Remove The Blindfold

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2007)

This is the sort of film that only Kubrick could make...no one else stretches our tolerance for languorous self-indulgence in quite the same way. Especially with the liberal use of female nudity...common in European film, but subject to all manner of puritanical finger-wagging in the US. Kudos to Cruise for publicly sticking up for the artist's finished result. The only compromise was a digitally added cloaked figure in front of an act of copulation.
As with the master's prior great works, what matters is not so much the plot or content but the -way- in which he conceives things purely for film. The hallmarks of this are the rearwards camera view that lead the actors through space, the dreamy long takes and reverse-angle cuts with generous lead time between bits of dialogue.
With this film we get the tantalizing promise of a narrative game - is this a dream? Whose dream is it, actually? Or overlapping dreams with no 'real world' to bring us back to? Note the use of one redhead (Kidman) to drive us into one dream state, and the opposing talisman (Davis, also a redhead) to drive us out again. Intermittent affairs with the blondes only lead to dead-ends.
But I think Kubrick wasn't sure of where to leave us, so he uses his customary insouciant ending. The blindfold, our blindfold, is removed...