Eyes Wide Shut

I wonder to what extent do its problems come from its being based on a novel set in Habsburg Vienna before the first world war, with the story being only updated to the present day in the most superficial manner?

My favourite bit of the film is when the frat boys shout at Cruise that he is a short arsed faggot. I'd love to know if that was Kubrick taking advantage of Cruise being a short-arse and widely rumoured to be secretly gay.

ps I have still not seen clockwork orange or red desert, but as these are the definitive make-or-break items in each case, i am reluctant to do so: if they are bad, then where does that leave these alleged genii?

Of course they both haf zero sense of humour: is this the problem?

Antonioni's 'ideas' - that alienation can be a beautiful thing. Or, objects and landscapes can be more interesting than people, and that we can have 'relationships' w/spaces, architecture, colours.

Eyes Wide Shit more like.

having relationships w.colours not ppl = a good direction for mark s possibly sigh

What I got was Tom Cruise smugging the camera for THREE HOURS. "Eyes Wide Shut" can eat me. Had Tom been edited out of it, it would have been an infitely better movie. Hell, chopping out an hour of meandering would have made it a better movie. It tried so hard to be surreal that it ended up being ass.

Anyone see the Kubrick doco's on the last week. Woody Allen on Dr Strangelove was very interesting, saying that it wasn't as funny as it should be as Sellars stretched himself too much and Kubrick had no real sense of timing. Interesting.

Of the Kubrick movies I've seen, the best is CLEARLY "A Clockwork Orange". That's the only one with any real sense of pacing. "The Shining" has some brilliant moments in it, too. Haven't seen "Full Metal Jacket" or "Lolita" and I can't remember "Dr. Strangelove".

also, it is one of the funniest movies i've ever seen

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Haven't seen Eyes Wide Shut, actually.

kubrick's is ruined by peter sellers mainly: haha i tht lyne's worked bettah becuz the day i am sympathetic to jeremy irons is the day i exfoliate my legs w.nitric acid!!

I think Kubrick is very humorous. EWS = essentially a comedy, as noted above. In fact, I would say most of Kubrick's movies are in some way humorous. Antonioni is mostly insufferable, except for L'avventura, which is a masterpiece.

As for Kubrick being great, what does it take for a director to be great? One great film? Kubrick has two: Barry Lyndon and 2001.

but I haven't seen the a bird->a plane and don't know why it happens.

i quite like the bit where hal is killing the boring spacemen, but sadly the wrong robot wins

i like the weird glow he gave new york: nicole k is pretty good too, tho shelly duval is still the only woman SK actually ever met, i think (except for his daughter who wants a bushbaby)

haha yes mark see lolita again - surely some new level of meaning to be gleaned there, as you must be about the kid's age by now

BONNNNNGGG

BONNNNNGGG

BONNNNNGGG

BONNNNNGGG

yes

A friend of mine and I were talking about Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" last weekend. My friend observed that whenever he asked his guy friends if they liked "Eyes Wide Shut", an overwhelming majority praised it, but when he would ask his women friends what they thought, an overwhelming majority said they hated it.

Being curious, I looked at the ratings for EWS on the movie database, and indeed there is a pretty significant gender split, with males rating the movie much higher than females across age groups.

Of course, I'd take the movie database's ratings with a grain of salt, but assuming it might reflect a true difference...theories? Perhaps women find Nicole Kidman's character more interesting than Tom Cruise's, but given the short-shrift in the storyline?

oh dere's tits

Hmm, I hate admitting that it might be the fact I'm a woman. But I did hate it at the time. The idea seemed terrific on paper but I hated the way it played out. Now, after so many years and having read his biography (well, both Kubrick's and Cruise's), I think I might actually turn around and actually enjoy it. At the time I hated it because it was a late 19th century Freudian book converted to a 20th century story. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? I think I was (maybe still am) very hesitant to praise Freud.

I watched it again recently and I was really struck by how AWFUL Tom Cruise is.

Cruise seems willfully bad in this film. I feel like Kubrick must have directed him to be so incredibly flat for a purpose. In a way it feels appropriate, as the doctor is dreaming all these scenes and he is not really functioning as an agent. Rather, this action is happening to him, and his blankness can be seen as an indicator of his remove.

it was a late 19th century Freudian book converted to a 20th century story.

Still seemed very 19th-century Viennese to me (under the veneer, where it counts).

to be honest, i never thought his performance was that bad and i've seen it many times. i see how it could be seen as flat though -- that seems to be his attempt to act dumbstruck by what's happening to him, which actually does lack depth.

but nicole kidman is awesome to watch in this -- it's the sort of unstable character she knows how to play.

also um yeah the boys like this movie cuz there are like, 40 naked women in it?

only in the newly available Euro version.

Dr, I don't agree, really, the story was transposed to Hollywood/LA. I shoudl see it again. I'm relying on my (crappy) memory. What I now realize: how painful it is to see their marriage fall apart on screen. Very weird and, in a way, painful.

It's set in New York! An invented Kubrickian one, of course.

at the same time that you were more dear to me than ever, i would have given everything -- everything -- for just one moment

with him

xpost with HOLLYWOOD ACTORS. :-) Yes, yes, I know,you're right.

Men are more likely to be kubrick fanboys would prob answer the question as to why men like it better.

Regarding cruise: movies like ews always make me feel sort of confused when people criticize performances. I don't have any idea if a performance is good or not. Why criticize cruise and not, say, an actor in a bresson film?

Which is to say, that all talk about the goodness or badness of a performance seems to be ignoring the very large gap between intention and effect. I am always dumbfounded when asked to consider the quality of a performance and I don't quite know how to resolve that.much of the time people's responses to an actor seem to involve either massive amounts of projection or a sort of consumer choice as to whether you find the actor generally palatable.

if you don't have the 2.5 hours free to watch EWS then just watch the video for Laura Branigan's "Self Control" which is the same plot and many of the same shots but is like 5 minutes long, predates EWS by 15 years and has a really cool song over it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtn9AwgfQQ

"I don't have any idea if a performance is good or not."

i find this truly bizarre. i can watch any old crap if the performances are good. acting seems to vary wildly in quality, to me, and that's not just projection.

But how do you know it's good? I don't get it :/

how do you know ANYTHING's good? most stuff ilx talks about is subjective

how do you know a shot is well framed or that dialogue is good?

xpost

surmounter, watch that video. you will thank me.

guys maybe women don't like it because it's about a dude cheating on his wife?

Well you know that stuff is good because there are usually accepted criteria for what good framing is, namely that they are effective. So can a good performance exist in a totally worthless film or vice versa? How do you separate the performance from the film in general?

For example: "cruise is stiff and blank and therefore bad" vs. "it's supposed to be that way don't you see"

There is an infinite distance between those two statements.

So we just throw our hands up at that and proclaim that it's subjective?

gabb its about a dude wanting to but not cheating on his wife after she told him how much she wanted to but didnt cheat on him

xp no, but we shouldn't dismiss arguments based an actor's performance, either

good call deez

I guess the fact that it's acceptable to make both of those statements when talking about movies is what is disturbing me. There's something inconsistent in the discourse.not meaning to be annoying here, just a quibble.

i think gaps like that are the basis for any discussion about any art form

it's not annoying :-)

gabb its about a dude wanting to but not cheating on his wife after she told him how much she wanted to but didnt cheat on him

right, what i said

wouldnt you basically evaluate an actors performance the same way youd evaluate its framing or whatever else, ie how well it achieves what you think the movie wants it to?

oftentimes. what was the director's intention etc? you don't always know that either.

That's a great point surmounter! (about the gap being necessary for conversation)

I do suppose you have to take into account what the actor is "trying" to do in order to judge the performance, however problematic that may be.

I just also wonder if there could be a different way to approach a performance. Maybe not!

By the way, I take back what I said upthread about antonioni six years ago!

ryan, i don't know how to talk about it because i'm so baffled by that take on acting. to me the acting is the single most prominent feature in any film. can a bad film be saved by good performances? most definitely. can a film be very good if the acting is bad? most definitely not!

"Well you know that stuff is good because there are usually accepted criteria for what good framing is, namely that they are effective."

there are accepted criteria for what makes acting good and they are as hard to pinpoint as what makes a shot good or bad.

lots of xposts

jed,

you're not the only one who's noticed that Laura Branigan/EWS connection. check out the edit of the two someone put together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

"can a bad film be saved by good performances? most definitely. can a film be very good if the acting is bad? most definitely not!"

see i disagree w/ this - i dont think id ever watch a film purely for a performance or performances

PP, you got me!

Jed, I guess it's the difference between seeing acting as a "craft" and seeing it, as someone totally uneducated about it like me may be likely to do, as an attempt at "realism" or the production of some unstated intent on the part of the filmmakers.

deeznuts, would you watch a film for the cinematography alone?

i totally love EWS

yeah, but - to be 'clearer', & to flip what you said on its head, i definitely dont think bad acting can kill a good film, but im equally sure good acting cant save a bad one - i guess my prob with your statement is that i see acting as a definite part of the whole, & thus yr opinion inherently doesnt make sense to me: if bad acting kills a good film, its not a good film, & vice versa

it might be true that i value cinematography, or plot, or whatever, more than acting, but at the same i wouldnt say any one of those could in & of itself make a movie good or bad

ok yr right. i just meant it can make a bad film better or even enjoyable.

i think really excellent acting can make a film that is otherwise a trifle totally compelling. i'm not sure how i'd regard something like 'the good thief' if it didn't have such a great cast. but there are a few films in which "bad" acting is beside the point. like ryan said, bresson's pics.

deez breakin it out

so many good directors manipulate bad actors for the sake of their scenarios, though (Joan Crawford, Ali MacGraw, Keanu Reeves, Scarlet Johanson, to name a few).

^^^ this

See, like, in the scene in which Tom Cruise goes back to the hooker's apartment the next day and encounters her roomie, there are a lot of agendas going on there:

-- Tom Cruise thinks he's being Tom Cruise
-- "Dr. Bill Harford" also thinks he's being "Tom Cruise," or whatever the equivalent of "Tom Cruise" is in his universe.
-- Stanley Kubrick thinks both Tom Cruise and Dr. Bill are being smug jerks with not half the mad ladykilling skillz they think they have.
-- Red-haired roomie is all "lol u might have AIDS, Tom Cruise"

Kubrick wins, and both Tom Cruise and Dr. Bill are none the wiser.

you don't usually go to kubrick for good performances, but this being what it is, ie a psychological drama where not much really 'happens', good acting is required, and, in this case, not forthcoming.

