I watched it for the first time a year ago, twice. I was pleasantly surprised. It's not Kubrick's best, but it's very good and it manages to do all that "puzzle" shit that The Shining does so well, as a recent thread suggested. I will repost my thoughts ITT.
>>213063957I take you to be referring to the VERY long (like 12 mins) and important scene where Nicole Kidman has her little argument with him, undermining him and saying how she wanted the naval officer's dick. It's a bit of drama and can get a bit tiresome, but it is arguably meant to slowly suck the viewer into the meat of the story. When the phone rings, that's the clear break and transition into Part 2 of 5 IMO. In any case, it's an important scene, Kidman had to carry it, and she did well. Her performance is sleepy/breathy, on purpose. She's tired and high, acting like one of those old-school film starlets. A beautiful woman being on drugs also reinforces that theme as it plays through the film.
I believe that the film is neatly divided into fifths, or quintiles, with major cuts or set pieces intentionally dividing it along those terms. The film runs about 2 1/2 hours, so each of the four major "breaks" occurs around each half-hour mark. Alice's little snit is quite long, but it centers on 00:30:00, running from about 24 mins in to 36 mins in IIRC. Then "Fidelio" is written on the napkin, right at the 1:00:00 mark. I forget the exact 1:30:00 mark but IIRC it's Bill poking his nose into his own apartment, returning to the "normal" world. When the roommate tells Bill that Domino has HIV, this is just a few seconds before the 2:00:00 mark. Therefore, the normal, human time when a person would process such big news occurs precisely at the two-hour mark.
