He wanders the club, all expression removed, almost like a ghost. In fact the barman refuses to see him at first, looking away as he takes his order. Even when he removes the mask, that face is disfigured. These are the first steps for Vanilla Sky entering the territory of a horror film.
The club scene is a precursor for the biggest rug pull of the entire film, which may not be perceptible on first viewing. After the club scene Sofia runs off, leaving David to collapse onto the sidewalk, defeated. There is another lyrical clue on the soundtrack as the R. M tune Sweetness Follows blasts out. A record scratch, the sound of the needle touching the vinyl, as we fade in from black. A burbling of strange sound, and an odd colour palette.
The main clue is the sky, almost psychedelic. On subsequent viewings you realise this is the moment that David Aames chose to start his lucid dream. A product from a company that offer Life Extension, a program that lets you dream whilst being cryogenically frozen.
Even knowing where this is heading on subsequent viewings, the second half of the film is quite a ride. But when the mysteries start to evolve they become increasingly head scratching. This culminates in a murder scene that is a triumph of editing on all levels. Specifically sound editing — the mix here is phenomenal.
As the film reaches its climax it becomes difficult to discuss Vanilla Sky. But then things begin to get a little twisted. His face is so banged up that his appeal is called into question. We begin to wonder if this is going to turn into another one of those movies in which a disabled person has to learn to overcome his disability or at least his feelings of self disgust. Then things get even more twisted. He's goes to bed with Penelope and wakes up to find Cameron next to him.
Either way would be okay for most of us. Both of them together and all men could make love four times a night, or even five or ten. He's cured of that disfigured visage. But then he looks in a mirror and it's back! When he's in a bar with his best friend and the guy jokes that his newly renewed face is splitting a seam, we're as scared as Cruise. There's another scene in a bar later in which some guy with a Brit accent informs Cruise that everything happening to him is his own invention, that he can make anyone do whatever he wants.
Cruise shouts that all he wants right now is for everyone to shut up. They obligingly do so. Is he on acid? Is he nuts. Is he going through something like the guy who was hanged at Owl Creek Bridge?
What's up? There has so far been a kind of framing story in which Cruise, wearing a regnerative prosthetic mask, is trying to figure this all out with a psychologist in prison. It seems he, Cruise, has murdered someone. Fragments of the act return. Yes, he murders Cameron, but no, it's Penelope, as we can tell from that succulent nevis on her chest.
Well, folks, the ending will clear things up for you. But, I must say, the resolution sits kind of uncomfortably on top of what's gone on before, incongruously, like a fool's cap on a seal's head. It's pretty much out of the Twilight Zone. By this time the viewer is as delirious as the hero. But that's not quite the right word. Delirious is from de liro -- "I rave" -- but what we have here is dreaming, not raving, even though the dream is supposed to be pleasant instead of warped into a nightmare by the guilt Cruise carries around in his subconscious.
It's an interesting movie if you can accept the disjointed plot and get past those somewhat grinding shifts of gear. The acting could hardly be improved on. Cameron Diaz has the face, and the ability, to switch from helpless devotion to something more sinister. I've only seen one other film with Penelope Cruz, a quite different part, but she is immensely appealing here, always cheerfully in control of what's going on around her, knowledgeable beyond any expectable point about herself and the people around her.
She's fine. And Tom Cruise has never given a better performance. As an actor maybe he has a tendency to smile and laugh too much. In this case, his smiles and laughter assume heavily ironic tones. There is a scene in which Diaz tries to talk him into taking a ride with her, just after he's left Cruz's apartment.
It gives him a chance to display his range as a performer and he handles it very well. When Diaz first calls to him that smirky grin appears and he says, "You're following me. The direction is well done too, considering the challenges that needed to be met to put such a story line across. And the photography is outstanding.
Vanilla skies indeed. I recommend seeing this, but fasten your seatbelts. It's not a conventional love story, a conventional self-discovery movie, a conventional mystery, or a conventional science fiction story, although it's a little of all of these.
Tweekums 15 July Before starting to review this film I must say that I have not yet seen the Spanish film on which it is based so can't say whether it does justice to the source material or not. This is one of those films one has to watch more than once to understand as things we learn at the end of the film effect how one views the events earlier on. Often it is impossible to tell if what we are watching is real, a dream or a delusion.
Tom Cruise plays David Aames a yuppie who has inherited his father's publishing empire. He is sleeping with Julie but there is no real relationship in his mind they are just friends who occasionally spend the night together she however believes it means far more than that.
When he sets off for work Julie is there and asks him to get into her car, she then starts raving about how he must love her then crashes her car off a bridge. Things then start to be fairly strange, one minute David is well and talking to Sofia the next he is seriously disfigured from the accident talking to doctors about how they can help him, at this point all the can offer is a rubber mask which gives him an appearance that is almost like a statue; fairly realistic yet cold and emotionless.
He is later told that there is a radical new treatment that will repair his face, he has this and when the mask is removed he is back to his old good looking self.
He starts to have nightmares though, sometimes he imagines the disfigurement has returned, other times he thinks that Sofia is in fact Julie. He even believes that he has killed her but isn't certain which one of them. He is taken into custody and his world gets more and more insane, eventually he is taken to a company which specialises in cryogenicly freezing people immediately after they die, here he learns an alarming truth.
Tom Cruise did a great job as David, it is rare to see a good looking major star playing a character which for much of the film is disfigured unless it is the sort of serious film that is angling for awards.
