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Rewatched Vanilla Sky last night and the dream layers hit different at 35
Back in 2001 my friends and I thought it was just a weird Tom Cruise movie. Now after losing a parent and dealing with my own grief, that whole 'lucid dream' sequence in the apartment feels way too real. Has anyone else had an older movie completely change meaning after a major life event?
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olivia_webb2mo ago
The whole dream sequence in the apartment is actually where I think the movie goes off the rails a bit. I'm sorry about your loss, but for me Vanilla Sky was always about the fear of missing out on real life, not grief. Tom Cruise's character literally chooses a fake perfect world because he can't handle his mistakes. The weirdest part is when he starts screaming at the empty apartment and it cuts to the mask falling off his face. That moment works better as a metaphor for hiding from yourself than anything about actual sadness. I don't know, the dream stuff just feels too clean compared to how messy real grief actually works.
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markm272mo ago
Haha yeah I feel that. The falling mask scene is intense but you're right, it almost makes the sadness too neat. Real grief doesn't come with a dramatic reveal, it just hits you in the middle of loading the dishwasher or something random like that. For me the part that flipped was when he realizes the dream is breaking down and starts seeing glitches in people's faces. When my dad died I kept having dreams where he'd be there but talking in a loop or his face would look wrong. That's the part that feels more real now than the big emotional speeches.
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