Breaking Away

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The title of this film, Breaking Away (1979), not only refers to trying to win a bicycle race but also refers to the characters trying to overcome limitations that others imposed on them, and sometimes, inhibitions that they have imposed on themselves.

Peter Yates directed this movie, and he knows something about four-wheel chases since he also made the Steve McQueen hit, Bullitt. Steve Tesich wrote the screenplay and received an Oscar for his work.

The opening sums up the whole feel of the story. A group of young men walk along a quarry, a place that is a big hole in the ground. Mike (a young Dennis Quaid) sings a funny song about burying his body in the parking lot of the A&P, and having his soul redeemed with trading stamps. Cyril (Daniel Stern who would go on to voice the older version of Fred Savage in The Wonder Years, and act as one of the crooks in the Home Alone films) talks about how he lost all interest in life on this spot when a girl chose another guy. These fellows deal with their difficulties with humor and anger. There is one youth, Dave Stohler (Dennis Christopher), who is different. He speaks with an Italian accent and uses some Italian words. He carries a trophy. He seeks the exotic and is a bike racer who tries to break away from the pedestrian lifestyle that these youths have inherited.

Dave is in stark contrast to the everyday Bloomington, Indiana neighborhood as he rides his bike, singing in Italian. Along with Cyril, Dave’s father, Ray (Paul Dooley) gets most of the funny lines. Ray sees his son as a weirdo bum, wearing “Ity” cologne that attracts flies, saying Italian words, and eating “Ity” food, ending in “eenie,” like “fettuccine.” He humorously says he wants American food like “French fries.” Dave’s mother, Evelyn (Barbara Barrie, who received a Best Supporting Actress nomination) reminds her husband that their son was sickly until he started the bike training, which shows that a dream can aid in escaping life’s obstacles. She is supportive, serving Italian food and calling the cat by his new name, Fellini.

Dad says that he thought Dave would go to college, and then reverses himself by saying why should he go, since Ray never did. Ray says his son should be miserable and tired looking for a job, which is what is supposed to be the working-class way of life. Dad, who has acquiesced to limitations, sees his son’s desire to escape the father’s reality as pointless and a repudiation of the Ray’s reconciling himself to settle for lesser goals. Ray has stooped to working as a stereotypical shady used car salesman. He feels his son is almost like an alien as he shaves his legs like Italian bicycle racers.

The scene shifts to Moocher (Jackie Earl Haley, who later starred in Watchmen and Lincoln among others). He is in love with Nancy (Amy Wright). Moocher is a little guy, but he is dauntless, lifting weights as he talks with her. She hopes to be head cashier at some point. Moocher’s house is run down and needs to be sold since his dad went to Chicago to look for a job. But his wish to find happiness with the girl he loves, whom he later marries, shows another version of finding happiness despite living in poverty.

The young men are unemployed A&P workers. Mike was fired and the others quit, as Mike invokes the Musketeers’ motto of “all for one.” They are loyal to each other, as Dave says Moocher can move in with him when his house is sold. Dave says there are big families in Italy, and they all live together. It shows a desire to have each person supporting the other. Moocher says that Dave is starting to believe he is Italian, to which Cyril says,” I wish I was somebody.” He feels like his life has nothing to distinguish itself. Cyril jokingly says that he wishes he could be a cartoon figure. Behind the humor is another wish to break free of his depressing reality. Mike asks how Cyril became so stupid. Cyril says it was heredity, and then wittingly asks Mike “What’s your excuse?” which shows that Cyril is not as dumb as Mike says.

Mike jumps into the water hole at the excavated quarry and goes into a refrigerator at the bottom of the water as a joke. The others think he is caught and dive to rescue him. However, he already found a way out. It shows the loyalty of the young men to each other, but it also shows the feeling of entrapment and the ability to escape.

The college students show up and Mike is infuriated that they would invade this place that he feels belongs to them. He wants to get revenge by going on campus to stake out the college turf. Mike says that the students have it made because they’re “rich.” Dave says Italians are poor but are happy, to which Mike says, “Maybe in Italy.” It is a minimalist critique of how poverty may take a greater toll in the United States.

