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Vol. 6, No. 1 April 2002 Vanilla Sky
[1] Cameron Crowe's latest offering, Vanilla
Sky, is akin to viewing a Georgia O'Keefe painting. There is a
disjunctive movement that places the viewer into the film's world, a world
where existence and understanding rarely coalesce. Indeed, O'Keefe's oft
cited quip is relevant--"there is nothing less real than
realism." [2] The plot revolves around publishing heir David
Aames (Tom Cruise), who zips around Manhattan in his
expensive car, eats at exclusive restaurants only to return to his
luxurious apartment(s) where his lover Julie (Cameron Diaz) drinks
lattes and leaves messages on his alarm clock--suggestively uttering,
"open your eyes, David." Indeed. The rest of the film takes us
through jealous lovers, a defacing car crash, barrooms, prison cells, a
caring psychiatrist, immortality, and unusual dreams. Yet, none of this is
quite as it appears: Is Sofia (Penelope Cruz) merely a
psychological projection? Is Julie dead? Is David' s face unscathed? The
line between dream and reality is displaced. The film weaves a tapestry
where dreams, existence, projection, and the external world are at the
same time interwoven and undone. [3] Although Vanilla Sky wants to
moralize Cruise's movement throughout the film ( recall Jerry Maguire ),
it is not simply about gray hairs and pretty faces. David Aames seeks an
inoculation against finitude, striving to overcome mortality .In terms of
life affirmation, Vanilla Sky is paradoxical: memory and recollection
become a jumbled mess. Such as this is, Cruise's character equates the
transcendent world with everyday life, comprehending the abhorrent reality
behind the reality. The abhorrent reality is conveyed wonderfully in a
scene that takes place in a dark club to pulsating techno music. We watch
David descend into drunken madness as he removes his latex mask and
confronts his brute existence. Moreover, in the scenes where David talks
with his psychiatrist (a miscast Kurt Russell) we watch as he forms
and deforms life-- consequently, as viewers we share in David' s maddening
confusion. This commonality between character and audience is tied to the
very ground of religious experience: in the face of finitude we seek to
affirm life as we repeatedly encounter anxiety , death and suffering. [4] The idea of transcendence is centered on the
fleeting character of love, represented by Sofia. At the end of the film,
high above the streets of Manhattan, the choice Aames must make is
ultimate: to decide between disembodiment and incarnation. This emerges in
light of interplay between the absence and presence of Sofia, "the
last guileless woman in Manhattan"--she is the eternal embodiment of
the centered self The ultimate concerns that Aames must make are subverted
the practical ones of Sofia; in her harmony with the world she is just
doing what one does, resolutely living choice by choice. [5]
In the end, I want to suggest that the film presents us with a sort of
Nietzschean theological anthropology: to live is to dance on the abyss and
die at the right time. This is the anthropological scaffolding that holds
the other religious themes together. Interpretation wields meaning upon
appearances. The discontinuity between interpretation and experience, a
continual theme, probes at deeper questions about memory , recollection
and ontological forgetting. [6] The notion that we can domesticate God is
undone in Vanilla Sky. To choose immortality is to displace God and in
turn dissolve ourselves in light of a transcendent void. See Vanilla Sky
if only for the re-presentation of the album cover of The Freewheelin'
Bob Dylan and the other clues to decoding the film. Viewed as a love
story, a struggle for the soul, or an existential confrontation with the
eternal, Vanilla Sky should be seen late at night in one of
those stadium-style theater. |
