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Tom Cruise and the Seven Dwarves:
Cinematic Postmodernisms in Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky
Barbara Simerka, Queens College / CUNY
Christopher Weimer, Oklahoma State University
American Drama Summer 05
Postmodernism is often considered – or perhaps better said,
assumed – to be antithetical to the most popular forms of
cultural production. Such assumptions hold that commercially
successful motion pictures, whether they are hits in Europe or in
the United States, are almost invariably superficial
entertainments that never engage, much less challenge, the
viewer. That lack of engagement or challenge is precisely, again
according to these assumptions, what the allegedly undiscerning
movie-going lumpenproletariat want; what they do not want, following
this logic, are the complexities – including aspects of
postmodernism – characteristic of those films often classified in
Europe as auteur productions or in the United States as
“independent” films, which R. Barton Palmer describes as “usually
‘difficult’, with narratives that are hard to follow or even
bewildering, stylizations pushed to excess, and nearly
impenetrable themes” (28). It may indeed be true that a majority
of profitable motion pictures do function within traditional and
hence non-subversive aesthetic norms. Nevertheless, to
universalize the assumption ignores the persistent and very real
presence of at least some of postmodernism’s salient features in
a significant number of widely-released feature films of recent
years. Indeed, Palmer has argued that Hollywood production since
the 1980’s has consistently included the work of filmmakers who
aim at a hybrid form that he terms “commercial/independent
film, a particular form of postmodern cinema that complexly
intersects and deconstructs the contrast between high culture and
mass culture” (30). Such filmmakers draw freely on modernist and
postmodern devices, but “only those that can be accommodated to
the tastes of a broader, more commercial audience” (31); Palmer
offers the examples of directors such as Quentin Tarantino and
Spike Lee (35), but we might also include the works of
screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, Twelve
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Monkeys, Brazil, The Fisher King). In this study we will examine certain
postmodern elements of two popular motion pictures of the last
decade, Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar’s 1997 film Abre los
ojos (Open Your Eyes) and its 2001 Hollywood remake, Vanilla Sky,
directed by Cameron Crowe. In so doing we hope both to
demonstrate how postmodernism can manifest itself in commercially
viable motion pictures and to compare the aspects of
postmodernism most prominent in these two film versions of the
same story.
One irony inherent in casual dismissals of film audiences’
receptivity to postmodernism is that cinema, as perhaps the most
mimetic of all representational arts, has an equally great
potential to problematize and to interrogate its own
representational techniques. This potential is the very essence
of postmodernism, of course, for one of the primary tenets of
postmodern thought is the relative and slippery nature of truth,
which cannot help but radically complicate any process of
representation, much less one as complex as film. Linda Hutcheon
writes that postmodernism’s “entire formal and thematic energy is
founded in its philosophical problematizing of the nature of
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reference, of the relation of word to thing “ (Poetics 19).
Similarly, in his postmodern analysis of mimesis, Jean
Baudrillard outlines a continuum with four phases of increasingly
uncertain connection between representation and reality: 1)
“reflection of a profound reality”, 2) “mask[ing] and
denatur[ing] a profound reality”, 3) “mask[ing] the absence of a
profound reality” , and 4) representation with “no relation to
any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum” (Simulacra
6). Baudrillard also notes that where conventional pretense
“leaves the principle of reality intact,” simulation undermines
the possibility for a clear distinction between real and
imaginary. As we will see, Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky both
incorporate a postmodern stance toward filmic representation as
they revision the genre of the psychological thriller in order to
question the possibility of certain knowledge.
Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky focus on the efforts of the films’
respective protagonists, haunted by the psychological after-
effects of auto accidents and accused of committing murders
neither remembers, to reconstruct their pasts and the
circumstances surrounding the murders. Each protagonist, César
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in Abre los ojos and David Ames in Vanilla Sky, was formerly a young
man supremely happy with the good fortune of being both wealthy
and handsome (César is played by Spanish heartthrob Eduardo
Noriega, David by the iconic Tom Cruise). Each, however,
misjudges the sanity of a woman with whom he has a casual sexual
relationship, and in each film the woman cajoles the protagonist
into her car, then deliberately crashes it at high speed, killing
herself and leaving him with grotesque facial disfigurement.