^nonsense^

bad actors ... (Joan Crawford, Ali MacGraw, Keanu Reeves, Scarlet Johanson, to name a few)

really, Ali MacGraw stands alone in this group. The others are frequently good movie stars.

jed is so OTM re: "Self Control"

really, Ali MacGraw stands alone in this group. The others are frequently good movie stars.

"stars" exist to be manipulated.

blowin' minds

a good performance is when you can tell the actor's committed to something that exists in the world of the film (even if that thing is "getting high and watching tv")

Can we talk about "Self Control" some more? Then again there's this thread:

"Self Control" by Laura Branigan

Alex in NYC, prophet!

Actually, it looks an awful lot like "Eyes Wide Shut," complete with horny strangers wearing masks. I'm not even joking.

-- Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, February 28, 2005 1:11 PM

a good performance is when you can tell the actor's committed to something that exists in the world of the film

Extra points when you stop seeing the actor as "the actor" and just buy into the veracity of the character.

Kubrick was clearly not trying to get naturalistic performances out of his actors. Especially that opening party scene, everything is chopped and screwed. Whether it is effectively dream-like is up to the viewer.

if you men only knew

See it all, or see NOTHING. Anything less is THEFT.

i love when she's just gotten stoned and can't look at tom cruise's face without cracking up

Extra points when you stop seeing the actor as "the actor" and just buy into the veracity of the character.

Gene Hackman and Vanessa Redgrave to thread.

My theory has always been that the baubled lights in every scene (party lights, christmas lights) are little baubles of germs and AIDS and the clap that show the threat of nonmonogamy, so that when they turn off the Christmas lights in their home at the end, they're commiting themselves to a good clean monogamous marriage.

lololol try watching 'wetherby' and not see it as 'vanessa redgrave takes on thatcher'.

whoa eazy that's crazy. i always noticed all those touches of light.

this dress is KILLER

http://img.slate.com/media/32000/32119/Kidman.jpg

try watching Wetherby without falling asleep.

in support of eazy's theory, for a reason i could never until know figure out we were shown eyes wide shut in sex ed as a pro-abstinence film...btw kubrick died of syphilis...

Well, the theory also makes sense considering that Kubrick started thinking about this movie in the late 80s/early 90s, when the idea was in the air that cheating would kill you.

btw kubrick died of syphilis...

Uh?

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a150/tuesdayweld/eyeswideshut1.jpg

And they really are in most of the sexy scenes in the movie.

good shot

the good doctor

http://i31.tinypic.com/2cxeyr6.jpg
This shot is the one that gets me

I like the theory about the coloured baubles. They're everywhere: "Don't you want to go where the rainbow ends?" Also, Bill goes to Ziegler's pool room near the end, where he says he's 'just knocking a few balls around' - i.e. Ziegler just messes people up for his own amusement.

I just remembered - I've played on that pool table! It's now in a hotel in Birmingham.

wow!

eye-balls

tis the season for this movie

http://www.black-scale.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ews-2.jpg

i totally love EWS

― omar little, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 1:34 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Pancakes Hackman otm.

Rewatched this again last night after seeing this thread. Dr. Bill fails to get this infidelity thing because he's approaching the whole thing as a question of control -- either comes off as a smarmy jerk (two girls at the party, the hooker) or thinks he's got some sort of upper hand until he gets smacked down (hooker roommate drops the "she has AIDS" bomb, he thinks he can wander around the masquerade orgy but then gets penalized, gets called away at the party to clean up someone else's mess instead of flirting).

Kidman's character is great because she's not necessarily breaking this whole "men active, women passive" thing, but showing that there's just as much power in her approach. She comes off as flirty but not smarmy with the Hungarian at the party, and she's the the one who draws the lines in the whole interaction. So she's actually more involved with defining these lines, whereas Cruise's character just kind of goes along when he's offered sexual situations.

Also, how great is it that Dr. Bill has all this amazingly messed-up stuff happening all around and all he can mentally return to is the idea of this guy with his wife?

i find that totally realistic. like, that's what i would be thinking about.

This was on TV last night, I saw 20 minutes of it. It was terrible.

fascinating

i saw this on a tv station that heavily edits everything it shows. i also saw evil dead ii on this station. i feel like maybe i should like rent it or something.

evil dead ii i mean; this looked p rubbish

best kubrick movie

i can't watch kubrick movies; they make me seasick

Trick to Kubrick is you really have to watch them so many times you forget about the actors and plot and focus on the details in the background.

I think there could have been a great movie here with two leads that actually had chemistry. Cruise actually has some good moments, but none of them are in a scene involving Kidman.

some great moments; I enjoy it more than it deserves. Cruise is pretty great it in.

lol yeah pretty much agree with Matt, iow

been kinda obsessed with this movie lately, partly because after all this time and dozens of viewings, im not entirely sure what it's "about," and that's certainly not for the movie lacking the sense that it's about something. (if that makes sense)

more and more i think a lot of takes on the "fantasy" elements of the movie, while obviously not far off, don't really account for what seems to be a very weird subtext about power, or maybe the rituals of power or how its constituted, and that maybe what happened is that Cruise somehow peeks beneath the curtain (maybe led there by his own fantasizing) and saw something he wasn't supposed to see. something about that orgy scene, and especially his unmasking and the "sacrifice" it sets in motion, seems very primal, for lack of a better word.

anyway, it's just a weird, totally beautiful and ultimately elusive movie.

sometimes i think this is kubrick's best looking movie. the use of lighting is so striking

a very weird subtext about power, or maybe the rituals of power or how its constituted, and that maybe what happened is that Cruise somehow peeks beneath the curtain (maybe led there by his own fantasizing) and saw something he wasn't supposed to see. something about that orgy scene, and especially his unmasking and the "sacrifice" it sets in motion, seems very primal, for lack of a better word.

this is exactly what the film suggests, but if it's a puzzle, there seen to be several key pieces missing. you get this suggestion of a relationship between desire, fantasy, wealth and power, but it never congeals, remains a dream. the "primal" quality you note winds up being little more than the propulsion engine that draws us through the labyrinth, and it dissipates entirely once we emerge on the other side. fascinating, but also quite frustrating. the paranoiac in me has always wondered whether or not it's really the film kubrick was trying to make...

and, yeah, i agree that it's one of kubrick's best-looking films, if not the best.

i especially like that the amazing final scene with Sydney Pollack is basically "you didn't see what you thought you saw." There's this massive draw back or dissembling that seems to be going on, and then yeah Kidman says we need to fuck and poof--wherever things seem to be leading is left off, unactualized.

Pollack's puppetmaster character almost made me think it was suggestive that Kubrick cast another director in that role...

and his fascinating final line "Life goes on, until it doesn't. But you know that, Bill." Right before Bill goes home and turns off (!) the Christmas tree lights.

good point. half the movie is lit by christmas lights.

My theory has always been that the baubled lights in every scene (party lights, christmas lights) are little baubles of germs and AIDS and the clap that show the threat of nonmonogamy, so that when they turn off the Christmas lights in their home at the end, they're commiting themselves to a good clean monogamous marriage.

― Eazy, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 1:22 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

pollack's so good in this. i love his last scene where he's laying things out for cruise - where he's kinda pulling back the curtain on all the weirdness cruise experienced that night, as if to reassure him, but you're further unsettled by his urgency to get that reassurance across. and i love the blue pre-dawn light flooding into his pool room from outside

im still not entirely sure why Kubrick chose to set the movie during christmas, perhaps for no other reason than to institute this colored lights scheme.

and this has obviously been pointed out many times, but i find it interesting how the movie is divided into two parts with the orgy/ceremony in the middle as a kind of hinge. before it seems like Eros holds sway, and after Thanatos (or at least every erotic possibility seems poisonous or dangerous, as when he literally leans in to kiss the corpse of the dead girl who saved him). at the very least that seems like a starting point to make sense of how it's structured.

my friend describes the visual aesthetic of this film as GLARE

im still not entirely sure why Kubrick chose to set the movie during christmas, perhaps for no other reason than to institute this colored lights scheme.

yeah, that's one of the things that really eats at me in trying to figure out what the film's about. christmas = what, exactly? death & resurrection, the pretty surface of things, consumerism, home & family? none of the interpretations i try to attach to it make much sense. like it seems as though EWS is "supposed" in some sense to culminate in cruise's sacrifice, his death...but it doesn't. it's a transformational journey through a sexual underworld that provokes no transformation other than a realization that home is relatively safe and, hey, everybody has lustful thoughts every now and then.

i saw this movie in 1999 and didn't think much of it.

rewatched it two nights ago and I think its AMAZING!! A completely cheap erotic thriller, pretty much--aka my favorite kind of movie.

It's the Ben-Hur of erotic thrillers.

Druid orgy = chariot race.

"cheap erotic thriller" via Schnitzler

it's still a great film about marriage. and I agree it is one of kubrick's best looking films.

Well, it's a surreal looking film, that's for sure. It's as if the Archers' soundstage fantasies were adopted into a paranoid erotic thriller that's neither erotic nor thrilling but is frequently laugh out loud silly, or at least chuckle-inducing, from the score to the orgy to Sydney Pollack, who I think is sort of hilarious in any role. I guess I wish this movie were funnier on purpose. Like, it's the world's most expensive looking cheap erotic thriller. Was Kubrick simply taking the piss?

no, I think it's frequently profound and on the level.

that scene with kidman and cruise stoned in pants and talking veeeery slooowly is brutal though.

cracking movie. the critical kicking it got baffled the life out of me.

dunno if you've all seen this btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjmFQfQH2QM

All the slow talking is a way of making a dream rhythm (first party scene, too).

So it's a profound mediation on ... marriage? Marriage is scary? Infidelity is a walking nightmare? Eh. I'm not convinced of any depths, let alone profundities.

One of the ironies of this film is that by casting Cruise and Kidman, Kubrick picked two actors with absolutely no chemistry.

Marriage as sublimation, knowledge (or lack thereof) of the Other's desire (and the terrifying potential of that), the seduction of fantasy, the obscure relationship of Power to these mechanisms, etc.

Really a masterpiece for me.

Huh. I mean, I can see those things, but it's hardly some oblique meditation. I always thought the flick was way too on the nose.

Yeah those thing are all more or less part of the text rather than subtext. But as I tried to say in a few posts upthread I def get the sense that it's about something else that it deliberately pulls back from, like pulling a curtain back only for it to snap back into place before you can make out what you saw. That's the source of my fascination anyway--the way it's constructed in such an elusive manner.

What makes Kubrick Kubrick, rather than Schumacher, is the way in which he embodies those ideas in color, geometry, rhythm, etc., in ways that gives the film (and all of his films) their own internal vocabulary.

