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A Study In Uncomfortable Conversations
So what did we do this weekend, boys and girls?
Well, I don't know about you, but let's see: On Friday I worked myself into a nervous fit over The Book and spent a great portion of the evening in a fetal ball on my bed. On Saturday Nonelvis and I went to a Hitchcock double feature and had some nice Mediterranean food and I didn't think about The Book at all. Today I had lunch and a long chat with Rose. Tonight Nonelvis and I went to see Eyes Wide Shut because I want to write about it in mouth organ this week. I also had a long telephone call with Mary Anne when I got home.
Now, talking on the telephone is only slightly more enjoyable to me than hearing nails on a chalkboard. When I am queen of the universe, telephones will be used for data only. You want to talk with someone, you'll have to go visit them. Otherwise, send email. And everyone will be miserable but me. I shall chortle wickedly. Oh, I hate telephones.
Um ... but I digress. The point is, I wouldn't have made a telephone call unless it was important ... and it was: she wanted to talk to me about The Book. See what an egotist I am? (Okay, okay, it was a very pleasant conversation and I was thrilled to hear her voice and we talked about a lot of other things too. Happy? You're wrecking my carefully cultivated image of evil here.)
Anyway, Rose wants me to rework portions of the beginning and Mary Anne wants me to rework portions of the ending and I suspect they may both be right. So it looks like there'll be some revising labor after all.
But I won't think about that now. I'll think about that tomorrow.*
Instead, I shall rant a bit about Eyes Wide Shut. Beware! Here There Be Spoilers. In fact, what follows won't even make much sense if you haven't seen the film.
This film is interesting if viewed in the correct mindset, but the reviews and comments I've read so far (and I've been collecting them) all seem to indicate that none of you have picked up on this mindset.
Eyes Wide Shut is not a pro-sex film. It is not an anti-sex film. It is not a film about sex at all. Nor is it a film about relationships, jealousy, or infidelity. Wrong! All answers are wrong!**
This is a film about a man who discovers a Big Dark Secret. The sex fantasy, the fact that he's working himself up into a state of unfulfilled sexual frenzy, is just the McGuffin. If he hadn't been in this state, after all, he wouldn't have been wandering the streets in the first place. The marital relations (in many senses of the phrase) are merely a gigantic framing device for the real story.
The night journeys and the secret orgy are all done as a set of ritualized activities - a ballet, if you like. Admittedly the whole movie is paced as if being filmed in slow motion (I kept muttering to myself, "You can cut away now, Stanley, we get the point") - but as Mary Anne points out, the scenes at the beginning and end with Kidman contain somewhat more realistic interactions and dialogue.
The middle of the film is Cruise's dream. Not literally, but figuratively - it is the equivalent for him of the fantasy that Kidman has which he keeps obssessing over. And that "dream" of his is what Kubrick really wants to show us. The rest is just trappings.
Pity, then, that it's such a rotten dream, eh?
When I told Mary Anne Nonelvis' comment "How come he gets to have a real adventure and she just gets a fantasy one," she replied, "Yeah, but hers is so much hotter!" It's true. The little stag-film loop of Kidman and the naval officer that keeps playing in Cruise's head is much more sexual than any of his adventures in coitus interruptus. Maybe he knows that and that's why it frustrates him so badly.
I liked the central sequence with the Big Secret and the costumes and the masks - hokey as it was. But Mary Anne said she felt cheated because she wanted to see the outer movie - more of the framing device. And Nonelvis said she would have liked to have seen the alternate-universe version where it's Kidman's character roaming the streets and not Cruise's.
So, are we all agreed that Kidman was lots more interesting than Cruise? Nonelvis' first comment when she left was that she couldn't believe how bad he was. I personally agree with Chris Bridges that Cruise hit his peak of form in Risky Business and has never done as well since, but frankly, he wasn't given much to do in this film except look stunned. Kidman wasn't given a lot to do either, but at least she got a chance to emote a little. (She does a lousy job of acting drunk, though.)
I didn't have a problem with the acting. I didn't have a problem with the pacing. (After about the first half hour I was able to get into kind of a Zen fugue state and go with the flow.) I didn't have a problem with the lack of chemistry between Cruise and Kidman (I assumed they were doing it on purpose, since there was so much tension between the characters). I did have a problem with the ending, which is entirely the fault of the script:
The sexual tension is merely a device to get to the Big Surprise. But once the Big Surprise is out of the bag, and the consequences are dealt with, we have this unresolved tension in the marriage and a movie waiting for an ending. And the way it was done left me feeling ... frustrated. I agreed with Kidman's final comment too well; in fact, I'd have preferred the movie to end with the audience seeing that, to finally get a real sex scene worthy of the name after all the teases.
But do you want to know what really bothered me about the movie? Besides the bang-on-the-highest-note-of-the-piano score that annoyed during all the remotely tense sequences? Besides the stupid little goofs that shouldn't have been in a Kubrick movie, like the fact that one scene implies Kidman has worn her earrings all night while she slept, and that they apparently forget that their kid's wandering loose around the toy store at the end?
It was the conversations. I believe this film should be retitled A Study In Uncomfortable Conversations.
I have a problem with conversations where neither party really knows what to say. The ones where that unpleasant silence hangs over the room. I don't like having them and I don't like watching them. And Kubrick, bless his departed soul, found every damned one of them and put them in this movie. We have the
Tense leavetaking of babysitter;
Strained overfriendly greeting between party hosts and guests;
Embarrassingly ill-conducted flirtation;
Tension in the presence of the recently bereaved;
(and then)
Tension after an inappropriate familiarity;
Apologetic stammering at waking someone up;
Apologetic stammering at being a witness to someone else's embarrassment;
Strained conversation between two people who haven't seen each other in forever and don't know each other well;
Tense conversation as a prelude to a session with a prostitute;
(then, later)
Tense conversation at finding out some unpleasant information about that prostitute;
Tense conversation upon finding out someone has unexpectedly disappeared;
Tense conversation upon finding out that someone has unexpectedly died;
Tense and angry conversation due to having to tell someone some Unpleasant Truths;
and so on. Really, it's hard to list these all since (with the possible exception of Cruise talking to his medical staff and the cabdriver) there isn't a conversation in this movie that isn't tortured or uncomfortable in some way. And if they're uncomfortable, I'm uncomfortable.
I thought, for a while, that Kubrick had missed a prominent example in his catalog. "Hey," I said, "where's the sullen conversation on the morning after a vicious confrontation between lovers?" But, lo, he was saving that one for last.
I'm not sure why he did this, but I don't like it. Maybe it's a tour de force, but if so, it's a very odd kind.
I repeat: It's not a bad movie, not if you see it in the right frame of mind.
But I for one will not be seeing it again.
* This is a very easy film quote.
** This is somewhat more difficult children's book quote.
© Columbine
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