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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Artisan Entertainment
Salesrank: 8864
Released: August 21, 2001 |
| Our Price: $4.19 |
| Used Price: $2.96 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Handsome womanizer C?esar is disfigured in a car wreck, and as he attempts to pick up the pieces of his life, bizarre situations and events seem to occur as a result of his accident.
Genre: Foreign Film - Spanish/misc SA
Rating: R
Release Date: 18-DEC-2001
Media Type: DVD
Description of Open Your Eyes:
Imagine if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, and Total Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility. This film rewards multiple viewings, pushing the viewer toward one perception of reality, then switching to another until reality itself is called into question. Melodrama, love story, and psychological thriller combine with a dash of science fiction, forming a plot that is both disorienting and deceptively precise.
Set in Madrid, the story defies description, but this much can be revealed: young, handsome Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is vain, rich, charming, and--following a botched suicide-murder scheme by a jilted lover--horribly disfigured. He'd fallen in love with Sofia (Penélope Cruz) but is now an embittered husk of his former self, stuck in a "psychiatric penitentiary" on a murder charge and hiding behind an expressionless mask. His reality has crumbled, but as the film's agenda is gradually revealed, we realize that there are other factors in play. Exposing that agenda would be a criminal offense against those who haven't seen the film; suffice it to say that Open Your Eyes takes you into the twilight zone and beyond, and does so cleverly enough to prompt Tom Cruise to produce and star in an English-language remake, Vanilla Sky. The 2001 remake, directed by Cameron Crowe, costars Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, who reprises her original role. --Jeff Shannon
Open Your Eyes Reviews:
Fine Spanish romantic-surreal tale doesn't quite hit brilliance 
2009-11-18 - César (Eduardo Noriega) is in prison - or a hospital - it's unclear which at first. He wears a mask, and he's having sessions with a psychologist, Antonio (Chete Lara). Apparently he was a wealthy, very good-looking young man in Madrid, who after finding himself falling for his best friend's girlfriend Sofía (Penélope Cruz) accepted a lift from the obsessive Nuria (Najwa Nimri) and then crashed in her car at high speed, disfiguring him horribly and apparently killing her. He tried desperately to find a way to fix his face, but now from his cell life seems all confused, and events and people jumble in a way that makes it clear that either he - or the world - is going mad. The key seems to lie in an older, foreign man who he sees at a couple of key points in the story; finding him will unlock César's past, and perhaps present...
I haven't seen any other films from the Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, best known for this film, THE OTHERS, and THE SEA INSIDE; nor have I (yet) seen the American remake of this, VANILLA SKY, but based on this excellent, challenging narrative, I certainly will. Reminding one at times of earlier Spanish surrealists and fantasists like Buñuel and Almodóvar, and also at times having the nightmarish qualities of some of Philip K. Dick's novels of "inner space" science fiction like TIME OUT OF JOINT or MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, and some of David Lynch's work like LOST HIGHWAY, this is nonetheless a fairly original work in conception, closer ultimately to science fiction than horror or fantasy, but with a romantic-thriller feeling to it. Noriega is spectacularly good as César, traversing various modes between the arrogant prettyboy, the masked felon, and the disfigured loner with utter grace; the other actors are all fine as well, though none of them have anything like the challenges that Noriega faces. Really a tour-de-force performance.
I was not quite so enthralled by the rather flat direction, which certainly doesn't descend to the point-and-shoot character of many American action films but also doesn't really ever give us breathing space or any time to contemplate and wonder about what's going on. The narrative may be propulsive, but the director pushes it faster and harder than he needs to, I think, and his neo-romantic score is fairly banal. The biggest problem for me, though, is the ending, which gives an ambivalent and challenging film an all-too-grounded and prosaic finish. Some will be happy with the wrap-it-up style, but being used to the narrative hijinks of the directors I mentioned and other modern masters like Jacques Rivette, Atom Egoyan and Raoul Ruiz - and feeling that was the direction this was going in - I guess I would have liked something more difficult or weird, something that made me say "huh"?
Still all in all, a solid thriller with some interesting metaphysical concerns, even if it doesn't really push the envelope. The DVD is pretty bare-bones but the transfer is fine.
Hold on to the rails!
2009-10-20 - Can you distinguish between reality and dreaming? Are you sure? If you had to choose between dying and perpetually dreaming, which would you choose? If you could influence your dreams such that they fulfill your fantasies, would you choose perpetually dreaming over living your real life? If you chose the former, would you make the same choice if there was a risk that your dreams would become nightmares? If you could skip the rest of your current life and instead wake up far in the future, would you do it?
These are the sort of psycho-philosophical issues explored by this movie. Of course, this is a movie rather than an academic lecture, so the exploration of these issues is symbolized through an engaging plot involving flesh-and-bone characters (or so it seems). In the process, a number of more standard themes are also explored, such as friendship, romantic love, lust, betrayal, revenge, punishment, social acceptance/rejection, and the influence of wealth and personal appearance (and, yes, Penelope Cruz is pretty hot in this movie).
So why 4 stars rather than 5? Because some elements of the plot seem unnecessarily incoherent to me. This adds avoidable confusion to a movie which is already exploring themes which are inherently amply challenging, disorienting, and maybe even disturbing. I think this incoherence muddles things a bit and thereby causes the movie to lose some of its potential power.
Nevertheless, I do recommend this movie to anyone interested in the themes I've mentioned. Also, this is a Spanish movie with English subtitles, and it definitely has what strikes me as a Spanish "feel," so that may enhance or weaken the movie for you, according to your taste (certainly enhanced it for me).
More Lucid than Vanilla Sky version 
2009-10-15 - Like other viewers, I had watched Vanilla Sky first and was intrigued enough to see the original Spanish production. The story line is easier to follow than Vanilla Sky. While the two versions are very similar, it's worth getting Open Your Eyes if you like the Vanilla Sky story. The movie was a lower budget production and relies more on story telling while Vanilla Sky is a typical slicked-up Hollywood makeover with better sets, music and cinematography. Both have their merits and are recommended.
Not a bad film
2008-11-23 - I got this because I am big fan of "Vanilla Sky." The plot line and even the dialog is very close. The climax of "Vanila Sky" was much better and it also better conveyed the sense of dis-jointedness of a bad dream. I'm glad I bought this video but if I had to choose between the two I would choose "Vanilla Sky" every time.
great mind juggler 
2008-08-28 - If you can follow subtitles along with movie, you'll like this one much more than vanilla sky. However, vanilla sky answered some questions for me or perhaps just that I knew what to expect.
