Beautiful Dreamers (1990)

Film Title: Beautiful Dreamers
Released: March 1990
Directed by: John Kent Harrison
Written by: John Kent Harrison
Starring: Colm Feore & Rip Torn

Plot: Dr. Maurice Bucke, the head of the London, Ontario, insane asylum in 19th century Canada, meets American poet Walt Whitman and his world and that of those around him are never the same again.

IMDb: 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: No score
My Score: 2.5/5

Beautiful Dreamers is the 1990 feature length directorial debut of John Kent Harrison. A largely fictionalized account based on an actual events, Colm Feore is Dr. Maurice Bucke, appointed head of the provincial Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario, in 1877, a post he held for almost the rest of his life. That same year, he also met American poet Walt Whitman (Rip Torn) and the two formed a lasting relationship. In fact, Bucke would become a noted Whitman biographer. The film opens with Feore beginning his duties as superintendent for the small asylum in Ontario. We are introduced to his repressed wife (Wendel Meldrum) and the stuffy local moral authority, Rev. Haines (Colin Fox). While attending a symposium in America, he encounters Torn and they bond quickly over a disdain for "modern" psychiatric practices, including restraining and beating the mentally ill and the surgical removal of the clitoris and ovaries to "cure nymphomania and moral insanity" and to "compose the high-strung, hysterical woman." Feore and Torn, whose brother (Jeff Braunstein) is mentally ill, believe that all people, regardless of their mental faculties, should be treated humanely and with compassion, much to the chagrin of the established medical and religious majority. When Feore brings Torn to stay with him in his small town, Torn's freethinking philosophies and views of life enrapture Feore but challenge everyone else in the city, causing chaos. Torn gives a fantastic portrayal of Whitman and is really the highlight of the movie. Feore walks through the film with a look of smitten wonder toward Torn, quickly becoming a disciple of Whitman's worldview. The whole piece ends up a saccharine saturated fluff piece about breaking the restraints of preconceived societal prejudices. A feel good movie that skirts the dirtier aspects of both main characters real life counterparts, Beautiful Dreamers is a passably entertaining, if somewhat slow moving, period piece co-starring Sheila McCarthy as one of Feore's mental patients. The film was nominated for four Genie Awards in 1991, including Best Achievement in Art Direction, Best Achievement in Costume Design, Best Sound Editing and Best Overall Sound, which is kind of funny to me since the sound on the copy I watched was terrible.