WEEKEND UPDATE TIME!

Things I'm reading: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins

Movies I'm watching: “Eyes Wide Shut,” directed by Stanley Kubrick. “Comrades: Almost a Love Story,” directed by Peter Chan.

*** SPOILERS AHEAD! ***

A great weekend for movie watching. For four years, I had put off viewing Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," due to the plethora of negative reviews for it. But it was the man's final directorial effort, and I figured, "It's been four years. You've always liked Kubrick's work. You might was well watch it." Well, I watched it.

For the life of me, I can't see why so many people hate this movie. It's extremely well-made. Certainly, it requires patience to view. But it's also incredibly fascinating, exploring the illusions and false assumptions of both women and marriage. I mean, who hasn't assumed that marriage requires an emotional deadening of the self? I myself always figured that once a ring is slipped over a finger, that ring-bearing person can not, should not, must not even look at a member of the opposite gender. However, the truth, it seems, is more complicated than that.

So poor Tom Cruise plays a doctor who discovers his wife is capable of being unfaithful to him. Well, not unfaithful in the Biblical sense, but unfaithful in her mind. Nicole Kidman, the wife, definitely loves him, but admits she was attracted to another man once. No tryst occurred, yet the attraction was so strong that she desperately wanted a tryst to occur. This completely blows Cruise's mind. As he wanders the streets of New York (actually a set built on Kubrick's property) trying to deal with this, reality suddenly becomes this surreal sexual playground, with both temptations and threats to his sexual identity lurking around every corner. Can he bring himself to cheat on his wife physically, as a means of revenging her mental cheating?

Had a lesser filmmaker attempted “Eyes Wide Shut,” it could have ended up resembling some kind of grown-up teenage sex comedy. Tom Cruise spends the brunt of the film trying to get some, is on the verge of getting some, and then someone or something intervenes. Like all Kubrick films, however, there is a dark, sinister edge that keeps the pattern of failed liasons from becoming too ridiculous. Yes, the world becomes a simmering pot of bubbling-over sexual opportunity. But the sex being offered always threatens to be dehumanizing, and Cruise finds that he simply cannot use women for sex.

Take, for example, the scene with the prostitute played by Vanessa Shaw. They are on the verge of engaging in illicit activity, but then Cruise’s cell phone rings. It is Nicole Kidman calling him. After speaking to her, Cruise returns to the hooker and finds he cannot go through with what he had intended. We assume he withdraws because of the guilt he would feel cheating on his wife. Especially since she called him so recently. I prefer to evaluate the scene on a more symbolic level: Cruise has rented this hooker for sex. He would sleep with her only because he finds her sexually attractive. He is not interested in her on any other level, and certainly not on the emotional levels with which he loves his own wife. The call from the wife reminds him of that emotionally-involved, non-dehumanizing form of sex. His wife saves him from becoming an unfeeling, sexual robot, the types of character that thoroughly populates the film.

Then Cruise crashes a mysterious orgy, and he is threatened with what could be anal rape or genital mutilation. Kubrick directs these scenes in a way that is unnerving. All the participants wear masks, and talks in strange voices. This supports the theme of dangerous, dehumanizing sex.

And you’ve got to love the ending. Cruise returns from his disturbing sexual odyssey, and Kidman awakens from her mental one. You’d think, having gone through their respectively traumatizing experiences, that any thoughts of ever straying would be banished from their heads. Not so easy. As Cruise says, “No dream is ever just a dream.” When he tries to reassure Kidman that they will be married forever, she recoils from the thought. “Don’t say that word, forever,” she tells him. “That word terrifies me.” Ironically, Cruise and Kidman would divorce two years later. Were the problems of their real-life marriage reflected in this movie? Not necessarily. Art imitates life as much as life imitates art; their real-life marriage was as real as the celluloid one. As “Eyes Wide Shut” makes us ponder, what is marriage but one person with two sets of thoughts and desires? And while our spouses may keep us from engaging in simplified, dehumanizing sex, that does not mean we ourselves become simple.