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Liam Carey reviews
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8172
- Running time: 130 minutes
- Year: 2002
- Pressing: 2002
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, English for the hard of hearing.
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 5
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Commentary by Director Cameron Crowe and Composer Nancy Wilson featuring a conversation with Tom Cruise, 2 featurettes: Prelude To A Dream, Hitting It Hard, An interview with Paul McCartney, music video “Afrika Shox” by Leftfield/Afrika Bambaataa, Trailers, Photo Gallery with Audio Introduction.
Director:
- Cameron Crowe
Cast:
- David Aames: Tom Cruise
Sofia Serrano: Penelope Cruz
Julie Gianni: Cameron Diaz
Brian Shelby: Jason Lee
Curtis McCabe: Kurt Russell
Edmund Ventura: Noah Taylor
Thomas Tipp: Timothy Spall
Rebecca Dearborn: Tilda Swinton
Libby: Alicia Witt
He’s only gone and done it again. If the double whammy of Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous weren’t proof enough that director Cameron Crowe had become a master of his art, Vanilla Sky doesn’t just simply hit the bullseye; it reveals an ability to break out beyond his trademark niche of intelligently portrayed romance set to a personally-chosen soundtrack. Prepare to open your eyes…
Vanilla Sky is a remake – of Alejandro Amenabar’s Abre Los Ojos – but don’t be fooled. Aside from the source material it’s based upon, and the reprisal of her role in the original by Penelope Cruz, this bears all the trappings of a Cameron Crowe film. And then some.
Within its multi-layered, psychologically ambiguous and eternally mysterious story, Vanilla Sky provokes, shocks, amuses, baffles, thrills and engages on every conceivable level. At its centre, Tom Cruise gives the performance of a lifetime as David Aames, the have-it-all heir to a media empire whose enviable existence is turned upside down by a chance encounter with the beguiling Sofia (played with disarming innocence by Cruz). Events spiral out of control quite literally overnight, fuelled by the distraught and vengeful antics of his “fuck buddy” Julie (an equally outstanding Cameron Diaz), leaving Aames unsure as to what is actually real and what is in his head.
Is it all a dream? A nightmare? A conspiracy hatched by his resentful board of directors? Or something else entirely? Crowe presents a compelling and deliberately confusing case for all possibilities, cutting back and forth in time and switching perspectives to slowly unravel the truth behind Aame’s rollercoaster ride of passion, tragedy, identity and self-awareness.
The less revealed about Vanilla Sky the better, as any film whose basic premise is to constantly throw visual and narrative curveballs at the audience would lose much of its impact without the element of surprise. Nevertheless, this is not merely a gimmicky venture that becomes redundant after one viewing. Vanilla Sky is a densely structured movie, full of superb, eminently quotable dialogue and breathtaking imagery that – refreshingly – isn’t too reliant of CGI whizz-bangs to make its mark.
Challenging yet mainstream cinema is a rare breed, but significantly one that has returned in the past couple of years. Cameron Crowe continues to exceed expectation, offering fresh twists on his established use of iconic and contemporary rock music to fashion a stylised, self-contained but believable world. From the affecting, insightful teenage trials and tribulations of Say Anything to this extraordinary slice of seriously sophisticated surrealist mystery and intrigue, in four steps across 13 years. Now that’s progress.
Crowe is also one of Hollywood’s greatest advocates and fans of the DVD medium, although when his films initially arrive on the format they are rarely loaded with extras. Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous were posthumously granted Collectors’ Editions that gave scope to Crowe’s preferred home-entertainment experience, but Vanilla Sky is pretty satisfying first time out despite being released by the notoriously stingy Paramount studio.
The film utilises a whole host of visual and audio effects to evoke the eloping of perceived realities, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, while not exactly in the cutting-edge league of the latest Star Wars movie, does its job impressively enough. Dialogue is always clear and the excellent soundtrack becomes as much a part of the narrative as the script.
Crowe intuitively understands how music can be a rewarding tool if used sympathetically and intelligently. In every one of his movies, a song has framed the moment, conveyed exactly the right goosebump-inducing emotion. Think of Peter Gabriel‘s In Your Eyes from Say Anything, Springsteen‘s Secret Garden in Jerry Maguire, and the Almost Famous’ Tiny Dancer ensemble scene….and now add to that Jeff Buckley‘s Last Goodbye, the significance of which only reveals itself much later.
A featurette – Prelude To A Dream – is offered first on the menu’s list (above the movie itself) upon launching the disc, but like the other mini documentary Hitting It Hard, these are best viewed after the film. Not so much because of spoilers, as there are few of those, but so as not to detract from what it is an astonishing and unpredictable rollercoaster ride.
Prelude To A Dream offers a condensed look at Vanilla Sky’s hectic journey to the screen, mixing behind-the-scenes footage with soundbites, production stills, and Crowe as an informative guide. Hitting It Hard follows the Vanilla Sky’s key personnel as they travel around the globe in the good name of promotion. Shot with a variety of film/video stock in a fly-on-the-wall style, it chronicles the exhausting, dizzying effect of the worldwide trek on Cruise, Cruz and Crowe.
The music of Vanilla Sky gets its own sub-menu, although on closer inspection there isn’t an awful lot of substance to the “interview with Paul McCartney” spot, which amounts to nothing more than a cursory snippet of the man (very) briefly outlining the inspiration behind his uninspired title song. In a project of such far-reaching depth and suggestion, Macca’s souffle of a strum, with his now-typically throwaway lyrics, is shown to be all the more lightweight.
There is a new, re-edited music video for Afrika Shox, the 1999 Leftfield single featured in the lengthy nightclub scene halfway through the film. It’s a rather odd choice, since either the exclusive R.E.M. track All The Right Friends or Where Do I Begin by the Chemical Brothers (with Beth Orton on vocals, and also recorded specifically for the soundtrack) would have been more suitable.
Better, though, is the extensive Photo Gallery. Split into no fewer than eight sections, it also has the option of an in-depth audio introduction by Neal Preston, a friend of Cameron Crowe’s for 30 years and the photographer on both Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous. The stills themselves, navigated via now-familiar means (simple pressing of the back and forward buttons on the DVD remote control), are often stunning. Some even deserve to be blown-up to full poster size, such are their potentially iconic qualities. With somewhere in the region of 100 or so images in total, it’s almost an experience of its own.
A pair of trailers (one previously unreleased teaser) and full-length commentary from Crowe and wife/composer Nancy Wilson (of mid-70s and late-80s AOR legends Heart fame) that includes “a conversation with Tom Cruise”, complete the bonus material.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.