One seemingly petty, little, foolish choice is all it takes for an ideal life to turn into a nightmare. This seems to be the message as we watch publishing magnate David Aames, played by Tom Cruise, loose his million dollar good looks in a shocking car crash staged by his kamikaze lover..
This act one turning point In Cameron Crowe’s 1997 “Vanilla Sky” is especially resonant to the culture that the character David Aames was created to comment on. He’s a billionaire playboy; handsome, smart, riding high in corporate splendor, and full of himself. Just prior to the crash, Aames falls head over heels with, and blatantly steals his best friend’s girl, the enchanting Sophia played by Penelope Cruz. Next morning he is confronted outside Sophia’s apartment by the psychotic former girlfriend Julie, played by Cameron Diaz. He submits to a joy ride with her that ensnares him in a suicide pact.
As his new fate would have it, Julie dies, David does not. He survives, but his face is destroyed. It becomes a scary cross to bear. Watch in dismay as the charismatic wunderkind reverts to awkward, juvenile social traits he once outgrew
The masterful make-up of Aames post-crash face makes Cruise look alternately tragic, comic, frightful and pathetic, but all in sympathetic measure. Unable to abide this, Aames adopts a facial prosthetic that makes him look embarrassed, guilty, resentful and maudlin. Its haunted, plastic pout seems to plead, “how could this be happening to me?”
Good friends try to help Aames with his pride as he slides into identity crisis. An effortlessly hip self-image was Aames’ brand. The winning smile was his logo. Where did it all suddenly go? He’s supposed to be the ace of a magazine empire, where cheated images pervade the pages. How very, very thin are a few layers of skin.
To solve the dilemma of living life with either a deformed or a synthetic face, David Ames has his brain wired to some kind of pre-programmed dream that plays in his head while his body sleeps in cryogenic peace, presumably waiting for a technical breakthrough in reconstructive surgery.
To ensure his dream on ice is nice and hot, Aames contracts with a shady tech company for a digital lover. It is, of course, Sophia, the wise, whimsical dancer he fell in love with before the accident. If the first crucial turning point was when Aames got in Julie’s car, the next one is his choice to go to sleep and dream of love with Sophia rather than face the problem that stopped him in his tracks.
What is the metaphor in that deep freeze we never get a look at in the center of this movie? How often lately have we seen our real life corporate and government leaders behave like leading men; on-screen pushing some fantasy romance with the voter/consumer, off-screen praying secret deals and science will make-up their bets.
This expertly tailored film scenario proceeds with Aames attaining what he never could in real life, true love. Achieving increasingly lucid states, he tries to take over the fantasy and make it real. It only brings more pain as Aames mistakes Sophia for Julie and his embrace tightens like a chain around her in bed, not loving but smothering her to death instead. It’s a dreadful scene to watch and lands the masked Aames into a shadowy prison cell where he pleads his case to a corduroy shrink with perfect pitch played by Kurt Russell.
This dose of therapy enables Aames to open a connection with the corporation that provides his dreams and confirm that the memory of Sophia’s murder is complete artifice. It’s just a technical glitch in the program caused by Aames efforts to gain control of the illusion.
The mask eventually becomes a burden greater than the flaw he is trying to conceal, and it does come off eventually, but not without a piece of his hide. The mask has no power of it’s own. It is a simple law of nature that a hiding place becomes a prison, the consequences of putting off an appointment with destiny. To attempt to live above, or be immune to, or cheat one’s way through always ends up working against you.
With the assistance of a tech support angel our hero eventually thaws out 130 years later. He can feel the weight of his real problems again and the consequences of going to sleep. Forsaking his privileged mindset he’s grateful to leave the fantasy behind for “real life.”
Why did I like this story? Most of us are just as prone to this same character defect. I learned a lot from watching an ego, a mask and a shattered face all try to occupy the same space.