Like you hear reports that Kubrick deliberately sought to make the dialogue as banal as possible--and I think that sort of thing creates a weird stiltedness, a haziness that never quite conceals into people saying exactly what they mean.

Oh, there's no question it's a Kubrick Film.

My theory has always been that the baubled lights in every scene (party lights, christmas lights) are little baubles of germs and AIDS and the clap that show the threat of nonmonogamy, so that when they turn off the Christmas lights in their home at the end, they're commiting themselves to a good clean monogamous marriage.

― Eazy, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 1:22 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

cool post

I wish that were the case! Like, "Eyes Wide Shut" is the world's most expensive PSA for venereal disease.

I thought it was excellent, but then again I saw it on the big screen when it came out. It loses quite a bit on the small screen. Which is excuse enough to save up for a home theater!

that scene with kidman and cruise stoned in pants and talking veeeery slooowly is brutal though.

i actually love this scene! (or remember loving this scene at the time). I think because it's the most Lynchian scene!

My wife and I saw this movie on our honeymoon on a hot day in Hawaii. Actually, we saw a third of it before the projector broker. Then we kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and went out to dinner instead.

perhaps it's a film about how marriage attracts the mutually tasteless

A man thinks he can open the door to infidelity and intrigue, but ends up opening the wrong door and just about gets himself killed due to his hubris

hubris doobee doo.

[that scene with kidman and cruise stoned in pants and talking veeeery slooowly is brutal though.

Yeah, easily one of the greatest of all Kubrick scenes.

she is great in that scene

I would have liked this movie a lot more had practically anyone but Tom Cruise played the lead male role

which apparently I said in a slightly different way 11 years ago, lol

Marriage as sublimation, knowledge (or lack thereof) of the Other's desire (and the terrifying potential of that), the seduction of fantasy, the obscure relationship of Power to these mechanisms, etc.

...those thing are all more or less part of the text rather than subtext. But as I tried to say in a few posts upthread I def get the sense that it's about something else that it deliberately pulls back from, like pulling a curtain back only for it to snap back into place before you can make out what you saw. That's the source of my fascination anyway--the way it's constructed in such an elusive manner.

Like you hear reports that Kubrick deliberately sought to make the dialogue as banal as possible--and I think that sort of thing creates a weird stiltedness, a haziness that never quite conceals into people saying exactly what they mean.

― ryan, Sunday, June 24, 2012 (Yesterday)

^ OTM. What's fascinating to me is not what the film means, but how it creates the tantalizing sense of meaning seemingly offered but then withheld. Very similar to what I like about both David Lynch and Blue Oyster Cult. The audience goes through the same experience as Cruise's protagonist, but is ultimately left in doubt, which subverts the seemingly comforting happy ending.

BOC?

I think he meant Blue Velvet, lol

I figured. You can't even blame that on autocorrect or predicative text!

no, i really did blue oyster cult, silly as that may sound. it's a big leap, i know, but i talked on one of the BOC threads about the appeal in their music of the occult secret that is promised but never fully revealed.

did mean blue oyster cult

...

okay then, lol

what withholding of meaning? Married people need to fuck. The End.

what i was trying to get at about BOC, in mortifyingly purple prose:

Where most popular art is concerned, the "intricate detail on the skull" draws you toward the doorway, but the curtains part rather easily, and what you find on the other side is a kind of fantastical ordinariness, the sublime rendered mundane. BÖC's great trick is that they never fully usher you through the doorway. Instead, they leave you to peer in from the threshhold so that you're always an awed initiate, always the seeker reaching towards the chamber but never the adept arriving there.

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, February 19, 2012 3:03 PM (4 months ago)

^ really need to go back and edit that kind of shit before i post it

I like that post!

Married people need to fuck. The End.

that's kinda the "joke" that pulls the curtain back down, imo. cut to black, etc.

not to say that i disagree! but that sorta belies the 2 and a half hours we just spent watching Dr. Bill's odyssey in a very intriguing way.

watching that movie it was kind of hard to believe they were a married couple and i guess they did, too. i kind of want to see this movie with katie holmes or mimi rogers in it by comparison.

why on earth would you remove the one big positive of this movie and replace it with Katie Holmes

would it be a fair trade if harvey keitel were reinstated?

yeah katie holmes would make that unwatchable

I keep meaning to rewatch on DVD since they put out the European version here, without the digital 'Austin Powers' masking of the nudity.

mike myers in the lead would be interesting. he could probably do "I'm in over my head" more convincingly than cruise.

i should really see this again

wasn't steve martin originally who kubrick wanted for the lead? way back in the 80s iirc?

what was the deal with keitel? why do I remember something about someone cumming in kidman's hair? maybe that was my own dream.

it's apparently a myth, but a myth with explanatory power, like the anecdote about kubrick called up stephen king asking if he believed in god.

This is showing in DC this summer for a Kubrick retrospective. Can't wait to see it on the big screen

havin a hard time not seeing bateman every time cruise pulls the charming face in this:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa295/slugbert/gamerecognizegame.jpg

masks!!!

Obviously they are very different films, but I kept getting these weird "Eyes Wide Shut" vibes when I was watching Argento's "Inferno" the other day. Something about the set design, and Keith Emerson's piano score, and the general mood. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've seen "EWS."

Brief thoughts of Kidman:

People thought that making the film was the beginning of the end of my marriage -- but I don't really think it was. Tom and I were close then, and it was very much the three of us. Onscreen, the husband and wife are at odds, and Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality. That was Stanley: He used the movie as provocation, pretending it was our sex life. Which we weren't oblivious to, but obviously it wasn't us. We both decided to dedicate ourselves to a great filmmaker and artist.

Stanley had to coax me into some of the sexuality in the film in the beginning, but we shot things that were a lot more extreme that didn't end up in the movie. I did feel safe -- I never felt it was exploitive or unintelligent. He was very different with women than he was with men. He has daughters, so he was very paternal with me.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nicole-kidman-stanley-kubricks-lens-382186

Paternalism resulted in her best performance ever.

we shot things that were a lot more extreme that didn't end up in the movie

o_O

I liked Slavoj Zizek's take, that a major theme of the film was that fantasy is destroyed the moment it's realized.

And all that's left after that is Christmas shopping.

fantasy is destroyed the moment that... OH JESUS THIS ISN'T WHAT I WANTED AT ALL

eyes wide shut uh http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0096.html

great essay, especially for the phrase "the groans of critical blueballs"

anyone else see Room 237 yet/ are ppl talking on another thread abt it?

The Shining

of course

just now:

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (237 of them)

well done, ilx

dunno why i was impressed w/ unremarkable coincidences. 237th post discussing the room 237 doc abt the shining while watching the south park episode parodying the shining. i r dumb that way.

at the same time that you were more dear to me than ever, i would have given everything -- everything -- for just one moment with him

― Surmounter, Tuesday, July 1, 2008 8:09 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems crucial somehow wrt the zizek piece, i think. dr. bill's odyssey isn't about the fulfillment of fantasy; he doesn't even have one of his own. he's just wandering around trying on what he thinks fantasy is supposed to look like. in the taxi scene where he's imagining alice with the naval officer, i think as much as he's haunted by hurt and jealousy towards his wife he's equally or more so envious of her having a fantasy that consuming and destructive.

i have to award points on the "destructive" part, tho, he did accomplished that much ok.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/02/06/cruise-control/#.URf3YGIFzjo.twitter

that's marvellous

hey, the Village set doesn't make sense

http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=6434

never noticed the walking in front of rear projection before!

My humble take on it is that Kidman was at the party if not in person, in spirit. Consider:

- Opening shot of the film, where she drops her dress the same way as the masked women during the ritual

- The upsetting dream she has, which is close to the events that Cruise witnessed at the house

- The final line of the film, spoken by her, in repsonse to Cruise asking what they should do : "Fuck"

Also, striking use of red:

- Hallway as Cruise descends into the Sonata cafe

- Domino's front door

- Pool table that Pollack leans over towards the end of the film

Also the color of the robe of the master of ceremonies at the ritual

never noticed the walking in front of rear projection before!

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, March 26, 2013 5:44 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i totally noticed it but was never sure if it was meant to be noticed or not.

'Dream Story' is a quick read for anyone who enjoyed the movie. I knew the movie was based on the story, but was surprised how closely the film followed it. Almost all of the elements of the film - even the minor scenes - have some basis in the story.

yep, I was surprised when I saw EWS, having read the book when I knew that SK was adapting it.

I have an edition squirreled away in a box somewhere of the novel + the screenplay. never got around to actually reading it unfortunately.

http://i.imgur.com/8LD3XAC.jpg

Saw these chairs being delivered to the Masonic lodge in NYC this morning

Let me try this agajn
http://i.imgur.com/8LD3XAC.jpg

Oh fuck it

we can see this pics.

I've been in that lodge (not for an orgy).

a likely story

ha, i've been in there too. for, um, a fashion show.

likely story

those chairs are perfect

noting weird happened at the fashion show, look, here's a photo I took:
http://lightmasterstudios.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Eyes-Wide-Shut-Keyboards.jpg
just another night in new york city, you know?

well *i* still like it. so there.

this puts it under the microscope

http://somerton.tumblr.com/

A case for EWS (out 15 years ago yesterday) as SK's most personal film:

The final deep resonance regarding Eyes Wide Shut has to do with it being Stanley Kubrick’s last film. It was never intended to be a swan song. Fans of Kubrick would rather have had him sign off with AI or his long abandoned Napoleon, or maybe even his holocaust film Aryan Papers. But thinking deeply about Eyes Wide Shut, and feeling even more deeply about it, I believe that it may be as appropriate a final work for a filmmaker as A Prairie Home Companion was for Robert Altman and The Dead was for John Huston. I believe that this was Stanley Kubrick’s most personal film. The art on the Harfords’ apartment is mostly by Christiane Harlan Kubrick, and Alice is an artist; Nicole Kidman even kind of looks like Mrs. Kubrick. Kubrick’s father was a medical doctor, like Bill Harford. And as I implied earlier, there is a kind of concern for Helena, the Harfords’ daughter, who will grow up in a world where beautiful Barbie-doll women are sexualized, “get their brains fucked out,” and are then promptly discarded. Kubrick had three daughters, and there is an underlying concern of a father, quick to a civilization abounding with male privilege, for his daughter in the tapestry of this film.

http://www.letoilemagazine.com/2014/07/16/the-niles-files-its-old-fashioned/

I see that guy at screenings fairly often. Sky's the limit for him imo.

film criticism "sky" being what it is.

