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A recent viewing of Eyes Wide Shut (1999) on HBO reminded me when, three summers ago, I had counted down to July 16th, opening day of Kubrick's first film in 12 years. The hype for the film seemed extraneous to me but necessary for Warner Bros. because $60 million had been spent for the film's production. Unexpectedly, Kubrick died and general anticipation only intensified, culminating in a Time cover story and avowals from the world's best-known Scientologist about his affection for the late director. Compounding the hype was a ratings controversy that seemed unreal or forced, making people sick of the film before it had reached the box office. Moreover, some pre-opening reviews, especially by Alexander Walker, seemed defensive in their praise of the film, as if knowing the prevailing response would be negative and/or disappointing. Yet, what did I care about the response of public and critics? Most people were befuddled by or misunderstood Full Metal Jacket (1987) and had misapprehended The Shining (1980). I expected nothing less when Eyes finally arrived.
The ratings battle, R vs. NC-17, dislocated the publicity blitz for the film, taking on the added complication that Kubrick's contract called for his hand, and his alone, making the final cut. His finished, but probably not absolutely finished version came a few days before he died. At stake were 65 seconds of an "orgy scene"; a desperate Warner Bros. seemingly took the middle way by not cutting the scenes but adding digitized partygoers standing in the way of raw sex. Ineffectual howls of censorship and for the integrity of the artwork were uttered, but Warners was desperate to avoid the NC-17 rating because common wisdom said that such a rating would diminish box-office.
Before censoring (left) and after (right)
After seeing the film, I was mildly bewildered that it could have been rated NC-17 when it barely seemed to deserve an R. First, Eyes had no gratuitous violence and foul language; second, the sex was purely in the background, and no principal players pounded away at each other. At most, the female nude body was shown amply, pissing off the feminist contingent, but not always in a sexually thrilling pose, pissing off the male contingent. On a subsequent viewing two days later, I observed more and more nude bodies, and the adult-minded content whittled a claim I had made to friends that the film barely deserved a PG-13.
Besides, compared to other NC-17 movies — Henry and June (1990), Crash (1996), and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989), for example — Eyes Wide Shut does come off as PG-13 material. In Henry and June, one of the first NC-17 rated films, director Philip Kaufman created an erotic story to match characters who had both written about and lived hard sex and erotica, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin respectively. Why make a film about Henry Miller that's not risqué and for everyone's taste? The content and rating belonged to the story's subject and aesthetic. Henry and June included full treatment of heterosexual and lesbian sex, sexuality that, frankly, turned people on and might have been the best reason to give it the NC-17 rating. Besides, it also established the line over which a film must step to be deemed strictly adult fare but not necessarily pornography.
Peter Greenaway's films always luxuriate in erotic elements and will earn R ratings and above, if only for his predilection to have male frontal nudity (8-1/2 Women [1999] may be the greatest testament to this, and actor John Standing should have received a special Academy Award for the length of time he showed his cock and balls), one of the last taboos of mainstream film. Greenaway has had one arthouse hit, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, which contained highly charged sexuality and a climactic cannibalistic dinner. Yet its opening scene was the most jarring. The "Thief" (Michael Gambon) exemplifies a persistent type in Greenaway's work, a larger-than-life bully; Greenaway himself has become the aesthetic bully par excellence. Gambon leads a criminal organization and must punish one of his minions and leave a lasting reminder, worse than breaking an arm or leg, as a henchman picks up freshly laid dogshit and forces a man to eat it. I couldn't erase that scene from my mind or, for that matter, help thinking about a movie I'd never seen but knew about, John Waters' Pink Flamingos (1972), in which Divine eats a dog turd. Frontal nudity, cannibalism, and gut-wrenching violence are barely noticeable beside a long scene of a man eating freshly laid dogshit.
Crash's NC-17 rating, in contrast to Henry and June's, stirred little directorial protest. David Cronenberg saying the rating was justified ranked as gross understatement! Ted Turner, whose company distributed the film, was upset over the content, although not having seen the film did not influence his opinion. Crash's profusion of abrupt sexuality had rarely been seen in public exhibition, so a different plane from Henry and June's erotic depictions of sex couldn't be imagined. True, Crash explored a fetishism that few people indulged in, but sexual arousal by car crash within the film neatly fitted Cronenberg's career-long interplay of mankind and its machines. Crash's disturbing content should have surprised no one, for Cronenberg's films are in their best element when they screw with the audience's mind. The Brood (1979), Videodrome (1983), Naked Lunch (1991), eXistenZ (1999), not to mention his early project, Crimes of the Future (1970), will never be everyone's or every tenth person's movie fare, but Crash starts with graphic scenes of sexuality to leave little doubt that by staying in the theatre you have accepted his terms of engagement. Nor does the film let up, consummated by James Spader and Elias Koteas, late in the film, going at it salaciously in the front seat of a car.
One X-rated film surpassed the above three NC-17s put together. Empire of the Senses (1976) broke every sexual barrier for a nonpornographic film such that few regular filmgoers could have distinguished it from pornography! Where Midnight Cowboy (1969) intimated Jon Voight getting a blowjob in a movie theatre, Empire shows the woman giving her lover head from start to finish until the seminal fluid drips from her mouth. Director Nagisa Oshima's latest film's title, Taboo (2000), best summed up his career and the ground from which Empire emerged. In this last film and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), he explored homosexual desires among warrior cultures; in Max, Mon Amour (1986), the wife of a diplomat had an affair with a chimpanzee. Indeed, bestiality might be the last frontier of taboos. Empire itself had prolonged scenes of penetration, showing different positions and many orifices penetrated, and was capped off by the man's dismemberment. The film was banned in New York, and time has not dimmed its effects on the viewer. You can't help responding to it as if it were pornography, and nothing Greenaway, Cronenberg, Kaufman, and Kubrick have produced closely compared. With the advent of the rating with Henry and June, Empire of the Senses was eventually given an NC-17, thus establishing the back boundary for this rating.
NEXT: The Hindu protest
