comment #1

mutinyco says ...

David Thomson HATES Kubrick. He hates him. He once blamed EWS for Tom & Nicole's divorce, if I recall correctly. And the only major canon work he likes somewhat is The Shining.

That said, the only people who ever actually seem to have any praise for Thomson are other film writers. Filmmakers think he knows nothing about filmmaking. I agree, and his piece on cinematography in an earlier edition was so incompetent (cinematography isn't important, common people take millions of photos every day, only a couple of significant dp's in history, etc.), that I stopped reading the book.

That said, once again, this is about 6 years old, kind of dusty, but it gets to the point: http://www.movienavigator.org/eyeswideshut.htm

comment #2

Dr. Smith says ...

Jeff, I agree 100%. EWS is a stinker. It has been the subject of many revisionist/apologist articles and reviews since its release (ie Scorsese putting it on his 10 best of the 90s list), but in my opinion it can't be saved. Have you ever met anyone who LIKES this movie?

Take away the top-notch photography, the A-list director and actors, and you've got a script which would be best suited for a smelly, corny Skinemax movie starring Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed.

comment #3

Roman says ...

Personally I consider Eyes Wide Shut to be a vast improvement over "Full Metal Jacket". Stil, this work is much too strong to consider it anything close to a comeback.

To me. "Eyes Wide Shut" is vastly superior to "American Beauty".

comment #4

Roman says ...

"Have you ever met anyone who LIKES this movie?"

Smth, meet my left fist.

Oh, and Martin Scorsese.

comment #5

corey3rd says ...

"Every frame feels like a prison."

What prison experience resembles that frame of Nicole Kidman's ass? How much hard time has Thomson served in England? He spent more time in the joint than Nicole and Paris?

comment #6

Mgmax says ...

One thing I disliked about Thomson (back when I read Biographical Dictionary of Film daily) was that you could predict pretty easily the giants of the canon he'd put down-- Ford, Kubrick, Fellini, Chaplin, Kurosawa, Disney (who he never even bothers to include), etc. There comes a point when contrarianism just becomes rote. So I simply didn't pay much attention to him on those topics (even if sometimes I came to think he was right, as with Ford, and Hawks' superiority to him, and The Searchers standing heads above the rest).

comment #7

JohnCope says ...

"Have you ever met anyone who LIKES this movie?"

Uh...yeah, lots of people. I personally adore it.

"Take away the top-notch photography, the A-list director and actors, and you've got a script which would be best suited for a smelly, corny Skinemax movie starring Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed."

You can't really tell me you believe this. Obviously you must reject sight unseen all those silly "revisionist/apologist articles" which, btw, continue to pile up over the years, rather than appear in declining numbers. Is it, ahem, possible that you simply weren't fully engaged with what's going on in this film?

comment #8

EOTW says ...

Just found my new desktop pic!

comment #9

bmcintire says ...

I just watched EWS on Blu-Ray a couple of nights ago - enjoying again even more than expected. The interviews with his family are fascinating and an eye-opener. His wife and daughters have a laugh at the myth that he was some hermetic recluse. He went to the shops, traveled, had friends over for weekends. The only people he kept at a distance were the press, the studio flaks, and self-appointed overlords like Thompson.

comment #10

Mgmax says ...

"Take away the top-notch photography, the A-list director and actors, and you've got a script which would be best suited for a smelly, corny Skinemax movie starring Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed."

Take away the modern setting and you have Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death.

comment #11

Noah says ...

Nine years later, Jeff, and you're still defending your critique of the film. What that tells me is that either a) you are still wrestling with a film that is more complicated than you give it credit for or b) you are in the minority and you have to point to every other critic that agrees with you to make yourself feel better.

Other than that, you should read Jamie Stuart's article about it that he linked to above.

As for Thomson, I actually enjoy reading him but he is pompous and pretentious. He loves Godard and hates Truffaut, rather than loving them both for what they are.

comment #12

YND says ...

Said it before, I'll say it again: EYES WIDE SHUT is a masterpiece. A gift. A pleasure to watch. "Every frame feels like a prison" -- sounds very much like a man trapped in his own preconceptions of what he felt the film should have been (a critical "problem" that Kubrick faced with every film he ever made).