Bearing in mind it's what he *wants* to do.

hmmmm anything he wants to do is OK with me

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2TVMxnrSCKY/S0kpzdDPCPI/AAAAAAAAGz8/AhDHDP0UuUY/s1600-h/nilesschwartz.jpg

i mean....

http://www.letoilemagazine.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/IMG_3332bw-200x300.jpg

[redacted]

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/eyes-wide-shut-tom-cruise-nicole-kidman

wish that someone would corroborate the apocryphal story of kidman and harvey keitel humping her hair

http://www.letoilemagazine.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Eyes-59-300x168.jpg

ha i took this exact still (from the piece morbs linked) as a desktop background a couple years ago. can't have been a frame off.

I wanted to strangle Larry Smith by the end of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z22kV6t7TI

We will whisk you away from New York City to a secluded estate in the woods for an Illuminati rite of passage. Join us and discover the light of scientific truth.
A luxury limousine bus will pick up thirty Illuminati candidates at a secret Manhattan location. They will be transported to a stately hunting lodge located on a secluded lake peninsula one hour outside of Manhattan. Champagne will be sipped en route.
Our Surrealist soirée includes intricate cocktails, mouthwatering delicacies, inspiring music, devilish dances and esoteric rituals. The first course will be eaten blindfolded to better appreciate the nuance of the food.
Many of the dates will feature a special guest performance by Prodigy of Mobb Deep.
Attendees must fill out an online application and be accepted in order to purchase tickets.
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So basically a hip hop concert with some random people wearing masks?

more like cirque de foreplay plus prodigy i think

more like fidelino

love this movie so much, second only to the shining, miss SK so much

"a secluded lake peninsula one hour outside of Manhatta" hmm where could this be ?

I wanted to strangle Larry Smith by the end of this

― 龜, Wednesday, August 6, 2014 1:30 PM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah i love the lightning and shit in the movie.

lightning = lighting

god good i just saw EWS for the first time and it was incredible, i'm absolutely floored. easily my favorite Kubrick - A Clockwork Orange and especially 2001 are a bit worn out for me.

it's so strange knowing of of a movie for many years, familiar with its basic premise and iconography, and then finally seeing it and having your preconceptions obliterated. i thought the movie was about Cruise & Kidman going to these mask parties together, at least twice. the way that ryan talks about the "elusive" construction up thread is so otm - it makes it so much more disturbing and creepy having a brief glimpse of that world and no retribution, as opposed to having Cruise killed or whatever. and yes one of the best looking movies i've ever seen.

i saw it on small screen maybe ten years ago and being a bit 'whatevs' at the time, but I've felt like that about every Kubrick film I've seen until I got to see it at the cinema. His films really need to be seen on a large screen to be properly appreciated.

Stevie D just watched it.

I watched it last night. Not seen it since about 2006. Really enjoyed it, although I'm still trying to decipher a lot of it. Lots more to chew on than I first remembered. I'm sure there are a thousand critical analyses online I could read but it's quite a ride. The climax of the film, the orgy/ceremony with THAT music and chanting is so creepy and evocative. I love it. I started reading something yesterday that argues that the film isn't so much about sex as lucre, and yes I guess it is, and this film resonates even more in the Trump era than it did in 1999.
But it's also definitely about sex, and infidelity and fear. Cruise's character, on more than one occasion, is presented with the opportunity to practice inFIDELity (and it appears he would) but somehow never gets to. Meanwhile, his wife is very open about her own fantasies of sleeping with other people and indeed has vivid Old Testament dreams about this, which she admits to using against her husband. It's that last line, 'we have to fuck' that closes the film and kind of neatly-but-not-so-neatly wraps it up. This couple who've been arguing, accusing of cheating on each other (but mostly) in their minds, who've been getting increasingly sucked into this sordid demimonde of money, masks and murder, could easily wake up from the dream if they'd only rediscover each other... Still the conclusion tells us nothing about the cult, about what really happened to Mandy, about why they'd be willing to kill someone to protect their secrets... And what's happening with the Rainbow outfitters? How many people already knew about the society -does the shop owner know? Do the two models who say they're going to take Bill to 'the end of the Rainbow' know? Does all this even matter to the protagonists in the story?
Cruise's character's goal isn't to bring down the secret society or to bring justice to the dead sex-worker. He infiltrates the ceremony for the same reason he decides to go back to Domino's house - intrigue, boredom, frustration, anger perhaps. He's curious, and he could just as easily go home back to his wife and daughter. Even the next day, even after he's told to back off and discontinue his enquiries, he persists, despite a perceived threat to his life.
I'd really like to understand more about the scene with his friend who says 'it was all staged' and who brushes off Mandy's death as being unrelated. This is pure Kubrick, and a very much Lynchian trope too. The kind that makes you want to come back to the film for a second and third time.

Some things never change

Good in-depth essay from Jonathan Rosenbaum:

It’s one of the movie’s many indications that the unclear separations of imagination and reality include many rhyme effects between Alice’s dreams and fantasies and Bill’s reality as well as rhymes between her fantasies and his (such as her having sex with the naval officer). In fact, though the film initially appears to be mainly about Bill because it follows him around more than Alice, Alice’s confession and dream are just as important as anything that happens to him; in some respects, thanks to Kubrick’s (and Schnitzler’s) careful calibrations in the storytelling, she makes an even stronger impression than he does, especially because she seems more in touch with her fantasy life than he is with his own.

Yeah I watched this a few months ago and was blown away. Totally forgot about the Christmas motif, and the rainbow-colored Christmas lights hanging in so many scenes.

I read it mostly as a commentary on class and how deep-rooted power is. Even though Cruise is a successful doctor, he's unable to buy his way into society's walled-off top tier (he spends his night throwing money around, offering everybody hundred dollar bills; his name is Bill, etc., but the old money power players see right through him).

I watched it two Sundays ago, first full viewing since 1999, thoroughly underwhelmed and still laughable in places.

as in, "Do smart Americans like Kubrick and Raphael really have so shallow a conception of infidelity and perversion?"

hmmm, taken in a literary sense from Schnitzler

infidelity of the mind

I'm convinced most of it "doesn't happen"

Laughable in places i.e. every time they play the music

it's no far and away that's for sure

as in, "Do smart Americans like Kubrick and Raphael really have so shallow a conception of infidelity and perversion?"

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 19, 2018 2:53 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really?

Imagine this would be a good double feature with Risky Business.

(The Ligeti piece, in case it wasn’t obvious what I was referring to)

A case for EWS (out 15 years ago yesterday) as SK's most personal film:

The final deep resonance regarding Eyes Wide Shut has to do with it being Stanley Kubrick’s last film. It was never intended to be a swan song. Fans of Kubrick would rather have had him sign off with AI or his long abandoned Napoleon, or maybe even his holocaust film Aryan Papers. But thinking deeply about Eyes Wide Shut, and feeling even more deeply about it, I believe that it may be as appropriate a final work for a filmmaker as A Prairie Home Companion was for Robert Altman and The Dead was for John Huston. I believe that this was Stanley Kubrick’s most personal film. The art on the Harfords’ apartment is mostly by Christiane Harlan Kubrick, and Alice is an artist; Nicole Kidman even kind of looks like Mrs. Kubrick. Kubrick’s father was a medical doctor, like Bill Harford. And as I implied earlier, there is a kind of concern for Helena, the Harfords’ daughter, who will grow up in a world where beautiful Barbie-doll women are sexualized, “get their brains fucked out,” and are then promptly discarded. Kubrick had three daughters, and there is an underlying concern of a father, quick to a civilization abounding with male privilege, for his daughter in the tapestry of this film.

http://www.letoilemagazine.com/2014/07/16/the-niles-files-its-old-fashioned/

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Thursday, July 17, 2014 7:54 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't catch the latter concern, perhaps as a non-parent, but I nevertheless already regarded as his most personal and perhaps of a piece with at least one of the other two personal favorites.

(raphael was born in chicago but emigrated to the UK when he was seven: i think he probably mostly imbibed his shallowness of concept over here, if anywhere)

I thought Cruise and Kidman's acting was atrocious in places, especially Kilman acting stoned, all staggering around like a drunk antelope and talking really reaaaaallllly slowww. Cruise out-Batemanning Patrick Bateman actually worked in his favour in that it made everything feel even more uncanny

Imagine this would be a good double feature with Risky Business.

As long as you watch Risky Business, the better, smarter and definitely more enjoyable film, second.

Brilliant movie

How does it rank against The Emoji Film

it's better

fp'd JiC

Oh I just did that with like four people just now, including Alfred

no orgies for them

Classic:

http://78.media.tumblr.com/c9740dd8e43ff1de28672f28b3346603/tumblr_inline_n14xx4gWEB1qfo9ju.jpg

Dud:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cOFObkWKrK8/Vn8EQnlQCRI/AAAAAAAAOks/kO9-VCodd0Y/s1600/eyes-wide-shut-sidney-pollack.jpg

it's hard to get an orgy of beautiful people going

if you can manage 50% beautiful people in the orgy it's pretty much a miracle

but probably 2/3 will be sub 5s

basically the more people participate the less likely you'll get hot people in it

only reason i bring this up is because you try keeping your dick hard with people you don't find attractive

unless the actors are being paid to participate

They've dicked around with the aspect on recent Blus supposedly. Bad cropping and suchlike compared to some older versions on DVD.

http://cdn.avsforum.com/f/f1/f1f4ac2a_vbattach236931.jpeg

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/150-blu-ray-software/928408-eyes-wide-shut-review-up-hdd-3-stars-pq-3.html

holy shit

glad i got to see it for the first time in a theater last year

i have now seen the uncensored orgy scenes

i still find Kidman's laughing fit in the pot scene a riot

had forgotten almost the entire Marie Richardson lascivious grieving episode

that whole scene is incredible. those curtains...

are the uncensored scenes on the blu ray or did you see a screening? how much more explicit is it really? like someone said upthread (i think), part of what's funny/interesting/scary about the orgy is how stiff and non-erotic it is.

I'm talking about the fact that the US release obscured the pelvic areas of the orgiasts with CG onlookers -- "the Austin Powers version," as Roger Ebert called it. Just a reminder that American culture was infantilized even before the Orange Grifter showed up.

