Vanilla Sky - Review

Vanilla Sky is a movie like I have never seen before. Not once has a movie baffled me, confused me and made me think and ponder it's meaning as much as Vanilla Sky has. Before discussing the actual film, I feel like it would be beneficial for this review to go through my journey with this movie.

During the summer of 2018 and after seeing Mission: Impossible - Fallout, I went on a real Tom Cruise kick. I started re-watching some of his films I hadn't seen in quite a while, Minority Report, Collateral, The Last Samurai, Jerry Maguire, etc. and watched some of his films I'd never seen before such as War of The Worlds, Rain Man and of course, Vanilla Sky.

When watching Vanilla Sky for the first time, I was so lost. At one moment, I thought I was watching another Cameron Crowe romantic comedy, but then we cut to Tom Cruise in a face mask being interogated by Kurt Russell for a murder he committed. Not only was the plot confusing, but the way the movie was told was confusing as well. Constantly questioning if what we are seeing on screen is reality or a dream, sudden time jumps and scenes that make you really uncomfortable right next to really charming scenes with Peter Gabriel music. When watching it, I thought this was a mess and I wasn't having any part of it.

However, something happened which to be quite frank, is extremely rare for me. I thought about this movie every single day for six whole months. I couldn't get it out of my head. When driving to work, I was thinking about Vanilla Sky. When walking the dog, I was listening to the soundtrack of Vanilla Sky. When I would be laying in bed before going to sleep, I would be thinking about the plot, the characters and attempting to wrap my brain around the overall meaning of this movie. I watched videos analyzing this movie and it's ambiguous ending and have read essays explaining how this film explores visuals and how subtle it is in it's storytelling. When thinking back to my first viewing, I didn't remember thinking it was a mess or how confused I was, I remembered all the reasons why I kept watching the movie as opposed to getting pissed off and stopping the movie half way through.

So I decided that it was finally time to give Vanilla Sky another shot. After months and months of thinking about this movie and knowing what I was getting into this time, I can honestly say that I love this movie. I know right? No film has had a bigger shift of opinion for me than Vanilla Sky.

Now, let's actually look at the story. In Vanilla Sky, we have David Ames (Tom Cruise) who is a vain, selfish, and an extremely wealthy head of a major magazine in New York City. In his mind, he has it all. He has the extravagant apartment in downtown Manhattan, he drives an expensive car, his money was all inherited, he is handsome and he is living the perfect bachelor lifestyle with no strings attached. As a bonus, he has a friends with benefits relationship with a woman named Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz). Things change for David when he meets a woman named Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz) at his birthday party and instantly falls in love. They spend the night together and talk about life and all its hidden treasures and David has a sudden change of heart.

However, who shows up at Sofia's house in the morning and offers David a ride? You guessed it, Julie Gianni. After David gets in the car with Julie, she starts to have a mental breakdown as she drives off a bridge with David inside. From that moment on, you don't know what is real, what is a dream, if David is alive, if David is dead, if David is insane, etc. It is a total mind-bending rollercoaster.

So knowing that set-up (I didn't going into it) you can gage if a movie like this would interest you.

But the reasons why this movie works and makes you continue watching are the characters, the intrigue and the thought provoking themes.

Tom Cruise is great in everything he is in. But here, the film tackles the question, "Can we sympathize with the poor, rich character?" David is not a very nice person and treats others, especially Julie, like a piece of meat and has no problem throwing other people under the bus to get his way. But you do see a change of character throughout the movie and it teaches us that material goods can be stripped away in an instant.

Penelope Cruz is also great and her chemistry with Tom Cruise really jumps off the screen. You really do feel like they are in love and Cameron Diaz is perfect casting as the typical hyper sexual crazy ex-girlfriend trope, but she also has a layer of sympathy to her as well. She isn't just one note. Kurt Russell is also a great addition to the cast because he acts as the vessel for the audience to pick apart David's brain and find out what is going on inside his head.

The only actor that I thought was maybe miscast was Jason Lee as David's best friend Brian. Nothing particularly wrong with Jason Lee, I just felt that you could tell he was being out performed and overshadowed by all of his other co-stars.

With all the strong characters, it is much easier for us the audience to stay invested through all the twists and turns. Which leads me to the intrigue, the movie really does send you through a loop and I was constantly questioning what I was seeing on screen. Am I being lied to? Am I being shown someone's fake projection of reality? While confusing the first time watching, it always kept me on the edge of my seat because I was constantly anxious to try to solve this story and really understand what was going on.

This is the intrigue necessary to bring up some of the thought provoking themes that I couldn't stop thinking about for months after watching this movie. One of them being lucid dreaming. Would you live the perfect life knowing that it wasn't real? You could be with the person you want to be with, live where you want to live and have the abilities you've always wanted to have, but deep down you know that it isn't your real life?

Karma is another topic this film brings up and that all of your actions have consequences. Bad behaviour and one bad decision could change your life forever, but on the flip side, one of the quotes that is constantly uttered throughout the entire movie is "every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around." You may not realize it in the moment, but every action you take could change your life path entirely.

Lastly, the sweet is not as sweet without the sour. This film tackles the idea that the pure happy moments of life would not be so wonderful without some bad moments also. We look back at the terrible moments of our lives and wish that we would never have to go through them again, but because we went through them, we are able to learn from them and our happy moments shine even brighter.

I should also mention that Cameron Crowe has stated that the ending is anything you want it to be. Meaning if you want the film to have a happy ending, the film allows itself to end on a happy note and vice versa. Since I am rather optimistic, I wanted this film to have a happy ending, so that's what I got. However, you may just end up with a rather depressing ending depending on how you view it.

Vanilla Sky is truly a movie you need to see to believe. You may hate it, you may love it, but guaranteed, it won't leave your head easily.