Even if there were no substance to it, I don't understand how a true lover of film would be able to keep from falling under the sway of the pure, perfect technical filmmaking. To have the emotional underpinnings that make EWS likely Kubrick's most human-centric film in there as well... it's stunning.

It is certainly a film best seen projected on film -- if you get the chance to see it screened, don't pass it up. But even in a good digital transfer, it's jawdropping.

As someone who never connected to THE SHINING or FULL METAL JACKET the way he had to every Kubrick film that came before, EWS was a revelation to me. A swan song that magnificently capped (if too early) an incomparable career.

(And as Wells says he feels comforted to find Thomson validating his own negative opinion, I remember feeling similarly vindicated when Martin Scorsese named EWS one of his 5 favorite films of the 1990s. Personally, I'll take Marty over Davey any day.)

comment #13

YND says ...

And if you can find it, Liam Lacey's EWS essay for Cinemascope's Spring 2000 "Best of the 90s" issue is fantastic reading. ("Even at first viewing, it should be obvious that EWS is more than a messed-up erotic thriller. How did those annoyed readers miss the jokes?")

comment #14

YND says ...

Oops. "Annoyed readers" should be "Annoyed reviewers". You know, like Thomson. And Wells.

comment #15

Geoff says ...

The fact that Kubrick was "secretive, secluded" and not "in touch" doesn't really hinder the film in my opinion. The film is about a guy living in a bubble.

I think the marketing definitely played an almost cruel joke on people.

And it's my belief that many negative reviewers don't like to admit they keep wanting a different (sexier) film to match those beautiful images.

comment #16

joemart says ...

EYES WIDE SHUT is Kubrick's most complete film since A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - and one of his best. It perfectly explores modern marriage and the journey Cruise's character takes to become his wife's sexual equal. Her last line in the film tells us he succeeded.

comment #17

Mr. Muckle says ...

Thanks for all the links, guys. Gawd! The only thing more stifling than watching EWS is reading about it. Na gan happen.

comment #18

Balerion says ...

All right, it's juvenile, but that picture of Kidman has always elevated the film in my mind. And my blood pressure. Meow.

As to the film itself, I'm ambivalent about it. I think there's something to the idea that Kubrick's separation from normal life may have hindered his art. At the same time, the vision of someone not unlike a religious hermit is on display on that screen, and what it illuminates about the great director may in itself be worth as much or more than what it illuminates about sex and relationships.

And, you know, naked Nicole Kidman at the height of her beauty? Eternal plaudits.

comment #19

Arizona Joe says ...

I agreed with Wells about this the first time.

The film is miscast. Cruise and Kidman do not look believable as a married couple. Hence, there is not that much palpable tension between them and not that much risk associatd with their behavior.

If they were depicted as a physician & wife who were truly in love, throwing it over for infidelity, swinging, and decadence would have been very dramatic.

Kidman's dialog delivery is silly. The continental guy whom she dances with looks like someone from Vienna circa 1946, not a contemporary. The narrow studio streets and sidewalks look nothing like New York. It is a distraction.

I think all of this is a function of Kubrick being an anchorite. I consider Kubrick to be one of the greatest artists in any medium of the last century. I was disappointed in EWS. Compared to most of the schlock served up, it is a very good film. But it could have been great. I like it the least of the Kubrick canon.

comment #20

Chris Willman says ...

""Have you ever met anyone who LIKES this movie?"

Me.

comment #21

Edward says ...

Count me on the side of liking EWS, I need to see it again; though, since I only saw it on it's original release. Every Kubrick film needs to be seen more than once. As I've mentioned before, I hated Clockwork on first viewing, but grew to love it with each subsequent viewing. On the other hand, I dislike The Shining even after multiple viewings. Is there any great filmmaker that doesn't have the lovers and haters of individual films? Is Fellini's Roma as good as 81/2 (probably not)? What about Speilberg's Saving Private Ryan vs. Empire of the Sun? I love the latter, am mediocre on the former. So it is with Kubrick.

comment #22

TheJeff says ...

"Have you ever met anyone who LIKES this movie?"

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I absolutely adore the film. I think it's one of Kubrick's best, and most of my cinephile friends feel the same way. If you mean, "Does the average mall monkey like it?" the answer is, of course, no. It's an art film through and through. Most "regular" folks I know think that Forrest Gump is "like the best movie ever!" Nice people, but I don't give a flying fuck about their opinions on cinema.