On campus, some of the students throw a frisbee around and it gets away from them. It flies into the street and Mike’s car runs over it, to his delight. The male student curses them, calling them “cutters,” which is the term they think is derogatory. It refers to the fact that the local men cut limestone to build the university buildings. So, the implication is that the townies are only fit for labor, not intellectual pursuits. As they watch the college football team practice, Mike laments that he never reached his goal of becoming a famous quarterback despite being a good athlete in high school. He says he must read about the praise of each succeeding football star, and he will never join those ranks. However, he holds onto a cigarette but never lights it because he feels like he should stay in shape. It shows a lingering hope that he may attain recognition someday.

Dave is alone practicing Italian on campus. He is learning in his own way, not as a student, outside the classroom. He sees Katherine (Robyn Douglass) ride away on her scooter. She drops a book, and we have a boy literally chasing after a girl as he bicycles after her to return the book. (Christopher is quite an accomplished bicyclist in this movie). He automatically adopts the Italian accent as he gives her the book, knowing instinctively that his being a simple “cutter” will not win him any points. He says her name is Caterina, and she takes pleasure hearing its musicality in Italian.

Dave gets a flat tire (showing his deflated opinion of his cutter self?) and, in contrast, watches the college boys train for bicycle racing, as Katherine leads them in a Mercedes, an obvious reference to her economic status.

As opera music plays in the background, Ray ponders what he’s going to do about Dave. He says that he’s afraid to look into his son’s eyes because they may twirl like “pinwheels.” Dad is implying the existence of insanity, but those pinwheels may be a reference to Dave’s bicycle, and his desire to ride away from hereditary misery.

A great episode has Dave, after being thrilled to learn that the Italians are going to race in Indiana, goes out on the highway and follows a Cinzano truck. The driver speeds up and holds out fingers to tell Dave how fast he is going. Obviously, this arrangement has been ongoing. It is exhilarating to see Dave literally trying to race away from his limited existence. Humorously, they are going so fast, a policeman stops the truck for speeding.

Another fun scene is when Mooch goes for a job at a car wash. Mike says he’ll have to wash the rich kids’ cars and smile to get tips. They tell him not to forget to write, as if he’s “going away,” which he is from the unemployed gang’s point of view, since they are reluctant to capitulate to defeatism. The boss is nasty because Mooch is a little late and calls him “Shorty,” as he tells him to punch into the time clock. Mooch does so literally, smashing the device with his fist wrapped in a towel. A very short-term job.

There is a hint of Dave wanting to leave the defeatist working-class mentality of his father by wanting to take a college entrance exam just to see if he can pass. The tall Cyril had dreams of getting a basketball scholarship, but it didn’t happen. He says his father always says he “understands,” when Cyril fails. To Cyril it seems his father expects him to fail at everything, and he wants to give him a birthday present by taking and flunking the college test so his dad will have something else to “understand.”

There is an interesting cross-cutting of scenes as Dave serenades Katherine while Evelyn makes a romantic dinner for Ray, complete with romantic music and lit candles. As Dave sings with Cyril accompanying him on guitar, Dave’s parents hear the same words sung that Dave is performing. Evelyn removes the flower from her hair and Ray takes off his pocket protector, a humorous bit of working-class unclothing.

The serenade is a success as Katherine kisses Dave, and they later meet for lunch. She says that, unlike Dave’s exalting the family in Italian life, she says her parents don’t even miss her. Perhaps she, despite her upper social status, is missing something in her life. However, a few college students beat Cyril for his part in the serenade, and Mike vows vengeance. After the cutters and the students, led by snobbish Rod (Hart Bochner), have a brawl in the college cafeteria, the university says instead of fighting, the cutters can compete with the students in the Little 500 bicycle race.

At the quarry hole, Mike thinks Dave will easily win the race, with the others completing the team requirement. But the latter doesn’t want to expose himself as a cutter to Katherine. He continues to devalue his background and hide behind the façade he has created. Mike gets into an argument with the other guys and says he wasn’t planning on wasting his life with them. Cyril then says, “I thought that was the whole plan, that we were going to waste our lives together.” It is an insightful and sad admission. It is at the heart of this story that these young men have lives without dreams, but at least they have each other to share their disappointments.

Then the college students show up on the other side of the quarry hole, which stresses the class divide between the two groups of youths. Dave continues his deception, hiding so that Katherine will not see him with his friends from the town. This arrival adds insult to injury for Mike, and he challenges Rod to a swimming contest. Mike loses, injuring his head on the side of the rockface, a sort of ironic defeat for a hometown cutter of stone.

