More to Kubrick than first meets the eye
More to Kubrick than first meets the eye
While the filmmaker and studio executives may have felt panicky, they still pushed ahead aggressively to breathe life into a baby that was on the critical list at birth; Stanley Kubrick, who had still been editing the film aboard the Queen Elizabeth on his way from England to New York, was in the projection booth during every screening and quickly cut the film by 19 minutes, while MGM, realizing that the establishment press was against the picture, desperately tried to identify any sources of support.
Before long, it became clear that the two groups that were in synch with the film were the counterculture and intellectuals. Mike Kaplan, then a young MGM publicist who worked closely with Kubrick in the ongoing marketing of "2001," recalls, "The positive response was all from the underground. I was getting all this 'vibe' response from the fringe. Somehow there were already people in the audience the second night who knew the film was a trip."
Kaplan knew that he could never get influential critics such as Judith Crist and Pauline Kael to reconsider their opinions, but two things happened on the journalistic front that began changing the climate for the film: Newsday critic Joseph Gelmis reversed his original review with a follow-up rave a week or so after the opening, and the Christian Science Monitor published an extraordinary think-piece by a non-critic that MGM reprinted in its entirety in ads. Before long, "2001" was the most talked-about film in the world, a picture whose meanings were endlessly debated, a favorite to see stoned (preferably lying on the floor directly under the sweeping Cinerama screen), and a picture its fans went back to again and again.
Today, of course, it would be unthinkable, even laughable, to base the hopes for a major motion picture ("2001" cost $12 million, Metro's costliest production up to that time) on anything resembling the "counterculture" or "intellectuals," since neither group exists in any meaningful way. Ironically, the potential audience for Kubrick's new, and last, film, "Eyes Wide Shut," constitutes the very people who were hardcore adherents of "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" at the time, while it's young people that Warner Bros. legitimately has to worry about -- the "Austin Powers"-"Big Daddy"-"American Pie" crowd can hardly be counted upon to take an interest in the sexual obsessions and fantasies of a couple that has been married for a decade.
EYES WIDE SHUT" IS ALREADY PROVOKING its share of polarized opinion from extravagant praise to naysaying, with a lot of bewilderment in between. Opinions will fly back and forth and be reconsidered over the coming weeks and months. The point worth remembering, in light of all the intense scrutiny and heavy emphasis on marketing and box office, is that it has always been thus with Kubrick. People expecting to be aroused by the film's eroticism or knocked out by an indisputable masterpiece will inevitably be disappointed, but Kubrick's films have almost invariably provoked bewilderment and/or controversy upon their initial release, only to see their reputations improve with the perspective afforded by time and reevaluation. I can think of no other modern filmmaker working remotely in the neighborhood of the mainstream commercial cinema whose films so merit and reward a second viewing, and whose work always seems richer and more satisfying upon repeated viewing.
Unperturbed by the initial reviews out of New York, I was there for the first show of "2001" in Chicago and can only report that I "got it" right away -- so knocked out and stimulated was I that I raced home and was moved to write down two or three pages of thoughts about the film, the very first words I -- a high school student at the time -- had ever written about any movie. Such is the way careers can be born. Within a week I was back for a second look with several friends in tow, a pattern that was undoubtedly repeated innumerable times around the world and helps account for the mushrooming success the picture enjoyed in its long initial release.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE" THREE YEARS later was an instant sensation, but still the subject of a seemingly unending controversy, not only over its X rating but about its content; the Sunday New York Times ran an academic debate about it that went on for so many weeks that it began to seem like a regular column. And then Kubrick withdrew the picture from British distribution when he became disturbed by real-life hooliganism that appeared to have its basis in copycat crimes inspired by scenes in the film; only now is "Clockwork" about to re-enter release in the U.K.
The stately "Barry Lyndon" proved especially mystifying to critics and audiences on first go-round, with everyone acknowledging its beauty but hardly anyone seeming to understand its point. Then in my early days as a professional film critic, I was far from alone in being very disappointed in the picture, and I now freely confess that I simply didn't understand it upon first viewing. The second time around, it was instantly clear to me that it is perhaps Kubrick's most precise and expressive analysis of the human condition, a portrait perhaps rivaled in its corrosive detail only by von Stroheim. Whenever I stumble across the film on cable and decide to watch a few minutes, I invariably get hooked for an hour or more. From a professional point of view, I resolved that, in future, I would always try to see a Kubrick film twice before writing about it.
Similarly, "The Shining" was seriously misunderstood as an off-target horror film by most critics when it first came out, but has subsequently risen in many observers' estimations. My key into the picture was looking at it as something of a skewered self-portrait by Kubrick, the subjective view of a man cut off from most civilization whose imagination runs amok rather than being channeled creatively. And with "Full Metal Jacket," which at the time was unfavorably judged in the light of "Platoon," the Oscar winner and massive hit that had come out just a few months before, it was important to get beyond that comparison and see the film in the context of Kubrick's own previous war films -- "Paths of Glory," "Spartacus" and, to an extent, "Barry Lyndon" -- as well as just a specifically Vietnam story.
The issue here is that Kubrick's films are always surprising, sometimes off-putting and inscrutable, and not entirely understandable or digestible the first time around, and that the last word on "Eyes Wide Shut" will not be written in today's reviews or in the opening weekend box office figures. Kubrick took his own sweet time making his films, and the perception of the films evolves and changes as well. I saw "Eyes Wide Shut" twice on two consecutive days, and everything about it -- its great virtues as well as its flaws -- came into much sharper focus the second time; despite its problems, I also relished every second of it the second time around. So whatever your initial reaction, even if it's largely negative, I propose that a second viewing at some point down the line -- next week, or a couple of years from now -- is well worth it and likely to leave you with a higher opinion than the first.
