Has Kubrick always been the caretaker at the Overlook Hotel?

Rating: Null/10 (19 July 1999)

Very simplistically stated, "Eyes Wide Shut" resembles "The Shining" and "2001", Kubrick's two most popular and profitable movies. (There's even a visual reference in "Eyes Wide Shut" to the neo-Classical bedroom where Dave Bowman ends up in "2001".) But whereas Kubrick got away with making what has been described as "the most expensive experimental film ever made" with "2001", I'm not sure what this final film is going to do to his reputation. The picture works as a protracted nightmare (poor Nichole Kidman has to ponderously, slurringly, deliver most of her lines since in her two big scenes her character is either drunk on champagne or stoned on pot), but being promoted as a mainstream entertainment, I expect most audiences to get up and walk out. (These aren't the times of Stravinsky's "The Rites of Spring", so they won't riot, they'll just leave.) In the final analysis, I see in "Eyes Wide Shut" the same complete contempt for his audience which Kubrick exhibited in "The Shining". This is where he has been heading his entire career. Or maybe this is where he's always been, and I just woke up to that fact.