Above and Beyond

Vanilla Sky goes its source one Tom Cruise better.

by Sam Adams

Vanilla Sky

Adapted and directed by Cameron Crowe
A Paramount release

recommended



Two live Cruises: Cruz and Cruise recline.

Everything about David Aames (Tom Cruise) bespeaks the unassuming entitlement of a man who’s never had to live without money. His spacious, sparsely furnished New York apartment betrays both his playboy flamboyance and the old wealth he so obviously comes from: An original Monet hangs nearby a pair of Joni Mitchell paintings, while a smashed guitar, encased in Lucite, sits around the corner from an enormous, grotesque portrait of the patriarch whose riches provide the basis for David’s gadabout lifestyle.

Like any other rich, cocky character in a Hollywood movie, David is due for his comeuppance, and he gets it but good. But in Vanilla Sky— adapted by Cameron Crowe from Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), by Spanish director Alejandro Almenábar (The Others) — it’s hard to tell exactly when David starts to learn the error of his ways. For if the movie’s emotional logic is crystal clear, and Crowe is too much a fan of studio craftsmen like Billy Wilder to allow it to be otherwise, the means to David’s self-awakening are anything but.

David’s not the committed type, which means that despite the sexual intensity of his relationship with the spectacularly beautiful Julie (Cameron Diaz), he still gets goosebumps when she asks what "I’ll call you soon" means. But when Sofia (Penélope Cruz) walks unannounced into one of David’s high-powered parties, clad in a puffy parka and looking bemused but not at all intimidated, he can’t help but be fascinated by her sheer out-of-placeness. Here, it seems, is a woman who not only wants nothing from him, but isn’t even interested in what he has to give — at least, not on the level of money or status or power. A publishing scion whose own literarily oriented father never owned a television but whose own product looks suspiciously Maxim esque, David suffers from one of those crises movie stars are so fond of portraying: He has everything, but it means nothing.

Cruise’s stardom is Vanilla Sky’s ace in the hole, less from a box-office standpoint than in the sense that it adds layers of meaning to what in Almenábar’s telling came off as a too-clever-by-half shell game. When Cruise, in the movie’s arresting opening sequence, runs through a deserted Times Square — and the real thing, not some digital whammy — it’s not just the character’s solitude and confusion you’re watching. It’s Tom Cruise, as Tom Cruise, surrounded by billboards and neon signs and digital ticker tapes, a sign lost among signs. "Tom Cruise is popular culture," Crowe told Entertainment Weekly, and as much as anything, that’s what he’s playing here. When, late in the film, David’s presented with a critical choice, he’s told that his "panel of observers" is waiting for an answer. Cruise’s face fills the screen, and you’re waiting for a cutaway to the mysterious "panel," when you realize: He’s looking at us.

Vanilla Sky’s plot unfolds in a way that’s both too tortuous to explain and unfair to spoil. But in broad strokes, it goes something like this: Julie, inflamed by David’s budding relationship with Sofia, blows a gasket and in a jealous rage, crashes her car, with David in it. She’s killed in the accident (maybe), and David wakes up (maybe) with his chiseled face horribly disfigured. Or not. See, the story seems to be framed in flashback by a scarred David, his face covered by a sculpted latex mask, telling his troubles to a court-appointed psychiatrist (Kurt Russell), who’s there to determine if he’s fit to stand trial for murder. Whose murder? That would be telling. (Actually, it would really be telling, since the movie doesn’t get around to revealing that fact for nearly two hours.)

Crowe’s never been much of a visual stylist, and you can sense that he needed to follow Almenábar’s lead to break free from his usual mise en scène. (Vanilla Sky is the first non-original script he’s ever directed.) Though Vanilla Sky, like Abre los Ojos, and like The Others, is troubled by a contrived ending that tells where it should show, it’s almost startlingly successful, especially given the track record of tricky, downbeat European films and their typically denatured American cousins. (Call it The Vanishing act.) Crowe stays true to his source material while upping the emotional ante with the human nuances that are his forte. The one disappointment, finally, is Cruise himself. Called upon to deliver a compendium of the traits that make up his star power, he comes off as a charming, cocky cipher, one that’s never really cracked. It may seem an odd thing to say about a couple whose off-screen romance is tabloid gold, but Cruise and Cruz never click on screen, so just when the ending is meant to overwhelm you with emotion, you’re left flat, listening to a bunch of nattering gobbledygook. You buy Cruise as cocky, but not as redeemed. Cruise is what makes Vanilla Sky tick, but he winds down before it does.