X-Message-Number: 18210
From: 
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 16:58:00 EST
Subject: Vanilla Sky Review

VANILLA SKY
Directed by Cameron Crowe. Written by Cameron Crowe based on the film Open 
Your Eyes (Abre los ojos), by Alejandro Amen bar. With Tom Cruise, Pen lope 
Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Kurt Russell, Noah Taylor, and Tilda Swinton. 
A Paramount Pictures release. 

Review By Mike Darwin

The first thing to say about Vanilla Sky is that it isn't a very good movie. 
The second thing to say is that if you enjoy Cryonet you probably will want 
to see this movie. Maybe even if you don't enjoy Cryonet you should see it.

Why? That's either a simple or a complex question depending upon the kind of 
detail you like in your answers. The simple answer comes first: Vanilla Sky 
is a film about cryonics which isn't focused on cryonics and doesn't need or 
try to explain what cryonics is. Since it is a large budget, mainstream film, 
with an influential Director and a top box office star that says something in 
itself. What it says is that cryonics and the ideas it takes to understand 
the basics about it are already embedded in the culture. Nobody feels the 
need to explain the premise on which the dissonant parts of the film become 
integrated; it's a given that they are understood.

The more complex answer involves how and why this movie got made. There are 
only three or four movie stars and Directors in Hollywood who can almost do 
as they damn well please.  Unarguably, Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise 
constitute one of each.

Crowe is an interesting filmmaker: his Almost Famous showed real promise. He 
edited Rolling Stone magazine for years and so is in a position to create the 
feel of the cultural life and times of the people who are choosing cryonics 
now. Rock has defined the lives of the generation of people Crowe's film is 
designed to reach (and who are the 40ish people signing up for cryonics). 
With this fantastic background it is a pity Crowe fails completely to do what 
he tries: capture the Rock era sensibility as it relates to the big questions 
in life such as what is real and what isn't, what is love, what is death, and 
how do we deal with both of them? Not to mention balancing hedonism with 
responsibility.

Part of the problem is with Cruise and the character he plays. David Aames is 
a 33-year-old, good looking, utterly superficial and fabulously wealthy heir 
to a magazine publishing empire. His parents were killed by drunk drivers and 
he is now in charge of their publishing empire. There's nothing really bad 
about David Aames, but there is nothing really good about him either. He is 
rich, likes to have fun, is untroubled by the Big Questions in life and 
doesn't seem to have been at all scorched by the death of his parents. A 
typical day is sex four times in one night with a blond beauty named Julia 
(Cameron Diaz) who seems as superficial and unconnected to anything but the 
good times as does David.

David's lavish apartment is a virtual museum of recent popular music and 
culture with paintings by Joni Mitchell, some famous rocker's smashed guitar 
preserved in a glass case, a life sized hologram of John Coltrane performing 
to everyone's complete indifference, and, juxtaposed to the Joni Mitchell a 
painting by Monet; the Vanilla Sky after which the film is named. The movie 
opens the day of his 33rd birthday party and David is not happy about getting 
old. He plucks a gray hair from his head in the mirror with determined 
satisfaction. He feels immortal. The problem is that we haven't a reason in 
the world to care. This guy relates to the world around himself solely as the 
merry prankster. We get the impression he has never had a serious question 
about life since he opened his eyes for the first time. We all knew people 
like this in high school and while they might have been fun at 15, they are a 
crashing bore at 33. All they're good for is the money they have and the 
entertainment it can provide (if they are filthy rich!). 

If you look at Tom Cruise's film career it's pretty much the same story. Even 
in Eyes Wide Shut he fails to draw you into his emotional life. This is OK if 
you're making action films, but it just doesn't work in this genre. I won't 
dwell on the hackneyed Jerry McGuire! Near the end of the movie there is clip 
from To Kill A Mockingbird with Gregory Peck. The film was one of Cameron 
Crowe's mother's favorites and he reportedly watched it endlessly as a child. 
 To bad he didn't learn from Gregory Peck's great portrayal of Atticus Finch, 
the lawyer defending a black man unjustly accused of murdering an abused and 
confused white woman in the small town where the story unfolds while he deals 
with the complex ripples his actions have on his family, his friends and his 
community.

