greetings friends @lilapearl here. i've come to lead you through the dark odyssey of kubrick's misunderstood masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut. fidelio! let the watch begin.
we enter the christmas party, and are immediately bathed in the warm light of thousands of glittering bulbs ... no one knows for sure why kubrick decided to change schnitzler's dream story setting from mardi gras to christmas #fridaynightmovieclub
some have speculated it was simply because kubrick preferred to shoot by natural light, but i think the seasonal themes are all at play here, too
like scrooge before him, harford is haunted by the ghosts of the past and chilled by the horrors of his present..
as soon as they arrive at the party, nicole and tom are separated, and their delicate dance towards infidelity begins
"don't you think that one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?"
tom and nicole were, of course, married at the time. by all accounts their 15 months on the set didn't ... improve their relationship
while nicole dances with the elegant hungarian, tom has a promising encounter of his own ... 
but just when it looks like he might be headed somewhere really interesting -- he's summoned away by his host, a master of the universe type played by sydney pollack. this will happen to him in one way or another again and again
nicole and tom signed open ended contracts when they first agreed to be in the film... not knowing, of course, that the shoot would end up in the guinness book of world records for longest continuous shoot
kubrick encouraged them to draw on their own relationship history, their own fights. “tom would hear things that he didn’t want to hear,” nicole admitted to VF a few years ago. “it wasn’t like therapy, because you didn’t have anyone to say, ‘And how do you feel about that?’
and now, the plot really begins to swing into motion with nicole's brilliant monologue and troubling confession.
if you men only KNEW! the cri de coeur of women who sleep with men around the world google.com/search?q=%22if…
here's something i think about a lot. kubrick first optioned dream story in the late 60s. he thought about the movie a lot of different ways over the years -- for years, he thought it would be a romantic comedy. he considered steve martin, woody allen, bill murray, tom hanks
in 94, he sent the novella to the screen writer frederic raphael and asked him if he could adapt the story, set in hapsburg vienna, of a doctor who embarks on a dark journey after learning that his wife has fantasized about fucking another man to a film set in contemporary NYC
as raphael later recalled, he was initially skeptical. “hadn’t many things changed since 1900,” he asked kubrick, “not least the relations between men and women?” “think so?” kubrick replied. “I don’t think so.” raphael thought about it. then he said, “Neither do I.”
there are people out there who believe that Kubrick was murdered because he revealed too many secrets about the illuminati and the picture was then reedited to protect the powerful ...
on the one hand, i think about the time that kubrick told playboy, in an interview about 2001, "the very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning"
on the other...
critics have often focused on tom cruise's acting, calling it stilted and awkward, and it's true that the charisma that had made him, at that point, the biggest box office star in the world, was nowhere to be seen
and there is something sadistic about the way he uses tom... famously making him walk through a door 95 times for a single shot ... telling the most bankable celebrity in the world "hey, tom, stick with me, i'll make you a star"
but i read the performance kubrick pulls out of him as a deliberate choice, part of kubrick's desire to shoot this as a sort of dark fairy tale, unencumbered by the complications of personality
as @TheAmyNicholson once put it, "why ask the biggest star in the world to carry your film and then hide his face under a mask for 20 minutes?"
the oscar wilde quote comes to mind: "give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth."
and here we have another rainbow, another shot at infidelity ...
but tom is much more interested in power than sex -- now that he knows about this secret party, that's all he can think about
in tim kreider's excellent essay on the film, he points out, the "real pornography" in the movie isn't sex but "its lingering depiction of the shameless, naked wealth of millennial Manhattan, and of its obscene effect on society and the human soul.
when the film first came out, critics complained that its attitude toward sex seemed badly dated. Like: “It feels creaky, ancient, hopelessly out of touch, infatuated with the hot taboos of his youth and unable to connect with that twisty thing contemporary sexuality has become"
rod dreher of the nypost quipped that it seemed to have been made by “someone who hadn’t left the house in 30 years"
but this orgy scene, the centerpiece of the film, was never intended to be some depiction of modern sexuality, per se
it was supposed to be surreal, baroque, dreamlike...
kubrick's assistant told my colleague @BilgeEbiri that they drew inspiration from secret societies and sexual mores in vienna at the time of Schnitzler -- illustrations of secret-society rituals and the Black Mass
every mask in this scene was personally selected by kubrick
the one tom is wearing is taken from a direct mold of ryan o'neal's face from barry lyndon
Yolande Snaith worked on the choreography ... yolande told bilge: "Stanley wanted these sort of erotic vignettes and situations. I think the words he used were surreal and suggestive."
as time went on, though, kubrick decided he did want something more explicit ... one day kubrick's assistant showed up with a copy of the kama sutra and said, “stanley would like you to draw inspiration from these images”
of course tom is revealed as a fraud because he showed up in a taxi -- his costume of wealth is never good enough to conceal him among the truly wealthy
a delightful piece of trivia: the woman who "saves" tom is voiced by cate blanchett "We wanted something warm and sensual but that at the same time could be a part of a ritual" vulture.com/2019/06/cate-b…
here's kubrick's assistant, leon, again: "I spent years getting telephone calls from Illuminati fans, and they’d always start off with “Where’s the power?" You were making a film about the Illuminati, wasn’t it? It’s about the cover-up in the Catholic church, wasn’t it?”
Leon: "there’s apparently an Eyes Wide Shut club in L.A. with women in masks and guys in evening suits who patronize them. When we were shooting, somebody said — I think it was Tom — “Do you think these places really exist?” Stanley said, “if they don’t, they will soon.”
here's tom pulling out his id card. each time he does with that cocky tilt to his chin, he signals his status, which he wants to be impressive, but in fact marks him as an outsider among the group of men who he truly wants to belong with, the kind who never need to carry an ID
what could be more tempting...
the fact that this scene where tom thinks a strange man in a trench coat is following him is more titillating than the orgy tells u something about what the story is really about
and here we are, back with sydney pollack ... the blue light coming through the window indicating (according to some reads!) that truth is about to be revealed
some have called kubrick a cold director. pauline kael liked to refer to his "“arctic spirit" ... but i've always felt that this scene oozes warmth and intimacy
finally, the men are alone together, and tom is going to get what he really wants
complicity, a window into power, to belong to the club of the elite who he has so far only worked for
those people were “not just ordinary people,” pollack warns. “If I told you their names […] I don’t think you’d sleep so well.”... tom doesn't ask. he doesn't *really* want to know
once again, as with nicole, tom chooses ignorance
as pollack circles tom, tapping the pool cue on the floor, there's a faint echo of last night's ritual
"life goes on. it always does, until it doesn't."
there are a lot of different interpretations of this ending. some people have argued that its actually kubrick's most uplifting take on marriage (although that might say just as much about how bleak his other depictions of the institution are....)
i don't see it as particularly happy. it reminds me of the conversation kubrick and his screenwriter had back at the beginning of their work together.
nicole suggests that the moral of the story is that they should be grateful for what they have. and what do they have? a partnership built on her husband’s ignorance of her desires, of his refusal to ever learn
she's choosing complacency. her marriage depends on it. and that’s kubrick’s point, i think. as long as men choose ignorance, and women accept it, the relations between them will never change
still, i will say that the final beat of the film is a lot more upbeat on marriage than, say, the shining
nicole is choosing life. so is tom, even if still he can't really understand it.
it's gotta be one of the greatest closing lines of any film. "there is something very important we need to do as soon as possible."
"What's that?"
"Fuck."
"What's that?"
"Fuck."
merry christmas! and if you *still* want to hear my thoughts on this wild movie, my essay about it is here: vulture.com/2019/07/what-i…
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