Stanley Kubrick’s last movie is typical of his life work in several ways. Like his other films, it is engrossing in the barely accessible sense of “depth” of its theme and character insights, fascinating in its meticulous structure and carefully crafted images; at the same time infuriating in its methodical pacing and occasional incomprehensible moments filled with silences and stares. It is tempting to believe that when Tom Cruise ("Dr. Bill") stares broodingly into the distance that he is thinking deeply, but it is also suspiciously like the way a cat will stare darkly at you — just before falling asleep.
It is impossible to separate Kubrick’s work from his own working style, which is so famously infuriating. He was truly an auteur, controlling every aspect of his production, seemingly at the same time so cherishing (or fearful) of his films that he never wanted to finish them. Like a writer who refuses to finish his book, he had a hard time letting go. In fact, in this case, he died just before the release, as if dying in childbirth.
Like many artists, Kubrick was such a stylist and his images seem so personal and therefore indecipherable, that it is difficult to know whether his thinking is profound or just muddled. It is tempting to believe that because he was so fastidious in his preparation and execution that he must have been striving for just the perfect metaphor, trying to make all the right choices before being satisfied with the result. Yet, it is also possible that his hesitations and changes were due to indecision and absence of ideas. Perhaps his vision was uncertain. Maybe he lost his focus of the theme by concentration on the edges and threads.
It might not diminish his art to learn that he worked by trial and error, groping for his instinctive and possibly accidental discovery of the satisfying image, twist, reading, music, lighting. Like Bob Dylan, he is the kind of riddler who tantalizes the audience continuously with his stories. They often seem to be filled with symbolic images, plot turns, dialogue, that demand interpretation. Eventually, one has to ask whether the gaps in exposition are intentionally obscure, or are due to an absence of coherent and consistent vision.
At its heart, this film is a rather mundane tale of marital ennui – an attractive, apparently perfect couple, with looks, style, wealth, intelligence, domestic bliss – and a hollowness in their lives. The wife ("Alice" played by Nicole Kidman) is unfulfilled, unnerved by her husband’s smug attitude. He takes her loyalty for granted, and she cannot stand it. She discloses to him her sexual fantasy about a handsome stranger and it hits him in the solar plexus. He proceeds to spin out of control, flirting with his own fantasies for 24 hours. The plot spins Cruise into a wonderland of bizarre sex cult / party scenes, temptations of seedy sex opportunities. In the end, he is a pretender (complete with mask); nothing happens to him, and he realizes that his wife has never acted on her dream / fantasy of infidelity. They resolve to stay together, perhaps a bit less secure (less smug) about the perfection of their love, but better for the honesty and insecurity. A loving kiss in a toy store fades us out.
Like a soft-porn film made by a traditional Hollywood filmmaker, the film teases us, plays with our knowledge of cinematic convention and our own fantasies. We are led into a mood which strongly suggests impending violence and risk; dangerous perversion is hinted and sexual tensions are created but never consummated. Nicole flirts with a comically suave Continental seducer -- and leaves him. Tom is almost abducted by two sexy models -- but is called away. Tom is called to treat an overdosed, nude bimbo of his host (director / actor Sydney Pollack) -- and walks out with the girl apparently better. After his wife’s hurtful revelations, he wanders the night seeking his own fantasies, and encounters the bereaved daughter of a dead patient, but he ducks when she throws herself at him. Then he picks up a hooker who tenderly offers herself to him, but he ducks away again. When he goes to great lengths to enter a sex orgy party at great risk to his safety, he escapes without harm and without sex.
In the end, he is guilt-ridden without apparent reason for guilt. He is frustrated, and we have to think why. The answer seems to be that his only guilt is that he has long repressed his emotions. He is a doctor, who is trained to separate himself from his feelings for his patients. He has also separated himself from anxiety about his wife, and perhaps worst of all, from his own feelings of insecurity. Only after he has been hurt by his wife’s ridiculing revelations and his failures to confront risky behavior, and is manipulated into fear and guilt about possible responsibility for a death, does he break down and open up to the person he professes to love. It is not new ground in films – the theme of shocking a stiff character in order to stimulate love is as old as boy meets girl. It has been the subject of pornography, screwball comedy, farce, horror, spy, thriller genres over and over again.
Kubrick’s visual skill is revealed in the scenes between Cruise and Kidman in the confines of their bedroom. He focuses on Kidman’s lithe body as it moves around the bedroom, bending, stretching, mugging, as she recites her dream to her rigid husband who sits coiled and nervous on the edge of the bed with his square jawed dark cat look. She is incredibly seductive and convincing as a sexually sparkling package. Yet, her tale is a standard female fantasy of the 70's, popularized as the zipless fuck by Erica Jong. The tall dark stranger seduces without words, without any messy relationship. Long understood as the frustrated female’s strike against the confines of masculine security, it is by now a cliche. Yet it seems here to be the catalyst at the core of Kubrick’s message.
The nude and semi-nude glimpses of women’s bodies and sex acts and talk and seductions are slick and in the end, a titillation. So too is the aura of impending danger a tease. So too are the endless scenes of city walks, taxi rides -- tense build-ups to empty letdowns -- nothing bad really happens. The sinister masks and hoods of the party-goers are a false excitement – just some more titillation.
Yet, that may be the point Kubrick is groping for. We create our fantasies to satisfy our human need for insecurity. Our dreams create drama for our lives, situations to stimulate the emotional juices that we consciously suppress in our mundane living. It is also a commentary on the purpose of film -- the creation of the dreamlike fantasy world – the grand illusion including actors pretending emotions, pretending to make love, images and sounds to make us think and feel uneasy. It is what Kubrick has done so well.