After that incident, Dave appears to agree to race, which will reveal who he is to Katherine. Mooch says if she really likes him, it will not make a difference. In a perfect world that would be the case, but the world is a flawed place.

After Dave runs a red light that causes his father to stall out one of his test drives with a customer, Ray denigrates his son in the parents’ bedroom, calling him “worthless” and not capable of being smart enough to go to college. Dave hears his father saying these belittling words that could force an offspring to believe in his worthlessness, perpetuating the lack of achievement. However, Dave was inadvertently exposing his father’s deceit since Ray was trying to sell a defective car. They both are confronting their lack of pride in what they are doing.

Which is possibly why what follows is a scene where Ray visits his former friends who still work at the limestone cutting factory. He joins in helping to do some of his former work, which he was proud of performing. When he is walking with Evelyn, she suggests that he give their son a job at the used car business. Ray’s conflicted nature is obvious when he first says the used car business isn’t good enough for Dave, and admits it’s not even good enough for him, but then switches, saying it is worthy of himself. These scenes show that there can be satisfaction in any job or endeavor as long as that is what one aspires to do. Ray does relent and gives him a job washing the cars.

Despite being exhausted at the job, he continues to train with the Italians whenever he has a chance, even in the rain, which shows Dave’s desire to excel. The contrast between his having to overcome obstacles compared to the privileged students is stressed in the shot where he is cleaning the inside of a car while Rod and his crew ride by on their bikes.

When a young man returns a defective car that Ray sold to him, Dave says they must accept the responsibility. Ray keeps repeating “refund,” like it’s some kind of curse word. He suffers a mild heart attack, but is it because of the stress of having to part with money, or is it also due to an unconscious realization that his life is a fraud?

When Dave says he should skip the race with the Italians until his father recuperates, his mother shows him her passport. She says she carries it with her and shows it anytime she needs to present identification. She tells her son that he should do things while he can. The economy of the dialogue here is effective, because just by saying that, she shows she had a dream to travel that wasn’t realized, and that her son should not give up on his dreams.

Director Peter Yates uses music very well here as he employs an Italian classical soundtrack to keep the pace with the bikers. However, the race with the Italian bicyclists does not go well, as the Italians cheat and cause damage to Dave’s bike. Dave rides with the others as Mike says Dave is just a cutter now, like the rest of them. When he comes home, he no longer is talking like an Italian and admits that his father was right about his used car business, since everybody “cheats.” Ray is now upset and hugs his sad son who has lost his innocence and has learned about the unscrupulous reality that can present itself.

He is now ready to show who he really is to Katherine, who when she first sees him in his regular clothes says she liked him the way he “was before,” and he now looks like “everybody else.” They are harsh statements given the context of the movie. But, she, too, wanted to escape from the ordinary, and Dave gave her that. She slaps him as she feels betrayed by his lying performance.

Ray watches Dave tear down the Italian pictures in his room and they go for a walk. Ray says that he helped cut the stones that built the university’s buildings and was young, strong, and proud of his work. But then somehow those buildings  seemed too good for him. He says that all he left Dave and his friends were the “holes” in the ground, which is a metaphor for passing on a feeling of emptiness to the next generation. Dave admits he took the college entrance exam and did well on it. Ray now is encouraging, saying that was “good,” showing how he is proud that Dave excelled on the test.

Mike now admits that maybe those college guys are better than them. Is he serious, or is he using reverse psychology on Dave? In any event, Dave restores the broken bike and becomes committed to entering the Little 500 race.

Katherine approaches Dave on the street and she has now let go of her anger. She says she will be graduating and has a job in Chicago. She will also go to Italy with her parents. The first thought is that she is showing her privileged status. But the fact that she wants to go to Italy, and with her parents, shows how Dave implanted a similar dream into her to escape the ordinary. She wishes him a good trip, and he says he’s not going anywhere. Her knowing response is, “I don’t know about that.” She realizes that Dave is special and will be escaping from his surrounding limitations.

Katherine is not the only one Dave has influenced. Ray admits that Dave’s mother is expecting, so the Italian love of an expanding family has literally taken seed in the Stohler residence. His parents present him and Moocher T-shirts that say “Cutter” on them, which announces that they should be proud of who they are.

