Flipside Movie Emporium

[filmsRpriceless]

Let''s discuss Staney Kubrick's final and possibly my favorite masterpiece of his. And if you have time, give me some feedback on my review I wrote not so long ago.
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My apparent website

[the night watchman]

Good analysis, fRp. Let me just say for now that I agree with your interpretation that Ziegler was the hight priest, or at least in this dream world of Bill's the two are linked in some way. One is the other's doppelganger, perhaps. It might be important to understand what Ziegler means to Bill in the "waking world." I disagree with you that Alice's final utterance is a defeat; I took it much more playfully, that is suggests a certain innocence (ironically) has re-entered their relationship. Like her dream about Adam and Eve "masking" their nakedness, the ending introduces a comfortable "unmasking" of the couple's sexual understanding of each other.
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"If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever."

-David Cronenberg

[filmsRpriceless]

I think that you're take on the ending is the more popular take, though I do not pretend to be right about what I thought. I am not definite on it, nor do I think I know all of the film's mysteries. I think you are onto something by saying that Alice's final word is playful (thus being in a toy store) in nature. But because of the impasse in their marriage, it is all of Bill's fault that their marriage lost the meaning of making love, confusing it with fuck.
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My apparent website

[beltmann]

Interestingly, I agree with both of you. Like Night Watchman, I found the line playful, but I also, like filmsRpriceless, found it less than lovely. I really like the movie as a whole--one of my favorite Kubricks--because it deals with how our jealousies and fantasies affect our lives as much as reality, and how marriages have sexual dimensions as complex as emotional ones. But if those are the topics, then it seems a mistake that so much of the film equates sex merely with gratification, refusing to discuss the subject with the tenderness and complexity it deserves. I realize Kubrick was probably making a point about contemporary sexual relations, but if so, I disagree with him. The movie would have been fuller, and truer, had it linked the psychological dimensions of marriage to sex in all of its facets. (Still, I'm not sure my thoughts here have significant relevance to what Kubrick set out to achieve.)

Eric

[The Third M?n]

I'd love to read it but lamentably I have not seen the film. It has lots of spoilers so I prbably won't bother. Great site, by the way, filmsy.

[filmsRpriceless]