If you ever need a signifier of Tom Cruise’s star power, all you need to do is wonder how he managed to make Cameron Crowe curiosity Vanilla Sky cross $203 million worldwide.
On paper, Vanilla Sky should not have been a hard sell. The film reunited Cruise with Jerry Maguire helmer Cameron Crowe after the two had created arguably the star’s most beloved film and came agonisingly close to Oscar glory.
Add in Cruise’s then-girlfriend Penelope Cruz to the cast and you had an in-built audience for what was sure to be another crowd-pleaser from a director who had just wowed critics and fans alike with Almost Famous. The result, however, a remake of 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes, which had Cruz starring in the role taken by Cameron Diaz in the US version) is possibly the world’s first and last $68 million art house movie.
Cruise stars as David Aames, the heir of a publishing firm in New York City. He seemingly has it all, with good looks, a wealthy fortune and ‘friend with benefits’ in the shapely form of Cameron Diaz.
His world is forever changed, however, when he falls in love with Cruz’s Sofia and yet allows himself to step into a car with former beau Diaz, which results in a car crash that leads to horrific disfigurements.
Throughout the film, audiences are taken to scenes of Cruises’s character speaking from a prison cell to a psychiatrist (Kurt Russell in a strangely unheralded role) and while wearing a creepy prosthetic mask. The scenes, which take place at an initially unspecified point in time after the film’s main events, appear to suggest that David has committed a murder. But who did he kill and which narrative can be trusted?
It’s no great mystery that such questions led many of Vanilla Sky viewers to lose patience, as the movie was recently voted by UK film streaming site LOVEFiLM’s subscribers to declare it the “most confusing film of all time”. In reality, however, every single aspect of the drama’s trippy plot twist is explained in the third act, so it’s likely that many flipped channels before they received an explanation.
This is a real shame, however, as the film is one of the all too rare occasions in which Cruise used his movie star status to explore difficult subjects and confound viewer’s expectations in ways that he arguably hasn’t tried yet. Though Vanilla Sky was a box office success, it’s no surprise that his post-release catalogue includes the ultra-safe options of War of the Worlds alongside Steven Spielberg and two more Mission: Impossible sequels.
With a incredible soundtrack (it’s hard not to be touched by ‘The Nothing Song’ by Sigur Ros in the film’s final moments), a stunning deserted Times Square sequence, Vanilla Sky has much to offer and if it grabs you, it’ll likely provoke hours of post-viewing discussion. Yet it remains an extremely polarising release, hence its growing popularity with a cult fanbase that we’re happy to be a part of
For more cult films, check out the Jameson Cult Film Club.
