December
14, 2001 | When dreams are for sale, do they come with tech support?
Can you dream that you are having a dream? If so, what happens when
the dream that you dream you are dreaming turns into a nightmare? How
can you save yourself if you can't wake up?
With
all the beguiling shrewdness of a master cardsharp, writer-director
Cameron Crowe shuffles these and other provocative conundrums throughout
his extraordinary Vanilla Sky, only gradually tipping his hand
to indicate that, for David Aames, the justifiably paranoid protagonist
played by Tom Cruise, these aren't merely rhetorical questions. Rather,
they are, quite literally, matters of life and death.
Trust
me: I'm not giving too much away when I note that dreams of various
sorts loom large in this scenario. Crowe himself establishes the cardinal
rule of his absorbing game - Don't trust everything you see! -during
the opening minutes, as the fabulously rich and criminally handsome
David rises from peaceful slumber in his luxurious apartment, and sets
out for another day's work and play as a master of his Manhattan universe.
The longer he drives, however, the more he notices something distractingly
odd... that grows steadily more disconcerting... that becomes downright
terrifying, and worse.…
Gotcha!
It's time to really wake up, as the nightmare is dispelled by
a cooing message recorded on his clock radio: "Open your eyes!"
Which, not coincidentally, is the title of Alejandro Amenabar's acclaimed
1997 Spanish romantic thriller, which Crowe has adapted - with remarkable
fidelity and acuity - for this Americanized remake. (In return for granting
rights to his original movie, Amenabar got to make The Others
with Nicole Kidman, Cruise's ex-wife. Sounds like a fair deal to me.)
In
Crowe's version, the message is cooed by Julie (Cameron Diaz), the sexy
blond beauty who's lying next to David when, in reality or something
like it, he rises for the day. She's frisky - perhaps a shade too insistently
frisky - but David manfully resists her temptations and zips off to
run the publishing empire he inherited from his legendarily hard-driven
father. Before the first board meeting of the day, though, he takes
time for a quick game of tennis with his best buddy, Brian Shelby (Jason
Lee), an author whose good-natured mockery of David may not be entirely
untainted by envy.
David
is "about to turn 33," but the grim-faced board members at
his company - and, truth to tell, just about all the other people who
know him - harbor serious doubts about his maturity and judgment. But
David is too recklessly carefree to consider anything but a party-hearty
lifestyle. (That might explain why his magazines, which Crowe slyly
suggests are glossy Maxim clones, are so successful.) Whenever a problem
- or, much worse, a responsibility - clouds his horizon, David simply
takes flight in the opposite direction. Trouble is, there are some things,
like days of reckoning, that even a David Aames can't avoid indefinitely.
While
hosting his own birthday party, the kind of celebrity-studded, media-centric
bash where Steven Spielberg might (and does) make a cameo appearance,
David is disconcerted by the unexpected arrival of Julie, whom he took
great pains not to invite. To avoid her, David pretends to be involved
with Sofia (Penelope Cruz), Brian's intensely attractive date. One thing
leads to another, playful pretense evolves into mutual fascination,
and David brings Sofia back to her apartment, where they spend the night
together, falling in love without actually making love.
OK,
I can hear you laughing, but knock it off, and try to forget what you've
read in the supermarket tabloids. Cruise and Cruz are exceptionally
graceful during each step of this teasing, tentative mating dance, making
it easy to believe their characters might want to move slowly and not
rush things. Besides, David takes inordinate pride in delaying gratification,
so there's an edgy ambiguity here: His delaying tactics could be part
of a well-practiced master plan.
When
David leaves Sofia's apartment the following morning, he appears to
be - or perhaps we just want him to be - a changed man. Unfortunately,
he accepts a ride from Julie, who just happens to be outside waiting
(stalking?) in her car. Even more unfortunately, she's a lot more attached
to David than he is, or ever could be, to her. Diaz is terrifically
persuasive, at the very top of her game, as Julie fast-forwards from
mischievous banter to shrieking rage. But Crowe doesn't give us much
time to appreciate the impact of her unexpectedly compelling performance
because, with horrific suddenness, Julie hits the accelerator and drives
off an overpass.
Julie
is killed, but David somehow manages to survive - as a horribly disfigured
shadow of his former self.
Or
does he? And, come to think of it, is she?
More
questions: What does any of this have to do with sporadic scenes that
show David in some kind of prison setting, where he is repeatedly interrogated
by an aggressively sympathetic psychologist (Kurt Russell)? Why is David
wearing a mask that might be better suited for Halloween bogeyman
Michael Myers? And just who is the pasty-faced chap (Noah Taylor) who
keeps darting in and out of the background, hinting that he knows more
than he's saying, and saying more than David may want to know?
Crowe
is ingeniously, even profoundly tricky in Vanilla Sky, but he
does play fair. The clues are placed in plain sight. Some are as fleetingly
visible as the movie posters on David's wall - take note of Jules
and Jim, another movie that placed an emotionally distraught woman
behind the wheel - while others appear as recurring refrains, flickering
on TV screens as prophesies disguised as infomercials.
Maybe
you think I've already given you too much plot synopsis, but, once again,
I ask you to trust me: All I have given you is a bare minimum, the least
you need to know to play the game. I could tell you more about the multifaceted
marvel that is Cruise's performance - a perfect example of brilliance
fueled by star power, even more impressive than Cruise's work for Crowe
in Jerry Maguire. Or I could tell you more about the tantalizing
allure of Cruz as, to paraphrase a title coined by Louis Bunuel, an
obscure object of desire. But if I did tell you, Crowe might want to
kill me. Or, much worse, manipulate my nightmares.
Suffice
it to say that Vanilla Sky is a brazenly challenging and richly
rewarding fable about actions and consequences, dreams and realities.
It is the most stylistically audacious film to be released by a major
Hollywood studio since Moulin Rouge, and should spark more repeat
viewings and heated arguments than any movie since Memento.
It's
tempting to view Vanilla Sky as the darker flip side of Crowe's
last effort, the deliciously bittersweet, frankly autobiographical Almost
Famous. But many of the differences between the two films may be
more apparent than real.
Almost
Famous, based on Crowe's experiences as a teenage rock journalist
in the 1970s, is an enormously engaging coming-of-age story, told from
the compassionately bemused viewpoint of an older and wiser adult who
never forgot how lucky he was to be in the right place at the right
moment. Crowe's new work is harsher and harder, more cerebral than heart-felt
- but, it, too, is a coming-of-age story. And while David certainly
is anything but lucky when he winds up in the wrong place at the wrong
time, that place serves as a point of departure for a necessary journey
toward self-awareness. It's a trip well worth taking with him, again
and again.