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film

Vanilla Sky
File:Vanilla Sky poster.jpg
Directed by	Cameron Crowe
Written by	Alejandro Amenábar Mateo Gil Cameron Crowe
Produced by	Cameron Crowe Tom Cruise Paula Wagner
Starring	Tom Cruise Penélope Cruz Cameron Diaz Jason Lee Kurt Russell
Edited by	Joe Hutshing
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	December 14, 2001
Running time	136 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	US$68,000,000

Vanilla Sky is a 2001 film which has been variously characterized by published film critics as "an odd mixture of science fiction, romance, and reality warp" , "part Beautiful People fantasy, part New Age investigation of the Great Beyond" a "love story, a struggle for the soul, or an existential confrontation with the eternal", and an "erotic adventure, romance, comedy, mystery and psychological thriller, with a dose of science fiction".

The film is a "very close remake" of the 1997 Spanish film Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil. It stars Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz (a reprise of her performance in Abre los ojos), Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. It was directed by Cameron Crowe, who produced the film together with Cruise and Paula Wagner.

Plot

The film opens with David Aames waking up in bed. He is an affluent, handsome young man. As he drives to work, he finds the streets of New York strangely deserted at rush hour. With growing unease he drives to Times Square and finds the entire city abandoned.

We then learn that David is in a jail cell describing a dream to Dr. McCabe, a psychologist that has been assigned to him. David has been charged with a murder he has no recollection of, and wears a mysterious pale mask. He and Dr. McCabe discuss the events that led to his eventual incarceration.

Following the death of David's father, he was given 51% ownership of his father's publishing company. The rest of the company is owned by a board of directors that David disparagingly calls the "Seven Dwarves." Each of them believed that they were next in line to take over the company after David's father died. It is clear that David can have anything his heart desires, and that nothing is beyond him. Then, on the night of his birthday party which also includes a conversation with a drunken Thomas Tipp, the company attorney and an old friend of David's father. Initially, David considered firing Thomas for what he believes is his incompetence as an attorney, but has a change of heart when Thomas makes a sad confession. David's best friend, Brian, brings with him a girl named Sofia that he just met at the library. Almost instantly, David and Sofia flirt with each other, almost completely ignoring Brian. However, Julianna Gianni, a woman that David regularly sleeps with but has no deep feelings for, crashes his party. She stays distant but keeps a close eye on him the entire night. Once David realizes Julianna is there, he asks Sofia to pretend to engage in a deep conversation with him so that Julianna won't come near him.

File:VanillaSky2.jpg

David and Sofia

David and Sofia end up hitting it off. He walks her back to her place and they stay up all night talking. The next morning as David is getting ready to drive to work, Julianna drives up beside him asking how his night with Sofia was. Julianna makes David feel guilty about ignoring her and convinces him to get into her car. It quickly becomes apparent that she is obsessed with David. She starts driving recklessly, speeding through busy city streets, all the while insisting that she's deeply in love with him and berating him for treating her so casually. Fearing for their safety, he tries to get her to stop the car by telling her that he loves her. She drives the car off a bridge in an attempt to kill them both.

We are told that Julianna was killed. David survives but his face and arm are mangled, and he suffers blinding headaches due to the metal pieces holding his skull together. He spends a long time in isolation before deciding to take back control of his company and see Sofia again. She appears hesitant to be around him, and when they go on a date she brings Brian along. The date is a disaster as David drinks too much and makes Sofia increasingly uneasy around him. The three part ways at the end of the night, and David ends up passing out on a sidewalk. He is woken up the next morning by Sofia who tells him that she will stay with him if he can get his act together. From that moment, David's life is turned around. His team of plastic surgeons is able to restore his face and he finds his soul mate in Sofia.

File:Vanillasky2 techsupport.jpg

David converses with "Tech Support" for the first time.

His new-found happiness is short-lived, however, when he begins hallucinating. He looks in the mirror to see his face once again disfigured. A mysterious man turns up wherever he goes, and tells him that he (David) has the power to control the world. And one night he goes to bed with Sofia and wakes up to find himself with Julianna, who insists she really is Sofia. He grows violent, convinced that Julianna is alive and playing games with him. He is arrested and told by Tipp that he severely beat Sofia, But Tipp will have the case thrown out. Tipp shows David photos of Julianna with a bruised face, but everybody, including his best friend Brian, tells him that it was Sofia he attacked. David breaks into Sofia's apartment and finds that every photo he'd seen of Sofia is now of Julianna. Julianna attacks him, thinking he's an intruder but apologizes when she sees it's him, still insisting she is Sofia. She leaves the room, and the actual Sofia returns in her place as if nothing was wrong. They begin to make love, but while they are in the middle of the act, he finds that he is making love to Julianna. In a fit of panic, he suffocates her then realizes he has just killed Sofia.

When David is finished telling Dr. McCabe his story, he still can't bring himself to believe that he killed anybody. Dr. McCabe, frustrated by David's failure to tell him anything meaningful that might help his case, tells him that he can no longer help David and will try to argue for temporary insanity. As Dr. McCabe leaves, David sees an infomercial for a cryogenics company called Life Extension. The infomercial, and a dog that has apparently been frozen and brought back to life, have appeared at several points throughout the film. David is entranced by the commercial, and McCabe sees that there may be a connection between Life Extension and David's seeming amnesia.

