This is Stanley Kubrick's best film, but I'm not entirely sure why

This is Stanley Kubrick's best film, but I'm not entirely sure why.

Can anyone articulate why it's so spectacular?

Paths of Glory would be my vote OP.

I really like ews, but its not my favorite.

>Frederic Raphael, who authored the Eyes Wide Shut script for Kubrick recalled that Kubrick once remarked that "Hitler was right about almost everything," and insisted that any trace of Jewishness be expunged from the "Eyes Wide Shut" script.

He makes 90's NY, which is the trashiest setting you can think for a glamour movie, feel very much dreamlike, and watching Cruise go insane and going in deeper and deeper into the night when nobody is awake anymore is very comfy.

70s and 80s ny was the dangerous shithole NY. Look at times square in taxi driver. It was just greasy and sleazy. 90s new york was when it got cleaned up and turned into a theme park.

Dr SL, 2001, PoG, EWS, FMJ
My top 5 in that order. Thoughts?

stfu

Checked.

Missing barry lyndon though.

It's in 1999. Giuliani had already cleansed the worst of NYC to make it "family friendly".

It's because the whole thing is very mysterious and leaves you wanting both more and less

the viewer is in the same situation as cruise; the whole time you feel compelled to go deeper and deeper into the mystery, whilst simultaneously being scared of what you might find out

you also feel a lot like cruise's character after it is "revealed" that the whole scenario is just an innocent game - it makes sense but you still feel like there is something more sinister going on particularly when you research all the occult iconography used in the film afterwards

but yes I agree it's a great film, even though everyone I've told to watch it hated it

its my favorite and its easy to watch compared to some of his others, even though i love all of them

It's hilarious, the first time I watched this I was just flicking through channels in the early morning and thought it was just your average romantic drama

boy was I in for a ride

It actually is his best film, honestly. People look at it and just see the spooky sex cult and illuminati stuff, but in reality it's the most complex and richest in subtext film from Kubrick.

There's just so much going on. There's themes about sex, love, marriage and how it works over a long period of time, jealousy and sexual frustration, specifically of the male side, money, power, corruption, secrets and conspiracies, social class differences and how the rich have unlimited control over the working class, sleazy nightlife vs high class society entertainment, and more. And it's all mixed into this Lynchian or Zulawskian absurd, paranoid dreamlike blend where everything feels just out of your reach, yet it's not quite a generic who-dunnit mystery investigation either.

Hack.

Actually starred real people at the center of it. Of all his films people remember the characters more in this than any other meme characters like HAL or Nurse Rachet.

Because even if you don't believe the big conspiracies within it you can at least appreciate the little conspiracy about how women behave and men struggle to understand them and themselves in their quest for certainty.

thats what most people who saw it in theaters thought too i imagine

because is not any of his wow so art and is actually redpilled

i wanna be lynch so bad: the flick

>someone actually think this
>these type of people browse Sup Forums

In my personal opinion, it's like a No Country for Old Men without the need to pander to the type of audiences that only show up for loud and crazy action sequences, or hyper-overt sexuality. It accomplishes similar themes without overt violence-- the tension is psychological, and yet intensely pressing.

It generates a world that from the beginning, through the very caricatured performances from Cruise and Kidman, feel far-off, distant and fictitious. This ultimately is where it becomes brilliant; as Kubrick then reigns you in, scene-by-scene, breaking down the walls between his world and ours. That each of the characters, Cruise and Kidman, both experienced something very real, very horrific, very relentless, and very accessible. This isn't a voyage into space off of the budget of some government program, it's a nuclear family realizing just how deep you can fall into the wilderness of the world around you.

No Country for Old Men is very similar thematically-- that there is a world out there that you can't be prepped for. Individuals that operate on a caliber, living at intensities not even depicted in films. True professionals.

Kubrick's whole cult was pretty much that, and the whole mask reveal solidified it. If Cruise kept messing around he would have been killed. The wife might've even gotten raped. Fucking dope.

That's at least why it's one of my favorite films.

You can't bruise the Cruise. Kubrick played second fiddle next to him.

JUST ADMIT IT OR PROVE ME WRONG FAGGOTS.

Kubrick literally cucked Cruise
and Cruise loved Stanley he cried in the interview for the documentary they did on Stanley

It's pretty obvious that Kubrick just meant that he wanted to be thorough about making the Harfords read as authentically Anglo-Saxon Christians, as opposed to the Jewish characters in the source material, so that the Christmas theme would work better. Frederic Raphael is probably just being dramatic for whatever reason. Kubrick certainly didn't bring on another Jewish guy as his co-writer (and originally try to cast Harrison Ford as the lead) because he was turning his back on Jewishness.

Kubrick and Lynch have completely different thematic interests and goals.

Because it's incredibly thematically consistent.

Almost every single line has a reference to money, sex & relationships, playing games, time, or seeing.

A lot of the lines cover a few of the themes at the same time. It's like every single line is a double entendre.

Someone please explain to me,

Nicole kidman's character has a dream about the sex orgy party, right, during the same night that tom cruise visits the mansion.

Was she there at the mansion? If so, was she drugged, or is she in on it and lying to her husband?

Or was it supposed to just be a coincidence?

>Kubrick was Jewish from sides of his family

Why did I not know this

thank you good poster

What really gets me is how a somewhat mundane bourgois doctor like the protagonist gets to appreciate what he has. He starts off frivoulous, willing to destabilize himself for the thrill, but as he indulges in that mood, he experiences the terrible consequences of those choice, mostly through their effect on other people. It soon becomes a frantic run to go back to normality, while the abyss of dissolution keeps calling him back.

I see that as an allegory of the dangers of social disruption, and how trying to overcome oneself through opportunistic means is a recipe for disaster

Also the concept of running late, but that's time against.

The entire movie uses dream logic. His trip to the mansion is a dream.

Ed Koch, actually

That's not Barry Lyndon

>The entire movie uses dream logic. His trip to the mansion is a dream.

If this is true then I'm a bit dissapointed

maybe because he looks like a fucking indian/paki

It's less disappointing if you view the mansion scene as a dream sequence that mirrors the earlier party scene. In other words, the mansion is the reality of the christmas party that cruise's character and his wife are too dumb to see at first.

Thats a neat way to think about it I guess.

>His trip to the mansion is a dream.
You know, the idea with interpretations is that there can be multiple of them and none of them is the absolute "correct" one. This is one of those cases.

You can look at it in a few different ways. The way I see it, it's more of an internal struggle between the married couple, but also within each of them. It's about that very human sexual temptation that you have to resist when you're in a marriage, the guilt you feel even when you think about cheating on your loved one (see how she cries immediately and hates herself for dreaming it), and how a simple thought or dream can hurt someone's feelings and your relationship just as much as the physical act of cheating itself (Cruise keeps turning it over in his head, is overcome with jealousy and tries to "show her" by going to a prostitute). I don't think that the wife herself was at the sex party, but there is a certain duality between the party at the beginning and the sex party, and especially between his wife and the mysterious girl who showed up at both parties, at first passed out, and then later saving him.