Amy Hardie’s The Edge Of Dreaming

THE EDGE OF DREAMING (DVD)
Cinefile 

Release date: March 21st 2011
Certificate (UK): E
Running time: 73 minutes

Director: Amy Hardie

Cast: Amy Hardie, Peter Kravitz

Have you ever had a dream that’s more like a premonition? It happens to me once sometimes; I’ll dream of an earthquake or plane crash and the next morning I’ll wake to news of it. Or smaller things like hearing a song on the radio or running into an old friend I haven’t seen in years.

Dreams can be like that and if you’re a lucid dreamer you come to accept that for the amount of things you dream during a regular 8 hour session, there’ll be at least one thing you tap into which will occur at some point in your daily life the next day. Cast a net wide enough and you’ll catch enough fish, is one of my father’s sayings.

Scottish filmmaker Amy Hardie is usually a rationalist and sceptic. She specialises in science documentaries but one night a dream set in motion a series of events which would inspire this documentary.

Amy dreamt of her horse, George, dying. Woken with fear, she went to check on him and found him dead. Some time later she dreams of her late partner Arthur, coming to warn her that she would die before she reached 49. The dream came as a shock to her as she was nearing her 48th birthday.

Convinced that she is about to die, Amy decides to share her fears with her husband, Peter and discusses the idea of impending death with their three children Lotte, Eli and Nell and her sister. For the next year, they live in fear of the dream coming true, especially when Amy is rushed to hospital with breathing problems.

It’s a very tricky thing when a filmmaker decides to become the object of a film, especially a documentary. In The Edge Of Edge Dreaming, which is very well shot and edited, Amy is at the forefront as we explore how much weight she has given to her dreams. Contrasting opinions are dismissed, even those of her own daughter and family members fade into the background.

The Edge Of Edge Dreaming is short on critical and practical approaches to dreams and fails to share enough scientific data and historical background to take some of the focus off Amy. As a result, it’s very one-sided and supports olny Amy’s views. There’s not much to contrast it with so it’s without any surprise that nothing substantial is gained from it at the end.

It became tiresome watching her despair over something which seemed more like a self fulfilling prophecy. I felt bad for her family for being put through such an ordeal, needlessly, because of course, Amy doesn’t die and her willingness to make the situation more than it seemed was something else I felt could have been explored but wasn’t.

Although she is rushed to hospital, it could be argued that her medical condition was psychosomatic, but this too is never explored and nobody seemed at all willing to shake her out herself.

Perhaps it’s my own fatalistic tendencies intertwined with my pragmatic approach to life and all its mysterious, but I’ve always like deadlines. They give me something to work towards. I look forward to them, and in most cases, I set them for myself. I’ve always imagined that if I knew when I would die, I would apply that knowledge the same way; as a deadline with something to work towards. Life for me is about learning to let it all go and moving with changes, with death being the final.

As her polar opposite, I was unable to relate to Amy, a rationalist and sceptic, and her outlook on life; to live as if you will be here forever.

By the end, I found The Edge Of Dreaming to be contrived, narcissistic and generally lacking real insight into an otherwise fascinating and limitless area of the human mind.