"cheap erotic thriller" via Schnitzler
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 24 June 2012 13:44 (twelve years ago) link
it's still a great film about marriage. and I agree it is one of kubrick's best looking films.
― akm, Sunday, 24 June 2012 15:51 (twelve years ago) link
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?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 24 June 2012 17:14 (twelve years ago) link
no, I think it's frequently profound and on the level.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 24 June 2012 18:11 (twelve years ago) link
that scene with kidman and cruise stoned in pants and talking veeeery slooowly is brutal though.
― jed_, Sunday, 24 June 2012 18:24 (twelve years ago) link
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
― piscesx, Sunday, 24 June 2012 18:53 (twelve years ago) link
All the slow talking is a way of making a dream rhythm (first party scene, too).
― Odd Spice (Eazy), Sunday, 24 June 2012 18:54 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 24 June 2012 19:03 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― ryan, Sunday, 24 June 2012 19:36 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 24 June 2012 19:53 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― ryan, Sunday, 24 June 2012 20:09 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Odd Spice (Eazy), Sunday, 24 June 2012 20:11 (twelve years ago) link
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, 24 June 2012 20:12 (twelve years ago) link
Oh, there's no question it's a Kubrick Film.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 24 June 2012 20:46 (twelve years ago) link
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.
â Eazy, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 1:22 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark
― Black_vegeta (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, 24 June 2012 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
cool post
I wish that were the case! Like, "Eyes Wide Shut" is the world's most expensive PSA for venereal disease.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 24 June 2012 21:42 (twelve years ago) link
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!
― Hootie Tootie O'Bootie (tootie and the blowfish), Sunday, 24 June 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
i actually love this scene! (or remember loving this scene at the time). I think because it's the most Lynchian scene!
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Sunday, 24 June 2012 23:23 (twelve years ago) link
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, 25 June 2012 05:23 (twelve years ago) link
perhaps it's a film about how marriage attracts the mutually tasteless
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 25 June 2012 08:12 (twelve years ago) link
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
― mh, Monday, 25 June 2012 11:15 (twelve years ago) link
hubris doobee doo.
― Mark G, Monday, 25 June 2012 11:22 (twelve years ago) link
[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.
― old people are made of poop (Eric H.), Monday, 25 June 2012 17:15 (twelve years ago) link
she is great in that scene
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 June 2012 17:41 (twelve years ago) link
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
― Victory Chainsaw! (DJP), Monday, 25 June 2012 17:56 (twelve years ago) link
...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.
â 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.
― contenderizer, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
BOC?
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:07 (twelve years ago) link
I think he meant Blue Velvet, lol
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 25 June 2012 18:08 (twelve years ago) link
I figured. You can't even blame that on autocorrect or predicative text!
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:12 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― contenderizer, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:15 (twelve years ago) link
did mean blue oyster cult
― contenderizer, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:16 (twelve years ago) link
...
okay then, lol
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 25 June 2012 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
what withholding of meaning? Married people need to fuck. The End.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 June 2012 18:23 (twelve years ago) link
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. BĂC'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.â Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, February 19, 2012 3:03 PM (4 months ago)
â Little GTFO (contenderizer), Sunday, February 19, 2012 3:03 PM (4 months ago)
― contenderizer, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:27 (twelve years ago) link
^ 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.
― ryan, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:32 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― ryan, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:33 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:34 (twelve years ago) link
why on earth would you remove the one big positive of this movie and replace it with Katie Holmes
― Victory Chainsaw! (DJP), Monday, 25 June 2012 18:35 (twelve years ago) link
would it be a fair trade if harvey keitel were reinstated?
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 25 June 2012 18:43 (twelve years ago) link
yeah katie holmes would make that unwatchable
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 25 June 2012 18:44 (twelve years ago) link
I keep meaning to rewatch on DVD since they put out the European version here, without the digital 'Austin Powers' masking of the nudity.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 June 2012 19:00 (twelve years ago) link
mike myers in the lead would be interesting. he could probably do "I'm in over my head" more convincingly than cruise.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 25 June 2012 19:13 (twelve years ago) link
i should really see this again
― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Monday, 25 June 2012 19:20 (twelve years ago) link
wasn't steve martin originally who kubrick wanted for the lead? way back in the 80s iirc?
― tylerw, Monday, 25 June 2012 19:50 (twelve years ago) link
what was the deal with keitel? why do I remember something about someone cumming in kidman's hair? maybe that was my own dream.
― akm, Monday, 25 June 2012 20:00 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 25 June 2012 20:04 (twelve years ago) link
This is showing in DC this summer for a Kubrick retrospective. Can't wait to see it on the big screen
― Moreno, Monday, 25 June 2012 20:35 (twelve years ago) link
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
― slugbuggy, Thursday, 28 June 2012 08:06 (twelve years ago) link