The race is not without its drama as Dave injures his foot. The others do their best to help, participating in the race, showing how it is a team effort. Dave has his foot strapped to the pedal which means he must finish the race himself. He does win to the jubilation of his friends and the townspeople. Even Dave’s father leaves his job to cheer his son on, and there is a shot of Rod applauding, revealing he has conceded that the cutters were the best on this day.

The last scene is heartwarming and funny. Dave is now a freshman at the college, and he encounters a French exchange student. They are both riding bikes, and Dave says he is thinking of taking French, acknowledging that the French are the best bicyclists. Dad has come a long way from his previous perception of his son, and is now also riding a bike. As he passes his son, Dave calls out “Bon Jour, Papa,” startling his father, whose expression shows that Dave may have switched from being Italian to becoming French. In any event, Katherine was right, and Dave is most certainly “breaking away.”

Parasite

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Parasite (2019), was the first foreign-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar. Writer-director Bong Goon Ho here again explores the class divisions between the privileged and the poor, as he did in other films such as Snowpiercer and Mickey 17.

The first shot is that of the view from a basement apartment, stressing the subterranean life of the poor. Mr. Kim (Song Hang Ho) and his family live there. He is an out-of-work driver. Phones are shut off and they have been stealing the internet from a neighbor, who recently changed her password, cutting off the family members crowded together in the cramped dwelling. There is a picture and medal that was won in a track and field event, which shows that there is talent here, but it has not been able to sustain itself in the poverty surrounding it. They have stink bugs in the place. When an exterminator comes by outside, they leave the window open to kill the insects, but it is they who may be the target in this society.

They make money by folding pizza boxes to get by. The son, Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-Shik) has a friend, Min-Hyuk (Park Seo-Joon), who brings them what is known as a Scholar’s Rock that presages good fortune. The mother, Choong Sook (Jang Hye-Jin) says he should have brought food, which is what this deprived family really needs, not a lucky charm.

Ki-Woo is to take over tutoring English from the leaving Min-Hyuk of the daughter, Da-Hye (Jung Ji-So), of the rich Park family. Min-Hyuk doesn’t want some college student putting the moves on Da-Hye, who he likes and sees his friend as a faithful protector. Ki-Woo excelled in school in English, but the family couldn’t afford an education for him, or his sister, Ki-Jeong (Park So-Dam), who is an excellent artist. The only way the lower-class family can attain employment is through fraud (Are they parasites? The title of the film works on different levels). So, Ki-Woo pretends to be a college student, named Kevin, and his sister creates fake documents for him. As the father humorously says if there was a major at Oxford University for forgery, his daughter would excel there. Ki-Woo says he will go to the university and the document is just a bit premature because he will get the diploma, which shows his inner drive, but is it impossible for his dreams to come true?

In contrast, the Park house is luxurious. The first shot of Mrs. Park has her snoozing with her head down on a table. It’s a picture of the idle rich. Min-Hyuk called her “simple,” and her Ki-Wook’s family exploit this lack of shrewdness. (Is Mrs. Park in her own way a parasite living off society as a noncontributing member?) Ki-Woo tells Da-Hye that she needs “vigor” to do well on her tests, slashing through her studies as if clearing a jungle. His advice contrasts with the example of the sleeping mother, and the lax attitude of the entitled wealthy. The Park’s young son, Da-Song (Jung Hyeon Jun), likes to draw, so Ki-Woo sees this fact as an opportunity to insert his sister as an art teacher named Jessica.

Da-Hye already knows that her brother is a phony who pretends to be inspired to paint. Ki-Woo, being insightful, already knows this fact. So, it is not just Ki-Woo’s family that are pretenders. It is interesting that Ki-Woo and his sister are ambitious people, while the children of the rich are dependent on their parents, like parasites. Da Hye is attracted to Ki-Woo and they kiss, which subverts Min-Hyuk’s plan, and entwines Ki-Woo even more with the Park family.

Ki-Jeong is a better parent for Da-Song than is Mrs. Park. She is strong-willed and gets the boy to act properly quickly. She says that Da-Song needs “art therapy” because he exhibits a psychological pathology in his paintings (she just looked the term up to initiate the scam). She says it was due to a previous trauma, which apparently did happen to the boy. Of course, she must charge Mrs. Park exorbitant fees for such in-depth treatment.

While getting a ride home in the Park family limo, Ji-Jeong gets the idea of leaving her underwear in the car to entrap the driver so that her father can become the new Park’s chauffeur. Mr. Park says that his driver dared to “cross the line,” to have sex in the back seat of the limo, where he sits. The idea of line crossing is a metaphor for the divider between the classes.

