Read Good Shit On Musings: Stanley Kubrick

The Arc Of Stanley Kubrick: From Killers Kiss to Eyes Wide Shutby Noel Murray

By Yasmina Tawil

Stanley Kubrick made just 13 feature films in his nearly 50-year career, and from the 60s through the 90sthe era in which a Stanley Kubrick picture had a meaningeach new project went through more or less the same press-cycle. During production, reports would leak out about the grueling shoot, and how the reclusive Kubrick was testing the boundaries of cinema and propriety. Then the film would come out, and the critical reaction would be mixed to muted, with some declaring the new work a masterpiece and others calling it a disappointmentor even a pretentious fraud. Years would pass, and with time to sink in, each movie would be extensively reevaluated, eventually landing on best of the decade or even best of all time lists. It was as though each picture had to re-teach the audience how to watch a Stanley Kubrick film.

Eyes Wide Shut is the best case-in-point. Shooting began in the November of 1996 in London, and ended in June of 1998. Throughout that year and a half, there was gossip galore about what Kubrick was up to. The press knew primarily that the film starred Tom Cruise and Nicole KidmanHollywoods most popular couple at the timeand that it was going to be sexually explicit. Once filming completed, Kubrick spent nine months working with editor Nigel Galt, fine-tuning. Less than a week after he completed a final cut and showed it to Warner Bros. and his stars, he died.

So when the movie came out that summer, for a good long while the conversation surrounding it was about everything but what Kubrick had actually made. Instead, the press was preoccupied by

the decision to digitally obscure the orgy scenes, to avoid an NC-17 rating.

whether Cruise and Kidman had wasted a year of their careers making stilted softcore porn.

how American audiences reacted to seeing two of the biggest movie stars in the world in a slow-paced art-film.

whether the Pinewood Studios version of Manhattan looked real enough.

whether Warner Bros. was going to make its money back.

if this was the proper capper to a prestigious career.

By the end of 1999 though, a film that had generally been tagged as a letdown was being rehabilitated. Roger Ebert taped a special edition of his syndicated TV series, wherein prominent Chicago critics extensively unpacked Eyes Wide Shutand thus subtly rebuked the large number of well-known New York critics whod initially shrugged the movie off. The film made a healthy handful of best-of-99 lists (including in New York), and in the decades since its generally become regarded as one of the 90s supreme cinematic achievements, and indisputably worthy of its maker.

Most of the shift in conventional wisdom was due to Kubrick himself. When artists produce outstanding work throughout their careers, its easier to trust that they knows what theyre doingand that if we dont get it right away, we should look again. Its also true that once a film is out of the multiplex marketplace, questions like, Did you like it? become less pressing. Opinion takes a backseat to analysis. And with Eyes Wide Shut, theres as much to pick through and puzzle over as in any of Kubricks filmseven though almost nothing that happens in the picture is left unexplained.

Based on Arthur Schnitzlers Traumnovelle, the movie has Tom Cruise playing Dr. Bill Harford, a successful New York general practitioner who lives in a lavish apartment with wife Alice (Kidman) and their young daughter. The story begins with the couple going to a lavish Christmas party thrown by Bills patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), where the pair flirts with other guests before the doctors called in by his host to attend to a nude, overdosing woman. The next night, Bill and Alice have a testy argument about sexual desire, during which Alice confesses that shes recently lusted after another man. Still fuming, he leaves the apartment to go on a house call, and begins a winding two-day odyssey that sees him sexually tempted multiple times. A combination of desperate arousal and burning envy nearly puts him in mortal danger, after he crashes a bizarre masquerade party at a country estate.

For a long time, Bills journey into the night feels like an erotic dream that keeps threatening to become a nightmare. (In fact, Traumnovelle is sometimes translated in English as A Dream Novel or Dream Story.) But at the end, Bill meets again with Victor, who offers a different interpretation of the previous 48 hours. Bills anxious because the morning after he was ejected from the masquerade, one of his friends went missing and a woman who helped him turned up dead. Victor insists that the friend just left town, the woman was a junkie prostitute, and the masked men at the party werent really threatening Bill, they were maintaining the theatrical illusion of an event meant to resemble a decadent, dangerous gathering of some ancient clandestine tribunal.

Victor could be lying. Or more likely hes acting as Kubricks surrogate, telling the audience not to think too hard about shadowy cabals and unsolved murders, because thats not really what Eyes Wide Shut is about.

