There Are Two Colours In My Head
by Kilian
Manhattan
tragedy
David
Aames (the rakish bon vivant Tom Cruise) leads a regular life of
casual profanity and first world boredom. Except he is the 51-%-owner
of a large New York City publishing company and a millionaire's
heir enjoying the pleasures of the Manhattan rich, there are no great
expectations for him concerning his future. His playing games and ambitions are aimless and far from passionate
struggle. The latter however takes him by surprise when a rejected
lover (the success-in-media-business it-girl played by Cameron Diaz,
blonde as always) tries to kill both of them in a car crash out of
jealousy. She dies immediately and he suffers an awful disfiguration
of the face and an arm injury. Thereafter his actual beloved, the
endearing ballet dancer Sofia with the quaint Spanish accent
(Penélope Cruz, representing the sincere kind-heartedness and naïve
romanticism of the common girl), refuses the broken David who becomes
more and more depressed and insane. Charged for murder and
undergoing a wearing nightmare through the subconscious memories of
his past he finds out that he has been dead and frozen for years. He faces the decision to either continue his lucid dream with
improved and joyful content or to wake up in a future reality that is
150 years from his 33rd birthday back in the easy New York days.
A
well-meant Hollywood
spectacle
It
is well known that a film's commercial success is a
reliable indicator for mass-cultural tendencies and public moods yet
meaningless for the state of the art of its genre. The latter seems
to emerge from a web of (be it tiny) collectives' tastes which form
the contemporary movements in film making as well as from the widely
read reviews of broadly accepted critical authorities. In this
perspective it becomes obvious that Vanilla Sky
delivers classical Hollywood entertainment which employs mostly
standardized elements to place them around a usual pattern of
narration. After the protagonist's idyllic life is introduced and
turned upside down by a sudden misfortune the linear plot finally
allows him to make a choice between a damaged world and an uncertain
future.
In
accordance to that the film stages a repertoire of stock characters
that mystifyingly manage to appeal to the mass audience. Primarily it
is the young rich male, the successful and jealous media woman and
the charming foreign girl that represent urban stereotypes on cliché
paths through life. Whereas the last is the personally incarnated
good-heartedness that enters the urban jungle with only the best
attitudes and prospects, the honest girl to pursue the American dream
in the rough business of art, it is on the contrary the spoilt high
status woman whose suggested pamperedness
and jealousy ruins the protagonist. The rich kid in his thirties then
depicts the Hollywood phantasm of the upper class rake with the
boy-next-door habitus. Of course he – and not his poor writer
friend Brian – gets the girl. In fact David appears to be much more
attracting and thus superior to the failed poet even twice: Brian was
the one to bring Sofia along to meet David at a party who manages to
capture her attention the whole night with Brian thereupon leaving
the event drunk, melancholic and awfully cynic. The next time it is
Julie, the adored it-girl, to be snatched by David under Brian's
nose. These respectable triumphs and the euphemistic image, presented
over and over again, subtly pacifies the common people's resentments
towards the 1 % the nation. Especially those of the U.S. could
otherwise simply be seen as immensely affluent and influential,
culturally exclusive and locally segregated – which remains, thanks
to the rakish good boy image, only latently realized.
The
authenticity of the protagonists ultimately suffers from this blocky
shape. It is the omnipresence and familiarity of these stock
characters in modern cinema that colours them in a mass-conform tone.
But their inability to sink to life's true depths solely leaves a
blurred and impalpable outline of a fictional being that is hard to
identify with and whose stirrings and ambitions are only to witness
from a distant emotional level.
But
there is the reverse side active in some Hollywood productions like
the one dealt with: The approach to both fascinating and relevant
topics and the attempt to deal with sophisticated issues. Whereas the
loss-of-privilege story of David being deformed and going crazy is
worn out by many films – ambitious (e.g. David Fincher's The
Game) as well as boring ones – the pursue of eternal life enriches tragedies and comedies since
the early days. In Crowe's version it is cryostasis, the freezing of
the human body, to make this old promise. Although this technique is
far from large-scale realization in recent years some wealthy
adventurers decided to conserve their body after death, just like
rich David, in order to wake up in a future where they hope to be
reanimated. But attention should be paid to the fact that living
forever makes it impossible to escape from the unknown future by
simply dying one day in a more or less natural way. Thus the most
interesting question of the film is whether natural life in present
times with all its faults and vices or a vague confidence in a better
– but in actual fact incalculable – future is to favour. Another
demanding and highly gripping field is entered with the psychological
issue of the conscious. The structures, limits and capabilities of
the mind may be best explored in a lucid dream reality where David is
apparently caught in. It only lacks the moment of reflection that
neither David nor his dream internal cryo-company assistant are able
to bring forth. The bright allusion stays out of sight and the film
digresses in profanities.
All
this doesn't make the movie special or outstanding. The
shifts between reality and the cryo-dream are more than anything
simply confusing. As the film generally sticks to a classical
plot scheme of linear narration, the dream sequences interrupt it in a
fruitless way. They only provided jejune bites of misleading dialogues
in the pitiful absence of far reaching abstractions or subversive
associations which in other respects perfectly fit into a lucid dream
parallel world like the one presented. Therefore most of the
confusion remains predictable since it lacks a truly unexpected
twist, a meaningful meta level or at least a playfully composed mind
fuck.
Western
interior
His
mahogany upper class loft with the picturesque view on Central Park
is – not really hard to believe – decorated with pop cultural details. Like
any suburban teenager there is a basket for throwing on the wall. A
snow board. A Gibson SG guitar. The latter only differs from the
common boy's interior by the fact that it is
smashed, kept safe in a glass box and was thus certainly owned by
some rock star in former years. The same about the movie
posters of François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962)
and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless
(1960).
Here it is the French New Wave cinema that replaces the comic
hero film in the young American's room. A quick glance as well
reveals paintings by impressionist Claude Monet, modernist Henri
Matisse and expressionist Mark Rothko. To remind David of the costs
and tastes of his life a larger than life portrait of his father is
installed in a prominent place on the wall of the apartment's main
hall. In this manner the rich protagonist's home environment
amalgamates diverse artefacts of American pop culture, much-valued
European art and an ordinary Western consumption biography.
Sounds
from the CD player
The
picture opens with short bird's eye shots of a flight above the New
York skyline. The sound of the busy city rushes upwards to the cold
morning wind and the camera focuses a gallant apartment house. After
some breathy gibberish and the Spanish phrase “abre los ojos” a
female voice softly asks to “open your eyes”. The Radiohead song
Everything In It's Right Place,
opener of the 2000 album Kid A,
begins with its legendary synthi-piano line. David wakes up at an
early workday's hour to the sound of this tune from his CD
player. He leaves his apartment to find the whole of Manhattan
depopulated. Everybody is gone. All streets along Central Park and
Time Square are frightening silent and empty. The playboy starts to
shout out and run through the abandoned district. The advertisement
on Broadway flickers around him, his expression turns into
overwhelming confusion. Then he wakes up from his dream. Again, in
his apartment on a workday's morning.
Another
Radiohead song is heard when David much later encounters a stranger
in a restaurant bar who tells him that he is in a cryonic sleep,
frozen in 200° below zero and that he controls everything happening
in this lucid dream. The song is called I Might Be Wrong and
contains the telling verses I might be wrong / I could have
sworn I saw a light coming on / I used to think / there was no future
left at all.
When
David is in the midst of his subconscious never-never land Bob
Dylan's
4th
Time Around
from his 1966 album Blonde on
Blonde
is played while he sleeps with Sofia. The next scene
they walk on Jones Street in Greenwich Village. He has his hands in
his pockets while she's holding his arm. A 60s VW bus and an old car are parked on the roadside, it all appears to be the scenario of Bob
Dylan's album cover of his 1963 record The
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
The photo indeed was shot while the folk musician was on a walk with
his girlfriend Suze Rotolo in Greenwich – just like David and
Sofia.
After
a night in a club with Sofia the defaced David falls out with his
best friend Brian alleging that he caused his accident with Julie.
Brian leaves indignantly whereupon
the drunken and shattered David weaves through the dark to the sound
of Sweetness Follows
by R.E.M.: readying to bury
your father and your mother / what did you think when you lost
another /… / but sweetness follows.
In the morning light of the next day he wakes up lying on the
asphalt. Sofia has come to help him.
The
1968 psychedelic hymn Porpoise Song by The Monkees undermines
David's confused mind when Sofia turns into Julie while having sex
with him. Julie returns from the dead with a smile and asks “What
is happiness to you, David?”. In the meantime The Monkees sing: my,
my the clock in the sky is pounding away / there's so much to say / …
/ wanting to feel, to know what is real / living is a lie. David
is furious. His echoing shout is only drowned by Julie's bizarre
orgasm. It comes with a series of images of David breaking down and
with a sequence shortly before and after Julie's car crash. He
suffocates her just to notice that he has killed Sofia instead.