Besides Martin Scorsese, plenty of scholars and critics have thought it a masterpiece from the time it was released -- no revisionism necessary.

comment #23

cjKennedy says ...

Kind of comforting to see you stubbornly clinging to your wrongness all these years later Wells.

comment #24

Mgmax says ...

I'm very ambivalent about it. What's good is very good. What's ponderous is very ponderous. It is not a convincing portrait of life in 1999 in New York, and would have been better set (and made) in the late 60s, when it would have been easier to buy many aspects of it-- the husband's naivete about his wife's sexuality, for instance.

I mentioned Masque of the Red Death, specifically Corman's (art) film of it. Schnitzler was writing at a time when another sexual plague was all too common (syphilis) and his most famous other work, La Ronde, is a sexual version of a familiar medieval form, the Totendanz, the Dance of Death; thanatos hangs over eros throughout. If you view EWS as not being a realistic film but as being a kind of fable, set in a stylized world where sex is available (but just out of reach) in every window, yet Death stalks the party as he does in The Masque of the Red Death, its vision of spectral, doom-haunted nightlife in New York, tempting the family man out of his cocoon but promising dire consequences, starts to work a lot better.

Still, it's too long, those long, pause-riddled conversations are a hard sit, Lolita did it better, I grant you that. But there's no other movie like it, and people will sit through it and be frustrated by it when they've long since forgotten most of Cruise's and Kidman's other work.

comment #25

alynch says ...

Kubrick apparently did very little of this. The more invested he became in his secretive, secluded, every-detail-controlled, nothing-left-to-chance lifestyle in England -- which he began to construct when he left Hollywood and moved there in the early '60s -- and the less familiar he became with the rude hustle-bustle of life on the outside, the more rigid and formalized and apart-from-life his films became.

My least favorite type of criticism is when the critic, rather than simply analyzing the film, feels the need to be an armchair psychologist explaining the fillmmaker's mind as if he has a fucking clue. Psychoanalyzing the filmmaker, with only the flimsiest basis, gives the illusion of depth in your writing when you're really just pulling shit out of your ass.

comment #26

K. Bowen says ...

As some have pointed out, Thomson, rightly or wrongly, hates Kubrick's work. So I take anything he says about Kubrick as provocative theory, but hardly the final word.

comment #27

Rich S. says ...

Kubrick is my favorite director, but I've honestly never been able to determine my feelings for this film. I even read Traumnovel to try to sort it out, to no avail.

As many have mentioned, the scenes that connect work astonishingly well. But the film seems overlong and disjointed. That may very well be the point.

The film may not be easily dismissed, however. It is far too challenging for that. It is perhaps Kubrick's most challenging work this side of 2001.

comment #28

MilkMan says ...

After Hours, Blue Velvet and EWS are great to watch back to back to back.

Paranoia, The Return of the Repressed, and Acute Anxiety all filtered through each individual master's sense of dream logic.

I feel sorry for people who can't parse what is great about EWS, from the exquisite lighting and color schemes to the absurd sense of humor. I always laugh when Kubrick cuts from Cruise wimpering and promising Kidman he'll tell her everything to Kidman sitting at the kitchen table, crying.

"And then I met this prostitute who has AIDS and these guys called me a fag and then I'm at this orgy and they said they were going to kill me..."

Only a man who has been married for decades would know that the best (and only) salve for this kind of juvenile escapade is a good, hard fuck (Kidman's suggestion - gulp), and this sentiment betrays nary a stitch of Kubrick's worldview. He was always working blue. Why do you think he got along so well with Southern and Nicholson?

David Thomson is humorless. Always has been.

comment #29

Richardson says ...

"Take away the top-notch photography, the A-list director and actors, and you've got a script which would be best suited for a smelly, corny Skinemax movie starring Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed."

If you take away the photography, direction, and acting, '2001' would be too lame for Sci-Fi Channel and 'The Shining' would be... well, the ABC version.

I don't really think it's reasonable to judge a film -- especially a Kubrick film -- without taking photography, direction, and acting into account. Kubrick used photography and sound and editing to tell the story, so to ignore those things and then judge the story lacking seems... wrongheaded, I guess the word would be.

comment #30

swordandpen says ...

