 A film in three minutes, What Dreams May Come? Do you believe in an afterlife? A heaven or hell where our spirits will eventually rest? What if I told you that such a concept actually existed and wasn't designed by any particular God nor came from any place of judgement? That our afterlife was what we made of it, formed out of our most beloved memories and filled with the people closest to us. Because in Vincent Ward's 1998 fantasy drama What Dreams May Come, One Soul is about to make such a discovery. Based on the book by Richard Matheson and starring Robin Williams, the story follows the lives of Chris and Annie Nielsen, a happily married couple who are visited by tragedy when both of their children are killed in a car crash. Years later, Chris himself is killed in similar circumstances, leaving Annie bereft and grieving. After painstakingly trying to reach out to her from beyond the grave, Chris finally enters his own interpretation of heaven, surrounded by the beautiful landscape paintings his wife created and is reunited with reincarnated versions of his children. However, upon learning that Annie has committed suicide and is suffering in her own imagined hell, Chris embarks on a Dante's Inferno type journey to save the soul of the woman he loves from her deadly despair. It's safe to say that, just on purely visual grounds, What Dreams May Come's art direction and cinematography is simply stunning. The imaginative use of paint for Chris's depiction of heaven gives us some of the most gorgeously photographed imagery I can think of. Made all the more beautiful, by the way, the Academy Award-winning visual effects act as a metaphor of the love he has for Annie. The artistry of the varying architectural designs that structure the world of the story's afterlife pay tribute to the theoretical works of Yten Louis Bué and the paintings of Hieronymus Boss. And thanks to the loving direction Vincent Ward imbues in almost every frame, each gorgeously imagined landscape is revealed through Chris's eyes emotionally rather than just for pure spectacle. The descent into Annie's hell is one of the most haunting portrayals of such a dark underworld ever committed to film. With Annabelle Ciara's performance as the grief-stricken tormented wife and mother, gut-wrenching to witness, a reason the actor initially resisted joining the project before being convinced to play the role by Williams. Ward, no stranger to beautiful uncompromising visuals from his previous film Map of the Human Heart and his original concept for Alien 3, can be accused of veering too heavily into soppy sentimentality at the story's climax. But the visual depictions of depression, grief, longing and love are as brilliant a technical achievement as they are moving. That makes what Dreams May Come stand out from other films tackling the concept of the afterlife. Thanks to a life-affirming joy from Williams, a brilliant visual style and a moving story about the nature of love that many of us dare to only dream of.