|
The end at the beginning is just a middle, "the same continual fight" goes on after the restaurant break-up. "You've heard of a no-win situation, haven't you? Vietnam? This?" The film editor (Albert Brooks) can't live with the bank executive (Kathryn Harrold) and can't live without her, the latest split sends him home on Quaaludes, a very long night surrounded by answering machines and record collections. The morning after promises a new life of vitamins and jogging, it lasts a few hours and then he's desperately trying to woo the poor woman back. (Searching for a make-up gift, he considers the talking dolls on the supermarket shelf: "Do any apologize?") May's The Heartbreak Kid is a key precursor, though the self-indicting distillate of aggrieved male neediness is pure, uncompromising Brooks. After breaking a date and driving in circles at night, he waits outside the phone booth as a fellow paranoid putz grills his own long-suffering beloved. All is filmed with observational astringency, with extended takes giving a sense of romantic-comedy scenarios being dismantled in real time for the discomfiture beneath. "What is that? Is that not love?" "Maybe that's movie love." A picture of Los Angeles, a lesson in cinema. The protagonist sits at the Moviola to piece together a space opera directed by James L. Brooks, he tinkers with lines and adds sound effects to scenes featuring George Kennedy, the connection between his approach to work and relationships goes unnoticed. "I do think a lot of it was saved in the editing." The close-up of Brooks watching Harrold from the cabin window points up the influence of Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie, pull-away cranes and muzak cannot disguise a "happy ending" dipped in acid. Kubrick's famed admiration is visible all through Eyes Wide Shut. With Bruno Kirby, Bob Einstein, Jane Hallaren, Albert Henderson, and Meadowlark Lemon.
--- Fernando F. Croce |