I thought "Eyes Wide Shut" was a big step up from "The Shining" (Kubrick applying masterful touches to a story that was beneath him) and "Full Metal Jacket" (which was 1/3 of a great movie).

"Eyes Wdie Shut" may be a bit messy and overlong, but, as others pointed out, it is still challenging and provoking debate. What's there to debate on "The Shining"? If it was the first performance where Jack Nicholson descended into self-parody?

comment #31

lipranzer says ...

Count me among those who think EWS is Kubrick's final masterpiece (as an aside; what other directors can you think of whose final film was one of their best? Off the top of my head, I can only think of John Huston (THE DEAD) and Louis Malle (VANYA ON 42ND STREET), and this is another person who was disappointed in both THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET. It's so funny you should be talking about this here, because my co-workers and I were discussing it in the store today.

To me, there are two things that are especially brilliant about it. Someone mentioned how they thought Cruise was miscast. I couldn't disagree more. Whatever you think of Cruise as an actor - my own view is if he gets a real director who doesn't let him make the film a vanity project, he does very well - it's clear how the movie is designed to play off of, and kid somewhat, his image as a sex symbol. All of these characters are coming on to him, like the daughter (Marie Richardson) of a sick patient, the prostitute (Vinessa Shaw), the woman at the orgy (Julienne Davis) whose life he had saved at Sydney Pollack's party, Leelee Sobieski as the daughter of the costume shop owner, and Alan Cumming's hotel clerk. And there's also that gang of youths who attack him and call him a faggot and other names, which is a nod to those who think Cruise is gay in real life. All of this, to me, felt completely natural, precisely because Cruise's character is either too blind to see what's going on, or keeps getting interrupted.

The other thing I thought was brilliant was the "dream" sequence. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never had a dream that looked like it was directed by Salvador Dali, David Lynch, or Joss Whedon. The fact that the "dream" sequence looked so similar to the "normal" parts to me made it all the more interesting, because you could see Cruise questioning himself; did this really happen to me, or am I going crazy and I just dreamed it happened?

Oh, and the very last line of the film is one of my favorite last lines in movies of all time.

comment #32

Mgmax says ...

"as an aside; what other directors can you think of whose final film was one of their best?"

Bresson, L'Argent
Murnau, Tabu
Sirk, Imitation of Life

Years ago the Film Center at the Art Institute did a retrospective of director's last films. The answer turns out to be... a lot of them made a great movie about two before their last, but the last is nearly always lesser (hey, that's why they finally quit, after a disappointment). So Ford, who should have stopped after Liberty Valance, goes out with 7 Women instead; likewise Hitchcock and Frenzy/Family Plot, etc. But at least it was a rare chance to see Dreyer's Gertrud (wrong director for modernist material) and Griffith's The Struggle (wrong movie for the times, but quite strong and overlooked).

comment #33

Adonis says ...

Interesting discussion. Quite interesting. I really have one question: Why is their so much nudity in this post?

I don't mind, mind you. But somewhat odd... ironic given the theme of the post. For all the critics of Eyes Wide Shut (and I'm one too), the sheer explotive, thought-provoking photography in the film certainly marvels those you analyze it... Wells included, apparently.

comment #34

Richardson says ...

"s an aside; what other directors can you think of whose final film was one of their best?"

I don't personally agree with this, but I know plenty of people who would say Sergio Leone.

comment #35

messiahcomplexio says ...

I still would have rather seen Kubrick's AI.

comment #36

mtgilchrist says ...

I find it funny that no one has commented on those pictures, the publication of which qualifies as one of the most tasteless things I have ever seen Wells do. Did you get them off of one of those celeb nudie sites, or did you scan the DVD yourself for just the right shots that maximized your personal exploitation of the women in the film? If you're interested, the DVD last year actually has the unedited version of the orgy, so if you check that out you could probably find some pictures of the actresses getting banged good and hard.

Seriously, what does either of those pictures in particular have to do with either your argument or David Thomson's? Nothing. I guess the justification is that they're getting laid by attractive guys rather than "galumphs," or otherwise meet whatever standard of beauty you have deemed appropriate for the rest of humanity. (Oh, and just an fyi, even though she is in the movie, neither one of those features Vinessa Shaw.)

comment #37

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comment #38

Edward says ...

I happen to think Hitchock's Frenzy is outstanding.

comment #39

dinther says ...

