Eyes Wide Shut

Rating:
Summary: Short. Very very short.
Review: Coming in around 15,000 words, this reads more like a long journal article than a book. Chion takes an unapologetically personal view of Eyes Wide Shut that ignores without comment many key elements of the film and treats the whole as a straightforward narrative. Evidently, we are supposed to ignore certain obvious things as they are only meant to add to an unexplainable atmosphere independent from the plot. Overall unsatisfying, although Chion does provide the occasional insight like his analysis of the various types of repetition in the dialog and his comparison of the characters Bill and Carl. Due to its length, we get almost no elaboration on why, for instance, Chion holds to the view that the entire story is told by Bill and Alice's unborn son, although I suspect that the tiny snippet of evidence he does provide for this odd view is indeed all that he has.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, insightful book!
Review: Stanley Kubrick must have been habituated to negative reviews, given the controversy that many of his films inspired. Still, there was something poignant about seeing Eyes Wide Shut scathed by the critics when Kubrick himself had just passed away. It is a great film, a masterpiece, and yet it seemed so vulnerable there without the director himself able to lend his considerable energy to its defense. Apparently everyone was expecting a Tom and Nicole lovefest and thus could not see the film for what it was -- a kind of fin-de-siecle film about love, albeit seen in a glass darkly.

Fortunately, defenders of the film are finally emerging from the woods, and at their forefront is Michel Chion. His book -- which is insightful, elegantly written, and unpretentious (a notable quality in film books) -- makes a very strong case for considering Eyes Wide Shut as the work of genius that it no doubt is. He writes with extreme sensitivity to the film's meticulous construction, luminescent cinematography, sinuous psychology, and stylized dialogue. Attentive to the smallest of details, Chion demonstrates how a simple transition shot -- Tom Cruise entering an apartment and knocking on a bedroom door (a scene that Kubrick apparently filmed dozens of times) -- plays an important part in the semantics of the entire film. And those who think of Kubrick as a cinematic purist will be surprised by Chion's convincing analysis of the film's deliberate use of language -- passwords, repetitions, even spelling, as when an incidental character spells her name aloud with such insinuation that no come-on ever sounded so alluring.

It is not always easy to explain the roots of admiration, and sometimes you simply do or do not love a thing -- a book, a film, an artwork. But Chion's book has the great merit of transforming the author's love for the film into insight and exegesis, and perhaps in this way it might inspire admiration in others too...

Rating:
Summary: "A Not-Unhappy Ending"
Review: Stanley Kubrick was quoted in several books as saying, "I would never argue with (any) interpretation of (my) films."
Smart move. What's been interesting about the criticism of Kubrick's films over the years is the sheer volume and diversity of the interpretations. I remember reading a long Film Comment review of THE SHINING in 1980 that delved into the film's symbolism about America's troubled history of Native Americans and the breakdown of the traditional family.
I thought it was supposed to be horror movie.

For the most part, I enjoyed this BFI book about EYES WIDE SHUT but I thought the volumes about THE EXORCIST and LAST TANGO IN PARIS were more interesting since they were less abstract about their subjects. This particular take on EYES lost me when it tried to say that the film was from the point of view of the son of Tom and Nicole who hadn't been born yet. Huh?
But it's a Kubrick film.
And who can argue with any interpretation?

Rating:
Summary: "A Not-Unhappy Ending"
Review: Stanley Kubrick was quoted in several books as saying, "I would never argue with (any) interpretation of (my) films."
Smart move. What's been interesting about the criticism of Kubrick's films over the years is the sheer volume and diversity of the interpretations. I remember reading a long Film Comment review of THE SHINING in 1980 that delved into the film's symbolism about America's troubled history of Native Americans and the breakdown of the traditional family.
I thought it was supposed to be horror movie.

For the most part, I enjoyed this BFI book about EYES WIDE SHUT but I thought the volumes about THE EXORCIST and LAST TANGO IN PARIS were more interesting since they were less abstract about their subjects. This particular take on EYES lost me when it tried to say that the film was from the point of view of the son of Tom and Nicole who hadn't been born yet. Huh?
But it's a Kubrick film.
And who can argue with any interpretation?

Rating:
Summary: "A Not-Unhappy Ending"
Review: Stanley Kubrick was quoted in several books as saying, "I would never argue with (any) interpretation of (my) films."
Smart move. What's been interesting about the criticism of Kubrick's films over the years is the sheer volume and diversity of the interpretations. I remember reading a long Film Comment review of THE SHINING in 1980 that delved into the film's symbolism about America's troubled history of Native Americans and the breakdown of the traditional family.
I thought it was supposed to be horror movie.

For the most part, I enjoyed this BFI book about EYES WIDE SHUT but I thought the volumes about THE EXORCIST and LAST TANGO IN PARIS were more interesting since they were less abstract about their subjects. This particular take on EYES lost me when it tried to say that the film was from the point of view of the son of Tom and Nicole who hadn't been born yet. Huh?
But it's a Kubrick film.
And who can argue with any interpretation?

Rating:
Summary: A Nice Start, But Ultimately Inadequate
Review: When Chion remembers to write about the actual film Eyes Wide Shut, he can be most interesting. His notes on the repetitious dialogue in this film, and in much of Kubrick's work, are very interesting, even if they don't go very far.

Unfortunately, entirely too much of M. Chion's writing is vague and unmoored, unorganized. In the beginning of the essay, Chion makes what must be one of the most ridiculous assertions in the history of film criticism: that Eyes Wide Shut is narrated by Bill and Alice's unborn (and unconceived) son. This little bombshell is dropped into the reader's lap and not explained for several pages, and M. Chion's evidence to support this outlandish claim is, to say the least, unconvincing.

If you want to read an interesting and thought-provoking essay on Eyes Wide Shut, seek out Thomas Allen Nelson's excellent book on Kubrick, entitled Kubrick: Inside A Film Artist's Maze. It is clearly and concisely written, and Nelson never makes an outlandish critical interpretation without rock-solid evidence to back it up. M. Chion would do well to follow Nelson's example.

Rating:
Summary: A Nice Start, But Ultimately Inadequate
Review: When Chion remembers to write about the actual film Eyes Wide Shut, he can be most interesting. His notes on the repetitious dialogue in this film, and in much of Kubrick's work, are very interesting, even if they don't go very far.

Unfortunately, entirely too much of M. Chion's writing is vague and unmoored, unorganized. In the beginning of the essay, Chion makes what must be one of the most ridiculous assertions in the history of film criticism: that Eyes Wide Shut is narrated by Bill and Alice's unborn (and unconceived) son. This little bombshell is dropped into the reader's lap and not explained for several pages, and M. Chion's evidence to support this outlandish claim is, to say the least, unconvincing.

If you want to read an interesting and thought-provoking essay on Eyes Wide Shut, seek out Thomas Allen Nelson's excellent book on Kubrick, entitled Kubrick: Inside A Film Artist's Maze. It is clearly and concisely written, and Nelson never makes an outlandish critical interpretation without rock-solid evidence to back it up. M. Chion would do well to follow Nelson's example.