![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
here are the notes i took while watching the movie in chronological order
overall i actually enjoyed this movie even though im not sure i really completely understood it? tom cruise really nails the skeezy/sexy dichotomy until the very last scenes when he has to let it go and the whole movie is really vibrant and dreamlike. i love a long tracking shot that follows characters from behind as they walk forwards.
i guess one of the major things i noticed is the use of mirrors + how the cult party at somerton is a black mirror to the christmas party at the beginning of the movie. at the traditional christmas party, it's all very clean and proper on the surface, but there are drugs everywhere, some of the men are paying for prostitutes upstairs, and people are toying with cheating on their partners. everybody knows what everyone wants, but it has to be hidden away. at somerton, the curtain is pulled back and those desires are all out in the open, but ironically the attendees are all wearing masks. at the christmas party women are coerced by powerful men, and it is implied that bill/alice are only invited to the party every year to be sexually propositioned - alice especially. at somerton, women's position as sex objects to the powerful is unmasked and made clear by their nakedness and the rituals of sexual subservience.
symbolically alice takes off her mask after the christmas party when she confesses her darkest sexual fantasies to bill, shattering his view of the world in which women don't desire sex the way men do. alice knowing herself this well and in this way allows her to see right through bill's facade. despite that, the idea of alice desiring other men repulses and haunts bill for the duration of the movie, leading him through the night towards somerton. bill hasn't taken his metaphorical mask off because he cant admit to himself that alice's feeling are normal OR that he too has sexual fantasies, some of which involve other people. after bill has been caught infiltrating and threatened by the cult leaders at somerton, he eventually returns home, hours later than he said he would to a sleeping alice in their bed. someone has placed the mask he wore at somerton on his pillow. at this point, bill has realized that he's been lying to himself, been treating his marriage with little care; he was wearing a mask before he ever physically put one on. overcome by what has happened and what he has done, bill breaks down, crying as he sits on the edge of the mattress. alice wakes up, and immediately tries to comfort bill. he sobs and says i'll tell you everything. and he doesn't mean about somerton - in the next scene they are discussing their relationship, not the cultist conspiracy - he's talking about his own fantasies and his partnership with alice. the mask from somerton is right there on the bed, but alice doesn't ask where it came from. she's not even looking at the mask. she doesn't see it. she never has.
- i like the use of the waltz in the intro scene that seems like its part of the film score and then turns out to be diegetic when bill (tom cruise) turns it off
- ngl i want the bookshelves in these bitches apartment
- this movie kind of a bisexual fantasy lol nicole kidman sexy beautiful...also i think tom cruise is sexy im sorry its because i've seen too much of the mission impossible franchise. LEAVE ME ALONE
- nicole kidman being just slightly taller than tom cruise + a few inches taller when she's wearing heels is ??? hot ???
- rich old hungarian man hitting on alice (nicole kidman) named sandor....ah shit <starts tenderhounding against my will>
- this very long scene of tom and alice both actively hitting on other people while being married to e/o....VIBES
- 90% sure there was just a sexual innuendo in which somebody's dick was referred to as a 'bronze renaissance sculpture'
- you're very sure of yourself, aren't you? / i'm sure of you. OKKKKKK
- characters in this movie just confirmed than the state of michigan canonically exists in the EWSCU (eyes wide shut cinematic universe)
- ok i really thought the cult sex party was gonna be the climax of this movie not the MIDDLE
- would love to know what stanley kubrick intended by including a scene where bill/tom cruise is berated on the street for looking gay AND a scene where he is clearly being flirted with by a male hotel concierge
- listen i dont think they would let bill/tom cruise down into the hospitals morgue even if he was this girl's doctor (which he is not) and also I DONT THINK THAT SHE WOULD BE UNCOVERED AND COMPLETELY NAKED WHEN THEY BRING OUT HER CORPSE?
- love that the last lines of this movie are: there's one thing we need to do as soon as possible. / what? / fuck.
- love the way this movie spits in the face of traditional heterosexual monogamy #EPIC
overall i actually enjoyed this movie even though im not sure i really completely understood it? tom cruise really nails the skeezy/sexy dichotomy until the very last scenes when he has to let it go and the whole movie is really vibrant and dreamlike. i love a long tracking shot that follows characters from behind as they walk forwards.
i guess one of the major things i noticed is the use of mirrors + how the cult party at somerton is a black mirror to the christmas party at the beginning of the movie. at the traditional christmas party, it's all very clean and proper on the surface, but there are drugs everywhere, some of the men are paying for prostitutes upstairs, and people are toying with cheating on their partners. everybody knows what everyone wants, but it has to be hidden away. at somerton, the curtain is pulled back and those desires are all out in the open, but ironically the attendees are all wearing masks. at the christmas party women are coerced by powerful men, and it is implied that bill/alice are only invited to the party every year to be sexually propositioned - alice especially. at somerton, women's position as sex objects to the powerful is unmasked and made clear by their nakedness and the rituals of sexual subservience.
symbolically alice takes off her mask after the christmas party when she confesses her darkest sexual fantasies to bill, shattering his view of the world in which women don't desire sex the way men do. alice knowing herself this well and in this way allows her to see right through bill's facade. despite that, the idea of alice desiring other men repulses and haunts bill for the duration of the movie, leading him through the night towards somerton. bill hasn't taken his metaphorical mask off because he cant admit to himself that alice's feeling are normal OR that he too has sexual fantasies, some of which involve other people. after bill has been caught infiltrating and threatened by the cult leaders at somerton, he eventually returns home, hours later than he said he would to a sleeping alice in their bed. someone has placed the mask he wore at somerton on his pillow. at this point, bill has realized that he's been lying to himself, been treating his marriage with little care; he was wearing a mask before he ever physically put one on. overcome by what has happened and what he has done, bill breaks down, crying as he sits on the edge of the mattress. alice wakes up, and immediately tries to comfort bill. he sobs and says i'll tell you everything. and he doesn't mean about somerton - in the next scene they are discussing their relationship, not the cultist conspiracy - he's talking about his own fantasies and his partnership with alice. the mask from somerton is right there on the bed, but alice doesn't ask where it came from. she's not even looking at the mask. she doesn't see it. she never has.