I'd certainly recommend this to people who like to watch something different and don't mind not understanding everything they see as they see it.
An elongated, overproduced "Twilight Zone" episode, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, starring Tom Cruise as a magazine publishing mogul in New York City who is having a hard time distinguishing reality from his dreams; soon, he finds himself imprisoned, masked, and talking to a doctor about a murder he has apparently committed.
Proving that the greatest asset a film can have is a strong screenplay, "Vanilla Sky" is a series of half-hearted whims and self-indulgent larks. The shards of reality and non-reality, interpolated in rapid succession, aren't so much truthful glimpses into our hero's psyche as they are Crowe's cocky idea of a mind-screw.
Americanizing the Spanish-language film "Abre Los Ojos", Crowe is like a jovial rich kid messing with the switches until his film becomes the equivalent of a joy-buzzer.
It's both a curious paean to popular culture and the would-be ultimate brain-gasm. Make my sky "Vanilla" anytime, it's much nicer than the gray skies of winter! TxMike 1 January It is easy to see how some think it is one of the best they've seen, and it is equally easy to see how some hate it.
Regardless of one's leanings, there is no question you have to watch this whole film intently, grasp every nuance, understand every conversation to be able to even discuss it intelligently. I like to view films like this, it is a good mental exercise that most films just don't provide. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a film like "Dumb and Dumber", which happens to be one of my favorites, but one which you can watch very leisurely and just enjoy, like a good piece of creamy fudge!!
During the film he is involved, apparently, with two women, a brunette Penny Cruz and a blonde Cammy Diaz. He also has lucid dreams, sometimes starts having sex with one and finishes with the other. As he awakes his CD radio whispers "wake up", sometimes in the voice of one, sometimes the other.
It gets to where we, the audience, as well as David, cannot tell which is dream and which is reality. Another layer in the story is the psychologist Kurt Russell visiting David in his jail cell, David with mask on, the psychologist trying to find out what really happened, was there really a murder. Is the psychologist real, or just part of the dream?
We see a crash that apparently kills the blonde and disfigures David. We see him arguing with a panel of surgeons about doing something to stop the headaches. We see him meet a stranger, we find out David had signed up for a "Life Extension" program where they freeze your body and bring back your mind into lucid dreams.
The audience can tell by the vanilla-colored sky when David is supposed to be in these dreams. At the climax, David is given a choice when he calls for "tech support". He has been dreaming lucidly for years, he can continue or he can come out of that state and into reality. He has control, it will become what he imagines shades of 'What Dreams May Come' , so he jumps off the tall building he is on, as he lands we only see one eye open, and hear "wake up, David" and the film ends.
I may watch it again before I return it to my library, but upon one viewing I find it impossible to precisely reconstruct a narrative.
On the one hand, we could assume everything up to David waking up on the street, sleeping off a drinking binge, with the first "vanilla sky" we see, is real, and everything after is a lucid dream. Or, maybe everything between the first, early "wake up" and the last one, is a dream. Or some other combination. While I generally like for films to make sense, and feel that I am able to connect all the points, I don't feel that necessity here.
The film was so very well done, just the entertainment of watching the story unfold and the pleasure of thinking about it afterward is worth it. The DVD is fine, although unspectacular.
The "extras" I didn't find particularly interesting, unless you really like to see Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise "behind the scenes" and during the world premiere in Japan, with all the young Japanese girls acting like American teenagers seeing the Beetles for the first time.
Well, I watched "Vanilla Sky" a few days ago and I wasn't wrong at all. First of all, Cameron Crowe seems to like music very much at a time, he used to be a journalist for "Rolling Stone. But why did he overload his film with so much music? Due to this, the movie looks like a huge clip. It's not that the music is bad but the chosen songs suit badly to a movie with a rather dramatic story.
He insists there was no murder. Maybe there was and maybe there wasn't, and maybe the victim was who we think it is, and maybe not. It reveals an entirely different orientation which I will not reveal even here in the room , and, to be fair, there is a full explanation.
The only problem with the explanation is that it explains the mechanism of our confusion, rather than telling us for sure what actually happened.
That's why I went to see it a second time. In general, my second viewing was greatly helped by my first, and I was able to understand events more clearly. But there was one puzzling detail. At the second viewing, I noticed that the first words in the movie "open your eyes" are unmistakably said in the voice of Sofia, the Penelope Cruz character.
If the movie's explanation of this voice is correct, at that point in the movie David has not met Sofia, or heard her voice. How can we account for her voice appearing before she does? There is a character in the movie who refers to a "splice.
But consider the source of this information--not the person supplying it, but the underlying source. Is the information reliable? Or does the splice take place, so to speak, before the movie begins? And in that case Especially to then not show that with the last shot.
But there are close to a dozen references of cryogenics and life extension. The latter outweighs the former. With the joke easily explained as a red herring.
With those major alternative theories out of the way, this leaves only the ending as explained by Tech Support. David opted for a lucid dreaming cryogenic slumber.
This theory is supported by the numerous references to cryogenics and life extension that come up in the movie. Benny fell into ice, died, but was thawed out and came back to life and is as good as new. So this means that the film actively prepared us for the idea of cryogenics and resurrection.
David even had that guitar that had been broken during a show then gifted to David. It was pieced back together in a way that was almost whole again. Which brings us to the real question. How much of the movie happened in the lucid dream and how much happened in the real world? In the normal world, that would be something beyond explanation.
Except the two scenes act as opposites of one another. In the beginning, David is alone, completely at a loss, and on the ground.
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