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The Arc Of Stanley Kubrick: From ‘Killer’s Kiss’ to ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ by Noel Murray

By Yasmina Tawil

Stanley Kubrick made just 13 feature films in his nearly 50-year career, and from the ‘60s through the ‘90s—the era in which “a Stanley Kubrick picture” had a meaning—each new project went through more or less the same press-cycle. During production, reports would leak out about the grueling shoot, and how the reclusive Kubrick was testing the boundaries of cinema and propriety. Then the film would come out, and the critical reaction would be mixed to muted, with some declaring the new work a masterpiece and others calling it a disappointment—or even a pretentious fraud. Years would pass, and with time to sink in, each movie would be extensively reevaluated, eventually landing on “best of the decade” or even “best of all time” lists. It was as though each picture had to re-teach the audience how to watch a Stanley Kubrick film.

Eyes Wide Shut is the best case-in-point. Shooting began in the November of 1996 in London, and ended in June of 1998. Throughout that year and a half, there was gossip galore about what Kubrick was up to. The press knew primarily that the film starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman—Hollywood’s most popular couple at the time—and that it was going to be sexually explicit. Once filming completed, Kubrick spent nine months working with editor Nigel Galt, fine-tuning. Less than a week after he completed a final cut and showed it to Warner Bros. and his stars, he died.

So when the movie came out that summer, for a good long while the conversation surrounding it was about everything but what Kubrick had actually made. Instead, the press was preoccupied by…

… the decision to digitally obscure the orgy scenes, to avoid an NC-17 rating.

… whether Cruise and Kidman had wasted a year of their careers making stilted softcore porn.

… how American audiences reacted to seeing two of the biggest movie stars in the world in a slow-paced art-film.

… whether the Pinewood Studios version of Manhattan looked real enough.

… whether Warner Bros. was going to make its money back.

… if this was the proper capper to a prestigious career.

By the end of 1999 though, a film that had generally been tagged as a “letdown” was being rehabilitated. Roger Ebert taped a special edition of his syndicated TV series, wherein prominent Chicago critics extensively unpacked Eyes Wide Shut—and thus subtly rebuked the large number of well-known New York critics who’d initially shrugged the movie off. The film made a healthy handful of best-of-‘99 lists (including in New York), and in the decades since it’s generally become regarded as one of the ‘90s supreme cinematic achievements, and indisputably worthy of its maker.

Most of the shift in conventional wisdom was due to Kubrick himself. When artists produce outstanding work throughout their careers, it’s easier to trust that they knows what they’re doing—and that if we don’t “get it” right away, we should look again. It’s also true that once a film is out of the multiplex marketplace, questions like, “Did you like it?” become less pressing. Opinion takes a backseat to analysis. And with Eyes Wide Shut, there’s as much to pick through and puzzle over as in any of Kubrick’s films—even though almost nothing that happens in the picture is left unexplained.

Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, the movie has Tom Cruise playing Dr. Bill Harford, a successful New York general practitioner who lives in a lavish apartment with wife Alice (Kidman) and their young daughter. The story begins with the couple going to a lavish Christmas party thrown by Bill’s patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), where the pair flirts with other guests before the doctor’s called in by his host to attend to a nude, overdosing woman. The next night, Bill and Alice have a testy argument about sexual desire, during which Alice confesses that she’s recently lusted after another man. Still fuming, he leaves the apartment to go on a house call, and begins a winding two-day odyssey that sees him sexually tempted multiple times. A combination of desperate arousal and burning envy nearly puts him in mortal danger, after he crashes a bizarre masquerade party at a country estate.

For a long time, Bill’s journey into the night feels like an erotic dream that keeps threatening to become a nightmare. (In fact, Traumnovelle is sometimes translated in English as A Dream Novel or Dream Story.) But at the end, Bill meets again with Victor, who offers a different interpretation of the previous 48 hours. Bill’s anxious because the morning after he was ejected from the masquerade, one of his friends went missing and a woman who helped him turned up dead. Victor insists that the friend just left town, the woman was a junkie prostitute, and the masked men at the party weren’t really threatening Bill, they were maintaining the theatrical illusion of an event meant to resemble a decadent, dangerous gathering of some ancient clandestine tribunal.

Victor could be lying. Or more likely he’s acting as Kubrick’s surrogate, telling the audience not to think too hard about shadowy cabals and unsolved murders, because that’s not really what Eyes Wide Shut is about.

