EYES WIDE SHUT (1999)
calvin
I don't know what Kubrick had in mind, but it was
all enjoyable to watch because of the composition,
color, and camera work, especially those amazing
trademark back tracking and forward tracking shots.
Smooth back tracking through a crowded diner?
Seems impossible, but looks effortless.
The simple subject of marital infidelity (that never
happened) could just as well have been handled
by Woody Allen, and in fact it was very Allenesque:
mild jealousy at a party, with separate husband and
wife would-be seductions that never materialized;
later wife getting high smoking weed and blabbering
about being attracted to another man in the past,
causing husband to obsess about it for a couple
of days, almost being unfaithful as a result, though
not actually; the wife learning about his near-
infidelity; and them finally, in their home-life with
their child, pretty much making up, and deciding to,
at the earliest opportunity, fuck.
But Kubrick took it out of the Woody Allen realm
and into the Fellini realm with the succesion of
things that happened to the husband on his night
of a jealous fling that took him from one bizarre
situation into another; and finally into a Scorsese-like
realm of high crime, involving anonymous political
figures, great wealth, and death of one of the minor
players, maybe murder, maybe not.
The disappointing thing about the movie to me was
the big high-society formal orgy. Except for the
novelty of seeing a few women walking around
nekkid, no doubt making the DVD popular with
adolescents, this sequence could not have been
more boring and irritatingly meaningless, especially
at the beginning where we have to watch an
interminable ritual of smoky and undecipherable
chanting.
All in all, the movie was more enjoyable this second
time around, but (except for its craftmanship in
excelsis) it still didn't make nearly as strong an
impression on me as any of the previous Kubrick movies.
moviePig
Iirc, the orgy as shown to Europe got Kubrick the financially
untenable 'X' (or 'NC-17') rating... so he emasculated it, and decreed
that the U.S. was never to be shown the grownup version. (Again,
that's my recall, which others may amend.)
--
- - - - - - - -
YOUR taste at work...
http://www.moviepig.com
nick
not sure why Kubrick never okayed a possible "unrated" cut for later
on.
When I saw EWS in theaters, I remember the photography being very
grainy, heavily saturated colors, very much a fragile dreamlike style,
but in subsequent viewings, it looks conventional. Is my memory
playing tricks or is there a difference between the cinematic EWS and
the DVD/television/etc. EWS?
El Klauso
experience. Too bad that had to serve as the end point for him.
calvin
If you look at the bottom of the Wikipedia article,
it seems to be saying that the DVD contains the
unaltered version, but if so then I don't see what
all the fuss was about. A Clockwork Orange,
that I watched a few nights ago, was more sexually
explicit, I thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_Wide_Shut
Boss Crowther
Calvin, don't be a melvin. The idea of Kubrick being Allenish or
Fellinesque. No, Kubrick was always uniquely Kubrickian. Your
confusing theme with form--in comparison with Allen--and defining
anything grandiose with Fellini's fat bottom... though I suppose you
had La Dolce Vita in mind--and maybe 8 1/2. But if Fellini made
excess seem like excess, Kubrick made it look like a germ culture
under a microscope--or like the glass ball house in opening of Citizen
Kane.
Boss Crowther
>
> - Show quoted text -
No, same thing here. DVD screen is smaller so graininess goes away.
Boss Crowther
> Even more than usual for Kubrick, EWS was a sterile and distancing
> experience. Too bad that had to serve as the end point for him.
Your comments are sterile and distancing. I hope it's the end point of
your past films ng membership.
Boss Crowther
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
I saw the unaltered version. Boy, it is freaking far out.
El Klauso
distancing. I hope it's the end point of
your past films ng membership.
EK: Sorry I can't worship at the shrine, but for me EWS was a distinct
let-down from the glory that was Strangelove or 2001. It's probably
discomforting to you to hear competeing ideas and voices, but that's
supposedly what commentary columns are about, not simply an endless
echo of your own opinions.
David Oberman
<ChasJ...@aol.com> wrote:
>for me EWS was a distinct let-down
The book is better.
Boss Crowther
El Klown, you need to undergo the Ludovico treatment. Hehe, I shall
make you see EWS to Ninth symphony.
moviePig
No, in this instance, size really doesn't matter ...resolution does.
