If English speaking cinema-goers could learn how to read subtitles, we would be spared having to watch remakes of films that were made perfectly well in the first place. There is nothing particularly wrong with Crowe's version, and if it had been an original piece of work I would be hailing it as a challenging, left-field, atypical Hollywood product. However, comparison has to made with Amenabar's film, which in my opinion is superior in almost all aspects. The main protagonist of "abre los ojos", Cesar, is an unlikable character, whom it is difficult to warm to. Contrast this with Cruise's David, all of whose actions have some reason other than his being a spoilt playboy. Crowe, who is a filmmaker I admire, has lost all the ambiguity, and a good deal of the mystery, of the Spanish original. He spells out everything,as if a multiplex crowd could not be expected to draw its own conclusions, or even leave the theatre without any conclusion. I would compare this to "Donnie Darko", where the movie seemed so much better before everything was clarified on the DVD release. So my wish for Hollywood is to stop plundering other nations' film archives, and for English speakers to overcome their prejudices against movies in other languages.
Review of Vanilla Sky