Even unobscured, the sex is mechanical and non-erotic, as Kubrick intended.

there are at least 3 brilliant "character" roles filled here:

- the aforementioned Marie Richardson

- Rade Serbedzija as the costume shop owner who ultimately pimps out his daughter

- Alan Cumming as the hotel desk clerk, one of the funniest 3-minute performances in cinema annals (Franklin Pangborn would be proud)

Sydney Pollack for me. No one did smarmy gravitas so well. It's a shame he never made a Phil Jackson biopic.

are the CGI onlookers still present in versions sold in the US now?

you can gifs of the differences here: https://decider.com/2015/01/30/eyes-wide-shut-uncensored-hbo-go/

you don't get to see TC on his knees with a cock in his mouth or anything.

well hope springs eternal

I've come around to really admiring this film. No to the Alan Cumming reception scene, though. I think he comes across as some sort of grotesque gay stereotype - maybe that's the point I guess what with "Are we in the good doctor's head? " and all. Must rewatch.

yeah i loathe Cumming and that scene

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/6-6.jpg

top stuff here

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/eyes-wide-shut-tense-nightmarish-exploration-marriage-sexuality-kubricks-ultimate-film/

the Alan Cummings scene is amazing

ly bad

http://image.ibb.co/eL39vT/vlcsnap_2012_11_04_23h10m23s181.png

I probably should have had some reasonable sexual encounters in my life before seeing this film

are the CGI onlookers still present in versions sold in the US now?

They were up until the 2007 release, which is what i just watched.

hey guess what, for a lot of hotel desk clerks that gay stereotype is true.

btw there is a bar/showplace in NYC now called Club Cumming which he has a stake in

that still above makes it clear why SK originally considered Steve Martin to play Dr Bill

It would never have occurred to me that this was the case:

“In some of the scenes, the backgrounds were rear-projection plates,” the cinematographer reveals. “Generally, when Tom’s facing the camera, the backgrounds are rear-projected; anything that shows him from a side view was done on the streets of London. We had the plates shot in New York by a second unit [that included cinematographers Patrick Turley, Malik Sayeed and Arthur Jafa]. Once the plates were sent to us, we had them force-developed and balanced to the necessary levels. We’d then go onto our street sets and shoot Tom walking on a treadmill. After setting the treadmill to a certain speed, we’d put some lighting effects on him to simulate the glow from the various storefronts that were passing by in the plates. We spent a few weeks on those shots.”

Alan Cumming scene is great.

The whole thing definitely had the feel of being shot on sets. The couple of b-roll shots (maybe a freeway exit or such?) felt really out of place. The rest of it feels kind of like an 80s video.

you can tell if you're looking out for it. it's one of my favorite things about the movie xp

I probably should have had some reasonable sexual encounters in my life before seeing this film

― mh, Monday, June 25, 2018 9:41 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

yeah that's otm for me

there aren't many reasonable encounters in this film! mostly at the mechanical orgy.

Cumming said they shot his scene for a week, and that Kubrick laughed a lot.

if you know downtown Manhattan well, and that Cruise was never on those streets because Kubrick wasn't, you could surmise that something like that projection process was done.

The rest of it feels kind of like an 80s video.

yes. specifically this one that has the same plot as EWS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miGUnKWcYeo

i'm always posting about this ha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHB6etnELE

I admire this movie and how it was made a lot more than I like it. Probably my least favourite Kubrick

Was just with a friend the other day who has been to Sir Ivan's Hamptons Castle on several occasions, including one of the big orgy nights. Fascinating stories.

Go on...

You make my eyes
You make my eyes wide shut
You make my eyes
You make my eyes wide shut

Woah-oh-OH
Woah-OH-oh

is this movie good yet

To my eternal regret, I've only ever attended one of their minor orgy nights.

okay now I refuse to believe EWS wasn't Schnitzler's plot filtered through a Laura Branigan video

right?

That LB's video was directed by William Friedkin and Crusing is also basically about a civil servant's journey into nyc sexual underworld while not getting any bodily-fluid action

orgies are for savages irrc

that's great info, tonga. is cruising any good?

well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7y7g8h1y4

its a neurotic, confused giallo. pacino seems weirdly lost

I rewatch this every couple of years. I'm not sure how much it has to say--If I were married, maybe it would seem more profound to me. The good thing is, you can also look past all that and just enjoy it as bizarre, good-looking junk. One annoying tic that I really noticed this time is the way 37% of Tom Cruise's lines amount to him repeating what's just been said to him. ("Come inside with me. I just live over there." "Come inside with you?") Weirdness everywhere. When Cruise drops into Nick Nightengale's club for the first time, the waiter asks him if he wants a drink; Cruise asks for a beer, and the waiter goes off to get him a beer. There's no mention of what kind of beer--evidently this particular club only carries one generic beer. And the newspaper headline on the model's overdose: "Ex-beauty queen in hotel drugs overdose." Is that even remotely grammatical?

Cruise asks for a beer, and the waiter goes off to get him a beer. There's no mention of what kind of beer--evidently this particular club only carries one generic beer.

This is pretty common though no? Feel like there’s a studious avoidance of brand names in film and tv, which I rarely notice except when characters say, “I’ll have a beer” and the server of courses understands immediately.

xp Hmmm... headlines tend to go for brevity rather than strict grammar. And people rarely ask for a specific type of beer in films and TV, so I'm not sure there's much to read into those. I do really like this film a lot though

I've watched it three times waiting for its profundities to reveal themselves, so I've said the hell with it and enjoy it as chic junk.

But "drugs overdose"? Who calls a drug overdose a drugs overdose? I've never heard that before...Okay, I guess the beer thing makes sense in terms of avoiding product placement.

I think it's just an issue of expediency in films. No one asks for beer or whiskey by name, just like one says goodbye before they hang up the phone. Though it would be funny if every movie that featured a character asking for a beer involves asking what's on draft, hemming and hawing for a couple of minutes, and then eventually just asking the bartender for a Budweiser or whatever.

But yeah, it's also an issue of brands and rights. My wife works in advertising, and whenever we watch any movie or TV show she always comments on what brands are visible and what brands are not visible. She does work for a couple of beer brands in particular, and always notices when a TV bar is branded with, say, Miller products. Miller, for example, is the official beer brand of the FX Network, iirc, so any show you see on FX will likely feature Miller beer. We watched an episode of Russian Doll last night and she was surprised the show was Netflix and not FX, for all the Miller products.

"Drugs overdose' ... is that a British thing, like "maths?"

xpost should say "no one says goodbye"

The scene where Kidman gets high and they argue--great scene--maybe that has important things to say about men and woman, although the observations seem pretty standard. It's most profound observation (I'm going to be really male here, sorry) might be the dynamic Cruise brings up: you're determined to have any argument here, right, and you're going to find any old pretext to have one?

(I meant the oddity of the waiter not asking Cruise what kind of beer, not Cruise simply asking for a beer--that's normal.)

"an argument"

I think "a beer" and "drugs overdose" is perfectly in line with the simulacrum of reality the movie intentionally tries to present. Much has been said about how the movie presents a New York City that is "like" NYC, but somehow off, or genericized

yep, EWS fails the realism test. How un-Kubrickian.

The stagebound NYC is Schnitzler's Vienna in drag.

"junk" is a ludicrous noun to associate with Kubrick. I feel he was slumming with The Shining, but I wouldn't even use that word there.

You're splitting hairs here. You've criticized Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining more than anyone here (I actually like both films, so saying I'm not-liking parts of one of them in the wrong way is weird). Treating Kubrick like a sainted artist incapable of prurient junk is much more ludicrous to me.

He was capable of lumbering, flawed films. Not junk.

And for what it's worth, I'm not someone who's hung up on realism--the beer and the headline jumped out at me as weird, but EWS's weirdness is, for me, it's primary appeal. Kubrick could sometimes get hung up on realism, though; isn't Barry Lyndon, like Heaven's Gate, infamous for the director's maniacal insistence on getting every last historical detail right?

The commitment to decor and other surface detail intensifies the otherwordliness (see Balzac).

EWS completely pulls me in every time and scares me deeply. Dream logic obviously fake sets blah blah yeah, but that only gets you so far- there’s something about this movie that actually does make me feel like descending into a nightmare only to be jolted awake by that final “Fuck.”

“Drugs overdose” always scanned as Brit English to me.

https://d9hhrg4mnvzow.cloudfront.net/more.thestage.co.uk/archive/9eb55960-eno-drugs-shock_07m04i07m04h000000.PNG

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1755000/images/_1757529_now150.jpg

https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/yellowadsplash.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/8jYvqiy.jpg

yes "drugs overdose" v standard British

Point taken--just not something I knew.

The scariest moment in the film for me--or at least the creepiest--is that Cheney-like guy who passes the note to Cruise when he comes back the morning after (with the memorable way he suddenly turns away from the gate after Cruise takes the note).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI0-u-1FYjY

re uncanny britishisms note that the rolls there has a right-hand drive, and that the note is written in the diction of, like, charles augustus milverton

no doubt these are meaningless artifacts of production before they're anything else but they also happen to work well in a movie about tom cruise having a nightmare about the class system

The Rolls is not a right hand drive. You can see there is a driver in silhouette with a cap who turns around to reverse the car.

agh the zoom in on the note

i love this movie

i was thinking of watching this tonight! if i get my work done early enough

may just watch sopranos instead though

it's 5am. I need to see this film again soon. it's only been a year or something..

if Cruise had ordered a Michelob Ultra, many theses would've been written about What It Meant

Rewatched EWS just before the revive (the blu was cheap).

I still love the gleaming backgrounds and camera work, and still like seeing Cruise repeatedly emasculated. There's some attempted Heart of Glass hypnosis going on during Kidman's baked monologue, and it doesn't work any better for me here. This viewing I noticed just how many monetary transactions are detailed during Dr. Harford's evening odyssey, and found myself keeping a mental tally.

Shining aside, most Kubrick tackles "bigger" issues than the sexual jealousy that underpins this. Sure, the Bilderberg conspiracy orgy comments on social class, but this theme isn't really central. EWS is all escalating symbolic castrations, maybe cosmic correction, maybe karma for Dr. Harford's contemplated infidelity.

I've read Kubrick attempted to adapt Traumnovelle before Barry Lyndon. The perplexing thing for me is that for a passion project, it all seems pretty slight.

One thing I remember enjoying was trying to match the colours used to the wealth and status of the people depicted - from red, wealthy, through to violet, poor. It doesn’t really hold up but it’s fun.

