Made Thirty Years Too Late

Rating: 2/10 (20 July 1999)

WARNING: Below are character and plot revelations, and the liberal use of the F-word in all its Anglo-Saxon glory. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK:
-- Do they 'do' it? No.
-- Does he 'do' it? No.
-- Does anyone actually DO *anything* at all, ever? No. {thereby wasting two and a half hours of perfectly good time that could have been spent filing my nails. Which reminds me of a really good JAP joke, but... never mind.}
Bias going in: Expecting, hoping, maybe even needing to worship at the feet of the Master.
In no particular order:
Casting:
Bummer. Cruise is about a hundred years too young for the part. The book (and film it 'inspired'... a direct quote from the closing credits) calls for a man approaching young middle age, life-philosophy and habits set in the stone of an already closed mind. In other words, a jaded man as complacent as any white male at the pinnacle of a societally-valued career can be -- and who is about to have the core of his smug little being shaken to its roots. An Everyman, yes -- but a man, not a boy.

Kidman: Eye-candy disguised as a window-dressing plot device. A pun on the title that's only too apt, I'm afraid. She has no career, no goals, no... I was about to say 'dreams and desires' but that would be only figuratively true. She has them 'literally' so Cruise can play off them, but in the sense they exist at all, they exist for him alone, as do all the other women in the film. What she does have, however, is a great butt. To-Die-For great. ==cough, cough=> Kidman/Cruise, as couple and chemistry: More interesting, because it was both good and bad. I can see the attraction for Kubrick; the ready-made comfort level that would allow him to make the first scene (her taking a casual pee while Cruise responds to her 'how do I look?' with 'great, as always') work. But. That same level of unstrived-for coupleness that comes after ten years of marriage is also... boring. I don't mean the sort of boring-for-the-sake-of-him-kicking-over-the-traces banality that would incite a viewer to wonder what lay beneath the calluses, but a real been-there, done-that quality that came through *despite* Kubrick's intentions.
Given all the above, the cynic in me wonders (and will never know) if the only way to get Her marvelously sculpted butt was to hire His cute little manicured face.
Script:
Think of a primer on writing that warns against 'on-the-nose' dialogue by giving examples. This entire script could be used to fill it. Right down to the 50-point type, front page, carefully-placed-to-look-like-a-throwaway newspaper headline that screams the film's message: LUCKY TO BE ALIVE! And entire speeches revealing motive and mindset have been lifted in their entirety from the book and plunked here---a mere seventy-three years and a galaxy far, far, away---later. There's more---lots more---but I'm depressed just thinking about it.
Plot:
-- Kidman almost has a late afternoon zipless f**k... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost has two early evening super-models super f**ks... but doesn't.
-- Kidman almost goes off with an aging Hungarian lothario... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost sleeps with a hooker... but doesn't.
-- Cruise learns that he almost slept with a hooker... with AIDS... and is glad he hadn't.
-- Cruise almost kisses a dead woman... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost gives in to irrational sexual jealousy... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost gets laid at an orgy... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost gets in trouble at an orgy... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost has to strip at an orgy... but doesn't.
-- Cruise almost has his comfy little apple cart of a life upset... and I sincerely wish it had been.
Shall I go on, or have I laid bare the bones of a film that was overheard in the bathroom afterward as: "Too slooow, and jeez, nothing ever happened."
Visuals: The orgy was just silly and overlong, as were most of the other scenes. The use of color: red for sexuality and blue for emotion (I think; they just blurred after a while) has been done before, and better in films like Jou Dou, Raise High the Red Lantern and especially TC,TT,HWAHL.

Pace: Glacial, which would be forgiven if there were a pay-off. And even so, thirty minutes could easily be cut with no loss to anyone.
Concept:
Mind-blowing news just discovered by the original writer of the novella and the otherwise brilliant director of the movie: women *like* to f**k!

-- Film at eleven.
Sigh. This was by far the film's most egregious fault: it was made at least thirty years too late.
Kubrick's widow said that he became obsessed with the book (which she wisely refused to read, feeling that all that 'psychological conversation' was boringly passe, and Schnitzler's failed attempt to overlay new-fangled Freudian theory on old-fashioned Burghers, lame) in 1968. Maybe... a big maybe... if Kubrick had made the film then, transforming fin de siecle Vienna into an insight on the so-called sexual revolution taking place in middle-class America, it might have worked. But now?
Aside from the fact that there was nothing in that 'orgy' (ridiculous R, or NC-17 version) that isn't seen nightly on Spice channel *ads* -- the film destroyed the book's main conceit: That middle-class matrons so longed to be f**ked silly (an impossible 'dream' at a time and place where, according to Schnitzler, woman married just to lose their virginity in a societally approved way), and middle-class men so longed to be freed (if only for a few hours, and only anonymously) of their Madonna/Whore complex -- that a if-you-reveal-our-secret-you-die club flourished in the shadows. A club where otherwise sexually repressed men could live out their frightening Freudian fantasies and even more repressed women could give in to their penis envy by engulfing a few dozen at a time, and where getting caught could mean expulsion from decent society, loss of children, or worse. What a titillating idea... then.
In Eyes Wide Shut however, aging, wealthy men pay to be serviced by young, beautiful hookers with great tits and no sags, blemishes, untrimmed bikini lines or cellulite. Wow -- is that a nouveau concept, or what? Oh, and despite the fact that it's the *man* who's supposedly being stripped bare (it's Cruise's movie all the way) there's no male nudity of course, blemished or otherwise -- except for two unclothed, sort of heaving, chests. Worse: by not tackling what is true of marriage today -- that in a society which encourages us to experiment in every possible way with our bodies, but never our hearts, minds and souls, keeping the sexual frisson alive while married to the same person for even ten years is damn difficult -- Kubrick missed his chance to bring his genius to bear on his vision.

And so that which in 1926 might have been erotic, is today laughable. Cruise is jealous because of Kidman's unrealized *fantasy* (after ten years of faithful marriage, no less)? Hell, what long-married couple doesn't *use* those fantasies as the over-the-counter equivalent of Viagra? Along with visual aids and toys from the neighborhood sex shop. Hotel guest and Cabana boy (Mad About You), anyone? Master and Maid? Liddy and Bob play Doctor and the Drugstore? Well, you get the point.
Tension:
Over what -- that rich, powerful men in masks pay for group sex and might be discovered doing it? Booking a spot on Letterman and bragging about being a club member is more like it. Kidman feeling like Cruise is taking her for granted? Tune in to Oprah. Kidman's sobbing in *terror* and *shame* while recounting a dream in which she'd been willingly f**ked by countless men? Puh-lease. I swear, D.H. is standing in the wings, laughing himself silly and wondering when the remake of Lady Chatterly will be done, and which part Adam Sandler will play. In fact, the only real tension in nearly three hours was unintentional. At the very end, when Kidman and Cruise are patting each other's backs for being such lucky ducks and staying safely married despite the wicked temptations around them, all I could think about was their young daughter, who'd been left to wander alone in what looked like F.A.O. Schwartz for an interminable time -- long enough to be grabbed by some really dangerous modern character and spirited away -- and all I wanted to do was yell 'go find your child, you insufferable clods!' A sign, I suppose, that I wasn't exactly moved by either of them, or their 'plight'.
Your mileage may vary.