Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Vanilla Sky totally overwhelmed me.

Watched it yesterday during my DVD marathon session. It’s a freaking confusing story, much much more confusing then Memento but i’m speechless after watching it. No, wrong, i actually have alot to say.

First of all, i have to say i’m completely smitten by Penolope Cruz. Poor Cameron pales in comparison. Totally kenot fight man. Penelope reminds me of someone really familiar. The way she speaks, acts and the way she manja-manjaly looks at you is like a total replica of someone. Then i found out that someone’s name is Shu Qi. Cute accent, innocent, the i-so-wanna-manja-you type. She is like the Spanish version of Shu Qi.

Second thing. The whole story is such a deja vu. I still need to watch it the second time to understand it better but the Lucid Dream concept just struck me. I actually dreamt of something like that long long time ago.

The Lucid Dream is basically a dream program technology that this Life Extension company can implant in which you can live whatever life you want with whomever you want. It’s like you are living your normal life in your mind.

Long long time ago, I was hoping somebody would invent this Dream Machine thingie, which you switch on at night and program what you wanna dream about. And that is very similar to the Lucid Dream program in Vanilla Sky. I’ve mentioned it during my Multimedia presentation before. The topic is virtual reality. And it kinda works that way. A virtual reality so real it’s no longer virtual. A bit like the Matrix.

But one thing that makes a difference is, in Lucid Dream, there’s a catch. You must die first before you proceed to the dream program. Whereas for Dream Machine, we only let it run at night when we are sleeping. We will dream about the sweetest things in the world. But when we wake up, it is time to face reality again.

I know you would say this is a contradiction to my Nightmare Theory. But it is different. Lemmi explain why. In the present, we cannot control what we want to dream about (but on a second thought, we actually could. I’ve tried it. But that requires a very very strong will power and full concentration. Kinda like meditation. And it is not exactly a pleasant thing to do because you have to struggle to be at the borderline between consciousness and dreamland. Nevermind if it sounds too complicated to understand, let’s not go off topic). But if there’s such thing as a Dream Machine, it is like you have two lives to live. You live in the reality, and you live in your dream. Let’s say you sleep 8 hours a day. Meaning you live 1/3 of your life in dream. I’m not sure if i should call it dream, because with the Dream Machine, that is technically a LIFE.

No matter how sucky your real life is (your boss scolds you everyday and you wish he will choke on tofu to death, you are hideously disfigured like David Aames, you will never get to know Jessica Alba personally…), you can always make it all up in your alternative life. Because it is so so real you wouldn’t take it as a dream. In present we dream and forget. But now, you just pause it when you go back to reality, and continue living it when you sleep.

Isn’t that blissful?

But wait a minute. A machine is a machine after all. It can’t be flawless. A program can go wrong. And that’s exactly what happened in Vanilla Sky. David’s sweet dreams became nightmares. And imagine you can never wake up, now that’s the scariest thing in the world.

But really, a Dream Machine would be good. With Dream Machine we don’t even need a Time Machine. If there’s really such an invention, i guess everyone will spend more and more time sleeping.

Maybe, they will wish they never wake up ever again.

Share: