Blogcritics: Comments on "Fck": Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut*

Comment by Rodney Welch

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 00:29:18 EST

I got that impression as well, Michael -- but it may also be that Kubrick was working on the wrong turf. He wasn't unfamiliar with dealing with people on an intimate level in his films, of course, but he was always better dealing with the relationship between people and institutional societies (namely the military, a world he understood well.)

Comment by Michael Croft

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 00:12:26 EST

I've often wondered if it's generational. Growing up with a post-AIDS understanding of sex may make a statement that seems shocking or deep to Kubrick or Cruise seem underwhelming to me. I know there are people who love it, and some of them think it's destined to be considered a classic, but if it can't speak to future generations, then it doesn't have a long life ahead of it.

Comment by Rodney Welch

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 00:07:21 EST

Oh, and the movie's last word -- didn't that look like a sad act of desperation to you? As if Kubrick thought there was some kind of integrity in endorsing marital fidelity? It's just such a Doctor Phil kind of movie. One demands a view that it more interesting, a story that at the ending has a unique point of view, instead of the shallow one we got.

Comment by Rodney Welch

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 00:00:04 EST

"I can't imagine that Kubrick set out to make a movie that reflected the mental & sexual state of the common man in our world today or whatever--when had he ever done that before?--so I think to declare it a failure on that basis is missing the point." Well, obviously the Cruise character isn't common -- he's a rich doctor -- but he did seem to be someone with whom we are supposed to identify or relate. To me, the story just seemed old hat, and not quite as cutting edge as Kubrick imagined.

Comment by Sean T. Collins

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:12:13 EST

Well, diff'rent strokes, etc. Still, I can't imagine that Kubrick set out to make a movie that reflected the mental & sexual state of the common man in our world today or whatever--when had he ever done that before?--so I think to declare it a failure on that basis is missing the point. Kubrick's was a cinema of worst-case scenarios. This was one of them, and this time he was exploring the worst-case sexual scenario, as opposed to worst-case family in The Shining, worst-case technology in 2001, worst-case geopolitics in Strangelove, worst-case military justice in Paths of Glory, worst-case criminality in Clockwork Orange, etc. Moreover, there's a difference between simple sex and marital infidelity, and this was a film about the latter. At any rate, it wasn't that Alice just thought about the guy while jerking off--she made it very clear that had the sailor said so much as "hello," she would have left the marriage. So I think we can forgive Dr. Bill for being a little upset.

Comment by Taloran

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:06:16 EST

I saw it while taking a class in a little village outside of Rochester, NY. I kept waiting for something, anything, to happen, and then the credits started to roll. Ugh.

Comment by Michael Croft

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:01:55 EST

Yep. "Sex is dangerous". Best film about sex, 1958. It was boring.

Comment by Rodney Welch

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 21:50:12 EST

The reason audiences bolted from Eyes Wide Shut is that it was a bad film and the director was as out of date as his source material. Tom Cruise's character -- a man who freaks out over the mere fact that his wife has sexual fantasies about other men -- was far more common in Schnitizler's time than in the world you and I share.

Blogcritics: Comments on "F*ck": Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut

Comment by Rodney Welch

Comment by Michael Croft

Comment by Rodney Welch

Comment by Rodney Welch

Comment by Sean T. Collins

Comment by Taloran

Comment by Michael Croft

Comment by Rodney Welch

Blogcritics: Comments on "Fck": Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut*