The most interesting take so far on the year's most boot-stomped movie, from HG brother blogger Christian Lindke at "Cinerati.
The movie is visually stunning, but it shares more with Scorsese's Shutter Island and del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth than it does with the expectations its advertisements create. It is a film of sorrow, hopelessness, loss, despair and the role that fantasy plays in dealing with these powerful emotions. The movie's tagline is "you will be unprepared" and I have never read a more apropos movie tagline. Most people think a tagline like that hints at a narrative twist in the movie, and there is one, but in this case the tagline is telling the viewer that the film's trailer isn't truly preparing the viewer for the experience.
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I seem to remember that Kubrick's "Shining" movie got something of the same critical reaction, tempered, of course, by the admiration people had for his work generally.
IIRC, King hated the movie so much that he championed a mini-series remake...
Of course, by the time of "Eyes Wide Shut", the general feeling was that he had lost it entirely. The reexamination of Eyes hasn't been helped by the fact that its stars are two of the most disliked people in the business...
King thought Kubrick had contempt for his characters. Correctly, I'd say. Hecompared "The Shining" unfavorably with Cronenberg's "The Brood," which took the family relationships in a genre story seriously.
He was completely right, but I'm not sure he understood (or considered the possibility) that the movie was better for it.
A controversial position in some circles, I know....
Critics can complain about the vapidity of a movie structured like and resembling a game while missing the point. King can complain about the absence of King-like characters while missing the point.
Change is hard work. God knows, I'm mostly not up for it.
Why change when you're already correct about everything? Nowhere to go but down.
A couple more defenders...
http://www.chud.com/45479/high-plains-scribbler-the-feminism-of-fishnets/
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2011/04/sucker-punch-and-the-fetishized-image/
...in case anyone's still interested.
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