Kim, who has tried several businesses in the past but could not become successful, satisfies Mr. Park with his driving. His family then plans on getting rid of the housekeeper, Moon-Kwang (Lee Jung-Eun), who is not as easily duped. She was the housekeeper of the architect who built the house that now is owned by the Parks (It is an interesting fact that becomes important later). Ki-Woo discovers from Da-Hye that the housekeeper is very allergic to peaches and the fruit can’t be in the house. Ki-Jeong sprinkles peach fuzz onto the housekeeper’s neck. Kim then makes a video of the housekeeper going to the hospital. He says he was there for a physical and saw the woman coughing. He tells Mrs. Park he overheard that she may have TB. When Kim shakes Mrs. Kim’s hand, she asks if he washed his hands. It shows a repulsion toward the lower classes, and Mrs. Kim may see the handshake as another crossing of the line. The family rehearses Kim’s performance to recruit the mother, and it may be that director Ho is commenting on the filmmaking process, even adding ketchup to the kitchen trashcan to make it appear as if blood was on the housekeeper’s tissues as sort of a special effect. Mrs. Park fires the housekeeper and now Kim’s wife, Choong Sook, is hired to replace her. Mr. Park notes that his wife can’t do anything around the house, stressing her parasitic nature.

While talking about the Kim family’s good fortune, Kim sees a man again urinating outside their basement apartment. Ki-Woo throws water on the man to chase him away. This act and the fact that the chauffeur and the housekeeper lost their jobs implies that when some members move up in the class system it may be at the expense of others since society does not provide for the welfare of all its citizens.

The Parks go away on a camping trip and the Kims indulge themselves by taking over the mansion, eating, bathing, and drinking. It is there moment where they can pretend to be rich, “pretend” being the operative word. Ki-Woo says he wants to be able to ask Da-Hye out, maybe marry her, and the house will become their home for real. His family laugh at this daydream knowing that they will never be able to rise into the upper class. Ki-Jeong has been hired to act like a guest at some weddings to catch the bouquet, and her acting has become quite good, as she has already shown. Performance is necessary to acquire some benefits given their lower-class status, since that is the closest they will get to being among the rich. Kim says even though Mrs. Park is rich she is nice, but Choong Sook says she is “nice because she is rich,” which means she can afford to be nice, not worrying about scraping by each day to get ahead. All the worries of the rich are “ironed out,” they are “smoothed out by money.” It reminds one of The Great Gatsby, where F. Scott Fitzgerald says that the rich can be careless because they can fall back into the comfort of their money.

The family is drunk now, and Ki-Woo says that his sister seems to fit in well in the extravagant house. Choong Sook says that her husband could never fit in, and would scurry like the cockroaches in their apartment if Mr. Park came in now. Kim seems angry at the insect comparison and he grabs his wife by her shirt. He and his wife then laugh, and Kim says to his son that they were acting. Was he? They have become so used to conning others that they can’t tell if they are acting or not, being genuine or pretending.

The old housekeeper, Moon-Kwang, shows up and says she left something in the basement. She is there to rescue her husband, Geun-Sae (Park Myung-Hoon) who has been living underground for over four years trying to escape debtors. He is staying behind a secret wall, which became jammed and he could not escape. It is a place where the rich can hide if things go bad for them. The Parks did not know of this secret place. The wealthy can afford an escape plan, like a golden parachute. We again have the film’s metaphor that the poor must live below the privileged.

Choong Sook is ready to call the police, not feeling sympathy for one of her fellow impoverished. But Moon-Kwang discovers that the whole Kim family has conned their way into the house and threatens to expose them with a phone video. She and her husband also begin to enjoy the richness of the house, their only chance at the good life together.

The two families fight over the phone. Their struggle shows how the poor are forced to battle each other for what the wealthy have left them. The Parks were washed out of their camping trip by a storm, so the Kims must clean things up so as not to get caught. The Kims now become the captors of their own class in the subterranean compartment. Choong Sook causes Moon-Kwang to fall down the basement stairs and she sustains a severe head injury, and dies after freeing her husband of his bonds.

Mrs. Park tells Choong Sook of the traumatic experience that her son, Da-Song, experienced. He woke up when he was younger in the middle of the night to have more birthday cake and saw Geun-Sae come out of the basement. The child thought he was a ghost. Symbolically, this event may mean that the uncaring wealthy are haunted by the memories of their class victims.

