Open Your Eyes (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Abre los ojos)
Jump to: navigation, search
Open Your Eyes

Abre los ojos movie poster
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar
Produced by Fernando Bovaira
José Luis Cuerda
Written by Alejandro Amenábar
Mateo Gil
Starring Eduardo Noriega
Penélope Cruz
Chete Lera
Najwa Nimri
Music by Alejandro Amenábar
Mariano Marín
Release date(s) December 19, 1997 (Spain)
Running time 117 min
Language Spanish
Budget ESP 370,000,000 (estimated)

Open Your Eyes (Spanish: Abre los ojos) is a 1997 film directed by Alejandro Amenábar and written by him and Mateo Gil. It stars Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Fele Martínez and Najwa Nimri. In 2002, Open Your Eyes was ranked #84 in the Top 100 Sci-Fi List by the Online Film Critics Society.[1]

Contents

[edit] Plot

From a prison cell in an unnamed city, César, a 25-year-old in a prosthetic mask, tells his story to psychiatrist Antonio. Flashbacks reveal the following events: Good-looking César is attractive to women. At his birthday party he flirts with Sofía, the girlfriend of his best friend Pelayo. The next morning, he accepts a lift from his obsessive ex-lover Nuria. She crashes the car, committing suicide, and César is horribly disfigured, beyond the help of cosmetic surgery. Sofía prefers Pelayo again.

After César's disfigurement, he begins to have a series of disorienting experiences. Drunk, César falls asleep in the street. On awakening everything has changed: Sofía now claims to love him and the surgeons restore his lost looks. But as he makes love to Sofía one night, she apparently changes into Nuria. Horrified, César murders her, yet finds everyone else believes Nuria was indeed Sofía.

While he is confined to the prison, fragments of his past return to him as if in a dream. It is gradually revealed that, shortly after his disfigurement, César contracted with 'Life Extension', a company specializing in cryonics, to be cryogenically preserved and to experience extremely lucid and lifelike virtual reality dreams. Returning to their headquarters, under strict supervision by prison officers, he discovers they specialise in cryonics with a twist: "artificial perception" or the provision of a fantasy based on the past to clients who are reborn in the future. He then committed suicide and was placed in cryonic suspension. His experiences from about the midpoint of the movie onward have been a dream, spliced retroactively into his actual life and replacing his true memories. At the end of the film he elects to wake up and be resurrected. Convinced his life since the drunken night in the street is simply a nightmarish vision created by Life Extension, César leaps from the roof of the company's high-rise headquarters, resolving to open his eyes once more to real life outside the cryonic fantasy.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Reception

Critical reaction to Open Your Eyes has been mostly positive. James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three and a half stars (out of four), saying that movies "of this intelligence, audacity, and complexity come along so rarely that it's mandatory to cry out their arrival" and that "those who see it will not quickly forget the experience."[2] Rob Blackwelder of SplicedWire gave the film four stars (out of four), calling it "a jaw-dropping psychological thriller" that's "beautifully orchestrated."[3] Richard Scheib of The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review also gave Open Your Eyes four stars, calling it "quite a remarkable film."[4] Holly E. Ordway of DVD Active said, "I don’t give out “perfect 10” ratings lightly, but Open Your Eyes earns one by all accounts."[5] Aaron Beierle of DVD Talk gave a lukewarm review, saying that he "found most of Open Your Eyes interesting" but remarked that "there's something about the picture that kept me from being completely involved."[6] The music to the film has also contributed to a success of the movie.

[edit] Remake

Director Cameron Crowe remade the film as Vanilla Sky (2001), with Tom Cruise in the lead role (renamed David Aames), Penélope Cruz reprising her role as Sophia, Cameron Diaz as the girl who disfigures David (renamed Julianna Gianni), Jason Lee as the friend (renamed Brian Shelby), and Kurt Russell as the psychiatrist (renamed Curtis McCabe). The remake also transplants the action from Madrid to New York. The remake follows the original plot very closely but makes minor changes to the ending and incorporates many pop culture references.

Critical reaction to Vanilla Sky was mixed. It currently holds a 39% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 157 reviews (62 positive, 95 negative).[7] Critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film an "extraordinarily narcissistic high-concept vanity project for producer-star Tom Cruise."[8] The film was better received by general audiences, unaware of the fact that it was based on a Spanish film.

[edit] Soundtrack

  • Vol. #1
  1. "Glamour" - Amphetamine Discharge (6:03)
  2. "Risingson" - Massive Attack (5:29)
  3. "El detonador EMX-3" - Chucho (5:17)
  4. "How do" - Sneaker Pimps (5:04)
  5. "Sick of you" - Onion (4:28)
  6. "T-sebo" - Side Effects (5:44)
  7. "Flying away" - Smoke City (3:50)
  8. "Arrecife" - Los Coronas (3:11)
  9. "Yo mismo" - If (3:37)
  10. "Tremble (goes the nigth)" - The Walkabouts (5:02)
  11. "El detonador remix" – Chucho / Side Effects (5:01)
  • Vol. #2 (Instrumental)
  1. "Abre los ojos" (2:28)
  2. "Sofía" (1:12)
  3. "Soñar es una mierda" (1:04)
  4. "La operación" (1:33)
  5. "¿Dónde está Sofía?" (0:54)
  6. "El parque" (3:08)
  7. "Hipnosis" (2:20)
  8. "Quítate la careta" (2:56)
  9. "Eres mi mejor amigo" (2:41)
  10. "La única explicación" (2:05)
  11. "Quiero verte" (6:38)
  12. "Esa sonrisa" (0:53)
  13. "Deja vu" (1:51)
  14. "Excarcelación" (4:28)
  15. "La vida" (1:46)
  16. "La azotea" (5:21)
  17. "Créditos finales" (3:31)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Top 100 Sci-Fi List, Online Film Critics Society
  2. ^ Open Your Eyes review, James Berardinelli, ReelViews
  3. ^ Open Your Eyes review, Rob Blackwelder, SplicedWire
  4. ^ Open Your Eyes review, Richard Scheib, The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review
  5. ^ Open Your Eyes review, Holly E. Ordway, DVD Active
  6. ^ Open Your Eyes review, Aaron Beierle, DVD Talk
  7. ^ Vanilla Sky reviews, Rotten Tomatoes
  8. ^ Vanilla Sky review, Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films directed by Alejandro Amenábar
Thesis (1995) • Open Your Eyes (1997) • The Others (2001) • The Sea Inside (2004) • Agora (2009)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Your_Eyes_(film)"