And, afaik, Blu-Ray (1080p) ought to be enough to keep an original
looking noticeably grainy.
nick
> On Sat, 15 May 2010 12:22:12 -0700 (PDT), El Klauso
>
Kubrick was probably one of the last directors able to get away with
the "buy up the rights and all available copies" trick so audiences
wouldn't know what was going to happen in the movie. As it turned
out, it allowed all kinds of crazy rumors to get started, like the one
about how EWS had a "Dr. Caligari" ending where it turned out Nicole
Kidman was the chief doctor in an insane asylum and Tom Cruise was one
of the patients.
nick
>
about.
Of course, no discussion of Eyes Wide Shut would be complete without
some reference to "the Harvey Keitel story".
calvin
> On May 15, 1:58 pm, calvin <cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
> > If you look at the bottom of the Wikipedia article,
> > it seems to be saying that the DVD contains the
> > unaltered version, but if so then I don't see what
> > all the fuss was about. A Clockwork Orange,
> > that I watched a few nights ago, was more sexually
> > explicit, I thought.
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_Wide_Shut
> You're right. There's a recent 2 disc special edition I didn't know
> about.
Netflix doesn't say anything about a special edition, or a
disc of bonus material, so I probably saw the earlier DVD
containing the altered version after all.
moviePig
Netflix: "The regular version of this film is rated R; the Blu-ray
version is not rated."
T987654321
naked sluts.
calvin
I haven't found a reason yet to venture into the Blu-ray
world. But the 2-disc special edition that nick mentioned
would probably be the one to which Wikipedia referred, I
should think. In any case, I'll leave the unaltered parts of
EWS for others to see.
'Lolita' (1962), my sixth Kubrick movie of the week, is
now underway, and very amusing, with Mason, Winters,
and Sellers all in top form. I've seen it two or three
times before, but it's been a while.
nick
than its subsequent DVD/television versions? The cinematic EWS almost
looked like it was shot by Wong Kar Wai.
Howard Brazee
<cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
>The disappointing thing about the movie to me was
>the big high-society formal orgy. Except for the
>novelty of seeing a few women walking around
>nekkid, no doubt making the DVD popular with
>adolescents, this sequence could not have been
>more boring and irritatingly meaningless, especially
>at the beginning where we have to watch an
>interminable ritual of smoky and undecipherable
>chanting.
Isn't it *supposed* to show us how it should be boring?
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
calvin
> On Sat, 15 May 2010 08:20:02 -0700 (PDT), calvin
> <cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
> >The disappointing thing about the movie to me was
> >the big high-society formal orgy. Except for the
> >novelty of seeing a few women walking around
> >nekkid, no doubt making the DVD popular with
> >adolescents, this sequence could not have been
> >more boring and irritatingly meaningless, especially
> >at the beginning where we have to watch an
> >interminable ritual of smoky and undecipherable
> >chanting.
>
> Isn't it *supposed* to show us how it should be boring?
I don't know. I just assumed that Kubrick thought
it was sexy.
Halmyre
@live.com says...
Not as far out as some of the rumours that were flying around during the making of the
film - such as cameras *inside* Nicole Kidman's naughty bits.
--
Halmyre
This is the most powerful sigfile in the world and will probably blow your head clean
off.
Kais...@gmail.com
wrote:
>In article <913551de-7828-4dbc...@c11g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>, and-real3
>@live.com says...
>> On May 15, 12:58�pm, calvin <cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
>> > On May 15, 1:20�pm, nick <nickmacpherso...@AOL.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > When I saw EWS in theaters, I remember the photography being very
>> > > grainy, heavily saturated colors, very much a fragile dreamlike style,
>> > > but in subsequent viewings, it looks conventional. �Is my memory
>> > > playing tricks or is there a difference between the cinematic EWS and
>> > > the DVD/television/etc. EWS?- Hide quoted text -
>> >
>> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>> >
>> > - Show quoted text -
>>
>> I saw the unaltered version. Boy, it is freaking far out.
>>
>
>Not as far out as some of the rumours that were flying around during the making of the
>film - such as cameras *inside* Nicole Kidman's naughty bits.
