Tom Cruise and the Seven Dwarves: Cinematic Postmodernisms in Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky

Scholarly discussions of cinematic postmodernism often posit an implicit opposition between sum of two units categories of film-making: big-budget, profit-oriented motion pictures and the so-called "art house" cinema of European auteur productions and independent American films. While the films assigned to the first category (especially those made in Hollywood) are frequently scorned as "bland, formulaic entertainment, contrived by means of committee and aimed at the widest, least demanding audiences" (Andrew 38) those assigned to the next to the first are at least equally as repeatedly privileged as sites of postmodern and other non-traditional cinema aesthetics; R Barton Palmer foregrounds this aspect of many American independent films when he describes them as "'difficult', with narratives that are hard to come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind or even bewildering, stylizations pushed to exces and nearly impenetrable themes" (28) of the like kind assumptions, however, ignore the persistent and true real presence of at least a certain number of of postmodernism's salient features in a significant number of widely-released European and American feature films of new years, motion pictures made with each intention of attracting large audiences. Indeed, Palmer argues that Hollywood's output since the 1980 has consistently included the work of filmmakers who aim at a hybrid form that he bourns "commercial/independent film, a particular form of postmodern cinema that complexly intersects and deconstruct the contrast between high tillage and mass culture" (30). of the like kind filmmakers draw freely on modernist and postmodern devices, on the other hand "only those that can be accommodated to the tastes of a broader, more commercial audience" (31); Palmer tenders the examples of directors similar as Quentin Tarantino and Spike to leeward (35), but we might also include the works of Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, Twelve Monkey Brazil, The Fisher King) and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adap- tation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotles Mind). In this inquiry we will examine certain postmodern ultimate parts of two popular motion pictures of the last decade: Spanish director Alejandro Amen??bar's 1997 film Abre looks ojos (Open Your Eyes) and its 2001 Hollywood remake, Vanilla canopy of heaven directed by Cameron Crowe. In in like manner doing, we will both demonstrate by what means postmodernism can manifest itself in commercially-oriented motion pictures and compare the aspects of postmodernism greatest in quantity prominent in these two film versions - single European and one made in Hollywood - of the same story. Tempting notwithstanding that it might be to assume that the American film will dilute its source's postmodernism, we will diocese that this is not necessarily the case.

One irony inherent in casual dismissals of film audiences' receptivity to postmodernism is that cinema, as perhaps the greatest in quantity mimetic of all representational arts, has an equally great potential to problematize and to interrogate its hold representational techniques. This potential is the actual essence of postmodernism, of course, for single of the primary tenets of postmodern musing is the relative and slippery nature of reality which cannot help but radically complicate any proces of representation, abundant less one as complex as film. Linda Hutcheon writes that postmodernism's "entire formal and thematic activity is founded in its philosophical problematizing of the nature of relation of the relation of word to thing" (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 deep reality, 2) mask[ing] and denaturing] a abysmal reality, 3) mask[ing] the absence of a fathomless reality," and 4) representation with "no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its hold 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 diocese Abre los ojos and Vanilla firmament 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 observes ojos and Vanilla Sky focus upon the efforts of the films' respective protagonists, accused of committing assassinations neither remembers, to reconstruct their pasts and the circumstances surrounding the homicide s Each protagonist, C?©sar in Abre looks ojos and David Ames in Vanilla canopy of heaven was formerly a young man supremely contented with the good fortune of being the couple wealthy and handsome (C?©sar is played by dint of Spanish heartthrob Eduardo Noriega, David by the agency of the iconic Tom Cruise). Each, however, misjudged the sanity of a woman with whom he had a casual sexual relationship, and in each film the woman cajoles the protagonist into her car, then deliberately crashes it at high spe killing herself and leaving him with fanciful facial disfigurement. These tragedies radically alter the protagonists' lives and create the conditions in which the suppos manslaughters might - or might not - have taken place. the two films then devote most of their remaining time to C?©sar 's and David's memories and to their lengthened interviews with the psychiatrists, Antonio and McCabe, who are trying to evaluate their mental states for the ends of their criminal trials. Were any manslaughters actually committed? If so, who were the victims? Who might C?©sar and David have believed to be the victims? greatest in quantity important, which - if any - of C?©sar or David's memories are real and which are hallucinations or protective delusions or flat lies?