Open Your Eyes
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Movie Reviews of Open Your Eyes
Movie Review: You Won't Be Able To Shut Your Eyes
Summary: 5 Stars
I first experienced the work of Spanish writer/director Alejandro Amenabar when i saw "Open Your Eyes" ("Abre los Ojos"), and let me tell you, I have yet to shut them. Since my first encounter, I have gone on to see "Thesis" (his first film) and "The Others" (his first English film) and have fallen in love with both. But I'm not here to write about those. I'm here to write about "Open Your Eyes," and what a film to write about. If you have not yet seen "Open Your Eyes", let it be known that I am envious of you. You are in for a wonderful surprise. You are in the hands of a master filmmaker. Alejandro Amenabar has a sense of storytelling with his camera that very few filmmakers today have. His visuals are breathtaking (and I'm not just talking about Penelope Cruz) and stylized in the right kind of way. They don't show off, they help tell the story as effactively as possible. And boy, what a story. This movie will take you up, down, and around without you ever wanting to get off. Amenabar's script is loaded with so many twists and turns that summarizing the movie's plot hardly does it justice. But I'll give you a glimpse anyways: Eduardo Noriega, plays Cesar, a young handsome guy, that has all the luck with the girls. Unfortunately, just as he falls for the girl of his dreams, Sofia (Penelope Cruz (could she be any more beautiful?)), his crazy ex-girlfriend, Nuria, causes a car crash that kills her and disfigures, the once perfect looking Cesar. He awakens in a hospital bed, with his life and looks changed completely. It starts a whirlwind of dark moments and emotions for Cesar. Sofia can't look him in the face anymore. What was once most important to him is gone. He's suddenly charged with murder and his confused memory can't figure it all out.. His face is then fixed in an operation. Wait. His face is not fixed in an operation? A prosthetic mask? Sofia loves him again. Or is it Nuria? What's real? What's a dream? WHAT?
Confused? Well, then unconfuse yourself. Watch it. Experience it. I GUARENTEE you will NOT be let down.
Rarely is a film such a rollercoaster, and rarely is a rollercoaster so rewarding. And on this rollercoaster, I'm certain you'll want to get back in line and ride it again.
****FUN-FACT--This film is currently being remade by Cameron Crowe (one of America's top writer/directors), in his follow up to "Almost Famous". Crowe is calling it a "cover" instead of a "remake." As in when a band covers one of their favorite songs from another band, Crowe his covering one of his favorite movies from another director. The cast will include such no-names as Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. Retitled "Vanilla Sky", it is a fact that by the end of December everybody you know will have seen this this. Get a jump start on them. It will be BIG. It will be GREAT. But nothing beats an original. Especially an original like this.
thanks-kidpta
Movie Review: Mind-boggling, worldview-altering film
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not sure if this movie has yet achieved classic status, but it certainly should. Open Your Eyes is the smartest, most powerful, and most important film I've seen in a long, long time. I was literally speechless at the end. Speechless! That doesn't happen too often.
Essentially, the story centers around Cesar (Eduardo Noriega), an impossibly handsome moneyed bachelor who has but a few passions, and the most pronounced of those is sex. After spending time with Sofia (Penelope Cruz), his jilted girlfriend, Nuria (Najwa Nimri) drives her car off the road, killing herself and horribly mutilating Cesar's face. Soon after, reality begins to break apart, and Cesar must try to understand what led up to his being committed to an asylum, accused of a murder he doesn't remember committing. Then the fun starts. If you enjoy having the rug pulled out from under you, trying to put together the puzzle without all the pieces, then chances are you'll enjoy this little gem. However, this movie isn't about psychological tricks at all--if you check out the liner notes for the DVD, Amenabar has a sort of mini-essay where he says that the movie is about alienation, and the opening scene is an indellible image: the city of Madrid, home of 5 million people, completely empty. It always comes to mind when I'm walking down a lonely road.
So, you might be wondering, do I see this or the Tom Cruise American remake? The answer is: this one. It's not hard to see why this movie didn't fare quite so well in America--many people here have become so isolationistic and close-minded that they don't want to watch a movie with subtitles. Then again, these are the same people who complain that Hollywood doesn't make good movies anymore but don't bother to watch independent films either. Not only that, but this movie doesn't give much in the way of closure--it can be taken at face value, but too many small mysteries abound to bring about a final resolution, and many audiences here would just as soon not pay money to see a movie if they don't know what happened. I'm not a film snob, by the way--I have enjoyed a few Arnold Schwarzenegger movies in my day (he makes a better politician than actor) and I don't bore other people with harangues on the genius of Kubrick, Altman, Cassavetes, etc. The remake, though, was far more in spirit to American cinema today--all the ambiguities and mysteries that enrichened the original film were stripped out to create a film with less feeling and far more closure. I'm actually surprised that the remake got that close, considering the studios today.
Now, my soapboxing over, please enjoy the film. If you don't mind subtitles--heck, even if you don't like them but keep an open mind--you'll no doubt be enthralled, as I was.
Movie Review: The Road Less Taken
Summary: 5 Stars
Alejandro Amenabar has only directed four feature films-and yet his reputation as a genuine wunderkind continues to grow. Back in the early 90's-while attending film school in Madrid-he flunked out. He went on to direct a couple terrific short films-which led to his feature film debut-TESIS (1996). He gave us OJOS in 1998 and he emerged as a full-fledged film director, writer, producer, music composer, and sometimes actor-not bad for a lad who flunked out of film school.