In the end, we still do not know whether the film is a stylish cliche or an unsettling and profound work of art.
It is impossible to separate Kubrick’s work from his own working style, which is so famously infuriating. He was truly an auteur, controlling every aspect of his production, seemingly at the same time so cherishing (or fearful) of his films that he never wanted to finish them. Like a writer who refuses to finish his book, he had a hard time letting go. In fact, in this case, he died just before the release, as if dying in childbirth.
Like many artists, Kubrick was such a stylist and his images seem so personal and therefore indecipherable, that it is difficult to know whether his thinking is profound or just muddled. It is tempting to believe that because he was so fastidious in his preparation and execution that he must have been striving for just the perfect metaphor, trying to make all the right choices before being satisfied with the result. Yet, it is also possible that his hesitations and changes were due to indecision and absence of ideas. Perhaps his vision was uncertain. Maybe he lost his focus of the theme by concentration on the edges and threads.
It might not diminish his art to learn that he worked by trial and error, groping for his instinctive and possibly accidental discovery of the satisfying image, twist, reading, music, lighting. Like Bob Dylan, he is the kind of riddler who tantalizes the audience continuously with his stories. They often seem to be filled with symbolic images, plot turns, dialogue, that demand interpretation. Eventually, one has to ask whether the gaps in exposition are intentionally obscure, or are due to an absence of coherent and consistent vision.
At its heart, this film is a rather mundane tale of marital ennui – an attractive, apparently perfect couple, with looks, style, wealth, intelligence, domestic bliss – and a hollowness in their lives. The wife ("Alice" played by Nicole Kidman) is unfulfilled, unnerved by her husband’s smug attitude. He takes her loyalty for granted, and she cannot stand it. She discloses to him her sexual fantasy about a handsome stranger and it hits him in the solar plexus. He proceeds to spin out of control, flirting with his own fantasies for 24 hours. The plot spins Cruise into a wonderland of bizarre sex cult / party scenes, temptations of seedy sex opportunities. In the end, he is a pretender (complete with mask); nothing happens to him, and he realizes that his wife has never acted on her dream / fantasy of infidelity. They resolve to stay together, perhaps a bit less secure (less smug) about the perfection of their love, but better for the honesty and insecurity. A loving kiss in a toy store fades us out.
Like a soft-porn film made by a traditional Hollywood filmmaker, the film teases us, plays with our knowledge of cinematic convention and our own fantasies. We are led into a mood which strongly suggests impending violence and risk; dangerous perversion is hinted and sexual tensions are created but never consummated. Nicole flirts with a comically suave Continental seducer -- and leaves him. Tom is almost abducted by two sexy models -- but is called away. Tom is called to treat an overdosed, nude bimbo of his host (director / actor Sydney Pollack) -- and walks out with the girl apparently better. After his wife’s hurtful revelations, he wanders the night seeking his own fantasies, and encounters the bereaved daughter of a dead patient, but he ducks when she throws herself at him. Then he picks up a hooker who tenderly offers herself to him, but he ducks away again. When he goes to great lengths to enter a sex orgy party at great risk to his safety, he escapes without harm and without sex.
In the end, he is guilt-ridden without apparent reason for guilt. He is frustrated, and we have to think why. The answer seems to be that his only guilt is that he has long repressed his emotions. He is a doctor, who is trained to separate himself from his feelings for his patients. He has also separated himself from anxiety about his wife, and perhaps worst of all, from his own feelings of insecurity. Only after he has been hurt by his wife’s ridiculing revelations and his failures to confront risky behavior, and is manipulated into fear and guilt about possible responsibility for a death, does he break down and open up to the person he professes to love. It is not new ground in films – the theme of shocking a stiff character in order to stimulate love is as old as boy meets girl. It has been the subject of pornography, screwball comedy, farce, horror, spy, thriller genres over and over again.
Kubrick’s visual skill is revealed in the scenes between Cruise and Kidman in the confines of their bedroom. He focuses on Kidman’s lithe body as it moves around the bedroom, bending, stretching, mugging, as she recites her dream to her rigid husband who sits coiled and nervous on the edge of the bed with his square jawed dark cat look. She is incredibly seductive and convincing as a sexually sparkling package. Yet, her tale is a standard female fantasy of the 70's, popularized as the zipless fuck by Erica Jong. The tall dark stranger seduces without words, without any messy relationship. Long understood as the frustrated female’s strike against the confines of masculine security, it is by now a cliche. Yet it seems here to be the catalyst at the core of Kubrick’s message.
The nude and semi-nude glimpses of women’s bodies and sex acts and talk and seductions are slick and in the end, a titillation. So too is the aura of impending danger a tease. So too are the endless scenes of city walks, taxi rides -- tense build-ups to empty letdowns -- nothing bad really happens. The sinister masks and hoods of the party-goers are a false excitement – just some more titillation.
Yet, that may be the point Kubrick is groping for. We create our fantasies to satisfy our human need for insecurity. Our dreams create drama for our lives, situations to stimulate the emotional juices that we consciously suppress in our mundane living. It is also a commentary on the purpose of film -- the creation of the dreamlike fantasy world – the grand illusion including actors pretending emotions, pretending to make love, images and sounds to make us think and feel uneasy. It is what Kubrick has done so well.
In the end, we still do not know whether the film is a stylish cliche or an unsettling and profound work of art.
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