Eyes Wide Shut

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

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.