It's based on a novel by Arthur Schnitzler in Vienna circa 1900
called Traumnovelle, or dream novel, and some thought most of Eyes
Wide Shut was actually a dream.
DK
nick
If you get a chance, read Frederick Raphael's book about writing the
screenplay for EWS, Eyes Wide Open. "Sexy" just wasn't in Stanley's
vocabulary--he was too family values to understand the sexual
hedonism, infidelity and such in the material. He was on the Internet
trying to find out how much hookers cost. Neither he nor Raphael had
any idea what an orgy was like. They'd both been married to their
spouses for decades. (And funnily enough, Kubrick had been dismayed
by how big apartments were in movies set in NYC relative to the
incomes of the characters--a common gripe--I think it was some Woody
Allen movie he particularly objected to, so he went into all kinds of
research about NYC home costs and what people could afford, and I
don't know because I don't live in NYC, but something tells me that
Kubrick didn't quite get it right,)
More problematically, he was never able to create a grounding for
Cruise's character's sense of dislocation/alienation. In the source
material, the character was Jewish. Raphael thought the plausible
modern thing would be to make Cruise's character gay, but got
overruled by Kubrick who was looking for "universality" and as such he
didn't want the lead character to be gay or Jewish. Remember, the
character name Harford really is Kubrick's play on "Harrison Ford",
someone Kubrick thought was something like "the definitive gentile".
Big Boss Crowther
> On May 15, 9:09 pm, calvin <cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On May 15, 8:55 pm, Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Sat, 15 May 2010 08:20:02 -0700 (PDT), calvin
> > > <cri...@windstream.net> wrote:
> > > >The disappointing thing about the movie to me was
> > > >the big high-society formal orgy. Except for the
> > > >novelty of seeing a few women walking around
> > > >nekkid, no doubt making the DVD popular with
> > > >adolescents, this sequence could not have been
> > > >more boring and irritatingly meaningless, especially
> > > >at the beginning where we have to watch an
> > > >interminable ritual of smoky and undecipherable
> > > >chanting.
>
> > > Isn't it *supposed* to show us how it should be boring?
>
> > I don't know. I just assumed that Kubrick thought
> > it was sexy.
>
> If you get a chance, read Frederick Raphael's book about writing the
> screenplay for EWS, Eyes Wide Open. "Sexy" just wasn't in Stanley's
> vocabulary--he was too family values to understand the sexual
> hedonism, infidelity and such in the material.
He was not a 'family values' guy. If you mean he was loyal to his
family and a good father/hubby, true enough, but that doesn't mean he
was a conservative 'family values' type of guy into 'father knows
best' mentality. Kubrick obviously was drawn to sexual themes from
the very beginning. Killer's Kiss was pretty sexually daring for its
time. So was Lolita. Spartacus has a very sexy Jean Simmons. Barry
Lyndon was a very sensual film. All of his films are very involved
with sexual themes and sexuality. General Turgidson is a swinger.
Jack D. Ripper is paranoid about the commies robbing his manhood.
> He was on the Internet
> trying to find out how much hookers cost. Neither he nor Raphael had
> any idea what an orgy was like. They'd both been married to their
> spouses for decades.
You kill me, Nick. You mean one has to involved in orgies and wild &
loose fuc*king and sucking to know what that stuff is like? Well, I
suppose Kubrick shouldn't have made 2001 since he never was out in
space, and he shouldn't have made Paths of Glory since he never fought
in a war, and he shouldn't have made Barry Lyndon since he never lived
in the... what is it? late 18th century or early 19th century?
Besides, he was never an aristocrat nor dilly dallied with such
folks.
I mean what kind of nonsense is this? Artists work through
imagination, empathy, speculation.
Stephen Crane wrote the classic Red Badge of Courage but he had never
fought in the Civil War. Heck, I was never friends with girls, but I
know all about women. If you got imagination and intuition, you don't
need actual experience. That is for vulgar dolts.
By the way, how much do hookers cost? What would they do for 50
cents?
