Wednesday, 23 August 2000

RANTING & RAVING

It's the glory of cable TV. Eyes Wide Shut now enters my home without me knowing and before I realize it's happened, I am under the spell for an hour or two without being able to change the channel. If you haven't seen the movie, you may want to stop reading now, but it's hard to imagine that if you were reading this column last summer that you missed EWS.

Seeing the film again (and again) brought new epiphanies about just what Kubrick was up to with this film. Simple epiphanies. After trying to come up with sound answers for the color scheme that is the key to the movie, it finally hit me. It's the Kidman, stupid! I've been beating myself silly trying to figure out why red wasn't always "stop" and blue wasn't always…whatever. It's Nicole Kidman who is with Tom Cruise through virtually every scene of the movie. In the red of her hair and the blue of her eyes. The entire movie is about fidelity and as Cruise goes through his dream maze, she is there. Is the red the emotional exterior and the blue the emotional interior? Probably. But more literally, the very first shot of the film is Kidman stripping down and looking from behind much like many of the naked women we will see throughout the film, except a little less extreme in her "perfection."

And there is this whole set of keys I hadn't noticed clearly enough before. When they get to the party. "Do you know anyone here?" "Not a soul." It's not their playing field. And so it begins. When Cruise first sees Nick Nightingale playing at the party, he explains that Nick dropped out of the medical school they both attended. He took a different path than Cruise's Bill Harford. The theme: Different paths. Just as the guy who hits on Kidman on the dance floor suggests. She too has lots of options. They talk about a poet who had a very good time, but ended up alone. Not what she wants. "Why would a beautiful woman want to be married?" "Why wouldn't she?"

Cruise's Bill Harford flirts lamely with the girls. They want to go where the rainbow ends, but Cruise isn't really ready to make that trip. It's the redhead in Sydney Pollack/Victor Ziegler's bathroom who is the key to the entire movie. She is the object of sexual desire that Cruise thinks he wants. The "orgy sequence" is all about her. She is another redheaded, blue-eyed woman, but she embodies the more stereotypical physicality that men see as valuable. Cruise is brought into Pollack's bathroom at a party where he and his wife wonder about fitting in. They don't fit in. They aren't rich enough. They aren't blasé enough. But they are living in that aspiration. Well, he is. Why shouldn't he have the perfect woman ready to go at it, even if he is older and not so good looking? He then gives the girl, Mandy, a speech, telling her that she "can't keep doing this." Yet, when she comes to him, masked, in the orgy sequence, he wants to take her with him. She tries to explain that he can't keep doing this, staying at the orgy. But it's too late. They are going to strip him. He is going to become part of that scene by force, if necessary. But then, before he is dragged into his fantasy, he is redeemed. By the woman who symbolized the whole evening for him. Who tried to warn him first.

A few steps earlier at the orgy, the people on the balcony are Pollack and Kidman, her mask shedding a tear as she watches his exploration. Then, when the woman in the mask walks with him and tells him he doesn't belong there, if you read the entire exchange as a discussion of the fact that he is not part of that world, he doesn't belong there. His life is not literally threatened. His family life is threatened by his interest in pursuing that world, a world he isn't from and isn't part of. When Nick Nightingale plays for the "orgy," notice that he is not only blindfolded, but he is turned away from the activities. Unlike Cruise, he is in a happy marriage and stays blind to all of that which goes on around him. Get it? Unlike Cruise, who is awoken to that world in Pollack's bathroom, Nightingale can be right in the middle of it all and not even see it!

Another big key is in the Kidman speech about all the women fantasizing about Cruise when he examines them. Notice that Cruise's first dream experience is the daughter of the dead man coming on to him in an absurdly overt way. That's the power of Kidman's suggestion. The gay bashing he suffers, a symbol of his insecurity. The prostitute is starter kit for the eventual orgy sequence. ("It's nicer inside." Red door outside, blue on the inside.) And what does he want from her? He doesn't know. His first instinct is to talk about money. What separates him from the supervixen type in Ziegler's bathroom? Money. The prostitute has to walk him through it. "I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" plays on the stereo, complimenting "Bad, Bad Thing" from the earlier sex scene with his wife. But he can't get going without his wife popping up quite literally, by cell phone. As they talk, she is bathed in all blue and he in all red.

On to Nick Nightingale. He's part of that world, yet happily married. Maybe he can have it all. The costume shop. The Rainbow Costume Shop. All colors of the rainbow. Underage sex. An Asian man in drag. All sorts of personas. Dr. Bill chooses basic black. Not very inventive. But then again, Cruise's character doesn't really know any more than he has been told. Instead of driving up to the orgy in his car, he takes a cab. Still can't commit to his infidelity. And one thing is clear as soon as he walks in the door. He is not one of them. Even masked, he clearly does not belong there. And listen to all the conversations at the orgy. Think of them all as comments on fidelity and they all make sense.

The next day, it's all changed. As I've written before, every door that was once open is now shut. But now, I noticed that Cruise's character is going through a roller coaster ride the entire day into night. Every flavor is still available at The Rainbow Costume Shop, even more so, not that the owner is offering up his daughter openly ("Things change.") But he's left his mask, symbolically at least, at home. He goes to look for Nick Nightingale, but Nick is gone, back with his loved ones. He goes to the prostitute's door, but she too is gone and another girl is there, with red hair and blue eyes and a completely blue jean dress, there to accept Dr. Bill's cookies, in a box with blue printing and a red ribbon. The doctor is ready to step it up, but as soon as he is finally inspired to take action, the danger of the life he's been fantasizing about comes into the conversation with a story about the other girl being HIV positive. He gets in his car and goes back to the orgy house. He's made the commitment of taking the car, but he just gets another warning. He finds out that the woman in the bathroom who was also at the orgy, Mandy, is dead. He mourns the loss of the woman who started his journey. And he heads home to find his wife sleeping peacefully with the mask of himself that he left behind. And so, he tells her "everything," essentially a replay of the tale of imagined infidelity that she had rocked him with the night before.

This film, as brilliant and complex as it is, seems to keep getting clearer every time out. Clearer and simpler. More and more keys just fall into place. What a final gift that Kubrick left us all.

READER OF THE DAY: Joe quotes yesterday's column: "The one thing she lacks, as attractive as she is, is that raw, throbbing sexuality that some of the great famous groupies of the past had."

And then Joe adds: "Dave, I may be one of the few people in America to own a 16mm print of the great documentary from 1969 called Groupies. It's a rather raw insightful look at the girls that b**w the stars. And amazingly enough, many of the girls didn't have that raw sexuality. There's one girl, I think her name is Iris (she's the first person who speaks in Monterey Pop). She's just like Kate as she tags along with Ten Years After--having attached herself to the bass player. The Plaster Casters on the other hand, were rather disturbing to witness. The girl who 'prepared' the rockers was not some hot little groupie number. Fairuza was the norm. Kate would be the exception.

BTW, do you think DreamWorks will attempt to release the DVD of Almost Famous after the Oscar® nominations in order to let Academy members see the 40-minute longer version and try to rebuild the second look buzz amongst members?"

E ME: Good question. I believe that the long version will hit the street in time for Oscar voters to consider it. But I'll try to ask DreamWorks directly.