by Jöns, who exclaims, "It's meaningless. Can't you hear that I'm consoling you?" The robber then dies. Jof, the actor tells his wife Mia that he can see the Knight playing chess with Death and decides to immediately escape with his family.

Antonius Block pretends to be clumsy and knocks the chess pieces over, distracting Death long enough for the family of actors he has befriended to slip away. Once the pieces have been replaced on the board, Death then places the knight in checkmate, winning the game, and announces that when they meet again Block's time—and the time of all those still travelling with him—will be up. Before departing, Death asks if Block has accomplished his one "meaningful deed" yet; Block replies that he has. The knight is reunited with his wife at his castle, she having waited there alone for him. The party shares one "last supper" before Death comes for them through the twilight of the "large, murky room where the burning torches throw uneasy shadows over the ceiling and walls." At the final moment, Block pleads to God: "Have mercy on us, because we are small and frightened and ignorant." Jöns's girl, on her knees, smiles and announces, "It is finished."

Meanwhile, the little family of actors and jugglers have endured a strange light and roar in the forest which the father, Jof, interprets to be "the Angel of Death and he's very big." They now awaken listening to the rain tapping on the wagon canvas and crawl out, noticing "the dark retreating sky where summer lightning glitters like silver needles" over the ridges, forests, wide plains and sea. Jof, with his second sight, sees a vision of the knight and his followers being led away over the hills in a solemn dance of death. "They dance away from the dawn and it's a solemn dance towards the dark lands, while the rain washes...and cleans the salt of their tears from their cheeks." His wife, Mia, turns to him and says "You with your visions and dreams."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/