Kubrick in the era of AIDS

Rating: Null/10 (22 July 1999)

Kubrick's work has always been topical. Dr. Strangelove addressed the cold war and government under the shadow of the bomb...very apt for the early 60s. 2001 addressed the space age, the computer age, and expanding consciousness...very apt for the late 60s. A Clockwork Orange addressed social degeneration and governmental social engineering...very apt for the early 70s.
Now he addresses sex in the era of AIDS. William and Alice Harford experience extramarital yearnings. Alice, the female, experiences these yearnings in dreams and fantasies. William, the male, acts out his yearnings, though never quite consummating his passions. William is warned that his pursuits can bring him death, but he presses on until impeded by forces stronger than he.
How perfectly fit this story is for rendition by Stanley Kubrick. His off-pace editing, eerie sound, and dramatic colors all evoke the dream state that this film is about. We dream about sexual liaisons, and we are safe in those dreams. Trouble comes when we act out on them, or even tell our spouses about them.
The social message is conservative, pro-monogamy.
The reference to Beethoven's opera Fidelio is particularly apt for this theme. Fidelio is about a woman who dresses as a man and enters into the service of an evil Don to find and free her husband, who had been imprisoned for resisting the tyrant's evil ways. In EWS, the husband enters the castle seeking to join (not resist) in the evil Don's adventures. The husband is rejected and is forced to go home, tail between his legs.
Perhaps that's Kubrick's parting advice to us all, in the words of Alice Harford: let's go home and [make love to] our spouses.