I recall hearing dreadful things about EWS, and avoided seeing it. Then I rented it on DVD and was completely intrigued. It gets better with each viewing.

The criticism that Kubrick is "out of touch" with the "real world" is interesting, but I'm not sure matters that much. It is like comparing Sartre or Camus - both entirely "in-the-world" - with Kant, the abstract idealist. Sarte and Camus both lived lives that could spawn action movies, lives which coincided with their attempt to displace the distanced idealism of Kant. But Kant - who lived a fastidious, ascetic life, and was famously out of touch with the "real world" - still created amazing works that have withstood hundreds of years of criticism.

So yes, maybe Kubrick was out of touch. So what - that's what makes his films so "otherworldly." Do soldiers speak in the cadences that marked "Full Metal Jacket"? Of course not. Do New Yorkers live lives in the way depicted in EWS? No. Kubrick's worlds may not have been ours, but they were still authentic and there were no leaks at the seams. Indeed, Kant might say that Kubrick is not depicting the world as it is, but rather, as it should be.

comment #40

bluefugue says ...

One might add Vigo to the "last is best" club, but he died awfully young.

comment #41

Dave Polands Gut says ...

Lets be honest. EWS is a bomb.

comment #42

Mgmax says ...

"I happen to think Hitchock's Frenzy is outstanding."

That's the point-- it's not his last film, Family Plot (which is fun but nothing great) is.

comment #43

markj says ...

To cover some of the points mentioned above:

1. If you're looking for realism from a Kubrick movie you've chosen the wrong cinema screen. EWS is all about ambiguity, something sadly missing from 99% of American cinema.

2. Eyes Wide Shut was not a bomb - a profit of over $100 million represents a bomb does it?

3. To the poster who would rather have seen A.I. - I agree. I think Kubrick's version would have been one of the all-time masterpieces of cinema. A great master of the cinema reflecting on themes of life, death and what makes us all human. A tragedy he didn't live to make it. And I think it's fair to say Kubrick would not have a had a Josh Groban duet on the soundtrack.

comment #44

T. S. Idiot says ...

Good last films:
Huston's The Dead
Ophuls' Lola Montes
Frakenheimer's Path to War (if TV counts)

comment #45

lazarus says ...

F For Fake is a pretty great final film; it's also quite ambitious and ahead of its time, not the work of a former great easing into retirement.

Of course, if The Other Side of the Wind ever gets released, we'll have to consider that the final Welles effort.

comment #46

lazarus says ...

F For Fake is a pretty great final film; it's also quite ambitious and ahead of its time, not the work of a former great easing into retirement.

Of course, if The Other Side of the Wind ever gets released, we'll have to consider that the final Welles effort.

comment #47

Mgmax says ...

I thought about Lola Montes, but i really don't like it very much compared to his others.

And sure Frankenheimer's TV work counts. I imagine he'd much rather you thought of him for that and George Wallace than for Reindeer Games.

comment #48

mutinyco says ...

I'm not sure comparing Kubrick's last to other directors is necessarily meaningful. Most directors made a lot more movies than Kubrick. And most filmmakers made movies on a different level -- and for different reasons. With Kubrick, each time out, it was like a new thesis on the form and what can be done with it.

comment #49

LexG says ...

I can't believe there are still people who don't RECOGNIZE that THE SHINING is clearly Kubrick's most perfect movie.

Because it is the most perfect movie ever made.

Anyone who saw it as kid is pretty much traumatized for life by it, as it remains THE ONLY REMOTELY SCARY HORROR FILM, so perfect in its imagery, tone, sound, setting, acting... everything.

Much as I love Barry Lyndon, 2001, Clockwork, Strangelove, EWS, Lolita and Spartacus, THE SHINING remains the perfect mix of haunting, sinister, brilliance Kubrick craftsmanship, pop storytelling, and elliptical thematic and narrative possibilities.

If anything, FMJ is indeed the weak link in the latter half of his brilliant career, and even that's pretty damn good... just woefully misshapen and somewhat unfocused, but still worthwhile.

The Shining is fucking terrifying, intense, hilarious, surreal, sinister, ENDLESSLY rewatchable; Ask ANYONE aged 30-40, they've EASILY seen it 70 times or more... fuck, I probably watched it twenty times a month on cable when I was growing up.

MASTERPIECE.