Warning : If you think sex is sin, dirty, something not supposed to be discussed in public... don’t read beyond this line.
And those of you who think this movie & review is about lust & sex... please stop reading
MAN... you can have a dozen girl friends... flirt with N number of girls. But the moment you realize your girl friend or wife is fantasizing about someone else... makes you the most jealous animal on this planet... and yet you say ’Jealousy thy name is Woman’ (what more can she do?)
When Boy Friend/Husband confesses an affair... the girl friend/wife is expected to be ever forgiving & understanding... but how considerate art thou.. MEN?
Crouching Husband, Hidden Wife
Dr. William (Bill) Harford (Tom Cruise) is a succesful Doctor in New York having a super-rich clientele of patients which includes Victor Zeigler (Sydney Pollack).
Dr. Harford gets invited to attend a party at ’Zeigler Mansion’ along with wife Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman).
Four interesting things happen that night... Bill meets his college drop-out buddy turned musician Nick Nightingale (Todd Field).
Mr. Harford finds two dashing models to flirt with. A middle-aged central European man tries to seduce Alice. And Dr. Harford saves a woman unconscious after an over-dose of drug...
Now Alice is insecure about her husband flirting with other women ( Men cannot be trusted). Bill doesn’t care about his wife dancing with a stranger ( Aren’t women supposed to be faithful?). Most marriages/relationships lose their sheen when Men start taking Women for granted & start hunting greener pastures.
Alice after after returning home smokes marijuana & confesses to Bill... her fantasies about a young Naval Officer she glimpsed at Cape Cod in a dining room.
In her own words ’I thought I was ready to give up you, the child, my whole future’... her feelings for the unknown Naval Officer ’Here I am, my love, for whom I have waited - take me’. A wife trying to make her husband jealous? Shocking him into realizing she can no longer be taken for granted?
Wife/Girl Friend fantasizing about another man... how can Male Ego bear that? The whole world seems to collapse for liberal flirting Dr. Harford
Dr. Harford’s Ego Night-out
After receiving a phone call that his patient Lou Nathanson has died Bill leaves in the middle of night to show his face (hide his shocked face?). How can he continue to talk to his wife who had committed unthinkable grave mistake of thinking about the other man (Aren’t women supposed to faithful?)
First pit-stop... Marions (Marie Richardson) Apartment... Her father Mr. Nathanson is dead. Marion is mourning her father... Bill tries to give her some solace. Her fiancee Carl whom she is going to marry soon, is on his way.
Then the unexpected happens Marion tries to seduce Bill before Carl makes it there. Bill looks touched rather than surprised at her expression of love for him ( sees Jealous fantasy image of Alice and the Naval officer making love - how predictable?).
Before he could seduce her (and satisfy his ego) Carl makes his entry & is followed by Marions uncle & aunt... forcing Bill to leave from there.
Bill decides to walk home... bumps into a pretty hooker Domino who takes him to her apartment. Before he could have sex with her; he receives a call from his wife enquiring about when is he going to return home (How do women manage to call at the wrong moments? ;-)) Bill comes to his senses(?) leaves her with the intent of returning home.
On the way he spots his friend Nick playing (band) in a bar & enters the bar to talk to him (to spend time). There while doing small-talk Nick reveals to Bill... that he had come to NY to plays for a secretive restricted club of super-rich & powerful people who meet secretly wearing masks at some predesignated place to have ritualistic mass sexual orgy.
Now Bill wants to somehow enter the party, he gets password from his friend Nick & tries to get himself a disguise so that he could enter the party discretely.
His attempts to rent the disguise take him to the shop of Mr. Gibson whose daughter gets caught red-handed with two Japanese men when trying to find a suitable costume for Bill ( why life is so cruel to our friend Bill... every time he tries to forget his wifes fantasies something or other keeps reminding him)
Bill takes a cab to the manages to reach ’Bletchly Manor’... the chosen meeting place for the night. And witnesses the mass orgy...
The mass orgy scene which is beyond imagination shocks Bill out of his wits, blowing his cover & exposing him as a tres-passer. A girl intervenes and accepts the punishment in place of Bill. He is asked to leave the place immediately.
[ This highly controversial scene is meant to shock both the viewer & Bill. If it generates any other feelings it is not directors intent or fault ]
He reaches home at 4 am to see his wife asleep. He is tortured in his sleep by the night-mare of his wife confessing about her dreams of having sex with the Naval Officer & countless other men... ( in his words ’Wh*re of a dream’ )
The day break
On getting up the next day... he realizes what all dangers he just missed by a whisker the previous night-out. First he gets shocking relevation that the hooker Domino has AIDS from her room mate. His friend Nick is missing kidnapped by some goons.
Assuming the woman who redeemed him to be the woman he saved at Zeiglers, he approaches Mr. Ziegler... to discover that Mr. Zeigler was one of club members. Zeigler reprimands him for his foolish act the previous night.
To his utter shock he realizes that it was some unknown ex-model who had given up her life to save him!!
Now the re-formed Dr. Harford returns home... confesses the whole story to his wife. Now Alice being the woman that she is, she is understands & pardons him ( wasn’t it her attempts to make him jealous that made him take such grave risks?)
MEN... we can go to a hooker, try to seduce a girl when her father’s dead, enjoy holding a naked girl trying to flee when caught red handed with Japanese men, attend a ritualistic sexual orgy... all just because our girl friend/wife was thinking about some other man... still think it’s all justified & that she has committed the GRAVEST SIN....’Ego thy name is Man’
Then we realise... Oh My God! I could have got AIDS!! I could have got killed!!... feel we did a wrong thing & run back to our girl friends/wives & confess... ’Hypocrisy thy name is Man’
’’I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself.’’
-- Stanley Kubrick
For Analysis see the comments...