The movie has a disjointed and creepy feel to it. At first I didn't 
understand the many reasons why. The very first reason is that the voice on 
David's CD alarm clock (this guy must spend all his spare time at Sharper 
Image and Hammaker Schlammaker stores) is Penelope Cruz's. He problem is (as 
Roger Ebert points out as well) he doesn't meet her as Sofia until much later 
in the film.

The Times Square dream sequence is confusing, perhaps intentionally so. 
Cruise is a Scientologist and may be raising the issue "is all life a dream, 
or simulation, or an unexpurgated engram? One reason for the confusion is 
that you only get one brief line explaining that lucid dreaming starts only 
after revival. You only have to return to the "real" world if you want to. 
Presumably, you pay extra for the lucid dreaming option and maybe that's why 
David's fiances are so depleted. Or, maybe like Man Forrester in Fred Pohl's 
wonderful cryonics novel Age of the Pussyfoot, more things are necessary in 
the more advanced world and these added things cost more meaning that your 
money doesn't go as far. 

This is an interesting point since if you want to eat food prepared from raw 
foodstuffs (beans, rice and other staples) and forgo almost all modern 
technology: cars, cable TV/modems, phones, electricity, and so on, you 
actually can live for about 25% of what it costs you to live today. In fact, 
you can, I've been told, live cheaper on a dollar adjusted basis than you 
could in 1701! 

I found the frozen dog sequence somewhat annoying because it reminded me of 
TransTime's (BioTime's) Miles, the frozen but not really frozen Beagle. 
However, there was a line where his owner tells Letterman "he not quite as 
sharp as he used to be." That line was used to describe one of the mildly 
neuroinjured Alcor/Cryovita dogs "Dixie" in a number of interviews, including 
 a viciously funny one in a major New York magazine whose name I can't recall 
and is now out of business.

One redeeming thing about this movie if you like movie puzzles (like cult 
movie hidden references) is looking for all the little "in" things and 
tip-offs. Vanilla Sky is not only a Monet painting, but the title of a George 
Harrison song, and thus a tribute to the recently decreased artist.

The interaction between David and Sofia is the most genuine and interesting 
thing in the movie from a human standpoint. This probably reflects Cruise's 
current romantic relationship with her. Sadly, it is not explored or 
exploited to make any of the characters deep enough to care about. Rent To 
Kill A Mockingbird and see the difference. And realize too that the budget 
for the two was even more different. Plus, you get more for you money with 
the Mockingbird rental than the $7.50 they charge here in Riverside for a 
feature movie. At least I didn't pay $9.50 in LA.

The film has definitely been touched by Discovery Channel or other footage of 
Alcor cryopreservations. I don't know if Alcor had much direct input on this 
film, but I doubt it simply because studios rarely do this and even more 
rarely listen to you. The best way to get what you want is to suggest the 
exact opposite. And no, I'm not kidding about this; I've consulted on over 20 
films dealing in some way with cryonics and even have props from some here at 
home!

So, is this movie likely to be good or bad for cryonics. Probably good on the 
average since it just leaches more of the IDEA into the cultural feeding 
trough. It stars a high profile Director and cast. It also ends with David 
deciding to reenter the real world and continue life from there, even with 
its hardships and problems. Fundamentally, it says, "Cryonics is just a tool 
to get you where you think you want to go.  What you do with it and what you 
do when you get there to make your life worth living, or your dreams come 
true is up to you. In the end, David overcame his greatest fear and took the 
leap into life, both figuratively and literally. Hell, even two hours of 
confused and vapid dialogue may be worth that point, if anybody gets it.

And yes, I think they will get it at least on a subconscious level. It's too 
bad Crowe didn't do more to emphasize the take home message that this shallow 
vain man has decided to really live life and overcome the hardships life 
sends us all.

Cruise is 39 years old. I don't think its an accident he made this film at 
this time. I've encountered this same kind of searching involving cryonics 
from other major, egotistical stars at big transition times in their lives. 
Diane Keaton made a truly awful film called Heaven Can Wait. Cryonics was to 
be a central part of it and I talked with her extensively about cryonics 
during and after shooting the film. As her film crew said (mistakenly?) 
"Diane this is the option for you."(referring to cryonics). Heaven Can Wait 
is worth looking at too, just don't expect to be entertained by it. Sometimes 
these movies are made by people with a lot of money and power to explore the 
big questions in their lives. That the results are so disappointing shouldn't 
surprise us. After all, how well have any of us done?
                  I

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