These tragedies radically alter the protagonists’ lives and
create the conditions in which the supposed murders might – or
might not – have taken place. Both films thus devote most of
their remaining time to César’s and David’s memories and to their
lengthy interviews with the psychiatrists, Antonio and McCabe,
who are trying to evaluate their mental states for the purposes
of their criminal trials. Were any murders actually committed?
If so, who were the victims? Who might César and David have
believed to be the victims? Most important, which – if any – of
César or David’s memories are true, and which are hallucinations
or protective delusions or even lies?
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Not only does the subject matter of the two films lend
itself to the postmodern subversion of traditional cinema’s
promise of omniscient storytelling, both employ a non-linear
narrative which sets up a Baudrillardian continuum of realities.
Each film opens (apparently) at the first level of profound,
albeit mundane reality as we watch the protagonist awaken to an
alarm clock and go into the bathroom for his morning ablutions.
These banal activities are contrasted with the décor and
appointments of the protagonists’ homes, which suggest a very
comfortable standard of living; even their alarm clocks are
luxurious, with recordings of female voices that purr, “Open your
eyes,” while the very fact that they can rise casually in mid-
morning on a weekday and play racquetball with their best friends
reveals that neither holds a conventional job. This is further
emphasized in Vanilla Sky, which initially uses exterior shots to
reveal that David lives in an extremely expensive building on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side and soon makes it clear that he has
in fact inherited controlling interest in a vast media empire
employing countless workers, while César merely lives the
comfortable but not Donald Trump-like life of the heir to a
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restaurant chain. As César and David pull out of their
respective parking garages and drive off, the camera presents the
streets of Madrid and New York from a realistic perspective— but
with the twist that there are no pedestrians or vehicles. It is
supremely ironic that, at the point when the plot shifts from the
realistic and prosaic to a different mode – the films flirt with
the generic possibilities of post-apocalyptic science fiction –
the traumatic event is the absence of the nightmarish traffic
typical of both cities. Then, when the alarm clocks once again
intone “Open your eyes” and the protagonists are again shown in
their beds, the spectators realize that these opening sequences,
though presented as first level mimesis, the imitation of
profound reality, are in fact dreams, or more precisely,
nightmares. The initial scenes thus correspond instead to the
second level of mimesis, where reality is masked or denatured.
In addition, from the very opening sequences, the films highlight
the difficulty in distinguishing between real life and dream, and
between levels of mimesis —not only by presenting a confused
character, but by causing viewers to experience their own
confusion. These opening sequences present the space on the
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reality continuum (best pictured as a Möbius Strip) where the two
opposing poles meet and merge.
After each protagonist repeats the morning rituals seen in
his nightmare, both films then move through some realistic scenes
which demonstrate César and David’s successes with women,
establish their relationships with their best (but nevertheless
envious) friends Pelayo and Brian, and introduce the theme of
their business conflicts: César’s difficulties with his partners
in the restaurant chain left to him by his father and David’s
struggles with the directors, whom he mockingly calls “the seven
dwarves,” on the board of the media company he inherited. In
both films the scene shifts suddenly to visitation rooms, in Abre
Los Ojos a room in a “psychiatric penitentiary” and in Vanilla Sky a
room in a prison. Here, César wears the baggy clothes of a
mental patient and David sports standard prison garb; both wear
close-fitting rubber masks and speak to psychologists about the
murders they swear they did not commit. At this point, the films
veer suddenly into the genre of psychological thriller, with a
familiar epistemological quandary: is the protagonist a criminal
whose insanity caused him to commit murder and then impedes
8
recollection, or is he the victim of malevolent others who seek
to make him appear crazy in order to achieve their own nefarious
end? In addition to concrete reality and dream, the film now
offers deception and derangement as aspects of third level
reality. The standard thriller is of course the opposite of a
postmodern narrative, for although film noir versions of this
genre may produce an unjust ending in which the victim is
punished or the true criminal does not pay, the traditional
dénouement does produce the decisive knowledge and closure of
profound reality. Vanilla Sky and Abre los ojos present the
epistemology of psychodrama in a more complex context, through
the initial juxtapostion of reality and dream.
Non-linear plot development, a common feature of postmodern
film, is used for the next several sequences, interspersing
scenes at the prisons with those which provide a conventional
narration of the events leading to the deliberate car crash which
damaged the protagonists’ face so badly that they refuse to take
off their rubber masks, even when asked to do so by the doctors.
