"I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams"

Manuel Puig’s observation draws a sharp distinction between the nature of cinema and the rigid boundaries of reality, suggesting that film, at its core, aspires less to faithfully reproduce the world as it is and more to mirror the essential truths, emotions, and archetypes that populate our inner world. Cinema operates in a territory richly textured with metaphor, where gestures, images, colors, and sounds combine to build meanings far beyond surface occurrences. It does not merely record; it invents and stylizes, turning lived experiences into heightened expressions that resonate with the viewer's subconscious.

Allegories function by transforming the particular into the universal, translating everyday specifics into symbols or narratives with wider significance. Cinema, according to Puig, follows a similar path. Even when films ground themselves in realism, the architecture of cinema, its framing, pacing, use of music, and visual motifs, consistently steers the story away from mere documentation towards the realm of storytelling that channels collective human emotions and desires. A close-up is not just a technical choice, but can be a doorway into a character’s unspoken longing. Editing sequences can evoke the structure of memory or the disjointed nature of dreams.

By aligning cinema with dreams, Puig identifies film’s strongest power: its ability to bypass the strict logic of lived reality and connect with viewers on a deeply intuitive and emotional level. Just as dreams piece together fragments of our daily experiences, fears, and wishes into narrative forms that defy the rules of time and space, cinema pieces together images and sounds to create worlds governed by meaning rather than accuracy. The darkened theater and flickering screen provide a collective space where spectators can confront the mysteries and truths of human existence in forms more immediate and emotionally truthful than facts alone ever could be, echoing the perennial, allegorical pulse of dreams.