Kubrick

My review of Eyes Wide Shut written in January 2010:

I first watched this film with my brother on DVD. It was so slow and boring that we were not on our knees praying for the film to end, but for each and every overlong scene in turn to finish. As it was Kubrick's first film in 12 years we sat through it all. We loathed it. A tiny 40 minute non-story bloated out by the slowest pacing ever to create a two and a half hour monster. The uneventful story itself is also revealed to be tiny with very low dramatic stakes. What is the point of this film?

Some critics have the audacity to call it a flawed masterpiece. Flawed piece of [censored] is too kind.

The best thing I can say about it is that some of the lights have a nice burned into the film-stock look to them. Yes, that is literally the best thing about the film. Curiously the exact same complaints and minor praise can be applied to his 1975 historical dud Barry Lyndon. Another incredibly slow, overlong, dramatically inert monster with pretty looking lighting created by real candles (a technical marvel at the time).

It's astonishing to think that it took about twenty years to adapt from a novella, a year and a half to film and a year to edit (my numbers might not be super accurate). The film could easily have been filmed within a month like a normal film. When I saw the extended argument in the apartment in the film Le Mépris (aka Contempt) by Godard, I thought, that's it. That is how they should have shot Eyes Wide Shut. They should have just quickly and messily shot a semi-improvised deliberately pretentious film over a few weeks for less than a million dollars. As it's so cheap who cares if no one beyond a few film critics see it and roast it? Instead they had to make a big budget production out of such slight material.

For reasons of masochism I have returned to the movie two more times over the last nine years. And it remains a colossal dud. If you accept the painful inert pacing and the tiny storyline then it's not too painful, but it's still far from being even borderline okay.

I decided to try something a little bit out of the box in an attempt to make it watchable for my fourth viewing. I decided to watch the whole thing at x2 fast forward. 95% of the dialogue remained intelligible, and the 5% I didn't pick up I either didn't care about or I could work out the gist from the dialogue surrounding it. This way the awful draggy pace will be picked up and the running time halved to a more realistic 75 minutes.

And the film was bearable. The crap story and banal dialogue etc didn't suddenly burst into life, but at least things moved at a reasonable non-patience trying speed. For the majority of the film I was thinking it was a tepid two star movie.

And then the last post-orgy stretch turned up. If anything, the film SLOWED DOWN even further as Tom Cruise revisited the previous scenes. Seriously, what film slows down as it reaches its climax? A normal film is always gathering speed so that by the end it's racing towards the end. Kubrick and the Coen Brothers are about the only filmmakers I can think of who start slow and stay at that exact same pace from start to finish. It's just wrong.

The Coen Brothers movies used to drive me up the wall with the slow pace of all of their films until I learned to expect, and accept it. Fargo for example was such a horrible viewing experience first time I saw it as it took forever to get anywhere. Now whenever I put one of their films on I say to myself to expect that it will be slow from start to finish. If you expect it to take forever to get anywhere then it can't frustrate you as it's exactly what you expected (it's not the traffic jam that's making you angry, it's your expectations of getting to your destination quickly that is causing you to lose your temper).

I can sit happily through almost any Coen Brothers film now, as long as it's actually a good film like Fargo, but Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is way beyond the pale. Even at x2 speed the film drags at its climax. So the two star review ended up as one star because the story really is so small and insignificant and the pace is too patience trying. As entertainment it really, really fails. As "art" it fails because it's rubbish with nothing to say that can be mistaken as profound, unlike 2001, which at least suggests or hints at something being said.

Some arthouse film snobs say that some films are not meant to be entertaining, and work on a different level. I don't buy it. A film is meant as entertainment. If it doesn't engage on some sort of entertainment level then it's not very good. Well I'll happily be the philistine who stands up and says that Kubrick is a so-so director with a knack for finding interesting novels to adapt and then stepping back into the limelight and allowing others to big him up in order to create a legendary reputation.

1 out of 5 stars

ADDITIONAL:

Yesterday I re-read a substantial chunk of Frederick Rafael's memoir of writing Eyes Wide Shut, titled Eyes Wide Open. He indicates that he tried to write a denser, funnier, more detailed film with semi-interesting characters. And he would hand his drafts in and have Kubrick ask him to remove any new details not in the novella, junk anything resembling humour and flat line the characters to make them as nondescript and empty as possible*. Kubrick was also not keen for a long time in having the events at the start connecting with the ending in order to create another shapeless random film like Full Metal Jacket. He took a lot of convincing to bring Sydney Pollack's character back for the climax. And the "reveal" billiard-room scene that Rafael wrote was dismissed as too Bogart-Greenstreet, so it was blanded down with each new draft until it was just more banal nuts and bolts dialogue.

I get the impression that if the film had been made from one of Rafael's earlier drafts then a much more fuller, more entertaining and substantial film would have been made. He tried to bring life to it and Kubrick sucked it all out.

