It's largely accepted that Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" failed because Kubrick died just after making it, the studio failed to market it properly etc. when the real reason, of course, is that it's really a pretty terrible picture. It may be brilliantly filmed in that typically cool Kubrick style and it often looks stunning but it's about a preposterously overrated subject (sex) with a very dull scenario that drags on for over two and a half hours and has a monstrously egotistical performance from the horribly miscast Tom Cruise as the rich New York doctor consumed by jealousy after his wife, (Nicole Kidman), tells him of an infidelity she's committed, if only in her mind, (it's that sort of picture). They are awful people, in a film full of awful people, though to be fair Kidman, in much too small a role, is superb. She's an actress who can make even the tiniest line reading seem significant and who can make an unpleasant woman feel painfully human, abilities Cruise seems unable to muster.
Of course, on a purely technical level it's brilliant. Kubrick recreates New York in an English studio and his prowling camera moves through his gigantic set as sensuously as ever but it's also his poorest and least interesting film. The dialogue is clunky, the supporting cast are cyphers and the central set-piece, which seems to last for most of the picture but in fact only amounts to about twenty minutes of screen-time, is probably the least erotic orgy in movie history. It's all meant to be mysterious, exotic and highly dangerous though the fact that it's based on Arthur Schnitzler's novel "Traumnovelle", first published in 1925, and now transposed to contemporary New York, might explain why it doesn't gel. In the end it's so odd it makes what happens in "The Shining" seem perfectly natural. No Kubrick film is completely negligible and this one does have its fans but it's a very acquired taste; a case of a sow's ear wrapped in a silk purse. On the plus side, the masks in the orgy sequence look terrific.
Pretty surprised that this film was not to your liking. I will share my opinion and then we can perhaps compare and contrast our thoughts on the film. Firstly, I feel that Tom Cruise was perfectly cast. In my opinion, this is a film less about sex and more about how we sociologically interpret sex. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman being the most sought after power couple of Hollywood during the day only makes the point stronger and Kubrick's statement more relevant. I would like to think that this is Kubrick's most investigative and mature film. It explores what he had briefly visited in his previous films, but more holistically and organically. It is of course the logistics of human organisation with the backdrop of the dynamics of power and the arbitration derived from sentimentally valued principles such as monogamy(note the shopkeeper, his daughter and the prostitute). This is something that should have been written on an anthropological thesis or a study. But I think that's where Kubrick's sheer brilliance is revealed. He understands the limitations of his medium while conveying a heavily loaded subject such as this and in my opinion, he was able to find success with that through his obsessively methodic and meticulously detailed approach. There may have been an air of pretense and some inauthentic moralisation towards the ending, but if we look at the film as an overall comstruction, it feels like this is Kubrick's most morally ambiguous feature. I think that's why I loved this film. It was an unclouded study of the most prominent experience of being a human in a society. I believe the introspective nature of the film can feel distancing for many, but with an empathetic perspective we can perhaps see where Kubrick is coming from. It is safe to say that in a Kubrick film not even a piece of prop could have been placed accidentally. Every scene has a cipher screaming some sort of information to the viewer. In THE SHINING and EYES WIDE SHUT there may have been too many ciphers. But I think that's when things turn interesting. If we uncover these ciphers and catch a glimpse of his personal vision, we may as well be rewarded with a wonderful experience.
ReplyDeleteYour turn now, amigo. :)