Enigmatic

Rating: 8/10 (15 July 2002)

Okay, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that a Kubrick film might be, shall we say, deliberate in pace. Or that it might end up being, um, enigmatic. Nicole Kidman is awesome in this role, even more so, in that her character is not one that we really like all that much. A lot was left unsaid. Tom Cruise plays the quintessential "nice guy" and like them, he tends to lose. It is a bit amusing that, as he goes out to seek revenge on his wife for her sexual fantasy, he never quite manages to get laid. Sydney Pollack's character provides some exposition at the end, but one doesn't really know whether to believe him, just as Cruise's character doesn't know. There are some large mysteries, which I would have called plot holes in someone else's movie, such as how the woman recognized Cruise to warn him, through his Venetian mask. That whole sequence had such a dreamlike, nightmarish quality about it that I can see how someone may think that entire part of the film is really a dream. Plus Alice (Kidman) made some comments at the end that might make one think so. I'm not so sure. The return of the mask is completely unexplained, and so it up to the viewer to interpret. The creepy piano music fit the film perfectly, and the photography was always very bright, odd for a film that one might consider as basically dark. I need to see the film another time or two to really see what I think of it. But for now, Grade: A