20 years since EWS 20 years since the death of Kubrick.

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 2019)

20 years since EWS 20 years since the death of Kubrick.
Very minor spoilers
1999
When I saw the film back in the day it left me baffled as it did with most viewers (and many critics as well, though they had a hard time trying not to show it).
The death of its author overshadowed the film, and rumours about the famous "masked orgy scene" somehow mined my viewing "..when's this orgy scene coming...?"
So I was left thinking that this cryptic farewell by Stanley was either too complex for me or that this story about jealousy didn't turn out to be as iconic as his other masterpieces.
2019
20 years have gone by and I now believe that EWS is one of K's most complex and fascinating films.
Maybe because I've grown up in the meanwhile but on my second viewing I picked up on details, patterns, hints, symbolisms that I didn't ' on my first viewing twenty years ago. This is a film to watch over and over again.
The plot a in a nutshell: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are the Hartfords a dream couple,young, beautiful and presumably with good economic prospects..but as wealth and status they are nowhere near to Victor Ziegler (Sidney Pollack) whose grand style Christmas party they've been invited to.
At the party the couple toys with the idea of possible infidelity (without believing to much in it) and Cruise's character, who is a doctor, witnesses also an unexpected aspect of Ziegler's private life though he is sworn to secrecy.
The following day after having had a fight with his wife on the subject of infidelity Cruise's character is called to the house of a patient and this sets him off on an all night long journey across a Christmas lit New York.
He is tormented by jealousy but at the same time he bumps into many potential sexual encounters with different women (most of them, if not all with rufous hues in their hair like his wife's).
The night culminates in an out of town castle which in a distorted way (as in a dream) provides a bookend to Ziegler's party at the beginning.
By the end of the eventful night all of Hartford's insecurities, inadequacies and maybe his inability to climb the social ladder are dramatically unfolded.
Throughout Cruise/Hartford's odyssey his perception of sex is always associated with money and death and violence and guilt and social status.
But maybe Nicole Kidman's character has a more practical take on this subject. Her last line in the Christmas shopping scene maybe is after all the best way to drive away nightmares and insecurities, restore normality and reunite the family.
This F-word is the last thing we will see from Stanley Kubrick, a very private man whom we got to know a bit better in the following years through books and documentaries and interviews with his family and collaborators.
After 20 years he is still very much missed.