>
> More problematically, he was never able to create a grounding for
> Cruise's character's sense of dislocation/alienation. In the source
> material, the character was Jewish. Raphael thought the plausible
> modern thing would be to make Cruise's character gay, but got
> overruled by Kubrick who was looking for "universality" and as such he
> didn't want the lead character to be gay or Jewish. Remember, the
> character name Harford really is Kubrick's play on "Harrison Ford",
> someone Kubrick thought was something like "the definitive gentile".- Hide quoted text -
>
No,no, no, Nicky boy, the problem was not with lack of justification
for Cruise's alienation. The problem was Cruise is a very limited
actor and didn't really understand what Kubrick was after, and Kubrick
could only do so much with that sensitive earnest face of his.
Besides, the character is not supposed to be alienated, at least not
in the movie. When the movie begins, he's very well-adjusted. He
feels very much within the comfort zone in his life.
What happens is he becomes DISORIENTED, something different than
alienation.
He first becomes disoriented under a marijuana drugged out haze, when
his emotions are moistly vulnerable. He thinks he understand himself
and his wife--indeed, man and woman in general--, but then finds out
her true fantasy beau was someone else. It's not as bad as Michael
finding out in MEAN STREETS that some teacher kissed a 'nigger', but
it's pretty bad. Suddenly, he feels disoriented. all the more so since
he's a good looking guy and has been the center of attraction and
affection all his life. He has looks, a good looking wife, and money.
He's been blessed all his life. So, what his wife tells him is the
equivalent of OW MY BALLS scene in IDIOCRACY.
So, he goes out for some fresh air, to recover his sense of confidence
and narcissism. It's not so much sexual revenge or pleasure he wants
as to recover a sense of self-esteem. He doesn't so much want to make
out with a hooker as to find to his ego's satisfaction that she wants
to do it with him out of affection and attraction than just the
money.
But it's one strange night. His ego is further threatened by a bunch
of drunken Irish thugs who knock him over and taunt him as a pretty
boy faggot. His precious self-esteem is pricked again.
Later he meets an old friend and learns of some superduper orgy. He
doesn't want to join in the orgy but to be ON THE INSIDE of the most
privileged kind of stuff there is. Earlier, he discovered he couldn't
access his wife's secret heart. So now,he wants to compensate for that
by penetrating into the most forbidden zone in the world. A superduper
orgy held by the richest folks. And he gets in and thinks he's being
oh-so-clever. But, just as James Mason was being manipulated by Peter
Sellers all along, Tom Cruise the predator really becomes the prey in
the Orgylook Mansion. (Similarly, Alex the invader of the writer's
home later becomes the prisoner in ACO. And Jack Nicholson who
overlooks the Overlook Hotel becomes over-looked himself by superrich
ghosts of that hotel.)
This is where the DISORIENTATION AND HUMILIATION begins. Indeed, the
film is more about humiliation than alienation. Cruise makes it out
alive from the mansion but feels very very small and insignificant.
He discovers that despite his good looks and decent money, he's really
a nothing but a pawn in a world controlled by people much richer and
poweful than he. Like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, he's just a
grocery boy sent to pick up the bill. If there is indeed any
alienation, it is right here, and it is about power and class. Cruise
had been a well-adjusted happy doctor who thought he had it all and
was pleased with what he had. But he finds out he is not his wife #1
love. He finds out his riches are a mere nickels and dimes to those
with real power. He thought he had a gorgeous trophy wife but there
are women 100x sexier than her at the orgy of superpowerful and rich
men.
The movie makes me want to listen to POOR SIDE OF TOWN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwVOlLF9VGQ
moviePig
Haven't seen it on DVD. Obviously, it's easy to tinker with color-
balance, etc. in pursuit of a nice "normal-looking" picture for the
masses. But, I'd think that the expense of (attempted) grain-removal
would be a bridge too far. E.g., it seems less far-fetched that
Kubrick might've interposed an extra copy-generation into his release-
prints, just to up the "mosaic"...
calvin
> ... He thought he had a gorgeous trophy wife but there
> are women 100x sexier than her at the orgy of superpowerful and rich
> men.
I was with you until this last sentence. None of the
skanky sluts at the orgy were anywhere near as gorgeous
as Kidman.
I enjoyed your post, but wish you had said something
about the goings on at the costume shop.