Something has been gnawing at my brain for a little while, and I've only just recently put my finger on it. You see, I've gone on record several times as declaring (to varying degrees) that ending a story with a "it was all just a dream" twist is unforgiveable, agonizing, and makes me want to do incredibly inventive things with the writer's scrotum and a hacksaw. I've repeatedly held up Tom Cruise's "Vanilla Sky" as THE WORST F*CKING MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN for this very reason. And yet, if I were to make up a list of my all-time favourite movies, "Devil's Advocate", starring Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino, would rank very highly, which is odd because, while it wasn't all just a dream, the near-final twist is functionally identical. (In case anyone is interested, my all-time favourite movie is "Roger Dodger", featuring the much underrated Campbell Scott and Jesse Eissenberg before he got famous with all those lousy teen-sploitation movies.)

For the purposes of achieving more comprehensive comparisons, I will also be looking at Jet Li's "Hero", which irks an acquaintance of mine to no end for committing more-or-less the same sin repeatedly.

Broadly, what we are speaking of in the cases of all three movies is the "undoing of the story" - we discover that all or many of the events we've experienced ultimately have no bearing on reality: Nothing that has happened has mattered. And yet, there must be further distinctions, because while I find this acceptable in both Hero and Devil's Advocate, I find it dispicable in Vanilla Sky.

There is a school of thought on the construction of narrative that says that the development of the protagonist is the most important thing, and that the actual story is just there as so much scaffolding to support it - built up, taken down and moved around as needed. This is, obviously, a very antiquated view. It dates from the time when theatrical plays were typically ended with a god giving the protagonist a chance to go back and fix his/her mistakes (from whence the term "deus ex machina" comes). While I happily acknowledge that the development of the protagonist can indeed be more important than that of the story, I will fight tooth and nail against the notion that the story is entirely unimportant. ...After sitting here for some time trying to decide how best to argue my point, I have decided to quote an earlier post of mine: "...seeing [the protagonist] attain his enlightenment consequence-free obliterates the story arc. It doesn't matter how good your protagonist is; if you undo the story - the only context in which your protagonist actually matters - you have undone your protagonist as well..."

So, what is Vanilla Sky about? Admittedly, is has been quite a few years since I saw it, and I believe I've only seen it twice (the second time presumably against my will), but I will tell you what a remember: Tom Cruise's character becomes romatically involved with Penelope Cruz's character. Soon afterwards, an obsessive ex tries to kill him, leaving him horribly disfigured, and the disfigurement brings an abrupt end to the tryst. From that point, events quickly spiral uncontrollably into the absurd and surreal. After being led around by the nose for more than an hour, we find out that he took being dumped awfully hard, bought into some sci-fi-ish afterlife simulation program, and promptly offed himself, but he doesn't remember that because he chose the night was dumped to be the "splice" where his real memories ended and the simulation began. Everything that happened since that night was just a nightmare his mind cooked up while his dead body was being preserved in the real world. Dumb, dumb, dumb. All of it. How can he dream if he's dead? Why wouldn't he choose the splice to be before his disfigurement? And in the end, none of it matters because he chooses to return to reality. And there aren't even any consequences to his return; they just roll the credits. He learns nothing; he achieves nothing. This is the worst kind of story.

What of Hero? Well, the movie starts with Nameless having killed the three legendary assassins of the land, and approaching the king's palace to receive his reward. The king receives Nameless, allowing him to move closer to the throne for each assassin he had killed. The king asks Nameless to recount how he was able to kill them, and so we are presented with the first version of events in which the assassins are vengeful, jealous, and disloyal; Nameless creates further division among them and conquers. The king, having survived a run-in with the assassins, detects that the story is flawed. He deduces that Nameless is also an assassin, and puts forth the second version of events in which the assassins virtuously give their lives so that Nameless may get near enough to the king to kill him. Finally, Nameless reveals the true version, in which the assassins are neither scoundrels nor paragons; neither unified nor treacherous. They simply are as they are, and make the best of whatever comes. Apart from the fact that it's fun to spot the similarites between the different versions (Mistress Flying Snow stabs Broken Sword in all three, but for widely different reasons) they serve to show us that villainy and heroism are just matters of perspective, and that people are, for the most part, just people. It's a thought-provoking declaration that works very well the the film's overall aesthetic. Contrary to my acquaintance's perception, the additional versions do serve a purpose.

And I shall continue with my analysis of Devil's Advocate once I've had some sleep. To be continued....