The
story culminates in a company employee (Tilda Swinton) explaining the
cryostasis procedure to David that he is already in. For him this
sounds unbelievable but the employee soothes him: “They laughed at
Jules Verne, too.” The Beach Boys begin with Good
Vibrations. When David franticly shouts “This is a nightmare”
they sing I'm
pickin' up good vibrations / she's giving me excitations.
To
accompany the climax the soundtrack also includes several
songs by Icelandic post rock band Sigur Rós.
The
Chemical Brothers' catchy 1997 psychedelic electro track Where Do I
Begin then provides the film's exit music: Sunday
morning I'm waking up / can't even focus on a coffee cup / don't even
know whose bed I'm in / where do I start, where do I begin?
A revolution of the mind
A revolution of the mind
Now, what does the film show? What is the story about? We see New
York City, the metropolis of the 20th century. Skyscrapers and
roadsters, Wall Street and Central Park, cocktail parties and board
meetings. Much of the cultural offspring of the American decades –
even beyond the Manhattan South – was raised in this capital of the
Western world. Its stony and glassy heart animated the pulse of the
modern North Atlantic ropes that interconnected the world's two most
dominant continents. But the turning point lies at the end of the
20th century and at the beginning of the new millennium that
protagonist David inhabits. The city looses its grip and attraction
bit by bit as the United States falter and the Asian super powers
arise. New York is the weary giant at the end of the West or at least
at the turn towards a poly-centred and multi-powered new age. The
many small animals left in the former empire run in circles and
somehow thrive in furious turmoil until collapse or stagnation. And
maybe the next David Aames will be a banker in Shanghai, a Delhian
digital technology manager or a Moscowian oil oligarch. His
subconscious nightmare world then could involve unmanned military
drones, large-scale computer hacks, human genome changes or climate
catastrophes. But come hell or high water – the 21st century's
Vanilla Sky doesn't need to arise above East Coast playboy
mansions, jealous pop-singing it-girls or traditional stories of
individual achievement. There is a new league established
to cover the whole world's desires and concerns – with a
cosmopolitan David Aames required or – even better – any unknown
underdog to pursue his happiness. It is this pursuit of happiness of the single individual – which has even found its place in the 1789 U.S. constitution – that justifies the egocentric age. A revolution is only imaginable as a revolution of the mind, the most personal and isolated entity to possess. Changes in the ego may be possible or necessary. But isn't it not just a mind to be changed but an entire world?
Of
course the much-praised single individual appears to be lonely and
desolate and needs to have his problems solved. To that end there is
the dream. A lucid dream driven by the subconscious where all wishes
and demands that must make way for reality's actual facts are stored.
And as we know the
subconscious is strong. Thus it seems that some things can only
happen while dreaming. But why is it so hard to believe that the
individual's problems can be solved in real life instead of
procrastinating them into an expensive minus degree cocoon on a way
to a vague future?
And then: Do we dream to live forever or is it the future that we await hopefully? And what future is it worth waiting for? David's choice between present and future can only be made with help of a deus ex machina, a final saviour who was already and famously employed in the traditional Greek tragedy. He is the one to save the protagonist from his nightmarishly defective dreams. The deus this time is the cryo-company's technician, the specialist, an expert of highly developed technology who in the cryonic age becomes the god of life and death – a “god from the machine” in the literal sense.
And then: Do we dream to live forever or is it the future that we await hopefully? And what future is it worth waiting for? David's choice between present and future can only be made with help of a deus ex machina, a final saviour who was already and famously employed in the traditional Greek tragedy. He is the one to save the protagonist from his nightmarishly defective dreams. The deus this time is the cryo-company's technician, the specialist, an expert of highly developed technology who in the cryonic age becomes the god of life and death – a “god from the machine” in the literal sense.
Right
before the film's fade out David is again asked to open his eyes by a
not less godlike female voice. He slowly wakes up and his black pupil
senses the surrounding. The Radiohead intro song is remembered with
that he wakes up in his first lucid dream of an empty New York. There
are two colours in my head,
it is sung. The one
that I know and the one that I diffusely await. What I am and what I
always wanted to be. The two poles of the magnet that I can never
bring together in tensionless harmony. But why
is that so? For the most part dialectics are out of fashion since we have
unlearned to imagine any real dreams coming true. Be it through the
mind, god, technology or the individual.
sources of pictures
opening the eye (taken from the DVD)
