| Vanilla Sky | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Cameron Crowe |
| Produced by | Cameron Crowe Tom Cruise Paula Wagner |
| Written by | Alejandro Amenábar Mateo Gil Cameron Crowe |
| Starring | Tom Cruise Penélope Cruz Cameron Diaz Jason Lee Kurt Russell |
| Editing by | Joe Hutshing Mark Livolsi |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 14, 2001 |
| Running time | 136 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$68,000,000[1] |
Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American psychological thriller film, which has been variously characterized by published film critics as "an odd mixture of science fiction, romance, and reality warp",[2] "part Beautiful People fantasy, part New Age investigation of the Great Beyond",[3] a "love story, a struggle for the soul, or an existential confrontation with the eternal",[4] and an "erotic adventure, romance, comedy, mystery and psychological thriller, with a dose of science fiction".[5]
The film is a "very close remake"[6] of the 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos), which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil. Vanilla Sky stars Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz (a reprise of her performance in Abre los ojos), Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. It was directed by Cameron Crowe, who directed Cruise in Jerry Maguire and produced this film together with Cruise and Paula Wagner, and Cruise/Wagner Productions.
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David Aames recently has become owner of his deceased father's publishing company, and begins to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle. David, through his friend Brian Shelby, is introduced to Sofia Serrano, and the two begin to flirt and become closer. When David's former girlfriend, Julianna Gianni, discovers this, she becomes extremely jealous. One day, she offers David a ride, but purposely crashes her car at high speeds off a bridge; Julianna dies but David survives though his face is seriously deformed and he is forced to wear a mask to cover the injury. On an evening out with Brian and Sofia after the crash, David becomes extremely intoxicated, much to Sofia's displeasure, and she and Brian leave David to wallow on a sidewalk. However, the next morning, Sofia returns to help David back onto his feet, and they begin to date steadily. His facial injuries are able to be removed via plastic surgery.
Though David's life seems perfect, he finds oddities about him, such as a completely empty Times Square. At times, he finds himself hallucinating, his face reverting to before the plastic surgery. A strange man appears at various locations to tell David he has the power to control the world. After one hallucination episode, David goes to Sofia's apartment to find Julianna there, and that all the old photos and pictures of David and Sofia have been replaced with Julianna. In a fit of rage, David kills Julianna by suffocation. He is arrested and put into prison, placed under the psychological care of Dr. Curtis McCabe. David, finding himself suffering from a form of amnesia, attempts to recount the recent events to Dr. McCabe, and the two discover that there may be a connection between David and a company known as "Life Extension", who place clinically-dead patients into cryogenic chambers to awaken in the future when cures may be available. David and Mr. McCabe visit the company, who explain that they place their patients into a "Lucid Dream" state while in the cryogenics company. David recognizes that the reality he is in is his own Lucid Dream, and calls for Tech Support.
David escapes from the company office to find the mysterious man directing him to an elevator. As they rise to the top of an impossibly tall building, the man, revealing himself to be the tech support, explains David's true past: after passing out drunk on the sidewalk, he never saw Sofia again. Due to his depression, David sought the services of Life Extension, wishing to start the Lucid Dream the morning after the drunken incident, and to live under the "vanilla sky" his mother always talked about; he then committed suicide so that he may be placed in the cryogenic system, where he has been for the past 150 years. While David was experiencing the Lucid Dream, a malfunction of the system caused the dream to become a nightmare, merging Sofia and Julianna's personas and creating people, such as Dr. McCabe, out of his past memories. At the roof of the building, the man offers David a choice, to either be reinserted into the corrected Lucid Dream as to be together with Sofia forever, or to opt to wake up though this requires a leap of faith off the building. David opts to be awakened so that he can live a real life, and he takes a few last moments to say goodbye to the Dream versions of Sofia and Brian, then jumps off the building, his memories flashing through his eyes as he falls. Just as he hits the ground, a voice tells David to wake up, the film briefly focuses on his closed eye opening onto the real world.
According to Cameron Crowe's commentary, there are four different interpretations of the ending:
The title is a reference to depictions of skies in some of the paintings of Claude Monet; Crowe has noted that the presence of "vanilla skies" identifies the first Lucid Dream scene (morning reunion after club scene); all that follows is dream.[7]
Clues:
While the film grossed around $100 million in U.S. box office,[1] critical reaction was mixed. It currently holds a 39% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 157 reviews (62 positive, 95 negative).[8] Metacritic reported, based on 33 reviews, a "Mixed or Average" rating of 45 out of 100.[9]
Roger Ebert's print review gave it three out of four stars:
Ebert said that the ending "explains the mechanism of our confusion, rather than telling us for sure what actually happened."[10] Richard Roeper greatly enjoyed the film and has put it in his list for Best Films for 2001 at #2.
A more mixed review from The New York Times (NYT) early on calls the film a "highly entertaining, erotic science-fiction thriller that takes Mr. Crowe into Steven Spielberg territory" but then notes:
A negative review was published by Salon.com, which called the film an "aggressively plotted puzzle picture, which clutches many allegedly deep themes to its heaving bosom without uncovering even an onion-skin layer of insight into any of them."[12] The review rhetorically asks:
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian[6] and Gareth Von Kallenbach of Film Threat[13] compared Vanilla Sky unfavorably with Open Your Eyes. Bradshaw says Open Your Eyes is "certainly more distinctive than" Vanilla Sky, which he describes as an "extraordinarily narcissistic high-concept vanity project for producer-star Tom Cruise." Other reviewers extrapolate from the knowledge that Cruise had bought the rights to do a version of Amenábar's film.[2] A Village Voice reviewer characterized it as "hauntingly frank about being a manifestation of its star's cosmic narcissism".[14]
Diaz's performance got more positive reviews, with the Los Angeles Times film critic calling her "compelling as the embodiment of crazed sensuality"[15] and the NYT reviewer saying she gives a "ferociously emotional" performance.[11]
Vanilla Sky featured original compositions from Nancy Wilson and one original composition by Paul McCartney. Other songs used in the film include those from Sigur Rós, Radiohead, R.E.M., Joan Osborne, Todd Rundgren, Thievery Corporation, Underworld, U2, The Beach Boys and The Chemical Brothers. It features the track "Untitled #4 (a.k.a. 'Njósnavélin')" by Sigur Rós, but because the track had not been recorded in a studio during production, the version featured in the film is a recording of a live performance at the 2000 Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Director Cameron Crowe thought Vanilla Sky had musical overtones, and expressed this through the use of music throughout the film. Music from Vanilla Sky was released as the film's commercial soundtrack.
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