Listening to Stanley Kubrick (44 page)

As Bill looks at the corpse of the woman, he hears the mysterious woman’s voice from the party. She warns him that she cannot show her face to him “because it could cost me my life, and possibly yours.” After hearing this in his head, Liszt’s music begins. Leaning down, it looks as if Bill might kiss her on the forehead, but he stops a few inches away. The orderly stays turned away from this intimate moment, as the tremolos in the pianist’s left hand build tension that instantly dies away as Bill pulls back. In Schnitzler’s original text, Fridolin does touch the body:

Instinctively, as though compelled by and directed by an invisible power, Fridolin touched the forehead, the cheeks, the shoulders, and the arms of the dead woman with both hands, and then entwined his fingers with those of the corpse as though in love play. Rigid as they were, it seemed to him that the fingers tried to move, to seize his; yes, it seemed to him as though from underneath the half-closed eyelids a vague and distant look was searching for his eyes, and as though pulled by a magic force, he bent over her.
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He is interrupted by his colleague, and Fridolin places her arms at her sides again at once. In the film, Bill walks down the hallway of the hospital, obviously still troubled, but his thoughts are interrupted by his ringing cell phone. The music stops at the interruption.

Other Music/Sounds

The sound design of the film captures New York more authentically than even the elaborate set. Sirens, car horns, and construction sounds linger around the quiet conversations. When Bill and Alice are having their serious conversation at the beginning of the film, a loud siren goes by, perhaps warning them of this dangerous territory. Notably, after Bill confesses “everything” to Alice, and we see her with red-rimmed eyes the next morning, you can hear the sounds of a jackhammer outside. It is the sound of morning in the city, the sounds of construction, rebuilding, which are wholly appropriate after the destruction brought about by Alice and Bill’s actions and confessions. The sounds of the city also provide a great sense of space and give the feeling that, despite all of the troubles of these characters, life goes on as usual outside. Worlds collapse and are rebuilt, and all the while time marches on.

When Bill leaves the apartment after Alice tells him about her temptation, she calls him to find out when he’ll be home. She is watching a movie on television, and we hear the music and dialogue of that film twice, at 50:57–51:11 and 52:28–53:08.

The Christmas carol “Jingle Bells” appears while the Harfords are shopping at F.A.O. Schwarz (2:28:53–2:30:50). The happiness of the song and the liveliness of the surroundings appear in stark contrast to Bill and Alice, who seem to be cautiously and vaguely discussing what they should do about their current situation. It fades out during their final conversation, allowing their conclusions to be the central focus of the scene.

Music Interruptus

So many times in the film Bill is a passive character. His reaction to Alice’s initial confession is silence, yet in Schnitzler’s original novel, Fridolin at least responds with a confession of his own. The Bill of the film is often led around by other people. He believes he is in control of his life, but allows himself to be moved all the time. At Ziegler’s party, he is led away from Gayle and Nuala by one of Ziegler’s associates. At the masked ball, Bill is led around by the woman in the headdress and then led out by the man in the gold mask. At Domino’s apartment, he allows her to take the lead, unsure how to proceed.

Bill is also at the mercy of interruptions, as is the music of the film. The weight of Alice’s story about the naval officer is hanging heavily in the air when a phone call interrupts not just his thoughts, but Jocelyn Pook’s music as well. Alice’s phone call to Bill later that evening stops Bill from sleeping with Domino (and in response to the call, Bill turns off the music) and urges him on to the next part of his odyssey. In the judge’s house, Marion’s confession is interrupted by the arrival of her fiancé. As Bill is walking away from the morgue, his thoughts are interrupted again by a ringing cell phone, this time asking him to come to Ziegler’s place. And in one final blow to Bill’s sense of self-empowerment, Ziegler suggests that the tribunal that singled out Bill from the other partygoers was a charade put on for his benefit. It could also be that Ziegler is just trying to protect Bill from the harsh truth. Since Ziegler is an unreliable character at best, it’s difficult to know where his motivations lie, and Bill seems utterly at the mercy of the whims of others.

