Nicole kidman eyes wide shut Gallery

May 31

Posted by

When the inspirational-people Listography was being put together a few weeks ago, I realized that despite my love of Kubrick’s work that I had yet to feature him in a Debrief. It was clearly something that had to be done. And while selecting just one of his films was a task, actually writing this has honestly been a bit intimidating. One of the common public perceptions about Kubrick is that he was the ultimate control freak – he was always on his own timeline when shooting his films then tweaked and re-tweaked the editing. I don’t hide my respect for the man as a director; the depth in his use of symbols, his purposeful blocking, the way the audience’s response to characters change with subsequent viewings of the film, his absolutely masterful cinematography and use of the colour palette. Kubrick’s films are so packed full with stories and layers of meaning that I’m fairly certain I will leave out something of great relevance in this Debrief.  But part of the joy of writing these things is that I get to explore the film for myself as well. One of the things that I find positively gleeful about Kubrick’s work is that he has this way of making overarching statements about the state of humanity and his films are genuinely terrifying because of it. I believe Kubrick makes horror films (in the way John Ford makes westerns) not because they’re always scary or gory but because he has this way of telling a story that is both sincerely unnerving and haunting.

Kubrick died during the making of Eyes Wide Shut, and because of his propensity for changes to his films, I’m most intrigued by the fact that this might not be the final product he would have wanted us to see. The film was apparently “done”, having screened the cut for Warner Brothers executives, Kubrick died before the film launched in theatres. He was 70 years of age and died of a heart attack. However, the Great American Conspiracy Theory would have it that Eyes Wide Shut is filled with references and symbology of the Illuminati and that Kubrick was murdered for revealing too much. This week is the time to delve into Kubrick’s last realized work.

The film opens with Bill (Tom Cruise) and Alice (Nicole Kidman) Harford dressing themselves in preparation for an extravagant party, hosted by the inordinately wealthy Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). Bill is a doctor and Alice used to work as an NYC art gallery curator. As they arrive at the party, they split up. Bill finds himself arm in arm with two models and Alice is hit on heavily by a Hungarian man. Bill is called away to help Ziegler deal with a woman who has OD’ed on coke and heroin. The married couple leave the party together, go home and it is implied they have sex. The next night, after putting their daughter to bed, they smoke a joint and end up arguing about what promiscuous things the other got up to at Ziegler’s party. Alice ends up revealing that she had a fantasy about sleeping with and starting a new life with a naval officer that she saw while on vacation with the family the previous year.

A phone call interrupts her confession and Bill is called away to do a house visit for a patient that just died. Bill’s night ends up being one failed attempt at cheating on his wife after another. He ends up meeting up with an old friend from medical school who gives him the password to what turns out to be a ritualistic Venetian-masked orgy in a huge estate outside of New York City. The rest of the film follows Bill as he deals with his experience at the orgy after he was found out to have gained entrance to the estate when he hasn’t supposed to be there.

When Bill arrives home from, he wakes Alice from a nightmare. She recounts the dream that mirrors Adam and Eve’s garden of Eden. This is Kubrick at his most forthright in discussing temptation, but the whole film is packed with moments that hark back to Adam and Eve. Perhaps the most fun (on second viewing) is how the two models Bill flirts with at the party seem to simply writhe in his arms like the snake of Eden. Kubrick is wicked with his details. The counter balance to the story of temptation is that of the mask. We hide this temptation behind a ritualized facade, a charade. And, somehow, Kubrick manages to transform the story into a comment on status and rank in society. Bill is impotent in more ways than one in his attempts to cheat. And he learns himself to be a second class citizen to the elite that attend the orgy. Every interaction he has has a sexual layer and yet he fails to succeed to copulate. Masculinity itself is presented as frail, a toppling house of cards.

Kubrick’s use of art in Eyes Wide Shut is a great use on mise en scene. In the Harford house, the walls are filled with artwork; paintings of gardens and still-lifes of food – meant for consuming with our eyes and our mouths. This artwork is matched by the scene where Bill goes to attend to the woman who OD’ed in Ziegler’s bathroom. The woman and Ziegler had apparently just had sex because the hardly conscious girl lies completely nude in a chair. But if you notice, the enormous portrait above the OD’ed woman is of a woman lying naked in almost the exact same position. Like the food and the flowers, this woman’s body is nothing more than a piece of meat/work of art to be stared at, consumed.

