Greetings and EWS thoughts/rants?questions...
Mr. Greezy
started to post...been around for a long time though, just never had
anything to contribute.
Anyway, EWS (a bit random, perhaps): Saw it twice so far and have to say
WOW. I have to use a bit of restraint praising it now. Being in the midst of
it and everything I have to remind myself that true perspective can only
really be had from a bit of a distance, and avoid declaring it an all time
great. But still, I am absolutely in love with this film! Not saying that it
is his best, but is it not his most detailed? Or is it just the theater
experience that adds to that? In response to some of the posts, although I'm
still all for them, it seems futile to try to piece together all of the
"reality" details of a film like EWS. The mask on the pillow, the
recognition in the orgy scene, etc. seem as if they can never be completely
answered, which I think goes beyond mere ambiguity. Watching EWS I get the
same feeling I get from the fiction of someone like E.T.A. Hoffmann ("The
Sandman" especially) where reality, dream, imagination and symbol are so
blended together they can't be distinguished. And there are NO lines in
between! Why should there be? Most complaints of non-realism...the realism
of NY, the cars/cabs, or how the characters behave/interact...is entirely
without foundation. Something is wrong when an audience must be presented
with reality in order to respect a film. It seems that what Kubrick has
created here is a film that works exactly like a dream, where every single
detail, whether it 'works' in reality or not, has some kind of meaning, or
relation within it's world. And it is this very detail that makes EWS a
masterpiece...damn, sorry, have to hold off on that.
Who else can we really trust to make a film like this. Where we can have
faith that our analizations of the color of a door, or numbers in a math
problem, or the position of a painting actually mean something? That they
were actually intended to be EXACTLY as they are? In most other films I
approach such issues with caution, wondering if the study is justified, or
if it will just lead to dead end and contradiction. (Was Verbal getting his
lighter back at the end of Usual Suspects just an oversight, or is he really
not Kaiser?)...ummmm... sorry. Kuberick is one of the only ones I trust in
that Department.
Which is why the NY Times article (posted earlier) pissed me off as much as
it did. Thankfully I have no life right now and have been able to completely
immerse myself in the film and bask in the glory of it's detail, as some
critics are apparently unable, or unwilling to do. To say that Kubrick's
need for absolute control ruined this film is the most preposterous thing I
have ever heard/read. (Well, just about). It is exactly that control and
that attention to detail that...well, I won't go there again. If EWS had
been the more "spontaneous" picture that some critics would have liked,
wouldn't we have just ended up with another sexual fantasy love story to
talk about for an hour and then forget?
Note the plaster mask on the stand next to the dead mans bed, and all the
masks on the walls of Dominoes apartment (she has more to hide?)...and the
broken looking baby carriage outside her door, and the carriage that the
daughter picks out in the toy store (Alice: "Yeah...Old Fashioned.") And the
stuffed Tiger on Domino's bed and the whole stack of the same tigers behind
Alice in the Toy store ( is the tiger some kind of reference to raw
sexuality? Perhaps the distinctly feminine side of it? Giving background to
Alice's mention of the need to just "fuck"?). Oh, it just goes on and
on!.....Was it me or did the furniture in Dr. Bills office change color
during the film, white early on (before the orgy) and black (or at least
dark) afterward? I could be mistaken there.
Oh what an absolutely glorious weekend this has been. Watching EWS, I feel
like a child who has just been put in front of a Christmas tree buried in
presents. Thanks all.