Hey, film Spotters, Josh and Adam.
Here.
Wednesdays are when we drop something in the feed from the Giant Film Spotting archive. This week, we're sharing our nine from ninety nine review of Eyes Wide Shut. I don't know if you think of this as a Christmas movie, Adam, holiday movie lately, but a lot a lot of people do, and they tend to revisit it this time of year.
Yes, I think that that is only appropriate and it's fitting for me because I may have treated myself to an early Christmas present this year by buying the four K Criterion Collection DVD.
Come on, you're one of those people, you, Debbie, does this too? November one? You don't buy yourself anything? You're done?
Hold off?
You just you can wait till the next till January one.
Okay, well yeah yeah maybe so maybe so. But Josh, maybe you get more Christmas presents that I do. Maybe if I don't buy them for myself, nobody you will. I'm going to talk about that note.
You know.
I'm just fishing for listeners to send me stuff, that's all. Just just send the cookies. I just want baked goods, that's all I really want. Can't get that from Criterion from September twenty nineteen. Here is our nine from ninety nine review of iyse Wide Shut. You've never been jealous about me, have you? No?
I haven't.
And why haven't you ever been jealous about me?
Well?
I don't know, Alice.
Maybe because you're my wife and I know you would never be unfaithful to me.
You are very very sure of yourself, aren't you.
No, I'm sure of you.
Do you think that's funny?
I really don't bring this up to rub it in, Adam, But when I was hanging out with our now mutual friends Jason Eken and Brett Merriman at the film spotting la made up this summer, one of the things we debated was the supposed misanthropy of Stanley Kubrick's films, neither of them quite by my theory that his movies mostly despise people, and that the giant space baby at the end of two thousand and one is coming to gobble
us all. I honestly don't remember if Eyes Wide Chut, the latest film in our nine from ninety nine series, came up in the discussion that night. We'd moved on from the Brewery. At that point to a nearby Mexican spot. Now ewhd Chut is probably the Kubrick film best poised to puncture a hole in my argument.
Here's a movie that.
I found back in nineteen ninety nine, and upon this rewatch to be yes clear eyed about the depravity of humankind, but also brazenly positive about people, and dare I say even a bit mushy? Iwhit Chutt is adapted by Kubrick and Frederick Raphael from Arthur Schnitzler's nineteen twenty six novella trom Noval, which they updated to contemporary New York City.
Then married.
Co stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play an affluent couple and parents of a young girl whose marriage changes course during one woozy late night pot smoking session. Basically told by Bill her husband that women don't have the instinct for infidelity, Kidman's Alice launches into a searing confession about a near affair she had with a naval officer
the summer before on a family vacation. Kidman's monologue, by the way, my number two Stanley Kubrick's scenes smart pick can't wait to hear what years sire Adam Ellis's eye opening tale sends Bill on a strange odyssey through the New York night, where he dabbles with various opportunities to enact some sort of sexual revenge, including at the secret High Society sex ritual.
He sneaks into that the movie has become notorious for now.
A lot of this is nasty, ugly stuff, and certainly in line with a misanthropic reading of Kubrick's work. It was also a turn off to many critics at the time. Eyes White Shut only got mildly favorable reviews, and it did earn some notable pans, including David Edelstein's for Slate, which producer Sam Van Haugren referenced in this week's Film's Body newsletter. Kubrick himself, it's worth noting, died shortly before the film's release and didn't get to see its reception.
And yet if you stick with the picture, if you make it through the masked orgy to the moment when Bill drops his mask in response to Alice dropping hers, you'll find, as I put it in nineteen ninety nine, possibly the most moral movie ever to show this much skin. I think it portrays marriage as something difficult, yes, but also sensual and ultimately precious. Seeing Eyes White Hut in nineteen ninety nine, after I'd been married for four years,
I found that interesting encouraging. Watching it again in twenty nineteen, after twenty four years of marriage, it nearly wrecked me. I honestly let out a tiary gufaw at Kidman's perfect final line. This struck me as devastatingly romantic. So Adam am I wrong? Which means maybe Jason and Brett might be right about Kubrick. Or did you too find this odd sex odyssey from one of our quote unquote coldest tours to be a work of real tenderness, passion, and compassion.
