Arizona Dream Bluray Review
Nearly 20 years before the overhyped dream-centric Inception, Emir Kusturica directed Johnny Depp in the surreal comic fantasy Arizona Dream. The film was produced by Claudie Ossard (Delicatessen/Amélie) and is typical of the kind of bizarre arthouse movies Depp used to appear in regularly before finding mainstream appeal as a Disney pirate.
The plot, such as it is, follows the dreamlike adventures of Axel Blackmar (Depp), a drifter who has taken on the shadowy job of tagging fish for the New York State Department of Fish and Game. His cousin, aspiring actor Paul Leger (Vincent Gallo), appears announcing that his uncle Leo (Jerry Lewis) plans to marry his Polish fiancée Millie (supermodel Paulina Porizkova), a girl more than half his age and that he wants Axel to be the best he can be. man; Axel reluctantly accompanies Paul back to his hometown in Arizona.
In his best role since playing a version of himself in Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy, Jerry Lewis stands out as Axel’s Uncle Leo; an infectiously optimistic successful Cadillac salesman and living testimonial to the “American Dream” paradoxically haunted by survivor’s guilt for causing the accident that killed Axel’s parents, he convinces him to stay after the wedding and try to sell cars.
Axel’s first potential clients are the eccentric widow Elaine Stalker (Faye Dunaway) and her suicidal stepdaughter Grace (Lili Taylor). His brash arrival piques the interest of both Axel and cousin Paul, whose gift of gab secures an invitation to dinner at Stalker’s house. That afternoon; Here, screenwriter David Watkins (Novocaine) delivers one of the most jaw-droppingly funny surprise scenes I’ve ever witnessed, and from here on out, I was totally hooked.
Axel embarks on an adventure with Elaine, and despite his wacky behavior and scant grasp of reality, this May-September romance is compelling and genuinely moving to watch, especially his attempts to build the flying machine with which she has always dreamed The film’s theme of dream-seeking versus reality is fully explored; Uncle Leo dreams of stacking Cadillacs high enough to reach the moon, Grace dreams of being reincarnated as a turtle, and Paul aspires to be a great actor by reenacting his favorite movie scenes, providing one of the rare scenes when he recreates the entire Crop duster sequence from Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest for a local talent show.
Kusturica is clearly a master cinematographer and manages to maintain a dreamlike feel throughout the film’s 142 minute length, it is consistently funny but also has a haunting mystical quality to it that makes it engaging and thankfully the release in French Blu-ray contains a DTS-HD. English 5.1 audio master track with forced subtitles only for excerpts from Raging Bull and The Godfather: Part II, full 1080p picture quality is superb and 20 minutes that were cut from the theatrical release have been fully restored.
Arizona Dream is impeccably acted, and while it’s obvious that the story and script have had an element of improvisation, they’re strong and stay true to their purpose of evoking the absurd and surreal quality of dreams, an element that’s totally missing from Inception. by Christopher Nolan, the same could be said for the laughs of which there are plenty here too, making it a must-watch for fans of Depp’s previous work.