Rafael seems to think Kubrick deliberately removed anything interesting and quirky in order to create as blank a script as possible so he could later apply his directorial imagination to it. Unfortunately he had no imagination beyond how to light it. The problem with a good script, according to Rafael, is that it usually directs itself. There's an obvious way to shoot it and so the director ends up being told what to do by default. Kubrick preferred to have no obligations such as these.

So I think it's fair to say that Kubrick sucked more life out of the film than any other director would have.

A shame the book ends before the film was released so I don't know what the screenwriter thinks of the finished film.

* For example there was a fascinating idea for a line of dialogue. Kidman asks Cruise if he has ever fantasied that she was a boy? A show stopping line but Kubrick dismissed it straight away.

SOMEONE COMMENTED. THEY SAID I HAD AN AXE TO GRIND. I RESPONDED:

Nah, the movie is a pile of poo. My axe to grind is because of all the pretentious people who puff up his movies. He was not a God.

"requires some patience and intelligence to understand - obviously two traits you are lacking."

I've only watched the movie four times over ten years. How much more patience should I have before I'm allowed to disagree with the silly notion that it's a good movie?

 

Fair enough. I strongly disagree with several of your points, but you obviously have given them some serious thought.

Thanks for your detailed reply .

 

Man, I've never warmed to EWS myself, but the amount of energy you put into hating it is actually quite entertaining.

 

I think someone would be better off just watching his TV.

 

This review is way too long and boring. Didn't read, but pretty sure I hate.

 

Yes.

But the over-the-top acting thing is what Nicholson does.

He was over the top in the shining, like he is over the top in these and other movies that he does.

That's just how he rolls.

 

I don't think Jack was ott in the Last Detail at all, I think he was in the pocket there, and on Cuckoos Nest I think it was just the right mix. Goin South is another story lol. I agree with your take on Jacks work in the Shining, it fit the material......I mean he has to be crazed when he does the 'here come Johnny!' it would look more ridiculous if he underplayed it.

 

I saw Eyes Wide Shut in the theatre and the build up was intense....there was a lot of talk about Kubricks return, the nudity etc....it was a bit underwhelming. kind of fascinating in a weird way. ive never watched it again....not Cruise of Kidmans fault, the tried but, just not enough meat on the bone

 

Another case of over doing things in the media.

 

It's this exact type of condescending reply that makes me usually not post anything about Kubrick online. A person displaying independent thought that isn’t lined up with the agreed orthodoxy is scary and maddening to some people.

A person puts on a film. It’s self-evident to that person’s independent line of thinking that it’s not good, entertaining or even interesting. Person switches it off after X minutes. Now is that person an idiot or a have they made a reasonable, rational decision that the chosen film is not for them? I don’t apologise for starting films and not finishing them when they turn out to be, in my opinion, bad. I don’t need to watch all four hours of Heaven’s Gate to know it’s a turd when the first 45 minutes have been a charmless, boring and ****ty experience. Other opinions very much exist.

---

My review of Lolita (1961):

About a decade ago I tried to watch this on television. It wasn't bad, just not interesting. I abandoned it at about the 20 minute mark during the dance. This time I got about 50 minutes in, up to when Humbert gets married. That same criticism stands in that it's not so much bad as just not interesting.

The role of Lolita has been badly cast. In the book I think she is twelve years old. The film doesn't specify her age but she looks like twenty. I guess it's the fashions of the time, her hair style, her height and her build that conspire to make her look comfortably of age. If she doesn't convince as a kid then the whole story goes out the window. Why shouldn't Humbert date her? Also the actress gives a fake, mannered performance that was pretty bad. There is a distinct disconnect between the script and the actors, who seem to be stranded having to emote a bunch of emotions that don't make any sense. Shelly Winters, as the mother, in particular is given a bunch of inexplicable emotions to run through by the script. Why does she fall for Humbert so quickly? I didn't believe any of it – the script, the acting, the motivations of the characters and especially the whole role of Lolita.

It's a very fake, mannered movie. When Mason starts laughing over that weird note Winter's has left him, I felt I was watching an incompetent melodrama. The film doesn't work.

 

I don't know if it's the main thing I love about Kubrick. It is one I think he shares with Bergman, though. They both have what to me is the uncanny ability to take what seems like a very cool perspective on the most intense emotions. I find this combination immensely appealing and most effective.

Why is that approach so great? I think it's because they both essentially accepted the nature of the medium as limiting, but were largely able to overcome that limiting nature. And say something, show something, of great value. the cool distancing is overcome.

In experiencing a film the process is one where we are on one side of the screen, passively watching it. We know (even if we do not stay in constant awareness of such fact) that the director and the rest of the crew and cast involved in its production have chosen how to present what we see to us. Some directors (most?) I think take an approach that is "hot" - meaning they use the camera and angles and soundtrack and everything else to give an experience which tries to create the illusion that we are not seeing what we see as a passive observer. But this is silly, since the medium always remains what it is.

