Bel libro. L'autore è riuscito nella brevità del racconto a rappresentare l'inconscio nel rapporto di coppia con chiarezza e con un taglio accattivante ( )

Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut made a real impression on me as a wee sprout--I remember coming out of it with a pile of tortuous metaphors concerning what my recently-become-ex-girlfriend Erin and I could have done to manage our feelings and fears, the most salient as well as the most embarrassing of which had to do with surfboards and just riding the wave, bra. What I didn't realize, watching crazy, WASPy old Tom Cruise mug his way through what should have been a haunting role, was that the source material--Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story--wasn't really for people like me at all--young, well-adjusted, healthy members of the suburban dominant culture. No, this is a book about outsiderness; more specifically Jewishness; more specifically still, bourgeois Viennese trying-to-pass Jewishness in the overcultivated, brutal, imperial-headbirth era of decline presided over by filthy, genial mayor Karl Lueger, some of whose best friends were Jews, as you may have heard. This is a story about relationships, jealousy, recognizing the humanity of the other and what you do with that, and it has a surprisingly sweet ending; but it is also a story of exclusion, fear, colliding inferiority complexes on every street corner, and Schnitzler signals strongly that that sweet ending will turn out to be false or at least temporary--and yikes, you think, Jews of Vienna? Temporary any implied happy ending certainly was. ( )

A special edition for Guardian readers and not for resale.

La novela divaga entre una imagen y otra de la misma manera que lo hacen mis sueños; erráticos, dando tumbos de piedra en piedra con el fin de cruzar la inasible corriente de agua. Despiertas con un poso real de lo vivido; pero te aceptas incapaz de intentar reconstrucción alguna. Las descripciones son magistrales. Perfectamente nebulosas. Sútilmente perfila los elementos básicos; el lector construye su réplica de la imagen; Schnitzler esboza el acto, narra; y de repente ... ¡zas! drástico e inesperado cambio de escenario. Ni siquiera tiene que existir una conexión lógica. Precisamente es deliciosa porque no las crea. Bello paralelismo entre el sueño real de ella; y el ficticio de él. ¿O acaso es al revés? ( )

Amazing, enveloping book! The book on which the Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut was based. ( )

I saw the movie “Eyes Wide Shut“ before I read the book, and I have to say that this seems to me like one of the few cases in which the movie tends to be better than the book.
The funny thing is: The book’s content and message are brilliant, it is just that words can’t transport the dreamy feeling, or the mystery, that leaves the recipient puzzled and alienated the way the movie does.
Schnitzler’s intention was to show that you can’t draw a clear line between dream and waking reality. The problem with the novel is that you’re constantly reading about the protagonist’s thoughts, but you never really see the things he does. What you get is second-hand-information that has already been catalyzed by language. Maybe it’s just the effect of having seen the movie first, but I personally missed the revelation of dreamy images between the lines.
Watching the movie, however, you get the triple-alienation-experience:
1. You are hit with the strange impressions Tom Cruise’s character experiences
2. You ask yourself what he’s thinking and why he’s acting the way he does
3. It seems to be like the answer is there in the air, but you are never able to grasp it
So the movie leaves your intellect puzzled but your senses somewhat satisfied.
The book doesn’t give any explicit answer either, but seems to turn into a rational lecture about marriage and honesty. That’s what it is, in one way, but I don’t think that it’s is the quintessence. ( )

Albertina, esposa de um médico vienense muito bem-sucedido (Fridolin), conta a ele uma fantasia sexual. Um chamado de um cliente à beira da morte põe o médico num jogo no qual sexo e morte tem valores similares, e a vida corre sempre perigo. Quando retorna para casa, Albertina conta a ele que sonhara que estava num bacanal no qual o marido era condenado à morte. Freud era um dos admiradores de Schnitzler. ( )

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) wrote Dream Story (1899). Stanley Kubrick died shortly after making the film Eyes Wide Shut. It features my favorite actress, Nicole Kidman. The movie is based on Schnitzler's book. It's all about repressed sexual apetite and declining moral values in turn of the century Vienna. Here's another good review. Full text of the movie, too. Chris Isaak's "Baby did a bad bad thing" is just part of the movie's soundtrack.

1. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/content...
2. http://www.haro-online.com/movies/eye...
3. http://tinyurl.com/9ormn (Chris Isaak "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing")
4. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/do... ( )