Five great films about the fine line between reality and fantasy
When life gets too much, where can we go? With jobs to attend to and responsibilities we can’t avoid, sometimes a holiday or literally running away is out of the question. The next best place to go can only be inside your mind, where one can retreat into imagined worlds where anything is possible. Many filmmakers have explored this idea, but it’s not something that always plays out as smoothly as we might hope.
While certain films show how mental escape through fantasy and dreams can have positive effects, for many characters, this drives them to the extreme and results in their downfall. If we’re not careful, we can get all consumed and obsessed with a reality and idea that does not exist, resulting in crossed wires and sometimes even tragedy.
Films about imagination versus reality have often been found in cinema, from movies like Sunset Boulevard to Fight Club. Yet, this list will explore the films that capture this blurred line with such abstraction or power that they truly leave audiences questioning the meaning of life. Is escape through fantasy a good thing? Or will this only lead to disaster?
From David Lynch’s famously confusing Mulholland Drive to Alain Robbe-Grillet’s hallucinatory dreamworld Eden and After, here are five great movies that truly blur the lines between reality and fantasy.
Five great films about the fine line between reality and fantasy:
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
Sometimes, the choice to escape our living nightmares by entering a world of fantasy proves unsustainable. In Mulholland Drive, Diane’s dreamworld morphs into a nightmare as the guilt of her actions eats her up, and soon, David Lynch makes it hard for us to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not. There are many terrifying moments as the reality of Diane’s tragic decision peaks through the fabric of her dreamworld, in turn warning the viewer of the dangers of relying too much on fantasy and avoiding the truth.
The film is a stunning depiction of the fine line between reality and fantasy, with gorgeous imagery and impressive performances from Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. It’s a Lynchian masterpiece – of course dreams play a major factor. It also serves as commentary on the American Dream, suggesting that the idea sold to many is far-removed from the reality that most Americans find themselves in.
Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970)
Coming-of-age isn’t easy, but when you’re suddenly thrust into the adult world before you’ve fully navigated adolescence, things can only go wrong. This is the case for Mike in Deep End, the 15-year-old school dropout who takes a job as a swimming bath attendant, only to find himself intensely attracted to his colleague, the 20-something-year-old Susan. While she enjoys flirting with men for fun despite having a fiance, Mike soon falls under her spell and gets wrapped up in obsession.
His preoccupation with Sue results in him running around the streets of London to the sound of Can’s ‘Mother Sky’ as he attempts to see her before stealing a nude cutout of a woman that resembles her. He doesn’t know if it’s really her or not, and he can’t drop his infatuation, which soon turns tragic. When he’s in the pool holding onto her cutout, we can see how deep his dream world runs, and violence and passion soon blur his distinctions between reality and fantasy.
Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024)
When you feel misunderstood and neglected, the quickest way to escape these feelings is to resort to the vivid world of your imagination. For 12-year-old Bailey, the protagonist of Andrea Arnold’s Bird, her broken home life and lack of security results in her meetings with a strange man named Bird. He appears seemingly out of nowhere, often standing on the top of buildings like one of the angels from Wings of Desire, looking down with a watchful eye.
We soon realise that Bird is someone extraordinary, with Arnold stepping into the world of magical realism for the first time. Whether he is just a figment of Bailey’s imagination is complicated by the fact that other characters interact with him, but that’s not the point. He provides a sense of solace and understanding for Bailey, proving that sometimes having something fantastical to escape pain with – something that reminds us that there is more to life than this – isn’t always a bad thing.
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
Natalie Portman won an Oscar for her performance in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, which saw her embody both the innocent and insecure white swan side of her character, Nina, and the more violent and competitive black swan. The light and dark of her character should form a balanced image, but instead, both exist in extremes, with Nina’s life unravelling as she tries to become the most perfect ballerina fit for the leading role.
Nina has been subjected to infantile treatment by her mother, resulting in her naive and quiet nature, but when her obsession with becoming the best reaches boiling point, she finds herself unable to separate her reality from a living nightmare. Sex, murder, peeling skin, demonic eyes, and other gruesome images blend into Nina’s chaotic experience of perfection, confusing both herself and the audience.
Eden and After (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1970)
In Alain Robbe-Grillet’s cinematic world, it is hard to know what is real, what is imagined, and what the filmmaker possibly intended when he made certain daring artistic decisions. His film Eden and After takes this to the extreme, forcing us to decipher where reality and fantasy start and end through psychosexual imagery and constant fabrication. People die, only to return unscathed, and events happen that we can’t be quite sure are real or not.
It’s a fever dream of a film, with violence, eroticism, and gorgeous cinematography coming together to create a powerful slice of experimental filmmaking. The main character, Violette, hints to the fact that everything we see in the film could just be a dream. In that case, we are left wondering which moment was the blurring of reality or if there was any at all. Is there even a concrete distinction that can be made between the real world and fantasy?