The reaction to
Eyes Wide Shut
was mixed. Some complained that it wasn’t sexy enough, while others said that they just didn’t get it. Nicole Kidman’s performance was widely praised, while Tom Cruise’s performance—of an admittedly more thankless part—paled in comparison in some estimations. One of the problems, if we can call it that, of interpretation of the film is that the film itself does not “impose on us a hierarchy of what is important and what is not.”
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We are left to make our own decisions about the lesson of the story and perhaps what really happened. Was the whole mock trial at Somerton real or staged for Bill? Was the Mandy from Ziegler’s bathroom the same woman from the masked ball and the dead girl at the morgue? Can we believe Ziegler? Were parts of Bill’s odyssey a dream? Some of his experiences certainly seem dreamlike. What about Alice’s final word? If she and Bill “fuck,” will it solidify their new commitment to each other? Will this act conceive a child? Michel Chion interprets the film as a story told from the point of view of this possible child—this starchild, if you will—who comes into being only because of his parents’ mistakes, indiscretions, and confessions.
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The best indication of Kubrick’s success on
Eyes Wide Shut
is the simple fact that every time the film is brought up in a group of intelligent adults, it begins a conversation.
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It stirs up strong feelings, differing opinions, and interesting theories. The passionate discourse it inspires seems to indicate that Kubrick, as always, was onto something.

Kubrick considered
Eyes Wide Shut
to be, in the words of Jan Harlan, “his greatest contribution to the art of filmmaking.” One wonders then what he might have done after it, had he lived. Perhaps he would have returned to
Aryan Papers
or started developing something entirely new. Since the death of Stanley Kubrick, which occurred a week after he showed the completed version of
Eyes Wide Shut
to Cruise, Kidman, and Warner Bros. executives, Kubrick has not really left the movies.
Eyes Wide Shut
premiered in the U.S. on 16 June 1999. Since then, Kubrick’s name appears in film credits of more than a dozen films to date, receiving dedications (the end credits of
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
say “For Stanley Kubrick”), special thanks, grateful acknowledgment, and inspirational thanks. Film directors who never met him, but still consider him a mentor, will continue to honor Kubrick with praise and gratitude for generations.

Conclusion

Over the course of his career, Kubrick worked with hundreds of people on his films. It is certain that he found the work of these individuals indispensible and important. He undoubtedly learned from these colleagues and worked with some again and again. Music was an aspect of filmmaking that Kubrick absorbed so much information about in his formative years, and it was something that he made unique decisions about as he developed his style. From his earliest films, in which he collaborated with Gerald Fried, to the later films, which prominently featured preexistent tunes, it seems that the music in every project had something to teach Kubrick, and Kubrick was always willing to learn.

The aim of this book has been to illuminate the intricacies of Kubrick’s relationship with music, to put to rest notions of Kubrick’s “rejection” of traditional scoring techniques, and to show that he was not the proverbial lone wolf. It has also offered an opportunity to delve deeper into the meanings of the preexistent musical pieces themselves, perhaps not known by Kubrick but still there, influencing our readings of the films, our interpretations of the stories. Kubrick’s musical choices were often made with the gut or the heart, and that is where they hit us. All of us—fans and scholars alike—may want to understand why something has touched us so, and that is why we research and write and attempt to explain an emotional or visceral response to a work of art. It is a testament to Kubrick’s art that we continue to do this, with no signs of stopping.

In 1972, Kubrick said, “The thing a film does best is to use pictures with music, and I think these are the moments you remember.”
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It was an idea he lived by, making musical choices a priority in his films long before he loaded film into a camera. His films have a distinct sound to them, a sophistication for the ear that is often overlooked in favor of Kubrick’s incredible eye. He did not make explicit the reasons for his musical choices, did not seek out pieces based on historical background or extra-musical meaning, but what he did create is a sound world of film that was unlike anything that had come before. Every filmmaker who uses music in such a creative way stands on Stanley Kubrick’s shoulders and builds on the work of the master.