I would love nothing more than to tell you that you're wrong, But in this case, you are dead on. And I love starting with this because it gets right at the heart of what I too, appreciate so much about this movie. And I suppose the answer could depend on one's definition of romantic. But the counter to your take is pretty simple. This is a movie about a married couple who don't share a ton of screen time
when they're together. Most of the wife's dialogue, Alice, as you said, played by Kidman, concerns, fantasies about cheating with other men, in one instance, so many men she can't count, and ultimately trying to humiliate her husband when they aren't together. The husband is trying to actually cheat with other women. He's consistently thwarted, but he's trying. So sure, Josh, that sounds really romantic.
Here's a great movie.
The proof that you're right, though, is this. This is a movie about a married couple who, despite those fantasies and thwarted attempts, is in a much healthier, honest place than they were before. I think the key expression of that sentiment comes in Alice's lines near the end of the film when she says, the important thing is we're awake now and hopefully for a long time to come. And this, of course, tying back into the title of
the movie. If you set aside for now all the talk of dreams and the undeniable dreamlike nature of really the entire movie, and I'm sure we will talk about that a bit, there's this kind of suggestion of sleepwalking in their marriage right from the very beginning. Of course, we get that incredible opening shot of Kidman naked as her dress falls she's facing away from the camera and she's just a stunning, sensual figure, statuesque in her pose.
And then we go from that a little bit of a credit break into the scene of them getting ready, and it's a very familiar conversation, probably to most of us married people. Honey, have you seen my wallet? Isn't it on the bedside table? He kind of groans when he finds it. Of course, she's right, and that's exactly where he left it. He points out that we're running a little bit late. She says, I know, and she says, how do I look? And he says perfect?
Is my hair?
Okay? It's great, And before she even says it, we're all aware as viewers he's not even looking at her when he says it. He's really not paying attention at all. She then calls him on it. You're not even looking at it. He says, it's beautiful, you always look beautiful. Doesn't carry that much weight. He might mean it, but in that moment, it doesn't really carry that much weight. There's very little real connection there, I think, between them.
Which is it to say there's a wide chasm, or that there's a total lack of love, not at all, but we do see them going through the everyday motions
of a marriage. We see it too, I think in Alice's looking into the mirror during a love making scene, after the party, and by the end, Josh, they've awakened to a couple things, the reality of relationships, of life there for and as she says, the gratitude they should probably feel that they didn't feel before, and seeing each other as they really are, no more facades, no more masks, and specifically seeing each other as individual sexual beings.
That's the key.
I think this is territory that is certainly more fraught psychologically and emotionally. It's a little more dangerous, if you will, but it's also way more exciting and stimulating. And what's romance if not something that should be exciting and stimulating.
Josh, Yeah, it's romantic because it's a revival. I think that's why I find it that way. The other line she has in that final conversation you mentioned it to be grateful. She says, maybe we should be grateful, grateful that we've managed to survive. And there's a keyword as well, survive through all our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream. And so there's an honesty there in a way that you get the sense there in the most honest place, still a pretty terrible place. I mean,
they've got a lot to sort out. It's not like they're going to walk out of that toy store where they're Christmas shopping with their daughter in this final scene and everything's gonna be hunky dory. There's gonna be a lot of rough roads ahead, but you feel like this is probably the most honest place they've ever been with each other.
They're in their way more fulfilling path. Yeah, and I find that romantic. I se with you, but it is.
It's the sort of experience where there are a little dollops of this in a movie that is otherwise extremely depressing in all the ways that you described watching them apart, I do wish there had been more Kidman in this because not only because she just takes such control of those scenes she has, which are essentially monologues, but because we kind of get stuck with Cruise for a long time, who is good as well, Yes, but it is weighted far more towards him, and so yeah, I maybe could
have used a little bit more of her, But there are other romantic elements in this that the mirror scene you mentioned the beginning to Chris Isaac's Baby did a bad, bad thing, maybe more sensual than romantic, but at least captures a fire that they do have of some sort, mixed with a lot of other stuff going on.
I think that look, that look betrays something to me that isn't So let's get to the performances.
Because Kidman's looks in this film, but what she gives the camera with her face, she's always two and usually three mental places at once, and I think that mirror scene is the quintessential one for that. We see that part of it is an attraction and connection with her husband. Part of it is thinking about what happened at the party. They just came from the cocktail party where she was propositioned, and she's also suspicious of what he might have been doing, so that's at play.