The rich being superior is again displayed metaphorically. The Parks sleep on a couch in the living area to be on call if their son, who decides to have his own camping experience, stays in a tent in the grounds in the back of the house. The Kims are hiding under the furniture, showing that they are beneath the wealthy family. Mr. Park says that he can still smell Mr. Kim, as if the poor are somehow contaminated by their place in society. Mr. Park says that Kim “always seems about to cross the line,” but doesn’t, again using the analogy to show the need for the lower classes to stay in their place. But his smell “crosses the line.” He says, people who ride subways have that smell, as if derived from associating with others of what he would consider to be the working-class subculture.

Choong Sook resides at the house, being the housekeeper, but the other Kims escape (walking through a tunnel, the underground being their place in life).. When they return to their apartment, their home below the surface is flooded, showing how their plans have washed away. Kim comes to believe that plans are meaningless, and he falls into despair. They attempt to save some possessions, and Ki-Woo gets the Scholar’s Rock, which was supposed to represent good fortune. Ironically, it causes just the opposite, and his clinging to it is misplaced hope in this story.

The next day the Parks are preparing for another birthday for their son, and they can afford to host an opulent party. The scene of Mrs. Park going into her spacious walk-in closet contrasts with the impoverished multitudes in the gymnasium who sought shelter from the storm as they rummage through donated clothing. Mr. and Mrs. Park must act as servants. Da-Hye invited Ki-Woo and his sister. Da-Hye and Ki-Woo are kissing in her bedroom. It is above the grounds, looking down at the rich guests. From that height he is temporarily elevated in his status and wonders if he fits in there.

The child Da-Song likes to pretend he is a Native American, and for the party Mr. Kim must pretend to be one also. In this context he is an oppressed person playing the role of a member of another oppressed race. Ki-Woo takes the Scholar’s Stone and descends to kill Geun-Sae so he can’t expose the Kim family. But the man gets the drop on the young man and smashes his head with the stone. At this point Geun-Sae is in a deranged state following the death of his wife, and he seeks revenge on Choong Sook for her death. He wields a knife, killing Ki-Woo’s sister. On seeing a return of the “ghost,” the boy Da-Song faints. Mr. Park demands that Mr. Kim give him the car keys to transport his son for medical care, not showing any concern for the dying Ji-Jeong. Geun-Sae attacks Choong Sook who is able to use a food skewer to kill the man. It is ironic that something used to feed this posh group is now a homicide weapon used against the rich host. So far, the lower-class uprising has only resulted in deaths of those in their own class. But when Mr. Kim sees Park’s disgust of the smell of his family, Mr. Kim loses it and stabs Mr. Park to death.

What happens next is a narration by Ki-Woo which relates that he recovered following brain surgery. He and his mother were put on probation for acting fraudulently, but she is acquitted of Geun-Sae ‘s death for acting in self-defense. Ki-Woo views the Park house from a hill, the only way he can come close to rising to the height to be able to purchase the home. He realizes his father now lives in hiding in the room below the now vacant house because Geun-Sae used the light controls in the room to send out a Morse Code signal, and now so does Ki-Woo’s father. Mr. Kim has moved from one subterranean place to another, replacing another lower-class person in the seemingly never-ending oppression of the poor.

Ki-Woo writes a letter, that the film visualizes, to his father about working hard and becoming wealthy enough to buy the Park mansion so his father will join them. But he composes the letter from the dingy basement apartment in which the story started, suggesting that his hopes will remain only a dream.

Open Your Eyes

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Open Your Eyes (1997) deals with the theme of illusion versus reality and how individuals can create their own versions of heaven and hell. (The film was remade in English entitled Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise). 

The first words in the film are the title. It is a female voice recorded on the main character’s alarm clock. It is supposed to wake him from his dream. But it also refers to seeing things as they really are. And that is the problem that the protagonist, Cesar (Edwardo Noriega) must address.  

When Cesar takes a shower, the shower door and the bathroom mirror fog up. He must wipe away the moisture on the mirror to see himself. It is symbolic of Cesar trying to see things clearly. He drives in the middle of the day, but the streets are deserted. The film takes us into the surreal even though appearances seem realistic. Cesar is dreaming and then the opening repeats itself, only this time there is a woman in Cesar’s bed, who he is dismissive of. The woman is Nuria (Najwa Nimri), who will become the femme fatale of the story. 

