Films are a spiritual experience. Audiences sit, observe, and listen to the human condition. Finding some token of semblance to resonate with, to feel alive and less alone in this existence, is the vocation of art. Multiplicity is the artist's modus operandi. Interpretations are the playing field of the artist's mind. Thinking of all the possible meanings lifts the thinker out of his humdrum existence and exchanges it for a shock, an enlightenment, a reminder.

Robin Williams was a walking, talking work of art, provocative and perverse to the people, but for the people. He understood that creative spark that keeps us alive. He also understood the darkness that surrounds the strike of a matchstick. Williams was a guiding light, showing us the way to live a life fulfilled, a life he knew was filled with light. Williams played with emotions in such a spontaneous way that he couldn't be matched, but he didn't stop you from daring to. His performances encouraged us to be more than a witness; he wanted us to be more itself. In spite of the dark, Robin Williams gave everything a performer and spectator could ask for: a laugh, a cry, and a thought.

Life After Death

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PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

What Dreams May Come takes a spiritual journey through the metaphysical relationship between life and death. Since the beginning of time, the origin of death has weighed on everyone's mind. Death is seen as a problem with no solution; an ending with no aftermath. People forget that life and death share a symbiotic relationship. Life incites death just as death incites life. Meaning lies at their center.

In this 1998 film adaptation of the 1978 Richard Matheson self-titled novel, the Nielsen family faces their own personal and collective struggles. Pediatrician Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) marries artist Annie Collins (Annabella Sciorra) shortly after a chance meeting in Switzerland. Their kids are brought up in a clinical and cultured environment, feeling they have to prove their worth or stand out from the crowd. The subtle subtext of the family that lives together but is foreign to each other begins this metaphysical journey. In the physical, a car accident leaves their children dead. Chris later suffers an ironic death by a head-on car collision, but he learns that he's not completely dead. Meanwhile, a mentally unstable Annie is left alive, dealing with her family's tragedy and mind's abstractions that are made all too real.

Related: Robin Williams Fans Are Mourning His Death 8 Years Later: 'I'm Still Not Over It'

The Stuff of Dreams

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PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

Chris finds himself existing in his subconscious imagination, materialized in the form of Annie's many paintings. Her artwork resembles that of Gustave Doré and his grand sprawling landscapes inspired by the Bible. The stairway leading to Heaven features colorful, Victorian-era pedestrians, saved souls like Chris.

One of these souls is guardian angel Albert Lewis (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who was a friend and mentor to Chris in the medical field. With Albert's help, Chris travels into The Divine Comedy realms to see the reality through each brush stroke. Transcendence from religious mysticism and abstract realism art movements is a clever lens for understanding the unexplained dilemmas of mortality.

The acts of faith depicted are touch-and-go, favoring the mystery of faith over concrete consequences. Granted, it's hard to condense centuries of philosophy and religion into two hours, What Dreams May Come manages its what-could-be theories with convincing spectacles and thematic reveals. One controversial exception and plot point is the film's handling of suicide, however.

Related: Robin Williams Remembered by Fans on What Would've Been His 71st Birthday

To Be or Not to Be

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PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

When the paintings blend together, Chris learns about the other worlds of Purgatory and Hell. He also learns about the fate of his wife. The experiences Chris has in his new existence align with those of Annie. The death of her family left her struggling to cope with the loss. Annie disclosed her true feelings about her marriage and mental health in her journal. Chris speaks to Annie from the beyond, but it only escalates her withdrawn and wayward behavior.

Albert tells Chris that Annie had committed suicide and was condemned to Hell for it. Chris finds a loophole and decides if fallen angels exist then angels can rise again. He treks through Hell to save Annie from damnation, learning along the way that his children were disguised as other people in his lifetime. Chris confronts his actions and lack thereof as a father, husband, and human being, rectifying his unawareness and vicarious involvement (due to his calculated certainty of his career) with grounded forgiveness and reconciliation.

What Dreams May Come uses a phrase from the famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's play Hamlet for its title. Hamlet deals with the passing of his father with revenge, but for Chris, he uses unconditional love in the face of unrequited love. Not to cope or survive, although it does support these ends, but to exist between the lines, even if it doesn't make sense. Annie proposed two possibilities: "Sometimes, when you win, you lose" and "Sometimes, when you lose, you win." What Chris says is also true, "It's not about understanding. It's about not giving up." Life and death may not make sense in the moment or moments after; sometimes they don't have to. Like dreams and art, reality sometimes happens without explanation. Whether it is better to be or not to be, as a consequence of either choice, one cannot deny what will be.