Kubrick loses his way

Rating: 4/10 (8 January 2008)

Stanley Kubrick's final film plays slightly better this second full time through, but at the same time its too frigging long.
The plot of the movie that never ends (made in a shoot that never ended) is about a rich doctor who is haunted by a story his wife tells him of infidelity. This leads him on an odd odyssey that shakes up his world even further.
When I saw this in the theaters on the night it opened I was so bored by it I left after the much over rated sex scenes at the masked ball. I made one later attempt at seeing it when it came out on home video and got all the way through it. Other visits with the film have come on cable where I criss crossed through the films recesses in odd clips. Recently I had a long discussion with a friend who loves the film and figured I'd try it again. To be certain his remarks, probably the most intelligent I've ever heard concerning the film, made me hopeful that I had missed something. I don't think so.
The film concerns obsession and what a perceived infidelity will and can do to a man or woman. Cruise's dark journey all hinges on the fact that he can't get what his wife tells him out of his mind. Seeing it again for the first time in almost ten years I see little things that I probably missed the first time out. There is real power in the early scenes of Cruise and Kidman together and even apart as Kidman's unhappiness leads to flirtations and lustful thoughts that upset Cruise's sense of the world. I don't think that the whole masked cabal thing works, even on an allegorical level since the giant set piece of people having sex and performing rites seems to have been pulled in from a Hammer horror film. Whats even more deadly to the film is its over length and snail like pace. this is a two and a half hour film that feels twice that.
Personally I wish Kubrick had lived a little longer since I'd have love to hear what his take on all of this was. At times the film seems like it wants to be a black comedy, at other times a porn film. Its a thriller at other times, though it really doesn't have a pay off, or if it does certainly not one that is worth fighting sleep for the better part of three hours. Seeing it again, I'm of the opinion that with the exception of one person I think most people who love this film are doing so because its Kubrick and they think he must have known what he was doing. I would argue that he didn't