In what ways am I sleepwalking in some illusion? We all seem to keep having to learn the same lesson about this. What else could explain how unbalanced our world feels? And how long will we let business and government leaders play make-believe with the future? Eventually they have to come out from behind their masks of company and committee and face the consequences too. Because, as this film makes so abundantly clear, we’re just putting off the inevitable.
Last month I wrote about an Italian film that was a huge international success. This month I choose one by another Italian that I admire. This film was considered a total disaster critically and financially. It’s about American youth in the 60’s in rebellion against the establishment. At the time, Michaelangelo Antonioni’s ninth film was one of the worst money losers in history. Since then, “Zebriski Point” has been almost universally put down.
The worst part of “Zabrisiki” is its performances, but I think I have seen acting like this one other time, when it was being praised. It was in a performance of “Iphigenia at Aulis” by Euripides; a play that portrays a father ritually sacrificing his daughter to the gods to boost his standing in the Trojan War. Those in the audience who were gushing over the performances were aware the acting technique was antique, but it gave us a pleasure, similar to hearing music played on period instruments.
When I first watched it, I thought Antonioni was sacrificing the darling daughter of America, namely consumerism, to the gods of youth and beauty whom the Greeks called Aphrodite and Adonis. Likewise, I thought Antonioni’s decision to make the actor’s performance seem wooden was a classy homage to the Greek origins of western drama.
I have since read that Antonioni gambled on his lead actors, choosing pretty looking revolutionaries that were amateur actors and he found them very difficult to work with, especially the boy.
Before reading much about it though, I thought Antonioni was also poking fun at American porn films from that time period.
By the 1960’s adult films had evolved from crude roll playing in one reel stag movies, into feature scenarios with badly acted narratives quickly leading to expertly conducted sex scenes. Those brightly lit, fuzzy-edged frames were later labeled “soft-core” after hard-core went mainstream.
The big orgy at “Zebriski Point” was a feast for Antonioni’s detractors. Again, I found the choreography so campy, and put-on that it was a turn off instead of a turn on. Which is exactly what I would expect from Antonioni. He regularly plays against expectations in his films, so I didn’t question it. I presumed it had sprung from the filmmaker’s genius and I laughed with him and enjoyed myself. My laughter turned to awe while the cinematography at the end of the scene made the episode seem, by turns, sublime and transcendental.
In my untutored state, I thought the decision to make the final “Point” of his movie with multi-camera documentary footage of the demolition of an opulent resort home reason enough to make his feature in the first place. It might help you to understand that the story begins in a crowded room where American university students are plotting a revolution.
Symbolically, this finale could be read as Antonioni strapping consumerist society to a bomb and detonating it. He was in America for the first time, shooting in legendary California, the movie Mecca of the world. Here was a deep-thinking outsider making the authorities nervous with his portrayal of alienated American youth. I read that the Feds grew so paranoid and suspicious they tried to run the production into the ground. Would the critics rescue him? Nope.
As a consequence, many people will never see this superbly controlled and photographed event, invented in the late sixties before big explosions in movies had come into vogue. You used to have to watch a two-hour, playfully stylish, and mythical love tragedy to get to these closing fireworks. This scene can be watched as a stand-alone event now. It lasts about five minutes. Watch it full-screen, if possible. Tell me what you think the director had in mind.
What if the corporate orgy of greed that stains human history was worth it just for putting a few vital tools in the hands of the masses?
Here is proof that the political stage is not being managed by a secret cadre of money-grubbing fascists. If such a group existed, they would never have given us all these cameras. It’s their downfall because the camera equals freedom. It’s development is revolutionary to the evolution of humanity. I’m not even talking about the content of the image in the camera yet. Just use a camera and feel your mind’s eye snap open. The mere act of using it frees you from linear time.
Examine now, what the content in the camera is capable of doing for accelerating evolution. Unlimited cameras in the hands of the masses become a tool for comprehending the deep range of human potential in our global village. I’m talking about information that no one can get a head start on. We’re all looking at ourselves in the multidimensional global mirror now and the image is in a state of continuous development.