Tom Cruise saw OJOS at Sundance, and he bought up the rights for a remake. That project became VANILLA SKY. It is an interesting film-but it pales in comparison to this Spanish original. Amenabar was hired to write the screenplay for SKY-and he went on to direct Nicole Kidman in THE OTHERS for Cruise's production company. Amenabar has been compared to Hitchcock because of the marked creepiness of his first three films. I see influences from Kubrick, Lynch, and Argento as well. He went on to break the mold by directing last year's brilliant THE SEA INSIDE with Javier Bardem.
In ABRE LOS OJOS, it was Amenabar that first turned the film world inside out and created a new film modality-blending the genres of drama, thriller, science fiction, and romance-with a touch of soft-core porn. He took us to new places that later we rediscovered in MATRIX country-places of the mind, of lucid dreaming, of cryogenics and bathos. He used classic themes-that those thin and handsome amongst us would be devastated if their beauty was wrested them. They would prefer oblivion and life within their own cortex-plugged into a super computer.
Eduardo Noriega was brilliant as the young angst-ridden protagonist-Cesar. He portrayed just the right amount of smugness, good looks, arrogance, and conceit. He was not likeable. We could see that he deserved his karmic fate. The role did not fit so comfortably on Tom Cruise. He wanted to be liked-and it weakened the fabric of the plot. Cruise could not dig deep enough within himself to find the real creepiness, the sullen callousness, and then the genuine despair. Penelope Cruz, the "Madonna of Madrid" played Sofia in both films. She was radiant in OJOS. She was pedestrian in SKY. Nude-she was wonderful in each version, of course.
OJOS is a treasure trove of delights and surprises-pain and thrills and passion. It is a colossal achievement from a young filmmaker who seems to be both genius and a maverick. I look forward to his next effort.
Movie Review: Stunningly good!
Summary: 5 Stars
This second feature by Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar, Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) is a virtual remake of Hitchcock's Vertigo. Like that film, it dazzles us for a good portion of its running time by never letting us know exactly where we stand. Both films share a questioning of reality as they slide deeper and deeper into the lead's obsession. In the film's first half, it's the hazy trip hop soundtrack and symbolically heavy imagery keep us guessing. When the hidden truth behind what is going on is revealed with about 45 minutes of running time left, the film, like Vertigo, changes into a study of its lead character's twisted psyche.Amenabar does some exciting things here. The film's plot, without spoiling anything, follows Cesar, the film's lead, a womanizer that is currently involved with two women. Soon after spending the night and falling in love with one of them, his reality begins to become confused. During the film's first half, Cesar is our guide into his Lynchian dream world. The audience's confusions are shared and amplified by the protagonist. We feel our vision of reality sliding away with Cesar's. We go insane with him. When the film morphs however (in a scene where Cesar's friend tells him he's coming undone), and Amenabar all but reveals the reason behind the madness, our sympathies shift. We stay a step ahead of Cesar, allowing us to not only observe his psyche, but watch as Amenabar lectures us about the fragile level of reality that exists in any film. The way that he keeps us questioning what is real (even though we know nothing that we see in the film is real) is brilliant. At the end, we can not even be sure that the film's final fade-out returns us to reality.
The film lacks the effortlessness that Vertigo has though. It does rely on a bit of narrative hokum in order to tie these two disparate halves of film together. Eduardo Noriega's Cesar doesn't quite manage to create the tragic humanity that Jimmy Stewart does in Vertigo, either. Nonetheless, it is far more ambitious and timely a remake of that film than something like De Palma's Obsession. In some ways, it goes farther into the realm of sexual obsession than Vertigo did, or could dream of doing. What is certain is that Amenabar, at 25, has created a film that deserves comparison to Hitchcock's best work.
Movie Review: Seeing Is Not Believing
Summary: 5 Stars
A director friend of mine is fond of saying that you shouldn't believe anything you see on television, anything. Indeed, the wag that said, "The camera never lies" would be lost in our era where the camera seems incapable of doing anything else. The inability to believe our most trusted source of information is at the heart of Abre Los Ojos, or, Open Your Eyes, a superb film by Alejandro Amenabar.
The plot, such as it is, is readily available elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the value of beauty, of image and perception, are the themes that drive it on every level. It stars the near perfect Penelope Cruz whose grace exudes a vulnerability reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn, she projects an almost angelic appeal. Her character, another woman, and two men form a rather odd four-pointed love triangle, which culminates in tragedy. This is a fairly pedestrian tale of love gone amiss, but as it unravels clues appear that hint at sub-texts, men moving furiously behind the scenery, maintaining illusions, dreams within dreams, perceptions with more weight that reality.
As we begin to see through the layers of deception we have the sense of knowing less, not more, and yet, each new revelation draws us further in. Multi-layered stories like this usually collapse under the weight of their own complexity, not this one. Open Your Eyes is like a sumptuous impressionist painting; gorgeous when viewed from across the room, more fascinating still when viewed from inches away, when it is almost possible to see the hand of the master, applying his signature.
This brilliant film was sent to the Hollywood puppy mill where it emerged as Vanilla Sky, directed by Cameron Crowe. Like all retreads, it had some virtue because the source it cannibalized was so good. In a deliciously ironic twist, it even allowed Penelope Cruz to reprise her role as Sofia. But Vanilla Sky invites viewers to close their eyes, not open them, in a desperate attempt to avoid seeing Tom Cruise sleepwalk through a dense, complex part requiring nuance, a word he might labor to spell much less convey. Then again, perhaps the presence of Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky is emphatic evidence of the point Abre Los Ojos makes so brilliantly. After all, for years the camera has been telling us that he's an actor.