Coming up to TWENTY YEARS in July, my god.

this film is much more purposefully funny than people give it credit for

I don't think it's "about" sexual jealousy at all. love, death, pain, identity, the whole damn thing.

yeah he really had a lot of fun playing with the Cruise/Kidman public persona & even rumors about his sexuality

sanpaku otm though I disagree that it's slight, I think going down a rabbit hole from garden variety male insecurity w/r/t fidelity --> parties and a type of society or club that Kubrick definitely knew about, where the common thread is sexual rituals that seem completely sexless or sterile and dispassionate.... is pretty nuts. totally disorienting and scary. its connection to or lack thereof to actual secret society stuff is irrelevant, it's just one of the best dream/nightmare movies ever. you can look at the orgy as a thinly veiled whoever reference, or a variant on the "I'm naked and I have to give a speech in class" dream. and like a dream, it's full of loose ends and concludes suddenly, unresolved.

it's a dumb movie, but I'll keep watching!

flappy otm and I agree that the meta casting angle shouldn't be overlooked or underappreciated

it’s why he’s Bill Harford - “bill” for money, and a portmanteau of Harrison-Ford

haven't watched the film since it first came out, haven't really had the desire to watch it again. at the time thought it was really thin gruel. the stunt casting really emphasizes the degree to which i do not like the lead characters. the whole thing came off to me as a boring and tedious slog with no emotional stakes. but also i'm not really motivated by sexual desire or sexual jealousy so the movie was never going to connect with me.

tbqh I think Warners let Kubrick know he needed big stars for this, just as for Barry Lyndon they TOLD him it had to be Ryan O'Neal or Robert Redford.

I think I have only seen this movie in its entirety once, but I recall it being possibly the weirdest and most surreal approach to the most boring and mundane of material. I have no doubt he needed Cruise and Kidman to get the thing made, but then I thought, why this movie? Why did he want to tell this story? Because there's really not much there, and what's there is kind of facile, iirc.

To be more generous, maybe the movie is ahead of its time? Maybe the movie Kubrick wanted to make couldn't be made then? I could totally imagine if he were alive him making a better version of it today, or another filmmaker making a much more effective version of it today.

i like the idea of the clash of form and content, but frankly lynch's "dune" is a far more interesting failure on those grounds (though dune is at least a legitimately good story).

y’all are wrong and should see it again

i mean the relative thinness of the plot seems almost beside the point to me

amazing y'all don't complain about the most idiotic plot Kubrick ever used, but then you've always been the caretaker

I know I've mentioned before that Traumnovelle was made for German TV in 1969 (it's on YouTube)

regarding the movie feeling "slight," or never seeming to amount to much...I've come around to the idea this was intentional in some way...and the whole pollack scene at the end is so brilliant in the ways that it both posits some ultimate conspiratorial meaning to the whole thing and then draws the curtain down on any possibility of finding out what that is. "life goes on...until it doesn't." I think the movie is less a psychoanalytic allegory than it is about the impossibility of ever finding your way out into something like allegorical meaning, like the way the dreams slip away as you begin to wake up.

I also think James Hillman's "Dreams and the Underworld" is a really good text to read alongside this movie!

That Pollack scene is what I find unsatisfying about the film. The actors' rhythms are off, the scene awkwardly edited, and it goes on for too long.

I like Sydney Pollack as an actor, but he's basically himself no matter the character--he seems to have parachuted in from Tootsie. I can envision Harvey Keitel in that role.

About 90 percent of the posts in this revive have been infuriating, but it was all worth it for Morbs to admit The Shining isn't junk.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AltruisticElatedAtlanticblackgoby-size_restricted.gif

this film is much more purposefully funny than people give it credit for
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius)

^^^

“I’m a doctor” *flashes ID like a cop*

I don't think the film's humor was totally overlooked, considering its legacy may ultimately be ornate masked orgies as comedy punchline. Fidelio! But really the movie should have been funnier, weirder and/or more suspenseful, something that left you scratching your head in a good way. And Cruise and Kidman are terribly miscast.

i dunno, i think Kidman's punchline to the entire movie suggests they're perfectly (if stunt) cast

Alice Harford: I do love you and you know there is something very important we need to do as soon as possible.
Dr. Bill Harford: What's that?
Alice Harford: Fuck the NRA

That would have left people scratching their head for sure!

FIDELIO

Succumbing to the trolls here, but I don’t understand how anyone could not find something to love here especially in light of all the trash that’s put out weekly. Tough crowd

There's a lot to love, or at least appreciate. Just not the movie itself, imo.

This film was far from universally praised when it came it out.

http://newrepublic.com/article/131189/kubrick-sadness
http://slate.com/culture/1999/07/the-naked-and-the-dead.html
http://www.salon.com/1999/07/16/eyes/
http://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/12/12/eyes-wide-shut-1999-review-by-andrew-sarris/

Was there some point between then and now where treating it as something less than great art became "trolling"?

most of kubrick's films post-strangelove received mixed reviews when they were first released, though, didn't they? 2001's early reviews were notoriously bad and clockwork orange struck a lot of critics as a morally repellent movie. i was reading some of the original reviews of the shining a while back and "kubrick is slumming" seemed to be the general consensus.

i remember reading that salon review of EWS when it came out. charles taylor has always seemed like such an insufferable crank to me -- i don't think i've ever read a piece of his, even a rave about something i liked, that didn't make me cringe at some point.

a lot of it, I think, is the chasm between what people expected from Kubrick at a given time, and what they got.

(xpost) Don't disagree with any of that--he was a polarizing filmmaker. So, re the "trolling" comment above (sorry, I hate the word and the concept, and I have to use the quotation marks), I don't know why, 20 years later, anything would change with Eyes Wide Shut. Some people love it, some don't--there's no ulterior motive in expressing reservations about it.

Most people who like it have reservations, me included. Tom Cruise crying is never a good thing.

I know I'm not the first person to say this, but the best joke in the film goes back to Bogart in The Big Sleep: the way everyone who comes into contact with Cruise wants to climb all over him.

well I've never understood why exactly, but he was considered sexy in '99

This movie is better than your lives.

Well, a lot of things are better than your lives, let's be honest.

You may be betraying more than you intend there.

a lot of it, I think, is the chasm between what people expected from Kubrick at a given time, and what they got.

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius)

otm, he took so much time between movies and made relatively few. and it's obviously easier and less disorienting to go through an artist's body of work when it's finished.

Janet Maslin got it right when EWS came out. I'll see if it's still on youtube, Charlie Rose had a panel of critics on to talk about it.

I posted this mind-boggling shot-by-shot analysis of EWS on the general Kubrick thread, it's well worth a read (but very long):

http://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/ews_toc.htm

One of the most disturbing things it mentions is that in the toy shop at the very end, the daughter appears to be led away by three men who were earlier seen at the party.

JD: I read that Charles Taylor review and found the tone and the objections he raised pretty straightforward. I don't know about his reviews in general--I used to read him now and again, but it's been a while.

sometimes I feel like this film has more of a Lynch feel than a Kubrick feel

Are people really unaware of the generic movie trope of characters just ordering "a beer" or "a whiskey" or whatever? I literally can't think of a single movie aside from Blue Velvet where a character orders a beer by name.

The Deer Hunter--Rolling Rock! There are probably others, but now that I think about it, you're right.

I trust that somewhere there's a senior thesis comparing Bill Harford to Cruise's other sex-obsessed (sort of) character in 1999, Magnolia's Frank T.J. Mackey.

I've never seen Vanilla Sky, but for some reason I thought that would be a similar character.

I don't think so, from what I remember...Ships passing in the night: Kubrick's last film, P.T. Anderson's third. If you had to single out one director today who's closer to Kubrick than any other, I think it'd be Anderson. Not a perfect fit, but I can't think of a better match.

Christopher Nolan is jumping up and down in his seat with his hand raised

ugh, NEXT

I agree that PTA is the closest analogue to Kubrick today (at least in America).

Not US, but I'd argue for Jonathan Glazer as being closest to inheriting the Kubrick mantle. Similar framing, camera movement, themes, hollow characters, use of music. Less so in Glazer's debut Sexy Beast than in his Kidman feature Birth and in Under the Skin. As Kubrick had planned for decades, Glazer is presently filming a Holocaust film.

Nolan is another formalist, but working more in time/editing clockwork than in meticulous production design. He has none of Kubrick's cynicism, and relies heavily on screenwriting kludges that Kubrick would find risible. PTA genuinely seems to love his characters and his films are suffused with humanity. In some ways he's an anti-Kubrick.

ilx in a laughable heretic mood

Glazer's Kubrickian tendencies are, yeah, I think more formalist and self-conscious. Though Under the Skin is an example of a movie I could have totally seen Kubrick making had he come along a couple of decades later. Same thing with The Master or Phantom Thread. Maybe even There Will Be Blood.

Not Nolan.

Nolan is a waste of celluloid, but Glazer and Anderson RULE and are pretty distinct from SK to me. Anderson's films are always about love, for starters. Glazer might be a better counterpart, in that respect.

I'm not really thinking about what Kubrick's films are about, per se. I really don't see a thematic through line.

I think Kubrick was trying to suggest something about the duality of man.

here or always?

Haha just a little joke — paraphrase from full metal jacket.

When I compared PTA to Kubrick, I was also--maybe mostly--thinking about stature. I think Anderson, among English-language directors, is the guy whose films are most anticipated right now and most automatic for acclaim, end-of-year lists, etc.

He's, especially lately, the guy with big ideas, long takes, formidable (but no longer flashy) directing chops, etc.

Kubrick ... I'm too young to remember, but at the time did The Shining or Full Metal Jacket generate much in the way of significant acclaim/year-end praise, let alone anticipation?

full metal jacket very much so on both points; i'm too young to remember as far as shining is concerned

Was it? Not the the Oscars is *the* measure but it is *a* measure, and it was only nominated for best adapted screenplay (which it lost).

i was a kid and even i was aware that it was much admired and anticipated.

yep

This interview around the time of Full Metal Jacket addresses the question of Kubrick and critical acclaim:

Initial reviews of most of your films are sometimes inexplicably hostile. Then there’s a reevaluation. Critics seem to like you better in retrospect.

That’s true. The first reviews of 2001 were insulting, let alone bad. An important Los Angeles critic faulted Paths of Glory because the actors didn’t speak with French accents. When Dr. Strangelove came out, a New York paper ran a review under the head Moscow could not buy more harm to America. Something like that. But critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion. Which is why I think audiences are more reliable than critics, at least initially. Audiences tend not to bring all that critical baggage with them to each film.

And I really think that a few critics come to my films expecting to see the last film. They’re waiting to see something that never happens. I imagine it must be something like standing in the batter’s box waiting for a fast ball, and the pitcher throws a change-up. The batter swings and misses. He thinks, “Shit, he threw me the wrong pitch.” I think this accounts for some of the initial hostility.

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/the-rolling-stone-interview-stanley-kubrick-in-1987-90904/

I totally agree that many (all?) of his films have grown or at least changed in estimation over the years. Or at least are frequently reassessed. That's something else.

I wasn't that much of a kid, old enough to remember when it came out, and I mostly remember Full Metal received as yet another Vietnam film (Hamburger Hill, Platoon, etc.) and that it was not considered one of Kubrick's best movies, tbh. Can't speak to its anticipation the way I can to that of EWS which of course followed decades of radio silence (as opposed to Full Metal, which followed only 6 or 7 years off), and arrived as a Big Deal.