You also see.
Her seeming to consider all of those things at once and asking herself, who am I? Who am I looking at right now? And who are we together? Kidman gives such a psychologically layered performance here and again with maybe a third of the scenes that Cruz has, and just makes those so potent so powerful that they do in the end for me outweigh the miserableism that we see Cruz's character mostly wading through.
Yeah, I want to talk about the performances I suppose, in particular Cruse here because I think you're exactly correct about Kidman and her performance. And if we were going to redo those Kubrick scenes, having now seen Eyes Wide Shut again, I probably would have tried to fit that exact scene on. That monologue for me, is the crux of the entire film, and I love her delivery of it.
I think she's off a little bit. There's a sequence later, that dream sequence where she's coming out of a dream and she goes on another long explanation that doesn't ever feel quite right to me. In fact, I don't really like anything about that scene. It's a little bit too
on the nose, and it's Garden of Eden symbolism. I felt that Kubrick was going for there, and she somehow just wasn't as grounded as she is in that scene where the camera is just trained on her and we get the those glimpses, we get those cuts to Cruise in those close ups, which I also love. Yes, I think we get in those scenes, and we get it in the taxikap to a little bit of that Kubrick
glare that he's famous for. It's that kind of almost looking down face that you only get from Kubrick, emphasize that way that suggests something more than just sorrow or just basic sadness, something like true existential despair. And I think you get it from Cruse. I certainly felt it there in that bedroom scene. So I think Kidman and Cruse are both great in that scene and very good
in this whole film. But Amy Nicholson in that Vanity Fair article said something interesting about Cruse's performance that she felt like it feels flat. She says, Cruise's blankness makes eyes wide shut. Take on an element of Kubuki theater, the art form where emotional perception, not projection, is key. The whole film feels like an exercise in theatricality, as though doctor Bill is not a person but a prop. This isn't a movie about a human possessed with distrust
and jealousy. It's a movie about distrust and jealousy that simply uses a human as it's conduit. With CRUs hidden in a mask and robe, The tension is to hide his individuality in the service of a larger ritualistic machine, And she pointed out the critics then did kind of
pan the performance. It was like, Oh, he's the action movie star, and yes he'd done Born on the fourth of July, but he's out of his league here somehow, and now again separated from that by twenty years and looking over the expanse of Cruz's career, I don't feel that way at all about this performance. I understand what she's saying about the flatness and how it does ultimately serve the story. And it gets to the question that all of us as critics or viewers have about performances
in films when they work or don't work. Who gets the credit? How much credit does the director get? How much of it is the actor and the choices they're specifically making. With Kubrick on this film, knowing what we do know about his approach, I don't see how you can't give the lion's share of the credit or discredit.
I would say, if that's what you perceive to Kubrick, because you know he shot ninety five to one hundred and fifty takes of everyone of these scenes, and tried to get exactly what he wanted out of those sequences, and how many takes that Cruz loved or that we would love did he leave on the cutting room floor.
He wanted something that suggested more detachment that flatness. Perhaps it's clearly this is all filling into this overall dream like state of this film, and you can get on that wavelength or not.
I suppose this is what's going on with Cruz, and you're right Edelstein really went after him in that slate takedown. He mostly aimed at Cruz and his supposed flatness. But what I think is going on is that Kubrick cast him for perhaps you know, the marriage element, but also for his innate enthusiasm, the way that he is our most enthusiastic actor, and then what he's going to do is stifle that and force that to be drained out of him. And watching that happen gives this movie and
gives the performance attention. And notice at the very beginning when they go to that cocktail party, that holiday cocktail party by Sidney Pollocks, the way Cruise shakes everyone's hands, todd Field's pianist, when he sees him again, he's pumping it up and down like it's the best thing that's ever happened to the both of them, that they're meeting together. He's greeting everyone this way, and eventually, as his world starts constricting upon him or getting up ended, he just
gets tamped down more and more. But in those scenes where he's supposedly flat, you can see underneath that enthusiasm wanting to come out, that kind of energy, that rage, but he does not know what.
To do anymore.
