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In Reply to: Re: "Eyes Wide Shut": Comments posted by Justin Doring on October 18, 2000 at 13:50:57:
yep, the music and the foleys were very good, and I was fascinated by the lighting--so much so that I just had to go see Hitchcock's "Vertigo" again. And I confess that I was held captive thru the whole film, waiting for Cruse and Kidman to be tortured and murdered. Darn! Talk about being sexually frustrated! Now Fellini could have done it right! Those limeys are so cold. You need a perverted Italian--or worse...a Spaniard! That's it...the Spanish Inquision! Who would have expected it? Oh, the horror! The Grand Inquisitor himself making Cruse account for his empty, pathetic, wasted life. Confess Tom, and then we can kill you. What's the password Tom? don't know do you? well, get this, there is no password Tom, we're putting you on? get it? now, how do you feel? real? Only passion makes life real Tom. No Tom, not lust, stop looking wide-eyed at that hooker, and feel your way through life's puzzles. "Use the Force Luke!" You're hopeless. Only your death can save you now. But look, you don't even belive in that, do you?
"Once more around the wheel of Karma, Dharma."Kubrick wanted to make a Hitchcock film, or, take a fatal stab at C & K (or perhaps just the shallowness of life without belief in the supernatural... but I'd prefer to make it personal). That, if anything, is extent of his masterful joke. He's putting us all on, just as he did in 2001. Kubrick did murder Cruse and Kidman, and the irony of their interviews at the end of the DVD make the stabbing from behind and beyond the grave all the more poignent. Bravo Kubrick! Those interviews can't have been planned, but they are so funny. The master sets the stage, knowing the actors will play their parts perfectly even with the director absent. Yes, it's his masterpiece all right. His supernatural act--how could he have known what they would say and that it would be included in the DVD release? He wanted to show empty people--nothing behind the mask, so he found two empty people, and had them play themselves! Is that brilliance, or just cynicism?
Oh how we wait for our chance to be free...following all the rules: I'll do well in school, get a good job, a nice girl, a house, some kids, pay off the mortgage, save for retirement...and THEN I will begin to live, and try to find my passion (if I'm not dead, yet)...but if we break away--then where are we? We have all the freedom of astronauts adrift (Hal knows a truth, but instead of freeing him, it makes him insane). The earth is no longer our home, we care nothing about the folly of our fellow humans. It's our passions and feelings that attach us to this world. Without that, we are spectors, stalkers of life (a stalker like the HAl 9000 or Tom Cruse, a clever imitator, but not the real thing. Dave is the quintessential Zen monk faced with an unsolvable riddle). We are Cruse or Kidman. We are HAL. We are Linda Tripp.
"Hal, open the pod bay doors!"
"I'm sorry Dave, yer fucked!"Once your eyes are opened, you can never return.
"Dave, I'm loosing my mind Dave."
Oh, oh....I've got to go see "Vertigo" again. Hitchcock taught Kubrick everything--all you need to do is see the opening credits of "vertigo" and it all becomes clear--as if seen thru a glass, darkly. Kubrick is fooling with us. It's DePlama's "Body Double"--a tribute? or just a stupid rip to titilate the masses. The first time it's art, the sequel is something else...a shallow, hollow double, a distorted reflection of the feel thing (such good casting!).
Who among us could stand to see C & K more than once? Jimmy Stewart---now there's an actor who needs no lines. Go ahead. I dare you to sit up late and watch "Vertigo" uninterrupted, and the following night do the same with "Eyes". Stanley's pulled a fast one all right--right in front of C & K, with their simple-minded eyes wide shut the whole time. Will they ever "get it?" Now watch the interviews again, and try not to laugh and wake the cat.
Oh, while you're at it, check out Hitch's use of color...it's so "in your face" you don't even see it. Now, where have I seen that before...hummmm.
Kubrick always stressed that he was after the feelings, not the literal depictions. He painted his films with feelings and moods (hummm from whom did he learn that trick? eh Hitch?). Follow the heart with Eyes Wide Shut. See nothing. Feel your way through this film. He means literally, open your eyes to the painted images and feel the mood created (you have to do this in a dark, quiet theater to get the intended effect). Cruse and Kidman feel nothing. They are "Will" (Cruse wills himself to care) and "Ice" ("al-ICE is way beyond caring). Their pathetic "acting" serves Kubrick well, because he's showing us how we live--a bunch of pathetic actors who shuffle thru our lives without indulging passion, without knowing passion, without caring--with eyes wide shut. Who's dream is this? Is it Will's? Is it al-ICE? Does the dream belong to the people at the party? Is it Stanley's dream, or our dream? Welcome to the magic theater Steppinwolf--everything you know is wrong. The whole film is absent genuine feeling. When they fight after smoking dope (anyone who's ever been high knows this) it's fake. Kidman the ice-woman (hey, I thought only Hitchcock used the Ice Woman as his architype??!!) They are simply pretending to care--hoping the feeling will follow the acting (such brilliant casting! and once again, I refer you to the very heart of the themes in "Vertigo"). What's missing is what we can't see. We can't see our heart's desire--get rid of those two! If you end up not liking it, or the lead actors, then you've solved his puzzle. Jimi Stewart's body double hopes that if she plays the role well Stewart will come to love her. But no, it's the feeling he loves, not the person. And she, she's no better, because she loves only the passion Stewart has for his lost love, not Stewart himself. Isn't that what Cruse and Kidman are doing? This is Kubrick's cosmic joke. HAL learns to feel, and goes mad. Dave feels nothing--wait, now who is the machine? Better run that one by me again.
"Wind up that Karma wheel Siddartha, we've got another starchild on the way." Fixing on couples copulating...taken directly from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Leading us by the nose, aren't you Stanley?
Who do we hate? The icons of the 21st century adam and eve. Yes Pogo, we have found the enemy, and he is us.
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..."
********
and now a word from our sponsor:"The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it."
--Stanley Kubrick
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Follow Ups
- Re: "Eyes Wide Shut": Comments - petew 17:45:39 10/18/00 (1)
- Re: "Eyes Wide Shut": Comments - Victor Khomenko 19:11:23 10/18/00 (0)
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