Close Your Eyes

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2002)

There's not a lot to say about this film. Really, there isn't. If you don't really understand it, you may call it "ingeniously provocative" or "appealingly philosophical" or any other term that will make you look intelligent. People look for an explanation and come up with plots so complex that it makes the whole thing look silly. Really silly. The actual clue here, is that there is none.
This is art, ladies and gentlemen. Art in disguise, in the world of massive consumption media. It's a composition of ideas interweaving and merging into each other. Just like Monet's painting shown in the picture, featuring the 'vanilla sky', it is an impression of reality. You have to look at it the way you look back at a dream you've just woken up from. Some parts are still clear in your memory, while others have already begun to fade out of your mind. And the whole - well - makes no real sense at all. Or if you believe that dreams have a meaning, it can make any sense you would want it to have.

Vanilla Sky is like one of Monet's paintings. When you examine his works at close range, they will look like assemblies of random brush strokes; as if the artist wanted to paint a surreal landscape. However, if you take a few steps back (or like in my case: simply take off your glasses), you will see the colours flow into each other and something will start to take shape inside your own imagination. Something really familiar. Monet wants to depict landscapes; he describes them with colour, so that we can make up their form ourselves.
Hold on to that thought, and use it to look at Vanilla Sky. Everything in it has a purpose and yet, nothing has a meaning on its own. See it as a whole, but don't be disappointed if it would turn out that the whole makes no sense to you either. What Vanilla Sky wants to depict is life; it describes it with images, so that we can reflect them on our own lives.

It's all about impression.
To conclude this review, I'd like to make one last remark. You can't really rate this film. You can't say that it's good, because it is NOT good. And you can't say it's bad either, because in a way, that's what it tries to be. Sweet and sour. What you can do, is decide whether you like it, or not. And to be honest with you, I didn't like it. It did bore me at times and I really don't like to be bored inside a movie theater (especially not when the movie has already started). On the other hand, I don't regret seeing it. Now that the movie is over, I'm starting to appreciate it. It's an attempt of using Hollywood to bring art to the masses, without Hollywood being fully aware of it.
Open Your Eyes