He's been completely discombobulated, and you see that cruise. It's draining away, That smug cruise smile just goes further further away. And it's all about that line Kidman gives or Ellis gives to Bill in that first fight. You are very very sure of your aren't you who's very very sure of himself? Tom Cruise, Who's going to get taken to the mat in this movie? Tom Cruise the character, build a character, but all so Tom Cruise the persona, And I think that is what Kubrick is going for now.
Just to jump back to what you said about Kidman and Alice in that secondary when she wakes up from the dream monologue, what I liked about it is that I was never quite sure, and maybe this can be read as an unsteadiness in the performance. I was never quite sure what Alice was making up, what she actually dreamt, what she was holding back from him that she did dream. And the way I read it is she is deciding as she's talking to him, how much of this dream
am I going to tell him? Because you could have a dream like that and your spouse can wake you up and mind you. When he comes into the room, she's giggling. She seems to be having a fantastic dream, but he wakes her up and she says, oh, I was having a horrible nightmare.
The conversation circles down to that it is horrible. It is horrible.
So maybe she's being honest and he being out all right yet? And so what I like about that scene is that that unsteadiness that I think she purposefully shows us is that I don't know what I want to say here.
I don't I don't know how I'm supposed to play this. It's it's her unsteadiness.
We were in a deserted city and and our clothes were gone, we were naked, and and I was terrified, and I and I felt ashamed. Oh God, and and I was angry because I thought it was your fault. But you you rushed away to go and find fine clothes for us. As soon as you were gone, it was completely different. I felt wonderful.
Maybe this is where we can move into the formal. I think it's fascinating that we have spent this much time on a Stanley Kubrick film talking about performances and not really gotten to the form I'm ready.
This has to be though. I think that's remarkable.
Though this has to be his most I don't want to say effective use of actors, but of all the films of his, I've seen where acting plays as prominent a part in what the movie is trying to do.
Is that fair? Maybe? Maybe?
And that's not to downplay any of the other performances that have been given. I mean great performances have been given in his films. I just it's I can't imagine any other movie of his we would start by talking about the acting for this song.
No, probably not, And as we noted, a lot of people would disagree with that, or certainly did back in ninety nine. I hate to use the pun here, but maybe it's a perfect marriage of that form and content, or I suppose in this case, thinking about the camera and how it works around the actors and supports everything we're saying about these performances, and really how it informs the psychology. I think our psychology is viewers more than anything.
And with Kubrick, I think we've always studied his frames fairly carefully. I mean we as in anyone who watches a Kubrick film we know to watch closely. I think I watch a little more obsessively now in a post Room two two seven world, right, that documentary that really gets into all those theories about what every single thing in the frame could possibly mean and all the symbolism of it. And so right off the bat with this film,
I was doing that. I'm looking at Ziggler's party and I'm seeing that eight pointed star that's lit up as they walk in and they're doing the handshake scene. And then man, we see that a few more times at his house. He seems really into that symbol. What does that mean? I promise myself I wasn't going to say Illuminati again, so I'm not going to go down that path.
But I did start looking at it that way, and you start to notice, of course it does, and take long to realize that scene after scene you're seeing frames populated by Christmas lights, and of course I start thinking, well, what's the deep meaning of the Christmas lights? And I completely dismissed it because I said, brilliant observation at him. The movie takes place at Christmas, God forbid, people are
celebrating and recognizing Christmas. Of course that makes sense. But the closer you start to pay attention, and you especially realize not only does he really continue the motif in a way that defies reality. I think it becomes a hyper kind of reality with those Christmas lights, you also start to notice when he doesn't employ the Christmas lights,
and there are some key scenes. And also then that meshes with the fact that we get in that scene when he is at the party and while she's dancing with the Hungarian man, he's being taken away by those two models, and it's weird. It's almost like something out of the movie The Devil's Advocate, when Pacino's devil character is trying to tempt Keanu Reeves, and I remember he's got these you know, these witches or these demons, if you will, who are super attractive women and they are
tempting him. That's almost what it feels like, because it's such a such an odd state. They are just ready to devour him as they're taking him away from his wife. But I'm watching that scene. What do they say when he asks where they're going? Their answer is, we're going where the rainbow ends. And then, of course, when you see the costume shop that he goes to to go to the party, it's called Rainbow. And when they go down into the basement and that whole charade plays out,
it's called under the Rainbow. And you think about how those lights tie in with the primary colors of all these Christmas lights in scene after scene after scene, and for me, it does just all support this idea that there's this real world that they inhabit, but it's ultimately a fake world, right. It's adorned with these lights to suggest joy, to suggest comfort, whatever you want those Christmas
lights to mean. And then there's this alter world. It's a construct too, where this ritual is going on, this whole power system is in place. It's a construct, but it's where everyone reveals who they really are and everyone shows their true primal instincts and their primal desires. And in those scenes, of course, we don't get those primary colors. We don't get the rainbow colors and the Christmas lights in the orgy scene. We get those stark blacks and
reds in that scene. And how about those confession scenes, anytime that they're in their bedroom, it's really striking how those are lit right where. Yeah, it's this combination of blues, icy blues.