I recall Full Metal Jacket being a big deal, but 1) still pre-internet, so a big deal then wasn't as big a big deal as now, and, as you point out, 2) it landed in the middle of a bunch of Vietnam films all at once. Triggered by what, I don't know--it was the second Vietnam cluster after Deer Hunter/Coming Home/Apocalypse Now, only this one involved twice as many films. (The best of which, for me, had the bad luck to be released last: Casualties of War.)

Same year as Born on the 4th of July iirc. And yeah, talk about a film (Casualties) that's been reassessed.

When I compared PTA to Kubrick, I was also--maybe mostly--thinking about stature. I think Anderson, among English-language directors, is the guy whose films are most anticipated right now and most automatic for acclaim, end-of-year lists, etc.

― clemenza, Tuesday, February 12, 2019 10:30 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah this is where I see the similarity, also in how it takes a few years for PTA's films to be reevaluated - The Master & Inherent Vice specifically, which I remember left a lot of people scratching their heads. Though I suppose that's where the comparison ends, everything prior was well received and Phantom Thread pulled almost everyone that was alienated by the past two or three films back in. He's also taking less time now than he was post-PDL.

Abigail Good (the Mysterious Woman): They took this space which is now a really beautiful hotel in St. Pancras. A very grand building with a big staircase. It was all very surreal because we were doing these weird ceremonial movements for months. We would meet and rehearse and come up with ideas. And every day, Leon would record it and come back with feedback from Stanley.

Julienne Davis (Mandy): Stanley said, “It’s not gonna be any of this,” and he made a thrusting gesture. Instead, he said it would be more a kind of modern dance with the inference of sex.

Russell Trigg (dancer): Yolande’s practice involves lots of contact work and improvisation, so that guided the rehearsal. It’s a deliberate kind of movement. She was trying to get a more kind of sensual approach to it. One time, I was working with somebody else, and we had to move along a wall and against each other. There was another scene on beds or sofas. The pressure and resistance of bodies against bodies, bodies against tables or walls or other kinds of props.

Yolande Snaith (choreographer): I’m not sure that Stanley knew entirely what he wanted. It felt like a sort of research period, with me playing around with ideas and presenting them to him, and him looking at them and feeding back. Jocelyn Pook was a composer I knew, [who had a piece called] “Backwards Priests.” I was using that in the rehearsal studio because it felt very appropriate. When Stanley was looking at the tapes of rehearsal, he asked, “What is that music?”

Jocelyn Pook (composer): Stanley said, “I’ve heard this piece from your album. I’d love to hear more stuff.” I remember a car came within a few hours to collect the little cassette I made. And the next day, the car returned to pick me up, and I went to see him in Pinewood studio. He was really excited about some music he was listening to, and he talked me through the section he wanted me to work on. Of course, it was a very intimidating situation to be in, because I hadn’t ever scored a film before. At the beginning, he just asked me to try some ideas for the masked-ball scene and the orgy scene. I was asked later to do the rest of the original music.

Leon Vitali: We were taking so long that sometimes the leases ran out on where we could rehearse. I was having trouble holding on to some of the girls I’d found because they had other obligations and jobs. And then we had to find some more because we realized we didn’t have enough. It was all very Stanley.

YS: I think his vision of the orgy scene over the course of the time we worked on it became much more of a literal orgy. There was a problem because the models would have to be paid a lot more to do that, and some of them didn’t want to do it.

AG: Leon came back one day with pictures from the Kama Sutra and said, “Stanley would like you to draw inspiration from these images,” at which point we were all sort of like, “Okay, that’s not really what we signed up for.” But we knew each other very well at this point, so taking on more of a sexual nature was not so shocking.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/eyes-wide-shut-orgy-scene-oral-history.html

Yolande Snaith is an anagram for Handy Toenails.

Opened 20 years ago today.

I will now observe the occasion by watching Swing Time.

Lol

Nick Nightingale sounds like an Astaire character

I will observe not knowing what date Swing Time opened by not watching Swing Time.

Thought this bump was going to be related to the Laura Branigan thread.

haha

so happy to have played a part in making that a thing.

From a 2002 profile of Jeffrey Epstein:

All the speculation and mystery has proved fertile ground for some alternative Jeffrey Epstein stories – the most bizarre of which has him playing the piano (he is classically trained) for high rollers in a Manhattan piano bar in the mid-eighties.

This is great:

https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/eyes-wide-shut-orgy-scene-oral-history.html

as posted on July 1

I wasn't trying to dis EWS, I rewatched it last year

Ah cool

What happened to Todd Field? He's made a whopping two films, both with tons of attention and award nominations, but Little Children was back in 2006 and nothing since then. Even his acting has been next to nothing.

There were too many Todds at the time--Haynes, Solondz, Holland--so one of them had to go.

I still think this is an extraordinary film

The most.

todd Holland?

Directed most of the Larry Sanders episodes.

What a weird oral history. These two things jumped out at me:

One of the problems was that they had to be totally natural. No Botox, no breast enhancements, anything like that. I made it very clear to everybody who came and their agents.

And that was because Stanley wanted this very particular body type, a sort of Barbie-doll type.

So everyone had to be "totally natural," but Kubrick wanted "Barbie-doll" types? OK. That whole scene is so dumb, and would have been better had it been more surreal or whatever word they kept throwing around. Like, I dunno, the sequence at the end of Gaspar Noe's "Love" or something. Because what hurts that whole scene in EWS is that, from memory, it is so cheesy Red Shoes Diaries or whatever. So ... mission accomplished? And failed?

My wife and I saw this movie on our honeymoon on a hot day in Hawaii. Actually, we saw a third of it before the projector broker. Then we kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and went out to dinner instead.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, June 25, 2012 12:23 AM (seven years ago)

perhaps it's a film about how marriage attracts the mutually tasteless
― Ward Fowler, Monday, June 25, 2012 3:12 AM (seven years ago)

It still plays beautifully.

Eh, you know what? Fuck all y'all.

I'll never marry, which makes sense because I don't understand the appeal of this movie even after three viewings.

It's tantamount to understanding the appeal of ILX after 16 years tbh.

borad 7 is where the bad silly and boring orgies take place

Tantamount Pictures Presents

ILX Wide Shut

By far his scariest movie

Thought this bump was going to be related to the Laura Branigan thread.

I saw this 4 times in the theater in 99. The last time (this was back when movies would play for a while) was probably in late summer in the Angelika in downtown Houston with just me and an elderly couple. I wonder what they made of it.

In Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Tom Cruise gives us a complete, devastatingly accurate catalog of the crumbling defensive postures that a nude or semi-nude man can take while trying to retain a tone of "level-headed" condescension during a boudoir argument with their partner or spouse. pic.twitter.com/VQ3DBvYorz

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) September 7, 2019

rethinking some of the plot elements now that we've revived the thread yet again

I'm not sure Dr. Bill's sexual jealousy is as much about the fear of his wife's infidelity as much as it is a realization he's incapable of imagining his own sexual fantasy scenarios. Alice's is both visceral and straightforward. He stumbles into this effete circle of elites who have concocted an elaborate ritual that has the trappings of eroticism but ends in what Morbs correctly described as mechanical, non-erotic sex

there's a sideline in the current HBO series Succession about people who are born moneyed being unable to participate in, or at least find joy in, a myriad of human experiences -- but they try to compensate by spending lots of money or going off script

if they could just buy an ice cream cone and have it mean something

buying an ice cream company and feeling a half second of ennui

I assume this movie is just on a loop at Morbz' house

Give up your inquiries which are completely useless, and consider
these words a second warning. We hope, for your own good, that
this will be sufficient.

the irritation in "which are completely useless" is palpable

orgies plausibly run by Trump

Shakey, it's at best my 6th-favorite Kubrick film, ya doof

*bangs staff*

this would make a great double feature with Three Days of the Condor

Interesting that it seems to have had some critical rehab in these last few years

https://filmschoolrejects.com/best-movies-1990s/9/

it's been several years since I've seen it, but does EWS ever get compared to Vanilla Sky (itself an adaptation of a 1997 film called open Your Eyes)?

I was going to rewatch that the other night, was one of my favorites as a kid. yeah, I never thought about it really but there's tons of stuff in common: the mask, male insecurity/impotence, an ordinary powerful man in extraordinary circumstances, marital/spousal anxiety, forces beyond our control/out of sight, mysterious organizations...

I was somewhat enthusiastic about that movie for a moment when it was released, but once you get past the surface it's Cameron Crowe doing the same shit about relationship dynamics, who gets to be trustworthy in what ways, with his record collection playing a little too loudly over the sountrack

it's been several years since I've seen it, but does EWS ever get compared to Vanilla Sky (itself an adaptation of a 1997 film called open Your Eyes)?

at the time quite a lot, iirc.

Shakey, it's at best my 6th-favorite Kubrick film, ya doof

Who's calling whom the doof here?

well i know you dont like Strangelove cuz it's funny, honeybunch

Given that and 2001 aren't allowed to NOT be in the top 5, that still leaves three whole slots and aside from Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining and Barry Lyndon, what else is there?

Nothing, that's what.

Paths of Glory and The Killing, wisenheimer

there's a reason Welles said Kubrick was "a giant" in the early '60s

I'm glad we all agree that this is Kubrick's shittiest movie

you have always been the caretaker, Mr Collier

this is prob my favorite kubrick movie bc i'm a dumbass. barry lyndon #2

my boring opinion is that kubrick's films are all at least good

i mean, even fear and desire isn't really that bad for what it is

I’m with Brad

'fraid so

infilitrating one of those eyes wide shut secret masked sex parties but just for the music

— ▀▀▀▀▀▀ (@immolations) October 17, 2019

lol "no you don't understand, I only go to those parties to see Nick Nightingale play"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJMW4WFXkAAxqrZ?format=jpg&name=large

Paths of Glory and The Killing, wisenheimer

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, September 9, 2019 2:52 PM (two months ago)

Posted just barely too early for "OK Boomer."

A recent meme:

Here are some photos of the Buttigieg fundraiser in Napa -- with the famous wine cave and the chandelier with 1,500 Swarovski crystals -- hosted by a for-profit HMO billionaire. pic.twitter.com/JZhoMgtJHL

— Kompromatthew (@MattTheGweat) December 16, 2019

ok that is actually funny

Some intriguing points of intersection with another Frederic Raphael-written film about a floundering marriage: Two for the Road with Finney and Hepburn. For starters, its last dialogue is

"Bitch." "Bastard."

i thought this was a good point:
https://www.screenslate.com/features/298

Among Eyes Wide Shut’s strangest effects is that it feels like a video game: its dialogue is clumsily literal, repetitive, and expository; its plot is linear and structured like a quest; its protagonist encounters almost exclusively non-player characters, simple ciphers with no purpose beyond helping or obstructing him. Its simulacrum New York recalls the game-worlds traversed by Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh in eXistenZ (from the same year), where the plot stalls if the players don’t use the correct phrases.

