SPOILERS ALERT!!!

Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

‘Vanilla Sky’. Hmm. This is a fascinating and unusual film to check out. I can’t say it’s been a satisfying experience, but the film certainly has a very interesting premise to it. You’d probably need to see the movie about more than once in order to get your head around it.

My parents saw this film before I did and they were baffled in watching it from beginning to end. I decided to see it for myself in order to find out whether I could make sense of it. I saw it and I think I have a general idea of what’s going on, but it isn’t exactly clear enough.

The film itself has to do with a lot of dreaming, which I’ve done myself in a couple of my ‘Doctor Who’ stories. But there are lots of complexities to it that you’d have to keep your full attention whilst watching the film, even for multiple viewings to get over the plot-holes.

Starring Tom Cruise, the film is about a magazine publisher named David Aames, Jr. who falls in love with the woman of his dreams, Penélope Cruz as Sofia Serrano. Unfortunately, he gets caught in a car crash with jealous lover Cameron Diaz as Julianna Gianni.

Julianna is killed but David survives, horribly disfigured. We then go on a journey with David where he begins to question reality and it’s unveiled that he was put into suspended animation after his death, as he lives a dream where he can control how he wishes to live.

Now, for a while, this film can be very confusing in its presentation, as it’s not clear what classifies as being a dream or a reality for Tom Cruise’s character. Then again, dreams can be like that when we think we’re living in reality and yet we wake up to find that we’re not.

Again, I can’t say I fully understand what’s going on in the film, as it sometimes shifts from being a romance drama to a murder-solving mystery where it seems David might have killed Sofia when he thought she was Julianna raised from the dead. It can be very baffling to watch.

As I understand it, the second half of the film is mostly a dream for David, and it’s only revealed it’s a dream for him when the exposition is given to us in the climax. I think if I was to watch this film again, I’d probably have a better understanding of what’s going on.

The film was written and directed by Cameron Crowe and it happens to be an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish film ‘Open Your Eyes’. From what I’ve read on Wikipedia, the plots for both English and Spanish films are the same, which is interesting.

And Penélope Cruz was in both films too. How ironic. 😀 As well as Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz and Cameron Diaz, the film also features Kurt Russell as Dr. Curtis McCabe, a court psychologist who listens to David telling him his life story when he’s seemingly in prison.

There’s Jason Lee as Brian Shelby – David’s best friend, Noah Taylor as Edmund Ventura (who happens to be Tech Support for Life Extension), Timothy Spall as Thomas Tipp, Tilda Swinton as Rebecca Dearborn, and Michael Shannon as Aaron, a prison guard. 🙂

Steven Spielberg even makes an uncredited cameo appearance as a guest at David’s party in the movie. I think that might be one of the rare occasions where I’ve seen Steven Spielberg performing in a movie and not directing behind the camera for this certain film.

‘Vanilla Sky’ has been an enjoyable if unusual film to check out on DVD. I can’t say it’s been entirely satisfying, but it certainly makes you think about what’s going on in the story and how the characters are interpreted in their roles especially in the dream-like settings.

Tom Cruise is excellent in the film and it’s been fascinating to see him in a role where he questions reality. The scenes where he’s disfigured are mesmerising to watch. In terms of how his character David ended up in the climax, well, I’d say it’s open to interpretation.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