See when she wakes up is in particular. Yeah, but even in that first one you see softer and almost warmer. It is warmer, but you see, for example, in shots behind them of the bathroom or the hallway, there's always this juxtaposition of a little bit of a yellow glow with this real iciness that contrasts that which obviously speaks to or underscores kind of what's going on with their relationship.
And when it gets to the end of the film, when it gets to that moment where he's about to walk in his bedroom, right and he sees the mask and he says, I'll tell you everything. He reveals everything honestly, or at least we're supposed to believe he does, because we don't get to hear his recount of the night we were with him. We're going to trust that he actually does tell her the entire truth. But what does he do the last thing before he walks into his bedroom. He shuts the Christmas tree off.
That's kind of that moment right where this rainbow fantasy I think is really supposed to end, and everything we're saying about their relationship, this new reality that they're about to enter, it finally happens once they finally shut those lights off.
Yeah, and for him then the final I don't accusation, I don't know what you want to call it, but the final decision is when he does see the mask on the bed pillow next to her, which gives him that moment of do I play this.
For more deception?
You could see there's a pause, sure, like how can I get out of this? What can I say? And in the face of that, he just sort of crumples. So the Christmas light thing is I think you're absolutely right in that they are this pretty sheen meant to attract and deceive. And that's kind of the nice topping how you see, like this is kind of fun to play out at that cocktail party where she's flirting with the Hungarian, played we should say, by Sky Dumont, great Cambio.
It's a little longer than a cameo, but he's so good in it.
And Bill is flirting with the two models briefly, and I think this is where what we gradually see is that the pretty, tantalizing lights and the tempting offer from the Hungarian, and the harmless flirtations with the models, they're
all the first step towards other things. When you get under the rainbow where all of the sudden it gets really a but it's the same trajectory, and I think that's why this is actually I don't know if you would ever call this a prudish movie, but in a lot of ways, it's like, that's why I call it a moral film. I get it in the way it
talks about humans and sexuality. And what's fascinating to me is how the cinematography plays into this the way that you're talking about, but even you know, the cinematography in
that costume shop scene is so amazing. It's possibly that's where the Christmas lights become sinister, and you have them Christmas decorations on these mannequins, and it just seems perverse, like it doesn't make sense there, and sure enough we find out it foreshadows what we learn about the owner's daughter played by Lee Sobieski, which I totally forgot that she was in this as a kid and all of a sudden everything curdles. It's like what the hungarian promised.
Remember their first conversation where he starts talking about the romantic poet ovid and kidman points.
Out, well, you know ended up alone in miserable. What's his response?
But he also had a good time first, a very good time. And the question to ask yourself about ice wide shot is okay, let's open that door, let's go upstairs with this Hungarian, which Cruise does for the rest of the film in his trajectory, does anyone have a very good time? And where we end up is the basement of the costume shot. Right where we end up is at the masked party, which is it's like cadavers being resuscitated.
It is so grotesque.
And like somehow forced to enact some gruesome porn film.
Please come forward.
That nine from ninety nine series was so much fun. Fight Club being John Malkovich Magnolia, the Blair Witch Project, the Matrix and more. And of course, yes, Eyes White Shut You can hear all of those conversations and a few more I omitted Josh as part of that series in the Film Spotting Archive. You get access to that archive, monthly bonus shows, and so much more. By being a film Spotting Family member, we'd love for you to join. Give yourself the gift of film spotting, give someone in
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