Why only talk about the commercial potential of this phenomenon? While government and environment go bankrupt from rapid technological and population growth, the neurological and spiritual dimensions of humankind are experiencing exploding growth. Never has the individual been so free to make so many connections guided by personal choice. The opportunities for the free and fast exchange of knowledge among individuals is highly encouraging to our evolutionary advancement. We need to use this to bring the environment and economy along for this rennaissance. The more connections the better. How much more do we need for these connections to grow into the ultimate connection? Until they outnumber the disconnections
While this new phenomenon is happening to us our understanding is growing so fast that no one can tell us what it all means, or where we are going. It will continue taking us there at the speed of light for the next many generations. This event is historically equal in significance to the evolutionary milestone of when our early predecessor first recognized himself in a pool of water. He finally quit thrashing the thing and realized, “the face in the pond is my reflection.”
At the movies, while we look outward at our reflection, we gaze inward with imagination, to fill in the implied off screen context. The data our imagination chooses to supply is our individual reaction to what is shown onscreen. Our reaction is filtered through our experience. A filmmaker must master his lenses and we, the audience, are his last filter. If we see a baseball player crouching with a bat, a catcher and umpire lined up behind him, the filmmaker must make sure our imagination fills in the ball field with all the players in place and a pitch racing toward home plate.
A movie is a spool of time, literally. Its a rolled up miniature record of exactly what action was taking place in front of a lens in a certain light and speed at a particular place and time. By the time we see it, the action is consigned to the past. When we talk about going to the movie, we refer to the place where the past is rewound and waiting in the future. When we get there, since it will be the first time we’ve watched it, it will belong to our present.
Let’s watch a motion picture of a particular period in the past, a famous event in history, one that we all know about, or not. For instance, Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” an international success. We follow the life of the last emperor of China from privileged birth, to child king, to his overthrow, exile, and repatriation in Mau’s revolutionary republic. The past present and future of these unique characters unroll for us in all their complexity and irony. The story brings the past into high relief, the last emperor’s past as well as our own. Where are you and I off screen, in that historical movie? The audience watching the film, in this case, become representatives of the emperor’s future. The dynasty to come.
Our brains are having such a great time with all this time travel. Lately they’ve figured out a way to become even more involved. Where movies were once the viewpoints of writers, filmmakers, actors and producers, now they are the frontier of common folk. We may just be watching a home movie of someone’s dog saying “ I love you” on You Tube, but whether we are conscious of it or not, our brain goes to work with that lens to delve deeper into big issues. The direction of the lens, the size and shape of its field of view, the sharpness, distance of its focus, the quality of light it refracts, all impact the story but our brain can make use of any lens, professional or amateur.
Anything that can be made with a camera supplies part of the bigger picture for the brain. Films illuminate the most important keys to our survival. They connect us with knowledge we need to bring along with us into the future.
Thirty years ago, the China Syndrome (1979) and Silkwood (1983), both Academy award nominated films, educated us on one of the most urgent issues currently threatening human survival. It took a mere two and a half weeks for the events in “The China Syndrome” to come to pass in the near meltdown of Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, but we did not stand up then like we should have. Now, toxic nuclear byproducts have fouled the ocean and even come blowing to your hometown a result of negligence and corruption by the energy companies and the governments whom we have invested with the responsibility to watch over them.
Motion pictures engaged the debate on the nuclear agenda with a vote of no confidence, but we seem to have ignored them. They cautioned us not to trust nuclear industry “experts” whose careers depend on strong demand for their electricity and bombs. Soothing statements on the nightly news are calculated to make us feel at ease living in a toilet. Both films point a huge, blinking red arrow up at those energy giants who are currently squatting over us, excreting their dung and assuring us that this is what’s best for everyone.