Really tempted to see the new year in watching this but not sure my wife would be up for it.

Somehow I only saw this film for the first time this year. I think I'd have enjoyed it more if it'd gone all Mulholland Drive in the last 20 minutes, instead of finishing on a total damp squib of a shopping trip.

that video game theory is p cool, eyes wide shut does kind of have an fmv horror game feeling about it

same Alba

the whole simulacrum thing is just kubrick 101 post-lolita. there is a quote by him about how film is not a photograph of reality, but a photograph of a photograph of a reality.

when your circle small but yall crazy pic.twitter.com/r7bgWFG0sJ

— catarina camargo (@catarinacmrg) July 26, 2020

That was the first (failed) attempt to use the heart attack gun on Stanley.

Finally found out why Harvey Keitel got fired by Kubrick while making Eyes Wide Shut.
Gary Oldman on the specific reason here & the general principle of it for Mr Keitel underneath. pic.twitter.com/RilIs25sMT

— Tom Reagan’s Hat (@RufusTSuperfly) May 13, 2022

keitel otm, another dumb and bad film, sorry anthony, sorry morbs kubrick only made one good film and this isn't it

wrong!!!!!

keitel was otm. telling an actor he can't walk through a door properly after 68 takes is disrespectful in the extreme. and fucking crazy, too.

mark s should specify which kubrick film he thinks is the one good one, so everyone who likes just one kubrick film can see if they agree which one is the good one

keitel otm, another dumb and bad film, sorry anthony, sorry morbs kubrick only made one good film and this isn't it

it's a strongly worded opinion. like most of yours.

i’m sure ol’ stan was a frustrating guy to work for at times but “i had to walk through a doorway a bunch of times” is not exactly a chilling tale of directorial tyranny run rampant

for some reason i thought this was the kubrick film mark s thought was good!

barry lyndon is the one that IS good (implausibly good)

how odd. that's not the one I think is his good one. one of us must be wrong!

barry lyndon is truly awesome but come on eyes wide shut is a dream!!!!

keitel: he made me walk through a door 68 times

me: sounds like a kubrick movie

I would guess this dumbass hasn't seen Paths Of Glory.

me? no

im not going to either

No director should demand anything of an actor with the range of Winston Wolfe to Arkansas State Police Detective Hal Slocumb.

i’m sure ol’ stan was a frustrating guy to work for at times but “i had to walk through a doorway a bunch of times” is not exactly a chilling tale of directorial tyranny run rampant

lol this is disgusting

people on side kubrick re: this topic need some perspective

I just watched the Cannibal Holocaust ep of Cursed Films, and from that perspective, yeah, team Kubrick

not sure which film I had a worse time in the cinema watching, eyes wide shut or a.i., I think the eyes have it.

I’ve heard pollack somewhere make basically the same complaint about doing that role, but iirc his attitude was more “this is confusing and annoying but it still beats working”

I can easily envision Keitel in that role--he'd probably lose some of Pollack's superficial slickness, otherwise he would have been a good fit.

https://i.imgur.com/yL9TPI4.jpg

that's how they made half of The Mandalorian iirc

eyes wide shut needed more baby yoda

False, Mandalorian needed more of Tom Cruise getting gay-bashed

😱

Quite a piece which deploys the book (and film) a bit

I rarely write personal essays, but this time I did, about the stickiest of all conversations we might have with our significant others.https://t.co/xJdBYFL4sJ

— Megan Abbott (@meganeabbott) June 2, 2023

You Must Remember This is coming to the end of its Erotic 80s/90s seasons and I believe is wrapping it up with a two-parter on EWS. First episode is up:

https://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/eyes-wide-shut-part-1-erotic-90s-part-20

Honestly, give her the Peabody

Rather!

one of the least erotic film about sex I know

*s

Sex itself is, I think, pretty low on the list of things this movie's about but ymmv

really? “let’s fuck”?

The last line of the picture, and it’s just “Fuck.” (And it’s a punchline.)

okay well i mean don’t be coy the idea idea that eyes wide shut isn’t about sex is an unusual one you have to admit, say more

I'd say it's about the fear of sex?

It's "We fuck" isn't it?

"You know, there is something very important that we need to do as soon as possible"
"What's that?"
"Fuck"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOHvgvRVCDo

Schooled!

The podcast is a treasure obviously but I forgot how Longworth hits all her “t”s “EroTic eighTies” .. frankly it’s not just that, her whole Chef John intonation drives me to distraction. but i will listen for the info :)

She veers very very close to Moira Rose territory

It’s been driving me crazy all day just needed to share

Her delivery has definitely gotten more arch and affected over the years, to the point that if you’re not highly invested in the content, it’s practically unlistenable

She used to get criticised a lot online for not ennunciating properly and has overcorrected. Can't win.

The podcast is a treasure obviously but I forgot how Longworth hits all her “t”s “EroTic eighTies” .. frankly it’s not just that, her whole Chef John intonation drives me to distraction. but i will listen for the info :)

It's close enough to an incantatory delivery that I look forward to listening

(Which means it'll be a good match for Kubrick)

Roffle. I roll with it, it's fine! Met her years ago well before the podcast started, she's a good sort.

If you join her patreon you can get transcripts, for those of you here who find it so horrible TO HEAR A WOMAN SPEAK.

I've always liked her delivery. She also has a very wry sense of humor.

I haven't given her podcast the attention it deserves. I'm streaming the sex, lies and videotape ep.

The series she did on Polly Platt and the one on Dead Blondes were especially good.

if you don't have the 2.5 hours free to watch EWS then just watch the video for Laura Branigan's "Self Control" which is the same plot and many of the same shots but is like 5 minutes long, predates EWS by 15 years and has a really cool song over it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtn9AwgfQQ

― jed_, Wednesday, 2 July 2008 01:31

lmao otm

Saw this for the first time today and it was much more watchable and good than I was led to believe, although there were several false notes.

Cruise has taken a beating itt for his acting but Kidman is worse, consistently too mannered. I guess pot smoking was new at the time of this film, because it wasn't portrayed at all believably.

Can I just complain about the "West Village" set - why do studios trying to recreate NYC always show a street that ends by running into a cross street, thereby forming a T-shape? That is not a configuration that really exists in NYC with possibly a few exceptions. Many old Hollywood films use a "NYC" backlot set with the same configuration - MGM maybe? Definitely the Universal lot was like this. You see it in TV shows right through the 1970s.

Nevertheless, the mystery and the surrealism of the film were overall quite captivating.

https://i.imgur.com/YWdTpPo.jpeg

why do studios trying to recreate NYC always show a street that ends by running into a cross street, thereby forming a T-shape?

Unacceptable. Just shoot in NYC ffs. But they couldn’t in this case because Kubrick was too afraid of flying there.

I don't think his fear of flying wouldn't have changed anything. With the way he worked, he wouldn't have shot on location, it would have to be in a 100% controlled environment like a soundstage.

I never bought the criticism against his decision to work this way. It reminds me of the story Truffaut told in the intro of his book on Hitchcock. “In the course of an interview during which I praised Rear Window to the skies, an American critic surprised me by commenting, ‘You love Rear Window because, as a stranger to New York, you know nothing about Greenwich Village.’ To this absurd statement I replied, ‘Rear Window is not about Greenwich Village, it is a film about cinema, and I do know cinema!” He could've said something similar about Eyes Wide Shut. Shooting a fabrication of NYC ultimately works in favor of the dreamlike nature of the film - having the night time surroundings feel unreal rather than allowing a documentary element to flow in was the right call.

Yeah, exactly. It’s a film about constructed reality on many levels.

I can buy that. Because at the same time they did get a lot of detail correct in their street set - specific lettering on signs, decals on newspaper stands etc. - which contributes an uncanny aspect to those scenes.

Parts of the film reminded me very much of Scorsese's After Hours. I wonder if that was an influence.

This New York has the same dream quality as the european(?) city in the unconsoled by Ishiguro imo.

Here’s a real corner you could see in this movie though tbf

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kk3oZ2NYeTxaxphE7?g_st=ic

He was nothing if not consistently deliberate in details that seem wrong (ie the impossible interior layout of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining). One detail in EWS that signals to me that we’re in a fantasy/imagined NYC is that the buildings are numbered sequentially on the same side of a street (36, 37, 38).

blog post on exactly this https://www.scoutingny.com/stanley-kubrick-the-shining-new-york-city-the-filming-locations-of-eyes-wide-shut/

Interesting. Between the blog post and the comments it looks like they're covering all the ways to look at this. Seems as if Kubrick and his sets are kind of like Hitchcock and his green screens - it's difficult to nail down their exact intentions, if any.

(Aside: someone online said the costume shop in EWS was based on the facade of Trash and Vaudeville in the the East Village and I thought "no it's not, it looks just like a particular storefront on West 8th St. - I've shopped there!")... and someone in the blog comments supports my take.

Getting the full-on Criterion overview:

https://www.criterion.com/films/34534-eyes-wide-shut

maybe finally time for me to get a 4k player

seems like there's quite a bit of controversy about the transfer! I'll withhold judgment until I see it, but some of the still images look great to me, with suitable grain and not overly crisp lights...so we'll see.

A Discord I'm on with some heavy film geeks were going on about the aspect ratio.

Good grain and nice colours to my eyes. Not as nice as the 35mm print that's been doing the rounds but you can't have everything.

EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) 35mm scan. 4K, one 5.1 audio track and 19 subtitle options. More info below.
Link: https://t.co/gqA10wQX8W pic.twitter.com/Nvggqf27x6

— kalasevsky (@kalasevsky) May 2, 2024

Él gets the Criterion nod.

https://www.criterion.com/films/33695-el

― Ned Raggett, Monday, August 18, 2025 1:30 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

about time!

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, August 18, 2025 2:05 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Seeing way more chatter about it than Criterion releasing Eyes Wide Shut as well, that's for sure.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, August 18, 2025 3:14 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

An Eyes Wide Shut directed by Don Luis would've been a keeper.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, August 18, 2025 3:32 PM

I got a panasonic and ordered this, Sorcerer, and Barry Lyndon today. RIP my wallet but I think it's gonna be well worth it.

Even tho I doubt my eyes can muster full 4K resolution these days, the UHD discs often pay much more attention to dynamic range etc, a much more film like experience for me. The 4K of ALIEN is particularly great.