Interested in a trippy movie with some top-rated movie stars? Do you like the multi-layered revelation structure of a movie like Inception (2010)? Are dream-involved movies of the subconscious mixed with love, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) of interest? Are movies involving dreams of love the hope for better your thing, including the movie What Dreams May Come (1998)? If you’ve answered yes to more than one of the above, then the movie Vanilla Sky (2001) just might be the movie for you.
(Penélope Cruz as Sophia Serrano, left, and Tom Cruise as David Aames).
Tom Cruise stars opposite Penélope Cruz and Cameron Diaz in a movie that may have been a bit ahead of its time. Cameron Crowe directed Vanilla Sky, which performed much better with audiences then it did with critics at the time it was released.
(Cameron Diaz as Julie Gianni)
Cruise is the clear movie lead who portrays a self-indulgent, vain publishing magnate who inherited his publishing house after the death of his parents in an automobile accident. We first meet the character David Aames as he expresses his so-called friendship with Julie Gianni. The scene is a foreshadowing of the story to be revealed later, which now leads us to David’s friend Brian Shelby, portrayed by Jason Lee.
(Jason Lee as Brian Shelby).
It is Brian, aspiring actor by trade and under the influence of his friend David, who introduces David to Sophia Serrano, played by Penélope Cruz. David feels like he’s in a dream, yet immediately expresses his interest in Sophia at David’s birthday party. Within a small period of screen time, the love triangle of David, Julie, and Sophia is established with Brian as the wannabe love interest for both Julie and Sophia to boot.
(Kurt Russell as McCabe)
The love triangle continues to play out as we learn that David is under legal suspicion. We see David in a jail circumstance with McCabe, portrayed by Kurt Russell, trying to get David to share the details for an unknown murder that hangs over David’s head. In the course of this, we get some of the backstory for how David came into his publishing empire, in addition to the fact of Thomas Tipp, portrayed by Timothy Spall, supporting David against an aggressive board of directors out to gain control of the publishing house that David controls.
(Tom Cruise as David Aames, left, and Timothy Spall as Thomas Tipp).
All this is background to plot questions that take the audience into questions of physical attraction, friendship, intimacy, loyalty, promises, and the nature of what each of these demands within the context of a relationship. These questions are all part of the larger questions of the movie, especially of what life has to offer as well as your role in seeking it.
(Noah Taylor as Edmund Ventura).
The questions, after many layers of Vanilla Sky try to speak of questions about mental health, interpersonal relationships, and even the Me Too Movement of a later prominence than the period when this film takes place. In the context of Me Too, Vanilla Sky does not hold up well on all scores. (That is a different blog to be explored later). In the context of the movie, Noah Taylor as Edmund Ventura helps bring clarity to the outer most frame of the movie’s narrative.
Due to the multiple layers of the movie when it was released, my instinct is that many critics of this movie at the time of release inappropriately undervalued the quality of the issues raised and the subject matter explored. Many of the questions indicated were and are socially important. The questions raised in the places where the movie leads are hard, unpleasant, and raise decidedly unpleasant feelings and thoughts in the audience. A 2001 movie audience may not have been ready for these questions. Critics at the time seem to have been.
Blog friend Cobra rates this movie quite highly. My guess is that this has to do with the narrative structure, the emotional questions raised, and the mystery of the layering of the answers to the questions raised. It is with these points in mind that I will rate Vanilla Sky higher that many did at the time of the film’s 2001 release. Acknowledging that the film is challenging in some ways for some audiences is also fair. That all said, I rate this film 3.75-stars out of 5.
Matt – Saturday, December 1, 2018
Matt Lynn Digital 