Bergman I think was always conscious of how the limits of the medium affected what it could show, and not show. The actors are acting. Their expressions are a form of mask (as in Persona). By keeping this awareness present, he nonetheless could and did show us something essential, meaning here of the essence, of human experience.

Kubrick if anything used even more of that cool distancing but also to great effect. In his film world the timing of what occurs in each shot, including the dialogue, makes use of spacing that fits with that coolness, rather than a sort of forced hotness. The effect of the kind of jump cutting approach to editing is to make it more hot, the film viewing experience less contemplative. The irony for me is that a rushed approach to filmmaking and editing actually creates a distance between me and what is shown since I end up getting caught up in my own experience of the film rather than in seeing that essence of human experience that Bergman and Kubrick wanted to show.

Not that hot editing has no place. But it affects the way the subject matter of the film works.

Take Barry Lyndon, which I think is perhaps the film that most divides views of Kubrick. The events that occur in the film could, with a different director, have been portrayed in much less time. But I think much would have been lost with a faster pace, quicker cuts. Less pauses in the dialogue. Take the scene where Barry encounters Captain Feeney and his son. The second time, on the road (although the first time works as well). Barry approaches a man in the middle of the road who is facing directly away from him. We understand from the camera angles. have an awareness, that here we are seeing Barry walk into, well, what? We on one level know that Kubrick has paced this scene as a developing one where at first we feel something is wrong, about to happen, but not sure what. Just as Barry did not know what, but with a rising anxiety. Will he be able to get through this without some injury to his position?

Without the pacing Kubrick used, we wouldn't have had the time, wouldn't have had the setup, to understand what Barry is facing. The conflict between his own intentionality and the wicked ways of the World that thwart his wishes would be less evident.

The approach taken of cool distancing recognizes that it is Barry and not the viewer who is experiencing what is shown. But we overcome that by recognizing what is common to his and our experience. That is why it works.

 

When I first saw it I thought I really liked it (well, it was a new Kubrick film). But when the glow wore off, I also think it’s a bore. The last time I watched it I tried skipping to parts I thought I liked: I couldn’t find any this time.

Also, Tom Cruise sucked.

 

I think 2001 is the most important film ever made. It will never be topped.

Dr. Strangelove is a stone cold classic as well.

A Clockwork Orange is my favorite. I love everything about it, the music, the design, the dark humor, Malcom McDowell.

 

When a "review" begins in the manner yours did, everything that follows is redundant. We get it, you hate the movie. Your reaction is not "scary", it's just boring.

BTW Lolita was indeed 12 in the book. No studio, then or now, would've allowed a prepubescent celluloid Lolita. Sue Lyon was in her mid-teens. You're entitled to your opinion, but your critique of the film is frankly inane.

 

I don't think I've seen a Kubrick film I didn't like, but

I misread that and thought you said 'frankly insane'. That seemed to fit fine.

 

Sometimes, when faced with one of life’s many difficult decisions, I ask myself: What would Stanley do? This has not failed me yet.

 

I like Eyes Wide Shut. Far from Stanley's best work, but still much to appreciate in it, not least the excellent music by Jocelyn Pook, of whom I've become quite an admirer. It's sad that it was his final film, but sentiment aside, I still like it, but I trust most of you will be relieved if I don't go on about it. That would be terribly tedious.

 

Do go on...

 

I like Eyes Wide Shut and I play it at the correct speed.

 

For the record I love Stanley's movies. They do something to me most movies don't: they confound my expectations. When some of his movies conclude I have no idea what the hell just happened. 'The Shining' is a perfect example of this. It took repeat viewings for my brain to piece together the puzzle that Stanley built. To me, this is the one reason above all else that makes Stanley a special movie director: it's HIS movie, not mine. Caveat emptor is my warning to those unfamiliar with Kubrick's style.

 

You have excellent, well thought out and meaningful reviews.

 

This may be of interest.....

Andrew Biswell did his undergraduate and Masters degrees at Leicester. I've met him a couple of times. He's a close friend of a former colleague. His work on Burgess was his PhD at Warwick.

The Clockwork Condition: lost sequel to A Clockwork Orange discovered
The Clockwork Condition: lost sequel to A Clockwork Orange discovered

 

Ryan O'Neal is a somewhat underrated actor who makes the most of whatever a script and Director will allow him.
He seemed kinda mediocre in a badly scripted/directed mainstream bore like Love Story,
but I thought he did a very good job in Barry Lyndon. He could also surprise and impress
in more imaginative and quirky fare like Tough Guys Don't Dance:

"Oh God! Oh Man! Oh God! Oh Man! Oh God! Oh Man! Oh God! Oh Man!"

 

I actually found the second half more intense. Snipers scare me a lot more than Drill Instructors.