Eyes Wide Whoa

Netflix recently led me to the film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) which was Stanley Kubrick's last finished project. I had seen The Shining and Dr. Strangelove and in younger years, had heard that this film was just crazy and unsettling. I'm sure it would have been to a younger me. Anyway, I watched it and was truly entranced. This man makes good movies that also happen to freak me out. I don't know if I will ever watch this again. It's not something I would personally enjoy watching over and over, but when it's compared to the average film that's made, it has so much more to offer a thinking human being. I love entertainment. I love romance, glitz, glamour, and "pretty." I love light humor. But, in a moviegoer's diet, I think you need variety. You need a movie now and then that gives more questions than answers, that scares you or disturbs you more than it ties things up in pretty bows so you can have a clear picture of the universe in mind. I love happy endings, but sometimes, it's not what needs to happen in a film. I love escaping from reality, and I think what attracted me to this film, is that in escaping reality, it comes back to haunt you and it's this big messy circle of confusion. There are so many symbols in this film, so much thought behind the details (Christmas lights, masks, mirrors...). The lines that are spoken are odd. You don't expect characters to say the things they say, but when they go against the melody, it doesn't strike the ear as false.

To give one example, in the last scene of the film, Bill (played by Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (played by Nicole Kidman) are beginning to reconcile after a rough few days. In the final scene, Bill says "A dream is only a dream." To this Alice replies, "The important thing is: we're awake now, and hopefully for a long time to come." When Bill says "forever", I automatically sighed like a sentimental fool, but Alice responds with "Let's not use that word. It frightens me." There is a sense with these two characters that they represent two opposing belief systems. Bill clings to ideas of certainty, stability, security, while Alice looks deeper into things, into herself, into him, and refuses any learned notions about people, dreams, reality.

I don't know a ton about Kubrick or his themes, but I did a little light online reading about the film and the Freudian novella it was based upon (Traumnovelle/ Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler). It's such a crazy story and honestly reminded me a lot of a Symbolism project my group did for theatre history last quarter. ALSO, I recommend seeing this film if for one reason only: Alan Cumming plays a small, but hilarious role as a hotel desk clerk. You might appreciate him the most if you stick with seeing the whole film, as his character springs out of nowhere in humorous delight amid a lot of dark, scary plot twists. I WISH there was a youtube clip I could show.

Je reviens

I have returned from Paris. I spent one lovely week there with one of my favorite people in the whole world and his grandmere. Mon ami and I had a very nice time reconnecting, and came up with a lot of inside jokes. I forget what it's like to have inside joke-friends. I guess I don't have very many at the moment, or at least not many I see regularly. Not that non-inside joke-friends are disposable and worthless, au contraire: all friends are good friends. That's why we call them "friends." I will cease this meaningless dribble...maintenant.

I did some naughty things in terms of spending which I shall reveal a little later. I'm a little ashamed of myself, to be honest...but I NEEDED to buy some nice things in Paris. If I came home with a Paris t-shirt and a pen and no more, I would have felt so sad. You see, when I visited France at fifteen, I had no idea about my own personal style. I thought I did, but you see, I thought terribly wrong. This was my opportunity to shop in Paris, and do it RIGHT.

My last day was highly entertaining. Drew and Grandma Patti went off to London and I was left alone at Drew's lovely friend, Claire's apartment (she was off to London for the weekend as well). I absolutely could Not just sit around all day, so I left, with FAR greater courage than I should have had. 'I am a city-dweller! I can handle this!' I thought innocently. I walked outside and saw the Eiffel Tower so I was on my merry way. Clearly, I got lost and a lot of highly comical things happened to me. Maybe I am conceited sometimes, but I really do believe that my life is sometimes comedy gold. Or maybe I'm just not used to such a wide variety of Parisian/foreign men and their ways.

I feel like I have many more posts in me than have actually been posted of late but at the moment, am too lazy to craft anything together. Here are some photos. FIN.

What I'd do if I were Free, or If My Life were a Katharine Hepburn Film

I'd go to the window and yell, "SHUT the F&^% UP!" to this guy outside my window having a loud, enthusiastic conversation in a foreign tongue.  

Then, I'd dive into a swimming pool in the moonlight and come up for air, and gingerly sip champagne I don't like very much from a pretty crystal flute at the edge.  And then Jimmy Stewart would jump in in his tuxedo and sing to me, and pick me up and haul me out and we'd turn on the portable radio, and we'd dry off as he'd teach me and/or re-teach me how to dance.  This includes the Real Charleston.

Then I'd hear a telephone ringing.  A real live house phone, inside this beautiful, glamorous little room.  And I'd let it ring and keep dancing.  There would be frogs croaking in the distance, and maybe some crickets.  Trees swaying in the heavy, humid air.  Just us.  All magic.  Spouting silly rhymes and poetry and laughing and swaying like those trees.  And I'd tell Jimmy Stewart he's a great writer and can do anything in the world and he'd say I'm swell, and say how I could do anything too.  And we'd get tired or drunk or the sun would start peeking up, so he'd pick me up in a robe and carry me off, still singing.

And the dawn would come with a headache and a bruise and a lot of good jokes and we'd walk around reading papers and smoking cigars and eating hard boiled eggs from sweet little egg holders, and chasing a dog named George who hid somebody's "interclosticlavical".  And there would be tea china and kempt little gardens and telegrams and flowers in buttonholes and no worries, no worries, no worries for me.