Movies - Vanilla Sky

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	Movies - Vanilla Sky

Vanilla Sky is a 2001 film which tells a story of a young multi-millionaire who is charged with murder.

The film stars Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. The film was directed by Cameron Crowe and is a close remake of the 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil. Penélope Cruz appeared in the original film in the same role. The film grossed around 100 million dollars in the U.S.

Early in the film, Cruise's character (David Aames) mentions Monet's "Vanilla Sky" in a painting hung on a wall in his room.

Plot

Tom Cruise plays David Aames, a spoiled, handsome young man who inherited 51% of his father's publishing company upon his death. He can have anything his heart desires, nothing is beyond him. Then, one night spent with the woman of his dreams Sofía (Penelope Cruz) leads to a fateful encounter with one of his previous lovers, Julianna Gianni (Cameron Diaz). An automobile accident leaves him severely disfigured, and on the path to sorting out his life he is arrested for the murder of a woman alleged to be Sofía, though he believes her to be Julie.

Psychologist Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell), working on David's case, becomes something of a father figure to him, and much of the film is spent as if told from Aames' point of view, discussing it with McCabe. Yet in his studies of David, a deeper truth seems to be lurking, involving a contract David signed, and the dawning realisation that everything may not be what it seems...

During much of the film, the skies are all "vanilla", just as in Monet's painting(s) — perhaps a little too much like the painting(s). That is one of the clues that we are in a fantasy film about simulated reality, because the film seems to be about modern life and a successful womanizer who becomes the victim of a Fatal Attraction
.

It is eventually revealed that this entire portion of the film has been an extended dream, assembled largely from pop-cultural images (it is also revealed that Dr. McCabe is wholly fictional). This simulated reality is the creation of a cryonics company called Life Extension (LE) that has sold the protagonist David (played by Cruise) a "lucid dream", which the company calls the "cryonic union of science and entertainment." The subject's body is kept frozen, but his or her mind is left to roam free in a simulated reality that branches from the real life at a certain point (so the subject has no recollection of his death). If something goes wrong with the simulation, the company can send technical support (played by Noah Taylor) to the subject.

Unlike the plethora of films such as Total Recall, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor
, etc., where the ambiguity of whether one is experiencing the reality or an illusion is a critical point used to support the ending, this film does not use this trick. The two layers — the reality and the simulation are distinct and David can himself choose when to exit the simulation. He does so and presumably ends up in the mid-22nd century, with his face restored and himself mortal and ready for the new real life in the future.

However, there is ambiguity as to whether or not he arrives in the future, or awakens at an early point in "reality", because the final shot, of David's eye opening and hearing a woman speak bears a striking resemblance to the first shot of the portion of the film which was set in the lucid dream. If the lucid dream was in fact a dream of David's, a dream within a dream, and he is awakening in the 20th/21st century, then comparison can be drawn between the film and the tale of Scrooge, whose dreams changed his life.

The motifs of this film bear a strong resemblance to those in the works of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, which typically feature unreliable reality, a father figure and a vindictive woman. Dick's Ubik, in particular, includes a cryonic suspension state - 'half-life' - with similar properties to LE.

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