Cesar picks up his friend, Pelayo (Fele Martinez). Through their conversation we learn that Cesar is wealthy and is a playboy who never sees a woman twice (although he did with Nuria). Pelayo says he is unpopular with women as opposed to the handsome Cesar. Cesar says anyone would want to look “normal” like Pelayo. That statement is a bit of foreshadowing. The two are playing racquet ball and Cesar says that God made him miss hitting the ball. 

There is a drastic shift to a scene where Cesar is on the floor wearing a mask and talking to a psychiatrist who asks him if he believes in God. Cesar now says he doesn’t. The psychiatrist, Antonio (Chete Lera), says Cesar will not let him see his face because Cesar wears a mask due to deformity. It is interesting that Antonio says, “I only believe what I see,” which seems to contradict his believing that God caused Cesar’s facial disfigurement. In the context of the movie, what one sees isn’t necessarily believable, as we find later.  

Cesar is in prison because he killed someone. Antonio has been talking to him for two months. Cesar is rich because his parents died in an accident, and he inherited his father’s business fortune. That his parents lost their lives in an accident mirrors what happened to Cesar. Is that what happened or is it a strange coincidence? Cesar has an alternative truth as he says it’s his partners who have railroaded him and are stopping him from attaining his wealth. He says he sits on the floor because it is the only thing that feels real as everything else seems like a lie. He is actually close to the truth here.  

Antonio says Cesar must tell him what happened to him for the psychiatrist to leave him alone. The flashbacks are Cesar telling his story. There is a jump back to his birthday party where Pelayo brings a date, Sofia (Penelope Cruz, who repeats her role in Vanilla Sky). When he goes to his room, he finds Nuria is there even though she was not invited. She tries to seduce him. He leaves and uses Sofia to make Nuria believe that he has moved on. It is a deception, like so much of this film. When he finds out that Sofia is studying to be an actress, he says that actors are liars because “they show emotions” they “don’t have,” and she could be pretending to be friendly to him. So, we have the film, a fictional story, commenting on the invented world of its characters.   

Pelayo is angry because it appears to him that Cesar is putting the moves on Sofia. However, he is very drunk and admits that he may be seeing things. His is actually seeing things clearly and his altered state paradoxically turns out to be a valid way of viewing the situation. Pelayo says that Sofia may be “the girl of my dreams.” It is a statement that is often used, but in the context of this story, it gains resonance because of the ambiguity between reality and dreams. 

When Cesar takes Sofia home, she kids about how her family earns money as arms dealers. It’s another fiction as they play with what is real and not. They draw pictures of each other. Sofia’s is a caricature, which is an exaggeration of reality, while Cesar’s is an accurate depiction of reality. This action again shows the theme of the film, and makes a comment about making movies. They see an ad om the TV about cryonics, which becomes an important issue in the story, dealing with freezing people after they die so they can then be awakened when their bodies can be treated for whatever caused their deaths. He admits in his narration to the psychiatrist that he felt love for Sofia, something new for him. 

Nuria convinces him to go for a ride. In her desperation due to his lack of caring for her she drives the car over an embankment and into a wall. The next scene finds Cesar walking up to Sofia in a park and he says the incident with Nuria and the car crash was a dream. However, he can’t remember his party, and we realize this meeting with Sofia is a dream. What is real and what is a dream seems to be what the film is asking. We are in The Matrix territory here. What supposedly happened was that Nuria died and the handsome face of Cesar was disfigured. He had been in a coma for three weeks and he says that the doctors couldn’t fix his face and gave him the mask he now wears as he talks to the psychiatrist. Antonio insists that Cesar is in denial, and that if he takes off the mask he will realize the doctors fixed his face.  

Cesar has a memory of driving and seeing Sofia after the accident and Sofia appeared to have a mask on which reflects what happened to him. But she is really dressed like a mime. She is in actress mode, appearing as something she is not. More deceptive appearances. She is panhandling and when the rain washes away her makeup, she is still playing a part according to Cesar. He says her smile is phony. She says she didn’t contact him because he would feel uncomfortable in his deformed state. He says she is the one who is uncomfortable. What is the truth? He says he had a dream that they would meet like this. Again, the dream state is evoked, and it turns out to be a fitting reference.

