Tonight on TV: this cult thriller of the 2000s always fascinates in its disturbing end

Tonight on TV: this cult thriller of the 2000s always fascinates in its disturbing end



An internal descent in the form of a puzzle

David Aames (Tom Cruise) is a young heir of New York, rich, seducer, carefree. His life changes after a terrible car accident caused by his lost lover (Cameron Diaz). Disoriented, disoriented, it loses foot. Around him, reality seems to falter: his relationship with Sofia (Penulope Cruz) becomes unstable, emerging contradictory memories and inconsistencies disturb his daily life. He is soon accused of murder which he does not understand the circumstances.

The story is organized around an interrogation, conducted in a white room where David exchanges with a psychologist (Kurt Russell). Gradually, the film reveals that David would have signed a contract with a company named Life Extent. This company offers a cryogenization process associated with a “lucid dream”: a conscious dream in which the customer lives a perfect existence, without knowing that he dreams. David would therefore be immersed in this dream from his clinical death, without being aware of it, his mind had started generating errors.

Reality, simulation or hallucination?

The last sequence of the film confirms that everything the viewer saw from the accident is an artificial dream, launched when David has been cryogenized. The incoherent elements – the faces that change, the events that repeat – therefore take on another meaning. The universe of the film was interrupted while David’s memory was fading. We understand that the character is at the intersection: he continues to dream in this unstable reality, or wake up unknown in the future, after over one hundred years of sleep.

This end, which reverses the perception of the film, divided. Some see him as a criticism of transhumanism and in search of immortality. Others insist on the emotional dimension of history: Sky Vanilla Questioned the way in which the memory of their loved ones persists in our mind. Music – omnipresent, from Sigur Rós to Radiohead – accentuates this permanent oscillation between nostalgia, loss and desire for rebirth.

Source: Cine Serie

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