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.