At a bar he meets Pelayo and Sofia. He is wearing his mask, but Pelayo says he can’t hide his face. Does that mean he can’t hide who he really is, an egocentric person. Has he been a monster inside even though his appearance was lovely before? He places the mask so it faces his back. He appears to be two-faced, a phony. Outside, however, he tells Pelayo he is his best friend, which seems sincere. Sofia first leaves and then Sofia, and Cesar falls asleep on the pavement. This is an important dividing point in the story.

When he wakes up he thinks he sees Nuria, but when he looks again, it is Sofia, and she is caring, and kisses him. Again, what is really happening? The next scene has Cesar back in the psychiatric penitentiary where Antonio looks at his drawings of Sofia. Cesar says never in his worst nightmares did he envision being in a place like the mental institution. The word “nightmare” is the negative side of the dream state, but it is just as false as a nice dream. Antonio asks him about another dream, and he says he was in an office he never visited, signing papers. He then says his doctors found a “miracle” cure, miracle being something out of the usual state of reality. He says it seemed like science fiction, which is what this film is, and the way things happen in a movie, which is what the audience is experiencing. Stories are fiction that reflect on reality, but are not real.

The doctors are successful, and Cesar and Sofia are together, and he and Pelayo are friends. But Cesar has another dream, and he sees that his face is still disfigured. Real or imaginary? He is in bed with Sofia he believes, but it turns out to be Nuria, who says she is Sofia. He ties her up and she says she never was in a car accident. Is he dreaming again, or has he been dreaming all along? Or is he insane? The police say that the girl he thinks is Sofia exists in his imagination, not in real life.

A man that he has seen on TV in the Life Extension ads confronts Cesar and tells him he is dreaming. He says the people in the bar are at his control, but they can destroy him if he gives into his demons. When he says he just wants the people to be quiet, there is silence. He tells this story to the psychiatrist, who hypnotizes him. In this dream state he recalls that he signed a contract after which he took pills. When he wakes up from the hypnosis he says he didn’t take any medications and that it was a dream, and he can tell the difference between reality and a dream. We know he can’t, nor can we at this point in the story.

He tells Antonio that he went to Sofia’s apartment. One minute the woman there is Nuria but then turns back into the Sofia he remembers. They make love, but during the lovemaking she turns back into Nuria. He says that he put a pillow over her face and suffocated her. In a mirror he sees his reflection which shows his deformed face. Mirrors, as has been noted elsewhere on this blog, often refer to another part of an individual’s personality.

The psychiatrist believes that Cesar is deranged and that he needs further treatment in the hospital. In the ward he again sees the representative from Life Extension, Duvernois (Gerard Barray). Cesar realizes he has been calling someone Eli in his memory, but it stands for L.E, Life Extension. He gets Antonio to take him to an L.E. office, which he has seen in his dreams. The representative there tells him that a person is frozen and can be revived in the future when there will be medical procedures to correct the fatal problem. There are options that can maintain the brain in a virtual reality which is controlled by the individual. Cesar questions what happens if the dream turns into a nightmare? Is that scenario what’s happening to Cesar?

Caesar says he is in a dream, but Antonio says that then the psychiatrist doesn’t exist, and that Cesar is being delusionary. It’s his dilemma, to try to understand what is his reality. He takes the mask off, and we see what he sees, that his face is still disfigured. He says he wants to wake up, struggles with a guard, gets his gun and shoots people. Antonio also gets shot, but suffers no effects. Cesar sees someone at the top of the building. Up there is Duvernois who says that everything after he woke up from sleeping in the street was his dream. He never saw Sofia again, became despondent, signed the Life Extension contract 150 years ago and committed suicide by taking pills. He created Antonio to help him understand what was happening to him. Sofia appears and so does Pelayo. Duvernois says they are just characters Cesar created from his memories and imagination, just like the filmmakers of this movie did. He has a choice: he can try to set his dream onto a happier course or end it. Medical knowledge now exists to correct his disfigurement. However, he must die in his dream world by jumping off the building to wake from his virtual reality. His face is no longer deformed as he stands on the edge of the building. He jumps from the building. The screen goes black, and we hear the female voice again saying, “Open your eyes.”

Was Cesar delusional or did he really live in an artificial dream state? Do we have the courage to face the truth about our lives or pretend to believe in a different version of the truth? These are the questions posed by this film.