What makes a film sexist? (Or in other cases; racist, or the more general, offensive?) A few months back I had a debate over Facebook with a complete stranger (we had mutual friends). This complete stranger – a middle aged Korean woman from Guelph-  was horribly offended by Fincher’s The Social Network because of it’s portrayal of the young Asian women who latched on Mark and Eduardo. She thought it was disgusting that the public was supporting a film that made it seem like all Asian women were gold-digging free-riders. First off, I don’t think the film made it seem like all Asian women were gold-digging free-riders. Perhaps those specific Asian women were gold-digging free-riders, and there is a distinction. This is a story after all, not an encyclopedia entry.

I find it increasingly difficult to get offended as I age. I am disturbed by things. I am shocked by things. I am appalled by things. But to offend me is hard to do. I like to think that to be better as a society, we have to be prepared to look at and talk about even the darkest parts of our humanity. And I think that getting offended shuts you off from that. In Darren Aronofsky’s foreword to a copy of Hubert Selby Jr’s Requiem for a Dream that I own, Aronofsky writes, “Hinduism has two main gods – Shiva and Kali. Shiva is the god of creation and Kali is the god of destruction. They exist as a team. One cannot exist without the other. Just like the Christian God and Devil. Good and Evil. There is a balance.” I like to think this is an argument for viewing things and discussing things that some might strive to leave unaddressed. We are just as much Kali as we are Shiva, let’s be honest with ourselves. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to change things. But if we are to know how to change, there should be nothing out of bounds.

Yes, there is level of nudity and voyeurism in this film that one could argue objectifies women. But the audience is just as much implicated at looking at Tom Cruise – himself a sex figure of his era. One of the wise people that I follow on Twitter (I don’t recall who) once wrote that his/her biggest pet peeve was hearing people say “it is what it is” – because, they wrote, the phrase should be “it is what we make it.” I think this relevant for Eyes Wide Shut and all films.

As discussed in previous Debriefs, marketing will play an enormous role in the financial successes and failures of films, as well as playing with public perception. Eyes Wide Shut was released during the summer blockbuster schedule for the summer of 1999. It was competing with films like American Pie and Will Smith’s Wild Wild West. Summer film season gives you Transformers and The Hulk, starring Edward Norton. This is traditional season for pure escapist entertainment. So perhaps in subtle ways, the audience wasn’t expecting what it received. The film got lukewarm responses both from the public and critics.

I take issue with critics because sometimes I wonder if they ever just let themselves enjoy their experience. Let the film be and take it in. Which is why I prefer the Debrief style of recommendation; nothing is perfect, but it is attention given to films worthy of attention. There were a fair share of critics who wrote about how Eyes Wide Shut was a failure for one reason or another. Kubrick’s reclusive tendencies and refusal to fly meant creating a film set in England that looked like New York. Apparently the New York they constructed wasn’t New York enough. But last time I checked, this wasn’t a Spike Lee film. And the potential that the majority or entirety of the film was a dream makes the necessity of a verisimilar New York irrelevant at best. Next was the wooden acting; Kidman and Cruise have been mocked for how awful they were at playing stoned. Or that Kubrick was just trying too hard to create an abstract work of art and because of it the entire film comes off as sterile and unreal. From this I think that the critics get caught up in having learned to know how to dislike a film, or parts of a film. You have to let yourself have fun. The film’s cinematography is intoxicating, the orgy sequence is something I still find pit-in-my-gut unnerving, and regardless of all the potential flaws, it is a film that has the power to plant a strange seed inside you, one that draws you back into thinking about its lessons long after your viewing. If we have to play the game where we only choose one word to describe this film, then the word would be “dense.”

Obviously, time will eventually tell much more about the film and it’s long-term public perception than any one single critic or group of critics. The film continues to be referenced in popular culture, such as by the amazing Frank Ocean in Novacane. Something tells me this was one of those films bound to be a classic that wasn’t appreciated enough in its early days.

Posted on May 31, 2012, in Highlight, Models, Nicole kidman, Nicole kidman eyes wide and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Comments Off on Nicole kidman eyes wide shut Gallery.

Comments are closed.