Read more


Embracing the Unknown: Picnic at Hanging RockBy Piers Marchant

By Yasmina Tawil

image

The most important parts of a film are the mysterious parts beyond the reach of reason and language. Stanley Kubrick

Coming-of-age films generally chronicle the moment where a sexual and emotional awakening is at hand, the point at which we transition from dreamy, fun-loving kids into neurotic, beleaguered adults. (Or maybe that was just me.) If we track a bit further back from that point, however before the characters careen all the way over the waterfall, when they can just begin to hear the distant roar aheadthere can be found a very different kind of attitude: fear of the unknown.

Peter Weirs masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock, takes us to the precipice of adulthood in the guise of a simple mystery story, by quite literally throwing some of its characters off a cliff (or at least behind one). The film opens with a long, static shot of the southern Australian desert, with small, gnarled trees and scrub brush in the foreground and a thick, hovering cloud of fog obscuring the horizon line. Gradually, the fog shifts and settles down over the trees, revealing the jutting expanse of distinctive, jagged cliffs that make up Hanging Rock, a monolithic mamelon slowly being exposed, as the ground below it becomes concealedone of many apt metaphors Weir has in his employ.

In fact, the idea of the monolithexplored in equally confounding ways by Stanley Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey, released some seven years before Weirs film in 1968duly serves as the films linchpin, without ever disclosing its purpose or intentions. The genius of the narrative, based closely on Joan Lindsays novel of the same name, is in this particular kind of murkiness: Picnic can be about practically anything you want to ascribe to it. Is it a meditation on the plaintive unknown of sexual awakening? A film about the limitations of human understanding? Does it concern the idea of our intellectual and spiritual frailty? All of the above and vastly more. In the end, we have a narrative steeped in the idea of mystery at its most elemental. To do this, the film takes a form that Kubrick himself would explore in The Shining some years later: It begins simply, as a kind of genre film, but gradually opens up to a more abstract consideration of the unknown.

image

By taking an elegant Victorian-era mysterythree girls and their Mathematics mistress from a fancy, turn-of-the-century boarding school go missing amongst the strange, obelisk-like stone protuberances and sharply cut pathways of the Rock, after a class picnic on Valentines Day in 1900and blowing up the conceit far past the point of solution, Weir has free reign to explore the obsessive conniptions we experience when presented with a true, unsolvable enigma.

Read more


Embracing the Unknown: ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ By Piers Marchant

By Yasmina Tawil

image

The most important parts of a film are the mysterious parts – beyond the reach of reason and language. —Stanley Kubrick

Coming-of-age films generally chronicle the moment where a sexual and emotional awakening is at hand, the point at which we transition from dreamy, fun-loving kids into neurotic, beleaguered adults. (Or maybe that was just me.) If we track a bit further back from that point, however— before the characters careen all the way over the waterfall, when they can just begin to hear the distant roar ahead—there can be found a very different kind of attitude: fear of the unknown.

Peter Weir’s masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock, takes us to the precipice of adulthood in the guise of a simple mystery story, by quite literally throwing some of its characters off a cliff (or at least behind one). The film opens with a long, static shot of the southern Australian desert, with small, gnarled trees and scrub brush in the foreground and a thick, hovering cloud of fog obscuring the horizon line. Gradually, the fog shifts and settles down over the trees, revealing the jutting expanse of distinctive, jagged cliffs that make up Hanging Rock, a monolithic mamelon slowly being exposed, as the ground below it becomes concealed—one of many apt metaphors Weir has in his employ.

In fact, the idea of the monolith—explored in equally confounding ways by Stanley Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey, released some seven years before Weir’s film in 1968—duly serves as the film’s linchpin, without ever disclosing its purpose or intentions. The genius of the narrative, based closely on Joan Lindsay’s novel of the same name, is in this particular kind of murkiness: Picnic can be about practically anything you want to ascribe to it. Is it a meditation on the plaintive unknown of sexual awakening? A film about the limitations of human understanding? Does it concern the idea of our intellectual and spiritual frailty? All of the above and vastly more. In the end, we have a narrative steeped in the idea of mystery at its most elemental. To do this, the film takes a form that Kubrick himself would explore in The Shining some years later: It begins simply, as a kind of genre film, but gradually opens up to a more abstract consideration of the unknown.

image

By taking an elegant Victorian-era mystery—three girls and their Mathematics mistress from a fancy, turn-of-the-century boarding school go missing amongst the strange, obelisk-like stone protuberances and sharply cut pathways of the Rock, after a class picnic on Valentine’s Day in 1900—and blowing up the conceit far past the point of solution, Weir has free reign to explore the obsessive conniptions we experience when presented with a true, unsolvable enigma.

Read more

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