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Vanilla Sky
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Starring: Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell, Cameron Diaz
Running Time: 2:00
Country: USA
Year: 2001
Web: Official Site
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One may scrutinize but the horizon is empty in Jerry Maguire in Nightmareland, a new failed attempt to remake a European film with Hollywood sauce.
Tom Cruise is David Aames, a young playboy heir to his father's Media Empire, whose life is going to switch between dream and reality following a car accident which leaves him disfigured. Poor David seems to lose his head when he confuses the new woman of his life, Sofia Serrano (Penélope Cruz) with his ex, Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz).
Vanilla Sky is the remake of Alejandro Amenabar's (The Others) imperfect but skillful small film Open your Eyes (Abre los Ojos). The nervous and visually stylized original did not hesitate to play with the spectator's intellect for his own good but nonetheless sinned with its excess of romanticism.
Rather than to rectify the film by correcting some clumsiness, Cameron Crowe makes a weak, shaky and soulless copy. In spite of some maladroit sentimental scenes, Abre los Ojos managed to captivate the audience thanks to a disturbing psychological atmosphere. Here the overdone scenes between Cruise and Cruz sink into cheesiness and definitely break the rhythm. It's like watching two films, one of psychological suspense and the other a romantic comedy in the Meg Ryan vein. While there is an indisputable more than real attraction between both protagonists, the full-length film does not work on the psychological level, which should nevertheless be its force. The fault is partially the director's who, after the success of its previous two projects, feels obliged to reuse their ingredients.
To begin with, Cruise is an awkward choice for such a role. If the star looks certainly the part and has the power to attract moviegoers to theaters, his overacted gesticulations and big stunned eyes sometimes turn grotesque where sobriety was required. An actor such as Jim Caviezel would have had a more adequate darkness in such a role.
The omnipresent soundtrack annihilates Vanilla Sky's rare effective moments. The musical tastes of Crowe which had been perfectly perceived in Almost Famous do not belong here. These 70' hymns not only cannibalize every scene, but also annul their impact, being in discord with the tone of the passage or simply too retro. This musical anachronism is all the more shocking as it collides with the techno sequence in the nightclub. While on the "cultural references" matter, decorating David's entire apartment walls with French New Wave film posters neither makes his character smarter or the film deeper. On the contrary, it gives a rather pretentious coloration to the whole thing.
Finally, isn't the interest of such a film to push the audience to an intellectual brink they're not used to and to leave the interpretation up to them, just like in a dream? The director—and probably the producers—do not seem to share that point of view since the film hastily resolves the mystery in an elevator; a conclusion which has no other purpose than to bring intellectual reassurance to an apathetic audience that can then catch their breath with a surprised "Oh".
Vanilla Sky will be remembered for its great cinematography of New York, Cruiz and Diaz's spark, and the Jason Lee sympathetic defeatism.
An only real enigma, why fetch such a film from Europe to remake it, while there are plenty of talented directors such as David Lynch (who had to finance Mulholland Drive in France), Christopher Nolan (Memento) and Richard Linklater (Waking Life) who treat the same themes with more originality and virtuosity.
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Fred Thom
:: Also Read ::
• Open your Eyes
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Vanilla Sky review