Escorted by Dr. McCabe, David visits Life Extension and realizes that he had signed on as a client, and had opted for an extra feature called the "Lucid Dream," which allows clients to be revived after death and placed in a perpetual coma where they experience a custom-made, self-designed dream life, with no memory of death.

David realizes that he is now living in the Lucid Dream and that the mysterious man is his "Technical Support." The Tech Support explains that the Lucid Dream was "spliced" into his life immediately following his passing out on the sidewalk after his night out with Sofia and Brian. But the dream went awry and turned into a nightmare. Since nothing he experienced after the splice was real, David realizes that he never murdered anybody. Dr. McCabe tells him that the guilt he felt for the way he treated Julianna may have caused his subconscious to merge Julianna and Sofia. But it turns out that Dr. McCabe isn't real either; he's just a character David created in his dream to be the father figure he always wanted. Tech Support tells David that in reality, he never saw Sofia again, and that Thomas Tipp, the attorney that David considered firing in the beginning, had saved the company for David and helped him regain control from the board of directors. But David, suffering constant pain and depression following his disfigurement, committed suicide.

In the end, technical support reveals that they have updated the software for their lucid dream and David can be reinserted into the dream with no memory of the nightmare portion, or he can be awakened 150 years after he was frozen and live in the real world with a restored body. David chooses to be awakened in the future, despite knowing that he will still be disfigured (which Tech Support says may not be an issue, given advances in technology), that everyone he ever knew will be long dead, and that his wealth will be worth far less. After imagining himself with Sofia one last time, he jumps off of a skyscraper. The final shot is a close up of an eye suddenly opening up, presumably David's, with a voice (sounding like Sofia) greeting him.

Cast

Tom Cruise ... David Aames
Penélope Cruz ... Sofia Serrano
Cameron Diaz ... Julianna 'Julie' Gianni
Kurt Russell ... Dr. Curtis McCabe
Jason Lee ... Brian Shelby
Noah Taylor ... Edmund Ventura
Timothy Spall ... Thomas Tipp
Tilda Swinton ... Rebecca Dearborn
Michael Shannon ... Aaron
Delaina Mitchell ... David's Assistant
Shalom Harlow ... Colleen
Oona Hart ... Lynette
Ivana Milicevic ... Emma
Johnny Galecki ... Peter Brown
Jhaemi Willens ... Jamie Berliner

Possible interpretations

According to Cameron Crowe's commentary, there are four different interpretations of the ending:

"Tech support" is telling the truth; 150 years have passed since David Aames killed himself, and everything after his passing out on the sidewalk was a lucid dream.
The entire movie is a dream, as evidenced by the sticker on David's car that reads '2/30/01'.
The movie is actually a novel that Brian is working on.
The entire movie after the crash, takes place while David is in a coma

The title is a reference to depictions of skies in some of the paintings of Claude Monet; Crowe has noted that the presence of "vanilla skies" in the film is one clue to understanding turns that the plot takes.

Reception

While the film grossed around 100 million dollars in U.S. box office, many of the reviews were negative. One exception was Roger Ebert, whose print review gave it three out of four stars:

Think it all the way through, and Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky is a scrupulously moral picture. It tells the story of a man who has just about everything, thinks he can have it all, is given a means to have whatever he wants, and loses it because — well, maybe because he has a conscience. Or maybe not. Maybe just because life sucks. Or maybe he only thinks it does. This is the kind of movie you don't want to analyze until you've seen it two times.

Ebert said that the ending "explains the mechanism of our confusion, rather than telling us for sure what actually happened." Richard Roeper greatly enjoyed the film and has put it in his list for Best Films for 2001 at #2.

A more mixed review from The New York Times (NYT) early on calls the film a "highly entertaining, erotic science-fiction thriller that takes Mr. Crowe into Steven Spielberg territory" but then notes:

As it leaves behind the real world and begins exploring life as a waking dream (this year's most popular theme in Hollywood movies with lofty ideas), Vanilla Sky loosens its emotional grip and becomes a disorganized and abstract if still-intriguing meditation on parallel themes. One is the quest for eternal life and eternal youth; another is guilt and the ungovernable power of the unconscious mind to undermine science's utopian discoveries. David's redemption ultimately consists of his coming to grips with his own mortality, but that redemption lacks conviction.

A negative review was published by Salon.com, which called the film an "aggressively plotted puzzle picture, which clutches many allegedly deep themes to its heaving bosom without uncovering even an onion-skin layer of insight into any of them." The review rhetorically asks:

Who would have thought that Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as "Vanilla Sky" in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right....But the disheartening truth is that we can see Crowe taking all the right steps, the most Crowe-like steps, as he mounts a spectacle that overshoots boldness and ambition and idiosyncrasy and heads right for arrogance and pretension — and those last two are traits I never would have thought we'd have to ascribe to Crowe.