Kubrick’s last whisper about music came in
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
, and it is a personal stamp that is undeniably his. In addition to having thousands of drawings made for the film, and working with numerous people on a screenplay, Kubrick had chosen a piece of music that he wanted to appear in the film, a waltz from Richard Strauss’s opera
Der Rosenkavalier
. In an interview on one of the DVD extras for
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
, composer John Williams mentions honoring Kubrick’s request:

Incidentally, this quotation of Richard Strauss was the one piece of music that Stanley Kubrick requested that Steven leave in the film. We don’t know why. The waltz . . . was the one thing he stipulated. It should be that melody from Richard Strauss in some area. Very difficult for me to find a place where it fit, but there’s a section for about thirty seconds where they drive through those great faces, you know, across the bridge into Rouge City, where on top of my own music, I threaded the waltz theme from
Rosenkavalier
as an homage to Kubrick completely without fully realizing what the connection in his mind was.

There is a sense of majesty, of grandness to the waltz. There is also a sense of movement, because it is a waltz, a dance. Kubrick was fond of waltzes, using them in
Paths of Glory
,
2001: A Space Odyssey
, and
Eyes Wide Shut
.

The thirty seconds of Strauss’s majestic waltz was Kubrick’s last chosen piece, but the musical influence he had on filmmakers in general, even those too young to have seen one of Kubrick’s films first-run in a theater, is strong. Filmmakers and musicologists will continue to look to his films for inspiration, and we will continue to talk about what we see and hear for decades to come. In speaking about the waltz in
A.I.
, Jan Harlan could have been talking about Kubrick’s musical sensibility in films as it continues to live on in new filmmakers: “Listen very carefully,” he says. “It’s there.”

Notes

1. James Howard,
Stanley Kubrick Companion
(London: B.T. Batsford, 1999), 176.

2. Michel Ciment,
Kubrick: The Definitive Edition,
trans. Gilbert Adair (New York: Faber and Faber, 1999), 258.

3. Howard,
Stanley Kubrick Companion
, 177.

4. Michel Chion,
Eyes Wide Shut
, trans. Trista Selous (London: British Film Institute, 2002), 16.

5. Hans-Thies Lehmann, “Film/Theatre: Masks/Identities in
Eyes Wide Shut,
” in
Stanley Kubrick Guide
(Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum), 235.

6. According to executive producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, Kubrick purchased the rights to
Traumnovelle
in 1970 (interview with author).

7. Chion,
Eyes Wide Shut
, 13.

8. Chion,
Eyes Wide Shut
, 17.

9. Baxter was the other one. Nick James, “At Home with the Kubricks,”
Sight and Sound
9, no. 9 (September 1999): 12–18.

10. See Lorenzo Bellettini, “Freud’s Contribution to Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose Style,”
Rocky Mountain E-Review of Language and Literature
61, no. 2.,
http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/61.2/articles/bellettini.asp
.

11. For a detailed account of Ophüls and Kubrick see Katherine McQuiston’s forthcoming title with Oxford University Press.

12. Susan B. White,
The Cinema of Max Ophul
s:
Magisterial Vision and the Figure of
Woman
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 239.

13. White,
The Cinema of Max Ophuls
, 240. This is White’s translation from the script of the film.

14. David Thomson suggested that Kubrick should have had Kidman portray every female role in
Eyes Wide Shut
, “so that Tom Cruise can’t help seeing her everywhere.” Quoted in Patrick Webster,
Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from
Lolita
through
Eyes Wide Shut (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, Inc. 2011), 150.

15. Ben Brantley, review of
Blue Room, New York Times,
December 14, 1998,
http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?html_title=&tols_title=BLUE+ROOM,+THE+(PLAY)&pdate=19981214&byline=By+BEN+BRANTLEY&id=1077011432284
.

16. There are some variations in the spelling of these names in different translations.

17. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “In Dream Begin Responsibilities,” in
Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film and the Uses of History
, ed. Geoffrey Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 249.