Abre Los Ojos Essay

Critical Film Analysis: Abre Los Ojos Abre Los Ojos is a spanish film that tackles Descartes dream argument.
The films protagonist Cesar is a young man whose life is going wonderfully until a car accident disfigures his face and causes him to go into a depression. The film is told mostly in flashback from a prison where Cesar resides until it is revealed that his life is a fraud and that he has been cryogenically frozen and in a dream state. The film is all about the perception of what we think is real.
Descartes dream argument explains that we know nothing for certain and the world could be just one big dream. Though it can be argued that our senses tell us what real, Descartes argues that senses can be deceived, and we cannot rely upon them
In the film though, it proves that even people who think they exist, don't really exist. They have consciousness, memories, and the ability to argue that they do exist; but they are only figments of Cesar’s imagination. That disproves Descartes theory about the absolute truth we have in our existence. We could all be somebody else's dream according to the film. Even with that argument against Descartes being the best philosopher for the film, his other philosophy proves that he is. Cesar was in a dream state for most of the film and had no idea until the end. The only reason he knew was because he realized that something was off, if he never caught on to the fact that his world kept changing, he would have never known.That's how Descartes philosophy works, we don't know were in a dream because our senses can be deceived and we go off our already pre known knowledge. If a person was like Caesar, and started dreaming at some random point in their life, they would never know the difference. It is impossible to know because our senses tell us that this is real because we experience it. The film Abre Los Ojos is best understood when there is an understanding of Descartes, and his dream