Indeed, prior to our first sight of David wearing his mask,
Vanilla Sky briefly taunts viewers who have seen commercials for the
9
film with a scene in which David barely escapes being mowed down
by a huge tractor trailer – we expect to see a horrendous crash
because we have been waiting for an explanation of the mask shown
in the commercials, but are left hanging. The scenes that then
follow the actual car crash return to exploration of dreams and
reality. Presented in the splendid settings of Madrid’s Parque
del Retiro and New York’s Central Park, César and David meet the
women with whom each thinks he might actually have fallen in
love: Sofía, whose name is the same in both films (and who is
played by Penélope Cruz in both, adding an odd note of postmodern
intertextuality to the experience of watching Vanilla Sky after
watching Abre Los Ojos). César and David tell Sofía of a nightmare
each had: the car crash we have just witnessed. The surreal
beauty of the settings incites wariness, as does the fact in
Vanilla Sky that the car crash took place in spring or summer, while
the scene we now see is in fall. For a second time, the viewers
realize that they are watching the protagonists’ dreams — or
rather, their recollections of their dreams. Voice-overs silence
the conversation with Sofía, as the protagonists state their
loathing of their dreams, and the visual settings shift back to
10
the prisons, where César and David begin to confide in their
psychologists Antonio and McCabe.
The possibility of psychological impairment begins to seem
logical in the aftermath of the car accident in both films,
because of the difficulties any human being encounters in trying
to accept drastic physical damage, much less those faced by an
exceptionally attractive person who has now become repulsive.
Vanilla Sky also clearly establishes that David suffers from
blinding head-aches caused by the surgical pins in his face,
pains so severe that they impair his ability to think, which in
turn increases the danger that his antagonistic board of
directors, the “seven dwarves,” will use his physical condition
as a pretext for stripping him of control of his corporation.
César and David, who had both previously behaved in a nonchalant,
easy-going manner in all situations, now react with excessive and
almost violent anger toward their plastic surgeons, a bartender,
strangers in a club, and even toward Sofía and toward Pelayo and
Brian. At his point, it becomes much more plausible that César
and David could commit murder, as they deal with lives that have
become nightmares. However, their ongoing struggles with their
11
respective business associates, present in Abre Los Ojos and
emphasized in Vanilla Sky, make conspiracy theory a plausible
alternate explanation. The films exploit the problematic nature
of grasping reality through narratives that alternate between two
different, but equally compelling, modes of epistemological
confusion and also repeatedly blur the boundary between reality
and dream.
In scenes with César’s and David’s teams of plastic
surgeons, the elusive nature of reality is explored from yet
another postmodern angle, as doctors and patients discuss the
customized rubber, face-covering item that has been made for them
to ease their adjustment periods. The doctors describe the item
in medical terms, as a protective, aesthetic, or prosthetic
device. César and David explode with all the wrath of wealthy
young men confronted for the first time with problems that their
money cannot solve, both declaring the masks to be nothing more
than masquerades or Halloween disguises. The lead doctors
soothingly reply that this is a matter of the wearer’s
perspective, recalling the episode in Don Quixote where characters
argue about whether an item is a magical helmet or a barber’s
12
basin. This scene initially exposes and ridicules philosophical
relativism as a valid epistemological stance; however, when César
and David venture into a nightclub for the first time after their
accident, they do indeed use the mask as the sort of
psychological crutch the doctors had suggested, rather than as a
costume. Thus, this sequence affirms the postmodern tenet that
there is no direct access to an unmediated reality, and that
reality is thereby constructed rather than perceived.
The next sequence of scenes returns to exploration of the
border between reality and dreams. Sofía’s unexpected acceptance
of César and David’s disabilities begins in each film when she
finds the protagonist passed out on the sidewalk and awakens him
with the very words, “open your eyes,” that had previously served
to show spectators how difficult it is to distinguish an actual
experience from a dream (in Vanilla Sky the first alarm clock voice
appears to be Cruz’s as well). Then, as the happy couples snuggle
in bed after a new round of reconstructive surgery has restored
César and David to their former perfection, Sofía muses, “Is this
a dream”? That very night, the protagonists have nightmare in
which their new faces have reverted back to their disfigurement,
13
then wake up and checks their appearance in the bathroom mirror
to be reassured. However, when each returns to bed the women
awaiting them now have the features of the psychotic lovers who
killed themselves in the automobile accidents, Nuria and Julie,
rather than those of Sofía, even though both claim the name
Sofía. The confusion is heightened, for the characters and the
film viewer alike, when a visit to Sofía’s apartment reveals that
Nuria and Julie’s faces appear in all the photos that had
previously held Sofía’s image. For both protagonists and
spectators, certainty is an increasingly elusive state, as the
film provides no clues as to whether César and David are
immersed in a hallucination or whether, instead, their corporate
foes – César’s business partners and David’s “seven dwarves” –
have faked Nuria and Julie’s deaths and are now using the women
to make the protagonists appear delusional.
The “contamination of genres”, including juxtaposition of
elite and popular filmic genres is a common aspect of postmodern
film (Degli Esposti 8). As we have seen, these two films shift
between a standard Hollywood mode, the thriller, and a more
sophisticated exploration of the nature of reality and
14
perception. In addition, in Vanilla Sky there are two scenes that
appear to flirt with the generic norms of pornography. Early in
the film, Julie rhapsodizes about the previous evening’s sexual
romp with David, emphasizing the importance that they made love
“four times.” Even though no actual activity was shown, and both
characters are presented in the aftermath as semi-nude but with
all significant body parts covered, this graphic conversation
appears gratuitous, and thus porn-like. Julie repeats the
reference to four orgasms, and also bluntly declares, “you came
in my mouth.” However, it becomes clear as Julie prepares to
drive off the bridge that these lines are not Hollywood
sensationalism, pushing the boundaries of the R-rated genre. She
reveals that in her mind, these sexual acts are sacred rather
than degraded, and constitute a promise that David’s body has
made to her. Thus, the film moves standard porn dialogue into
the psychological and even moral realms as Julie links crude
sexual dialogue with commitment, betrayal, and eventually suicide
and attempted murder. Similarly, the post-coitus scene in which
David explores a mole on Sofía’s breast initially appears as a
mere pretext to provide the viewer with a titillating view of the
15
character’s nipples. However, this mole eventually becomes an
important conveyor of meaning. As David suffocates a woman
during intercourse, he becomes confused because of the rapid
shifting from one face and flesh tone to another, and back. He
had begun making love to Sofía, then when the face shifted, he
placed a pillow over the face and upper body of Julie, but at
the last moment the arms and hands that struggle against him
changed again to those of Sofía. In order to acertain whose
corpse lies next to him, David does not move the pillow away from
the face, but instead seeks — and reveals to the camera and
spectators — the mole on the breast. Thus, this mole comes to
play the role of recognition token common to theatrical
anagnorisis. The generic presence of the snuff film is also
evident in this death scene; however, it is greatly overshadowed
by the epistemological confusion of the protagonist and the
spectator. The differing interpellations of graphic sexual
elements within scenes that feature “high brow” concepts are
markedly postmodern, in that they lay bare the porous nature of
the boundary between mere pornography and explicit but artistic
eroticism.
16
The early flirtation with the genre of science fiction comes
to the foreground in the final sequence of scenes of both films.
When César and David learned that the plastic surgeons have
invented a new surgical technique that will allow for complete
regeneration of the damaged skin, they had declared that such a
medical break-through seemed like science fiction. Then, just as
the psychiatrists give up and abandon César and David to their
fates, seemingly bringing the psychodramas to a close, each
glimpses on a prison television a reference to a cryogenics
company called Life Extension (LE). This is not the first time
that LE has appeared in either film; in both cases their
appearances on late-night television had been commented on
previously by the characters, while in Vanilla Sky David and others
who had seen the story of a dog resuscitated after being trapped
in a frozen lake for three months had treated LE as a joke.
This time, however, the author of the book appears on a talk
show, claiming that the technique has been perfected for people
as well, so that those with terminal illness can be frozen until
a cure is found for their disease. When César and David insist
that their psychiatrists help them to visit the LE office, the
17
spectator has no clear idea of why this could be important.
However, at the office, protagonists and spectators come to
realize that César and David allowed their bodies to be frozen
until surgical technology could repair their faces. In addition,
it is revealed that that both chose an option that permitted them
to live in the dream world of their choosing during stasis. The
spectator is suddenly informed that the fantasy-like moments when
Sofía had taken César and David off the sidewalk and into her
heart had been the beginning of the “splice” joining the
protagonists’ actual lives with their dream lives. These
sequences approach the Baudrillardian simulacra, for both the
protagonists and the spectators had believed virtual realities to
be “the real thing.” This moment’s postmodernism is heightened
by the fact that it reveals the highly sentimental moments of
Sofía’s surrender to love, typical of cinematic happy endings, to
be simulacra. The spectator is forced to re-evaluate a
significant portion of the film in order to re-categorize the
events portrayed and to acknowledge once again that access to
reality is not transparent. However, this development also tames
a significant epistemological issue, for it resolves the
18
protagonists’ and the viewers’ confusion concerning the
“murders.” In a dream state, illogical events are normal, and
dreamed irrationality does not put in doubt the possibility of
certainty concerning waking life. This sequence takes
postmodernism to its extreme by both confirming and undermining
philosophical relativism.
The final scenes of the two films raise additional
postmodern confusions, for the psychiatrist and the LE
representatives offer conflicting resolutions to César and
David’s problems. The representatives’ answers are grounded in
science fiction conventions, claiming that the protagonists are
still in the dream state, but that new technology will allow them
to wake up and live again in the 22nd century, in perfect health
and physical form. The catch is that they can awaken only by
“committing suicide” in their dream lives, jumping from the top
of a skyscraper. Antonio and McCabe reintroduce the thriller
genre when they assert that the protagonists’ corporate enemies
have arranged this whole scenario so that César and David will
commit actual suicide. However, the Spanish and American films
resolve this final quandary in very different ways. In Abre Los
19
Ojos, César is confronted only with this simple choice: to
believe the LE representative’s claim that he is currently living
a dream that he can end by a “virtual” suicide, or to believe
Antonio’s warning that he would actually be ending his corporeal
existence once and for all. Faced with these two options, unable
to verify either by any means, César chooses to make a quite
literal “leap of faith” from the skyscraper rooftop – in other
words, he chooses to try to live in the real world again, rather
than the world of his nightmares. In contrast, the LE technician
in Vanilla Sky challenges McCabe’s very reality: he demands that
McCabe name the two daughters he has so often referred to when
taking his leave of David. McCabe’s hesitation removes all
doubt, and confirms that the psychiatrist is indeed a creation of
David’s LE lucid dreams rather than a corporeal being. When
David leaps from the rooftop, then, he does so secure in the
knowledge that he will reawaken in the real world. Thus, Vanilla Sky
tames – or at least appears to tame – the Spanish film’s ending
by confining its own ending to a single genre, science fiction,
and giving the viewer a stronger sense of certainty and closure.
20
However, in Vanilla Sky the LE technician who offered David a
new life in the 22nd century informs him that in his Lucid Dream,
David “sculpted” an existence that incorporated not only
idealized moments of his own past, such as the brief encounter
with Sofía, but also patterns of wish fulfillment that have their
roots in film images and paintings — the visual modalities of
popular culture. The technician here echoes the postmodern tenet
that perceptions of reality are never transparent, that
perception never achieves the unmediated connection marked by the
first stage on Baudrillard’s continuum. Thus, even as the film
seems to turn its back on one form of postmodernity, the open
ending, it proffers another that the Spanish film does not.
César’s leap from the building shows only his plunge to the
ground, but as David falls, the images that flash before his eyes
include both black and white photos that appear to represent his
childhood, juxtaposed with images from classic films and
television shows like “Leave it to Beaver.” This juxtaposition
of a “real” life and media fantasies lays bare and problematizes
the Hollywood convention of representing family life and gender
relations in a highly idealized fashion, reinforcing the previous
21
skeptical moment when David and Sofía’s perfect relationship was
revealed to be have been a lucid dream or simulacrum rather than
a representation of profound reality.
