Lured by the prospect of cash, mechanic Marco has to decide whether he wants to uproot with his wife and head elsewhere, in this retro-futuristic short. Haunted by flying cars, Marco is a man of principle, but the more he drinks, the greater a distance emerges in his marriage. Over the course of the 18 minute work, Marco has to decide whether he should stick with his ideals, or start a new career in an unknown terrain.
It’s a simple story, but one that suits the economical runtime. Director Dan Egan utilises a number of creative shots. At one point, the camera focuses on a bottle of beer, the wife blurred in the backdrop. This creates a dissonance in a domicile that should be a bastion of contentment. Behind Marco stands a woman who smiles to hide the pain flickering behind her eyes. This is a marriage that has experienced more downs than ups.
In terms of aesthetics, Dream Machine uses a number of impressive designs for the flying automobiles. A 1950s’ style locomotive threatens to crash into Marco, causing him to cast an object at it. It falls down, as if emulating the death of God. Deicide is a common motif in literature (Philip Pullman, Ted Hughes, etc), but I don’t recall seeing it often in cinema.
Heavy duty for a movie that doesn’t last 20 minutes, but the primary goal of the work is the critique of capitalism. One of the themes of this short work is that money isn’t the root to happiness. Marco should be happy with his life, but the ennui and alcohol consumption makes it difficult to sustain a happy and committed marriage. Like the cars he services, his energy runs on fuel; this being the liquid he imbibes.
Dream Machine is virtually a silent picture. What little dialogue emerges does not stem from the mouths of the central protagonists, but people who visit them. In some ways, Marco doesn’t need to: his fury is palpable, just as the exhaustion percolates behind his brain. It’s a portraiture that’s as comic and as melancholic as Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp in Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936). The world has changed, but Marco – much like Chaplin’s miscreant – sticks to the old routines.
The point of the flying cars isn’t to make them look authentic, but to make the anger feel real. Up in the sky, animated specs of vehicles pollute the air much like vehicles do on the ground of the viewers. The desert is gorgeous, spoiled only by mankind’s “advances”. Technology dots the foreground: telegraph wires, petrol tanks, assortment of useless devices. This geography would be better developed and treated if humanity stayed far, far away from it.
It’s a societal divide: Marco lives on the ground, while the wealthier fake flight in their locomotives and soar in the air. It’s not subtle, but that isn’t the point of the work. Greed allows the privileged to reach for higher plains, neglecting the hard-working folk on a lower level. Egan uses a variety of colours, flash-forward cuts and soft focus. Indeed, it’s an incredibly pleasant work to observe on a kinetic level. While there is the potential here to re-write Dream Machine as a streaming series, Egan accomplishes the points of the story with flair and ease.
Dream Machine premiered at the LA Shorts International Film Festival.
