Eyes Wide Shut

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.