At the moments when César and David are about to land, both
films present a blank screen and audio rather than showing the
men’s bodies hitting (or not hitting) the ground. What
spectators hear against the black screen after a short silence is
unexpected, if not startling: in each film a female voice speaks
in much the same intonation as the alarm clocks in the opening
scenes, saying, “Open your eyes.” However, these female voices
do not merely echo the voice alarms of earlier scenes, in both
instances they tell César and David to calm themselves before
telling them to open their eyes, something the earlier recordings
did not say. Moreover, in both films the voices appear to be
those of the psychotic ex-lovers, Nuria in Abre Los Ojos and Julie
in Vanilla Sky, who had recorded wake-up greetings on the
protagonists’ alarm clocks. This immediately problematizes the
endings yet again, for the LE representative’s assertion that
César and David will awaken over a century after they were put
into cryogenic stasis cannot be true if either if César and David
22
are awakening in their own beds or if Nuria and Julie – who would
(barring still more plot twists) be dead from old age even if
their deaths in the auto accidents had been faked – are sharing
those beds or are even at their bedsides in some medical
facility. If the LE representative’s explanation was false, then
Antonio and McCabe might have been right; the corporate intrigue
plot has not necessarily been discredited. Moreover, the
spectators cannot help but wonder if César and David are
awakening from dreams which included some or all of the films’
earlier events, including what was presented as the protagonists’
dreams, or if perhaps Nuria and Julie might have survived the
auto accidents and are at the protagonists’ bedsides as they
awaken from their post-accident comas. This possibility seems
particularly plausible in the case of Vanilla Sky, the final image
of which shows a close-up of David’s one eye, opening in response
to the voice awakening him; this extreme close-up cannot convey
with certainty a specific emotion, but it is easy to read fear or
panic into the sudden widening of David’s eye. Again the viewers
are forced to re-evaluate their previous understanding of the
cinematic narratives, especially in the case of Vanilla Sky, which
23
deceptively seemed to offer a knowable closure with its
“revelation” that McCabe is only an invention of David’s mind.
It is a cliché that American remakes of European films often
“tame” elements that do not conform to commercial Hollywood
norms; in earlier eras, issues of sexuality and morality were
often sanitized for US consumption. It is tempting to assume
that Vanilla Sky will do just that: by initially appearing to
resolve nearly all aspects of the film’s conclusion, including
those left open in Abre Los Ojos, this motion picture appears to
reject the postmodern aesthetic of undecidability and the related
tenet of drastic epistemological relativism – until the final few
seconds. At first glance, Vanilla Sky might not seem a likely
candidate for a postmodern film; rather, it was produced and
advertised as a star vehicle for Tom Cruise, perhaps one intended
to capitalize on the fact that enactments of characters who
endure physical deformity, masks, or insanity have garnered
several actors Academy Awards in recent years. Nonetheless, it
must be admitted that the film in no way provides a typical
Hollywood happy ending, or indeed any ending at all. Not only do
the film’s final seconds preclude any possibility of traditional
24
narrative closure, the juxtaposition of multiple filmic genres
reinforces that subversion: it is highly unconventional for a
film even to apparently resolve the reality quandary of a
psychological thriller by offering, however deceptively, a form
of certainty that derives from a totally different filmic genre,
science fiction. It is also problematic for a film that has
presented itself as a thriller to resolve the mystery via a genre
that is introduced only in the final sequence, for this approach
is dangerously close to a prohibited form of plot resolution in
which the character or event that resolves a mystery is introduced at
the very last moment. Dependence upon the fleeting presentations
of Life Extension earlier in the film as adequate preparation for
the denouement may be seen as “cheating” cinematic convention and
thus undermining still further the reliability of the closure.
Thus, even as Vanilla Sky appears to aim at erasing one aspect of
Abre Los Ojos’s postmodern uncertainty in order to create a
commercially viable star vehicle, the film’s ending ultimately
matches the postmodernity of its European source.
WORKS CITED
25
Amenábar, Alejandro (director and co-screenwriter). Abre los ojos.
117 minutes, color. 1997.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. (Originally published
as Simulacres et simulacion. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1981.)
Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan P,
1994.
Crowe, Cameron (director and co-screenwriter). Vanilla Sky. 135
minutes, color. 2001.
Degli Esposti, Cristina. Ed. Postmodernism and the Cinema. New York:
Berghahn Books, 1998.
Hutcheon, Linda. The Poetics of Postmodernism. New York, Routledge,
1988.
Palmer, R. Barton. Joel and Ethan Coen. Urbana: U. of Illinois P,
2004.
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