Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Maria Richardson

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah. I was probably in my twenties or even younger, and I felt like how I felt about a lot of Kubrick films on first viewing. I just didn’t get it. I would be a little leery of any teenager or person in their twenties why got anything out of this film other than nudity up to and including Kidman.

I was compelled to come back to the film when my festival screener duties* drifted into an inexplicable new adaptation of Schnitzler’s original novel. All it did was want me to re-visit the Kubrick of it all.

Did I Like It: It’s immaculately made—naturally—and that’s all the more mystifying when one thinks that Kubrick couldn’t possible have been in the best of health when the entire production was going through the Sisyphean task of a year-plus shoot. It’s frank and unblinking in the things it depicts, with several moments legitimately feeling like we got a peak into Cruise and Kidman’s marriage. I can only imagine what putting those moments—both banal and intense—on display did to them.

But we can talk about the sex—also both banal and intense—in the film for days, but it is only a surface reading. The sex is incidental. I’m struck in this viewing by the dynamic between Harford (Cruise) and his old medical school chum Nick Nightingale (Todd Field). You might have one read from their scenes together, but Eyes Wide Shut isn’t about those surface readings. I tend to think that if Bill hadn’t met someone at that party who rejected everything he himself had done to have a comfortable, stable life, he probably wouldn’t have gotten in nearly as much trouble as he did.

You might think I’m reading the movie wrong. I’m not, but then again it’s very hard to read a Kubrick film entirely wrong.

*No, I’m not saying which festival. You just keep submitting.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Director: Sydney Pollack

Cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow

Have I Seen it Before: Inexplicably, no.

Did I Like It: This first thought is going to sound like a complaint, but it isn’t. Maybe, it’s a foolish sense of optimism, but I think that the Times did publish whatever Joe Turner/Condor gave to them, shedding light on the shadow CIA propped up by Higgins (Robertson) and others at the company.

Although that probably makes the movie more similar to a television pilot than a traditional movie with a contained story. Again, that’s not a problem. I want to follow Condor as he tries to take down the people that double-crossed him. I want it to take six years, and I want the last shot of such a series fade away from Turner finally re-uniting with Kathy (Dunaway) in favor of Wabash (John Houseman), back at headquarters contemplating either spending the rest of his days in prison while his enemies claim victory, or hiring Joubert (von Sydow) to offer him the only clemency he can hope for.

I want more of it, is what I’m saying.

This movie fits snugly within the wrinkles of my brain. Between the now ancient computers accomplishing tasks we now take for granted, typewriters in every home and on every office desk in all of creation, and the only good guy in town is the one who’s read the most books, I don’t only want to watch this movie again, I want to live in it. Which, as I’m typing, I realize is an odd reaction to the movie.

It’s so unusual to watch one of your new favorite movies for the first time, much less have that movie be waiting for you to find it for over forty years. I honestly don’t understand how this movie—which wasn’t exactly hiding in Faye Dunaway’s apartment—slipped by me for so long. It may just supplant Die Hard (1988) as my favorite Christmas movie. Fight me.

EDIT: Turns out a Condor series was released last year on AT&T’s fledgling streaming service, Audience. All things I wasn’t previously aware existed, but somehow have already been paying for all this time. What a time to be alive, I think.