Pay no more attention to their experts. The unfolding of recent events in Japan are playing out precisely as predicted by filmmakers. Both implicitly and explicitly, those filmmakers were inviting us to assume personal responsibility to prevent this. There must be a limit to the crap we will take. It is well within our power to stop them.
The massage is clear. We have denied the power of movies to instruct us. Will we finally learn by listening to the people of Fukushima, and surrounding prefectures, recently forced to abandon their dreams, livelihoods and property to escape nuclear chaos? They are the real nuclear experts.
If nuclear power provides 20% of this country’s energy needs, we could rid ourselves of it instantly by voluntarily reducing our energy consumption by an equal percentage. If that seems impossible, maybe you’ve been watching too much nightly news. You could begin immediately reducing your energy needs by turning it off.
Good people formerly living in and around Fukushima are now adrift as a consequence of trusting the nightly news and denying the truth in the movies. The Japanese are also presently consuming a great deal less energy then they were before this nightmare overwhelmed them. Why wait until we are forced from our homes by a similar disaster before we undertake drastic reduction? Unless we do, the change we are all bound for is what they’re all waking up to now in Fukushima. With foresight and determination we might still preserve here at home, what they have lost there forever.
A new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. —Michelangelo Antonioni
Apocalypse? Revolution? Paradigm Shift? Are we the “new man” of Antonioni’s mid-20th century pronouncement? He was basically the same man as the old one but with out the church to tell him how to behave. In our time, the self-destructive impulse has become even more supercharged by technology. The studies of modern alienation on which Antonioni focused his lens in the 50’s and 60’s are generations deep in the cinema now, energized by global terrorism, industrial greed, and the abrupt crash of our eco-system.
The new man in the movies gestating this half-century later is, like Antonioni’s man, undergoing technological assimilation, but pressed to such extremes now that a character such as Neo in “The Matrix” must resist, with nearly superhuman effort, becoming hardwired into the battery compartment of the corporate machine.
In “Red Desert” Monica Vitti plays the archetype of the Madonna in labor. In The Book of Revelation, a beast is standing by to devour her offspring the instant it slips from her womb. In that story, the child is swept up to heaven and the woman escapes to the desert. In “Red Desert” there is no heaven. Her family is absorbed by the beast of progress and the Madonna is cast adrift in an industrial wasteland where every relationship succumbs to its toxins.
Though Antonioni said he believed progress was inexorable, he chose to depict someone who was not adjusting well to the new and improved. Why was she more interesting to him than those characters in the film that readily adapted? Is she the part of ourselves we are consigning to extinction? Monica Vitti’s character Giuliana hears sounds that the others in her crowd pay little or no attention to. “My eyes don’t know where to look,” she says. She is exquisitely sensitive and seems fragile as a moth. Does she represent our humanity? No. Can we say humanity is any less incarnate in our insatiable appetite for faster and more?
I wonder if it is the sacrifice of our senses that Antonioni laments. Discernible colors in “Red Desert” occur exclusively in the new industrialized world. Antonioni instructed his art department to paint buildings, trees, and even the ground to look dull and monochromatic.
When the primeval world becomes replaced by a man made one, our sense perceptions gradually mutate and attune to the artificial. Antonioni could be said to be aiming the camera over his shoulder with a sigh for what is lost, and then forward with a nod to the inevitable fire and our moth-like advance toward it.
The masterful make-up of Aames post-crash face makes Cruise look alternately tragic, comic, frightful and pathetic, but all in sympathetic measure. Unable to abide this, Aames adopts a facial prosthetic that makes him look embarrassed, guilty, resentful and maudlin. Its haunted, plastic pout seems to plead, “how could this be happening to me?”
ow long will we let business and government leaders play make-believe with the future? Eventually they have to come out from behind their masks of company and committee and face the consequences too. Because, as this film makes so abundantly clear, we’re just putting off the inevitable. 