Other reviewers extrapolate from the knowledge that Cruise had bought the rights to do a version of Amenábar's film. One reviewer from The Guardian summarized the film as an "extraordinarily narcissistic high-concept vanity project for producer-star Tom Cruise"; a Village Voice reviewer characterized it as "hauntingly frank about being a manifestation of its star's cosmic narcissism".

Diaz's performance got more positive reviews, with the Los Angeles Times film critic calling her "compelling as the embodiment of crazed sensuality" and the NYT reviewer saying she gives a "ferociously emotional" performance.

One critic was so upset about the movie and demanded that Cameron Crowe tell her the correct interpretation of the movie. Cameron Crowe told her to interpret it anyway she liked. She responded by saying, "I want to strangle you!"

Additional production notes

File:Vanillasky1.jpg

Director Steven Spielberg makes a cameo in Vanilla Sky.

The scene with Tom Cruise alone in Times Square is not computer enhanced. The production was given unprecedented permission to shut down Times Square for three hours on a Sunday.
During David's dream in Times Square, a clip of a scene from The Twilight Zone (episode "Shadow Play") can be seen on the center of the Budweiser Jumbotron, a deliberate reference to part of the plot for the movie . In the background, you can see actor Dennis Weaver yelling "No! Not again!"
The outfit that Sofia is wearing at the wake Brian has for David is the same outfit in the final scene where he kisses her for the last time.
Cameron Crowe used samples of The Conet Project, a collection of recordings of numbers stations (mysterious shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin believed to be operated by government agencies to communicate with spies), in certain scenes of the film. He said he used the station recordings to create a sense of confusion.
Crowe says that there are 428 references to pop culture made in the film — 429 if one made in error is included.
The motor vehicle registration on David's car reads 2/30/01, a fictional date. Though this could be easily accepted in the Times Square scenes in which Aames drives a Ferrari 250 GTO (as this is a dream), the date also appears on Aames' Ford Mustang, supposedly in real life. On the commentary, Crowe says that it was an accident, although it led to one of the different interpretations of the story.
The filmmakers asked for, and received, a few paintings by Ralph Bakshi to use in the set designs for Tom Cruise's apartment. While the credit "Painting by Ralph Bakshi Courtesy of Ralph Bakshi" can be seen during the end credits, it is not known exactly how much or which of his artwork was used.
During the final rooftop scenes, the surrounding buildings and landmarks are placed as they would have been remembered by David. This is most notably illustrated by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island both being much closer to the tip of Manhattan island than they are in real life and the twin towers of the World Trade Center still being intact and standing despite the September 11, 2001 attacks, which David would not have known about.
The Monet painting depicted in the film is "Seine at Argenteuil", as can be seen clearly in the birthday episode at David's house.
During the scene where David sprints in an empty Times Square, one of the images flashing by, ironically or coincidentally, is Tom Cruise's real-life future wife, Katie Holmes.
The ending theme was written and performed by Paul McCartney especially for the movie.
The soundtrack of Vanilla Sky was the first major motion picture soundtrack to feature the Icelandic group Sigur Rós.
Steven Spielberg appears in a cameo at David Aames's birthday party. Spielberg would return the favor to Cameron Crowe the following year by allowing Crowe to appear in a cameo in Spielberg's Minority Report. Crowe appears as a subway passenger reading the paper who stares directly at Tom Cruise after another person passes between Crowe and the camera. Cameron Diaz can be seen in the foreground as a woman talking on her cell phone. In that same year, both Spielberg and Cruise appear in cameos as themselves in Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002).
One of the photos that flash by in the ending montage is one taken of Crowe's sister leaving her family, curlers still in her hair. This pivotal moment in Crowe's life was depicted in Almost Famous, also directed by Cameron Crowe.
In a scene, David walks with Sofia down a street purposely in the manner of the album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, even with very similar cars in the background.
David Aames' name is taken from the film Paradise. The main protagonist in Paradise is named David, while the actor who played David is Willie Aames

Music

Vanilla Sky featured original compositions from Nancy Wilson and one original composition by Paul McCartney. Other songs used in the film include those from Radiohead, R.E.M., Sigur Rós, Thievery Corporation and The Chemical Brothers. Director Cameron Crowe thought Vanilla Sky had musical overtones, and expressed this through the use of music throughout the film.

Soundtrack

References

External links

Eyes and Ears for Vanilla Sky at Cameron Crowe's Official Website
The "secrets" of the film, from the Internet Archive copy of a fan's now-offline website
Complete Vanilla Sky Soundtrack Listings
Vanilla Sky at IMDb
Vanilla Sky at Rotten Tomatoes
Vanilla Sky at Tom Cruise Online.com

v t e Cameron Crowe filmography
Director	Say Anything... (1989) Singles (1992) Jerry Maguire (1996) Almost Famous (2000) Vanilla Sky (2001) Elizabethtown (2005) The Union (2011) Pearl Jam Twenty (2011) We Bought a Zoo (2011) Aloha (2015)
Writer only	Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) The Wild Life (1984)
Producer only	David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019)
Television	Roadies (2016)
Adaptations	Almost Famous (2019 musical)

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