Kubrick's Last Laugh

Rating: 10/10 (22 March 2000)

There was a brilliant article in the magazine Brill's Content a few months after "Eyes Wide Shut" was released which explained what happened to the marketing of the film before it was released. What it boils down to is the fact that Kubrick only let one person see the film before it was released and that person worked for Time magazine and he saw it 72 hours before the film was scheduled to be released in July. But since film magazines and other avenues of the mainstream media have production cycles that have deadlines months in advance, before you knew it rumour was being compounded on top of rumour until it completely snowballed out of control. Obviously no member of the press actually went to the trouble to actually read the novel that Kubrick based the film on, they were more interested in repeating whatever rumour sounded like it would sell magazines. At one point I remember hearing that the film was about two psychoanalysts who are married to each other and each of them starts to have an affair with their respective patients and then they decide to swing with them. Whoa. Says a lot more about the person who thought up the rumour than it does about the film itself. Of course, Kubrick played it to the hilt by just refusing to comment and letting the rumours get out of control until you have lapdog rags plastering their cover with things like "The sexiest film ever?" Can you say "Pavlov"?
The public really was conned into thinking that this film was going to have THE most erotically charged orgy ever filmed by what is considered one of the, if not THE, greatest director of all time. So you wonder why everyone said it bombed? Because they were swindled into thinking that it was supposed to be like the rumours and when it was finally released it was revealed to be just like any other Kubrick film: I.E. a sensitive and very analytical piece that is essentially an art house film that will be discussed for decades. No wonder Kubrick kept his mouth shut: he got his last film, an art house film with, as such, a very limited audience, into the minds of everyone passing a news stand and got them into the theatre thanks to their blind faith in the lies and rumours that the mainstream media publish before they realized that it was, sure, a movie about sex, but not an erotic movie at all. Kubrick made a film which analyzes the difference between sex and love (something the United States doesn't realize there's a difference between) and shows both sex and love in ways that are not erotic at all. Those who were disappointed by this film were those expecting a movie with sex in it to be erotic, which basically reveals just how shallow this culture is. It's actually the warmest film Kubrick ever made. If you can think about sex without getting aroused, you'll love this film. If you can't think about sex without getting aroused, perhaps you're better off with Russ Meyers films.