A good ending to a great career.

Rating: 8/10 (17 July 1999)

Kubrick's last film is a good (not great) ending to a stellar career. What is interesting is that Kubrick's strongest moments in this film are precisely the sort of moments that he has been criticized for coming up short on in the past: the human moments, the character-driven moments. The private scenes between Kidman and Cruise are the highlights of this film--Kubrick's relentlessly voyeuristic camera records the tense and cruel moments between the couple with true sympathetic detachment. A montage of the mundane moments that make up the couple's time apart is sensitive and colored with Kubrick's usual eye for irony. (Those who worried that Kidman and Cruise were not worthy need not worry--they both come through better than I, for one, would have expected. They both do very well, making Bill and Alice two of the truest human beings in the Kubrick canon).
What is not as strong in this film, though, are those moments that Kubrick fans have been trained to expect: the haunting images that burn themselves into our brains, the intense and relentless tracking shots, the impeccable use of music. The much-anticipated orgy sequence is marred by digitally imposed images of onlookers--fig leafs that ensured Kubrick an R instead of an NC-17. And they are much like the fig leafs added to great paintings in the sense that they add a note of distraction and silliness to potentially striking moments. The entire masquerade/orgy sequence moves between brilliant and farcical, but in the end seems unnecessary. Kubrick would have done well to record marital jealousy and infidelity without the melodrama.
The philosophy behind the film will take some time to decipher. The dominant idea that sticks with me after two viewings is the repeated linking of sex and death--again and again the sexual act of creation is linked with death.
A good film, then, but a bit too long. In the end, it feels like a transitional work between the brilliantly visceral intensity of Kubrick's best work of the past and a new cinema more rooted in everyday life. It is doubly sad, then, that Kubrick died before he could more fully explore this new stage in his artistic career.
Thank you, Stanley. For everything.