Vanilla Sky was a close run thing (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I just watched it for the first time. About three quarters of the way through I decided that the filmmaker crossed over the line from complex to incoherent. I was literally in the process of reaching for the remote to turn it off, and coming here to humbly ask someone to 'splain it to me (oh, and rant some), when the elevator scene happened and out came the explanation.

Now I’ve decided that the timing of this dénouement was in itself the most brilliant aspect of the film. It brought me to the brink of utter frustration, and then satisfied most of my questions.

I’m trying to decide whether to watch it again, now understanding that it’s not a chronology with occasional flashbacks… except when it is.

I have two major questions that I’m not sure the film answers, and I’d hate to go through the whole thing again looking for answers that aren’t there.

  1. Did Cruise actually die, and if so, when and how, before the dream? Or was that edited out by the… dream masters?

  2. Assuming Tom wakes up at the end, how much time will have passed in the real world? Cruise and Cruz talk about finding each other again, but is that a real possibility?

2

Wasn’t it 150 years?

Yes, he took an overdose of pills (before the dreams began). And then the dreams picked up from the night he went out to the bar and wound up passing out on the sidewalk. Everything up to that point was reality. (Or rather memory of reality.)

3

Whenever my life doesn’t make any sense, I run around screaming “TEEEEEEECH SUPPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRT!”
It doesn’t help, though. I think they’ve been outsourced to India.

4

Have you tried saying तकनीकी समर्थन?

5

This is one of my two favorite movies in which Cameron Diaz discusses having cum in her mouth.

6

The point of Vanilla Sky is that it isn’t cut and dry, black and white. Perhaps none of this occurred. Perhaps this was the book that Jason Lee’s character was writing. Perhaps he didn’t have a drug overdose. Perhaps this is a drug trip he has while in a coma and he’s not even frozen. There are so many different interpretations of this. If you notice, at the end, after he jumps off the building, is it Penelope Cruz’s voice that says “open your eyes”? That calls into question the “fact” that it’s 150 year in the future.

It’s intentionally ambiguous.

7

Good point. He could still be in a coma from the car wreck and she could be at his bedside pleading with him to open his eyes. The rest, from the car wreck forward, could be a coma dream.

Throughout the movie the other characters keep telling him to “wake up” – his hospital visitors trying to get him to come out of a coma?

8

I suppose he could have been in a coma when the movie started.

9

Note, too, the window sticker when he’s still pre-accident: 2/30/01 is dreamy.