What did others think of Vanilla Sky?
The following review and summary was borrowed from filethirteen.com. Its contents belong to the author, lodger. No copyright infringement is intended.
| After seeing "Vanilla Sky," anyone who still capitulates to
cinematic snootiness and accuses Tom Cruise of being a pretty boy and a
pampered star will look pretty foolish. Cruise, gliding along with his
new fave director Cameron Crowe, goes for something really deep and
unique and interesting here. The two succeed admirable.
Cruise plays Davis Aames, a pretty boy turned wealthy young adult (remember when 30 was middle aged?) who can't seem to separate his dreams from reality. He has the male dream relationship in a fuck-buddy set-up with Cameron Diaz. She's really, really hot here. I'd do her and I'm Gay! She makes some really bold choices here and really goes for something truly unique and different. She has a outright crude line or two but her tough girl persona hides a deeper problematic character waiting in the wings to emerge. And, when one views the film for the second time, understanding some of her understated nuances in character and choices, they'll realize just how awesome Diaz's acting is. Of course, the exact same can be said of Penelope Cruz, who plays Cruise (Tom's) "dream girl" here. As Sofia, Cruz (Penelope) reprises her role from the original 1997 Spanish language film on which this film is based. That film is called (when translated to English) "Open Your Eyes" and the phrase repeats here to remind us that David (and therefore we) are not sure whether we are in dream or reality. Crowe's film work is beautiful. Every frame of this film is gorgeous. Even when Cruise is made up in prosthetics to look hideously deformed the film seems lustrous. Crowe steps decidedly out of the box he has seemingly put himself in (jovial marketable films) and emerges as a cinematic force to be reckoned with. Joining Soderberg, the Andersons (P.T. and Wes) and the Coen Brothers (among others) as prolific masters who make interesting and unique, yet bankable, blockbuster FILMS. But it is Cruise's work here that is the most glaringly daring and truly visionary. Cruise bought the rights to this film presumably knowing it would be a starring vehicle for himself. Cruise knows, going into the film, that he will get to play a man who goes from attractive to deformed. It's an integral part of the plot. And Crowe and Cruise play it off magnificently. Cruise may use "make-up" to create a character but make no doubt about it, like John Hurt in "Elephant Man," Cruise acts around and on top of the make-up, creating a stunning and revolutionary character that has as much to do with acting as it does special effects. Cruise proves himself, if there was ever any doubt, a truly brilliant actor here. Cruise's character's evolution, beginning here riffing off of his pretty boy persona and then emerging as the Deformed Man, is paramount to the theme because this film isn't really about dream vs. reality; it's about perception. As audience, we love to look at Cruise. I don't care if you're gay, straight, bi, or into sheep, everyone knows that Cruise is hot and aesthetically pleasing. When Cruise's character, David, becomes deformed, his face scarred and his flesh drooping, Cruise looks awful. It is painful to watch. Crowe films him perfectly. Notice the exactly correct close-ups and medium shots. With the change of David's face also comes change in disposition and here the film suggests that it isn't just physical characteristics that are the basis of attractiveness but also how we carry those characteristics. Cruise's David hates himself as ugly and deformed and that anger, bitterness and hurt comes out as profound ugliness in the actor's hands. It's a fantastic performance from Cruise, perhaps the best he has ever given. Cruz (Penelope), meanwhile, helps also to convey this idea and theme with her reactions to Cruise (Tom) as deformed ugliness. She reacts like we do. We want to love Tom Cruise. We know it is the same guy under the ugly face that used to make us hot as fuck. It's Joel from "Risky Business" and "Jerry Maguire" under all that drooping flesh. If looks truly don't matter, then why are we so repulsed and unable to love him as Deformed Man? This is the crux of the entire film. Cruise is such a modern cinematic equivalent of profound lust that his sexuality is often called into question by everyone who has ever gotten wet from seeing his face. To see him suddenly become ugly; it is almost unfathomable. It calls into question all of our human notions about looks, personality, sexuality and eroticism. It is a mind-fuck performed by one prosthetic mask glued to the face of America's most fuckable male star. It is devastating. It makes us ashamed of our own feelings and our own inability to be attracted to Deformed Man, which we know is the same Tom Cruise that we've always wanted to fuck. To compound this confused sexuality of the viewer, Cruise as David often, after his deformity, appears in a pure, smooth, gelatinous mask made (as explained in plot) to help him cope with his deformity. Cruise, as Deformed Man (in Mask), confuses our libidos yet again with this smooth skinned angel face. He looks like a hot teenage boy in some sort of psychedelic, alternative-reality, Wiley Wiggins mask. Again, could we fuck Deformed Man if we knew he used to look like Cruise and he was wearing a Wiley Wiggins mask? Crowe and Cruise use this mask extensively in the film to continually discuss not only our own inability to cope with the ugliness within ourselves but to question our acceptance of those different physically from us. As Wiley the smooth skinned, generic, hottie, boy wonder, Cruise again changes not only appearance but personality as well and now becomes Troubled Son. We only want to comfort him, stroke his smooth, gelatinous cheek and tell him it will all be all right. Crowe and Cruise have much help with exploring all of these things involving physicality. They also discuss the attractiveness of power, wealth and material things. Help in this matter is unwaveringly supplied by Diaz and Cruz (Penelope). But many other actors appear in the film and each and every one of them give performances that are the best of their career. Jason Lee, Kurt Russell, Noah Taylor, Tilda Swinton, and Timothy Spall (okay - he had more of a character in "Secrets and Lies") all work wonders here in the (not so) periphery. This is simply a film where everything clicks. Everything is in its right place. Even Crowe's audio landscape is impeccable. Crow revives the lost new wave classic "Doot Doot" by Fruer to consecrate it as the penultimate in neo-modern-futuristic elevator music. but that isn't enough; he goes on to mix a plethora of cool tunes in the score and then commingles them in the film's climatic moment to be an amalgam of pop culture sounds that coagulate into a cacophony of mind-splitting, mind-bending, mind-breaking, mind-fucking sound, a pinnacle of sound, that represents nothing less than the fabric of reality being torn asunder. Tunes like The Five American's "Western Union," and Joan Osborne's "What if God Was One of Us" churn into the collective pop culture beehive of David's brain causing a brilliant short circuit of reality only to segue into the mind-freeing breath of realization that is Todd Rundgren's classic "Can We Still Be Friends." It is some of the best usage of pop music in film in a year that has been infused with great film music montages, from "Moulin Rouge" to "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." And more importantly, like those films, the music here is particular to the film's plot. It MEANS something. The pop culture clutter of David' brain means something. Music is integral here. And you know Crowe is on the right track when he begins the film with Radiohead's recent avant-garde classic from the "Kid A" experiment, "Everything in Its Right Place." Indeed it is. "Vanilla Sky" is a truly masterful film. I was only disappointed with the fact that the film's brilliant conclusion actually served to wrap up the film a bit to well. But reflection on the piece, which leads me to want to see it again, has made me realize that it is one of the most interesting and singularly unique films to be made this year. A film that, with "Almost Famous" and "Jerry Maguire," surely cements Cameron Crowe in the pantheon of modern filmmaking masters. |