Eyes Wide Shut
Michel Chion, Eyes Wide Shut (BFI Modern Classics Monograph)
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 fuckfest and thus could not see the film for what it was — a kind of fin-de-siècle 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...
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