It’s hard to explain They Dream, a profound exploration of grief that takes many, many forms. There are home-video archives, miniatures, and motion capture technology. Also recorded conversations and animated sequences. But deep down, the inventive and creative ways the grief is expressed don’t make the grief any easier. Grief is grief. And we all have to find our own way to let it out.
Loss is one of those individual things that, if expressed correctly, can be universal. But what is the right way to express it? Isn’t that, like many other things, personal? They Dream is director William David Caballero’s attempt to make sense of his own pain, and it is, like grief can often be, chaotic, messy, and sometimes hard to follow.
But it’s real, it’s moving, and in a way that perhaps it couldn’t be if it were more structured, it’s wholly cathartic. I’ve suffered through loss, way too much to put into this review without making it about me. And I have often wondered how one can or should process that loss? As a creative person, isn’t the best way of processing through art? But is art then a tribute or a way to find some sort of balance? Can it be both?
Perhaps the best thing about They Dream is that Caballero doesn’t have an answer. It’s okay, we didn’t really want one, because any attempt at putting a neat little bow on a feeling that doesn’t actually disappear would have been a mistake. Instead, They Dream is about a moment of time. About how to get through it. About what tools you have and what tools you can give the world to make the necessary exploration easier.
Caballero has been here before, in a way that comes together perfectly in They Dream. He’s animated his family before, in cartoons, shorts, and Webby-winning miniatures. Those stories come together in They Dream, where each member of the family gets a chapter, a story, a feeling. Sometimes the feelings intersect. Sometimes the stories can have things in common. But they’re not the same. We’re not the same with each different person we lose, either.
Loss is both such an inevitable thing and the kind of thing we never really get used to. They Dream won’t make that part easier, because nothing can. But it might help soothe the raw edges when you feel like you cannot make sense of the void you have been left with. And, as Caballero gets to the end, to his own story, to his wounds and his unsolved issues, there’s a powerful truth in all these vignettes that come together to form a tapestry of both grief and life.
Come for the beautiful, inventive way this story is told. Stay for the remarkable mix of techniques and the way the story is woven. Leave They Dream with a feeling that your story, whatever it might be, and your pain, no matter what shape it takes, matters. And you, too, can find your own ways to let it out into the world.
They Dream premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
