This movie was interesting because to me it is a study in male fear towards female sexual desire. I mentioned earlier that I recently attended a training where they said that men physiologically respond with sexual desire instantaneously when seeing someone who attracts them visually. Women notice, but take seven hours to decide whether they are ready to act on it or not. This is why most dudes get lucky on their third date. Amirite fellas?
I’m not saying we don’t see people we find hot and think about them and fantasize. I am saying that women usually will not act immediately after just seeing someone attractive, (except maybe if there is a lot of alcohol involved., but that is another movie.)
We be more like
I believe that Kidman could see a hot sailor and choose to fantasize about him. I do not believe that she would have felt the intense mind numbing passion she described. I believe that is something a man might feel, and subsequently fear his woman might also feel. I also do not believe a woman would be cruel enough to describe this desire in such a cruel way to the man she loved. Again, this struck me as a manifestation of male fear. I felt the same way during the scene where Kidman described her dream to Cruise. Dreams are weird. I don’t know if a woman would dream something like that or not. I do know that most women would not describe it in such a cold and heartless way. It strikes me as something scary that men would imagine and fear. OMG my girls is with all these dudes while she is laughing at me. Not part of the female psyche! But definitely something a dude might worry about.
So we end up with a story about what men fear is going on in women’s heads. Remember it is based on a story written by a man (Arthur Schnitzler), built on a screenplay written by men (Kubrick and Frederick Raphael) and produced and directed by a man. The humor in it, is that they are transposing their own experiences onto the other sex. The film was also a study in male fragility in the face of female desire. Again its funny to me, coz I don’t find the desire to be real. Just the idea that she desired another man was enough to send Cruise into a tail spin. Even though he was probably getting hit on all the time, he saw the attention as his due, and never thought about sex from the female desiring it perspective.
A couple of other thoughts…
When Cruise was saving Mandy, he had her look at him multiple times. IMO this served two purposes. It showed that he saw her as a real person, and also set it up for her to recognize him at the orgy. She would have perhaps looked in his eyes enough to recognize them as the only visible part of his face when he was wearing the mask. I find it to be a bit of a stretch, but the only thing that makes sense.
The scene with the daughter who hit on Cruise after her dad died was a classic case of transference. This situation did seem likely to me. It happens in a lot of professional relationships where the cared for turns to the care giver. It is why shrinks are NOT allowed to sleep with their patients. He had been taking care of her father in his dying days, he had provided comfort to her, they had spent more than 7 hours together and she associated safety with him. It did not make the feelings real, legitimate or long lasting though.
Kubrick has said that the movie is a study in whether imagined infidelity carries the same weight as actual infidelity. I would argue it does not. Everyone fantasizes, Cruise just never stopped and thought of his wife as a woman with her own desires that could be apart from his. His behavior is much more condemnable than her fantasy. The way she told him about it though was unnecessary and heartless.
I think Kidman was definitely displeased to see her husband with two young coeds on his arm. Important to note that she didn’t know what he was up to when he disappeared for hours to help Mandy. She may have been ruminating and imagining that he banged them. That combined with his cavalier attitude that he never worried about her cheating on him may have made her feel taken for granted, and that may have led to her desire to make him feel the insecurity she felt, hence how she told him about the sailor.
Kidman’s acting was pretty good, except when she laughed. Ugh! The two scenes where she does (when she was stoned and when she was dreaming) were painful to watch. Perhaps they were painful for her to act if they felt as out-of-female-character to her as they did to me. Had nobody on set been around stoned people before, or gotten stoned themselves? That scene was horrible.
I think they portrayed Kidman as this rich socialite who once had a career (until the art gallery went under) who was dissatisfied with her life. Perhaps it was this dissatisfaction in the face of Cruise’s accomplishments that made her be so cruel to him. Again, this behavior did not ring true to me, but in the movie was necessary to trigger the rest of the events that took place.
Finally, I cringed during the entire scene at the party at the start of the movie. People had no concept of respecting personal space! If some asshole came up to me and drank from my glass, I’d be tempted to smash it in his face.
I would not act on the temptation though, coz that is not how us chics roll!
