Word: kubrick
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...Kubrick's opening is so numbingly boring that he almost loses his audience before the real plot kicks in. The scene that actually rekindles the audience's attention is the one we've been watching for months: the couple stroke each other in front of a mirror while Chris Isaak's perfect "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" messes with the tone of the moment. Though Kidman and Cruise don't have sex on-screen (what a tease!), the short scene is wonderful because it is so loaded. Combine Kidman's glances into the mirror, her height advantage over Cruise...
...previous summer. Speaking even slower than the night before (now she's on pot!), Kidman tries to chew the scenery and ends up choking bigtime. Her monologue should be the key to the movie--a thorough exploration of how unrealized emotions can inspire the most potent jealousy--and yet Kubrick has Alice on marijuana before she begins her speech. Why? Why cheapen the moment? In Schnitzler's novel, Alice is perfectly lucid; she virtually relives her erotic desires for the sailor as she recounts her lust. In the film, the exchange isn't balanced; Alice isn't rational, the emotions...
Schnitzler's fascinating account of an opulent palace of sex and mirthful ritual has been turned into much the opposite. True, most critics and fans have raved about Jocelyn Pook's spooky score, the beautiful costuming, the fantastic lighting and the haunting ceremony. The problem, however, is that Kubrick's vision misinterprets Schnitzler's theme: That sex is so deceptive and dangerous because it involves a playout of fantasy. That reality only kicks in once sex is over. Yet, in Kubrick's orgy scene, the mood is menacing from the outset. This isn't erotic sex--this is a museum...
...rest of the film is, sadly enough, a simple exercise in presenting unneeded answers to the many mysteries Bill encountered the night before. In Schnitzler's novel, Bill is left without a true explanation to his journey. But Kubrick inserts a scene where all loose ends are tied up and the result is almost laughable. The film limps to its finish, without catharsis or meaning. The "moral" of the film, according to Alice who had her own horrifying dream adventure the night before, is that "no dream is only a dream" just as no one night symbolizes all "reality...
...much could be said about Kubrick's failure to realize that Bill is also entrapped in his own dream and Kubrick's revamping of Alice's dream (in the book, she dreams of her husband being tortured and crucified). It may seem unfair to criticize a movie because it is its own story, and not Arthur Schnitzler's. But this film has Dream Story's narrative structure, and throughout the movie--especially when the novella's closing moral is repeated verbatim--Kubrick commits himself to Schnitzler's theme...