Dreamland (2019)
Directed by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte
Amid the dust storms and economic depression of Dust Bowl Era Oklahoma, Eugene Evans finds his family farm on the brink of foreclosure. Discovering fugitive bank robber Allison Wells hiding in his small town, he is torn between claiming the bounty on her head and his growing attraction to the seductive criminal.
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3 films that influenced Dreamland
What critics say influenced Dreamland
These words are spoken by Eugene’s kid sister, Phoebe (Lola Kirke performs the older-wiser thoughts of child actor Darby Camp), with a kind of purity that recalls the dreamy voiceover of Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” — as mythic an influence on “Dreamland” as Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” which could have been its prequel, had Clyde died and Bonnie stumbled away wounded from that climactic shootout.
At 27 years old, Miles Joris-Peyrafitte proves himself to be one of the most exciting young directors around with Dreamland, a drama with dazzling visuals, subtle performances and deft nods to classics like Days of Heaven and Bonnie and Clyde .
Robbie’s Allison, a fictional character, has obvious echoes of Bonnie Parker, the real-life outlaw played by Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde.”
Dreamland’s set-up reads like a Bonnie and Clyde rip-off, a fact which director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte seems well-aware of.
With echoes of Bonnie and Clyde and movies set in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Dreamland feels familiar and original at the same time.
While the initial comparison one might make is to the classic outlaw romance Bonnie and Clyde, the biggest influence on Dreamland director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte and screenwriter Nicolaas Zwart appears to be the cinema of Terrence Malick.
The film contains echoes of Malick’s debut feature, Badlands , starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as two young people in love and on the run, and his dreamlike second film, Days of Heaven , starring Richard Gere and Brooke Adams as another set of young lovers trying to find a way out of trouble while working as farm laborers in the Texas panhandle.
These words are spoken by Eugene’s kid sister, Phoebe (Lola Kirke performs the older-wiser thoughts of child actor Darby Camp), with a kind of purity that recalls the dreamy voiceover of Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” — as mythic an influence on “Dreamland” as Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” which could have been its prequel, had Clyde died and Bonnie stumbled away wounded from that climactic shootout.
At 27 years old, Miles Joris-Peyrafitte proves himself to be one of the most exciting young directors around with Dreamland, a drama with dazzling visuals, subtle performances and deft nods to classics like Days of Heaven and Bonnie and Clyde .
Beginning with fatalistic narration (from an unseen Lola Kirke) that immediately locates the film in a long tradition of neo-Western legends, “Dreamland” channels everything from “Days of Heaven” to “Slow West” as it lays the groundwork for a half-remembered folktale about a teenage boy and the outlaw who changed his life.
A sensitive, soberly rendered and ultimately flawed film about growing up in the parched plains of the Texas Panhandle, Dreamland is an uneasy mix of Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Badlands, with a pinch of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, starring the always probing, often underrated Margot Robbie as a bank-robbing vigilante.
Right from the start, it's obvious that screenwriter Nicolaas Zwart and director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s are positioning their film as a tribute to the early works of filmmaker Terrence Malick, especially “Days of Heaven,” which shares with it such elements as a Depression-era setting, lovers on the run following a crime (which Malick also utilized in “Badlands”), narration from the main character’s younger sister (voiced by Lola Kirke) and plenty of scenes clearly shot during the so-called “golden hour” to lend a sense a grandeur to the otherwise bleak surroundings.
The film contains echoes of Malick’s debut feature, Badlands , starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as two young people in love and on the run, and his dreamlike second film, Days of Heaven , starring Richard Gere and Brooke Adams as another set of young lovers trying to find a way out of trouble while working as farm laborers in the Texas panhandle.
A sensitive, soberly rendered and ultimately flawed film about growing up in the parched plains of the Texas Panhandle, Dreamland is an uneasy mix of Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Badlands, with a pinch of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, starring the always probing, often underrated Margot Robbie as a bank-robbing vigilante.
Right from the start, it's obvious that screenwriter Nicolaas Zwart and director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s are positioning their film as a tribute to the early works of filmmaker Terrence Malick, especially “Days of Heaven,” which shares with it such elements as a Depression-era setting, lovers on the run following a crime (which Malick also utilized in “Badlands”), narration from the main character’s younger sister (voiced by Lola Kirke) and plenty of scenes clearly shot during the so-called “golden hour” to lend a sense a grandeur to the otherwise bleak surroundings.