Vanilla Sky

Vanilla Sky is a 2001 film starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. The film was directed by Cameron Crowe and is a close remake of the 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil. (Penélope Cruz appeared in the original film as well, in the same role.)

Early in the film, the principal character mentions Monet's "vanilla sky" in a painting.

Warning: Plot details follow.

Throughout much of the movie, the skies are all "vanilla" just like in Monet's painting - in fact, a little too like the painting. That is the only giveaway that we're in a fantasy movie about simulated reality, because it plays it straight, appearing to be a film about modern life and a successful womanizer who becomes the victim of a Fatal Attraction. Tom Cruise plays David Aames, a handsome and successful young man who is severely disfigured in an automobile accident caused by Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz). Things become tense between David and his friend Brian (Jason Lee) -- and also between David and Sofía (Penélope Cruz), who forms one-third of an awkward romantic triangle with David and Brian. Approximately halfway through the film, David begins to have a series of very disorienting experiences culminating in his arrest for a woman alleged to be Sofía but whom he believes to be Julie. Psychiatrist Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell), working on David's case, becomes something of a father figure to him.

It is eventually revealed that this entire portion of the film has been an extended dream, assembled in large measure from pop-cultural images (and in particular that Dr. McCabe is wholly fictional). This simulated reality is the creation of a company called Life Extension (LE) that has sold the protagonist David (played by Cruise) a "lucid dream", which the company calls the "cryonic union of science and entertainment." The subject's body is kept frozen, but the mind is left to roam free with no recollection of the subject's own death. If something goes wrong with the simulated reality, the company can send technical support (played by Noah Taylor) to the subject.

While the issue of whether what one is experiencing is reality or simply being fed to the person is a critical point used to support the ending, the issue and the question (and all that it entails) is only peripherally raised in the film. While it is somewhat more emphasized in the movie eXistenZ, the subject is most clearly raised in The Matrix, and is touched upon quite heavily in the film Total Recall.

Various people have speculated that the picture depicted in the film is either Monet's "Falaises et Voiliers a Pourville", or even one of the series named variously "Wheat Field and Cypress Trees" / "Yellow Wheat and Cypress" / "Paysage avec Cypres" by Vincent Van Gogh.

See also: life extension

Vanilla Sky

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