Being Nicole Kidman: Part 2

Nicole Kidman. David Thomson.
Hot on the heel's of Monday's post, here's another look at David Thomson's "Nicole Kidman," this time from Scott Eyman of The New York Observer. While he approves of Thomson's intellectual effort, he wonders why it was wasted on the star of "The Interpreter," "The Peacemaker," "The Others" and "Bewitched": "Like her or not, like the book or not, Nicole Kidman will make you sit up and think about this specific actress, and about actresses' careers in general. Which is, after all, the critic's job: to make you think."

There's enough that's self-indulgent in Mr. Thomson's book to enable a certain kind of critic—the ones who clutch their pince-nez glasses as they lecture the class—to dismiss it as the equivalent of a hot-sheet special, the effusions of a critic in lust.

But Mr. Thomson has always put himself out there—he's one of the rare writers who view criticism as an art form in its own right, and every artist has to reserve the right to fall on his face. In this particular book, there's a dream sequence set in a Parisian bordello that verges on the embarrassing, and there are occasional sentences that could have been lifted directly from Photoplay magazine circa 1938: "It is Nicole's nature to be sturdy, cheerful, robust, a real person, full of common sense." At these times, the book is simply what my grandfather used to call a "mash note."

Mr. Thomson has earned the right to his enthusiasms, if only for his A Biographical Dictionary of Film, which is never less than interesting, frequently irritating, occasionally maddening—and one of perhaps half a dozen indispensable books about the movies. (Mr. Thomson is also a contributor to The Observer.)

Excerpt

From "Nicole Kidman" by David Thomson, a section dealing with Stanley Kubrick and "Eyes Wide Shut":

[Tom] Cruise and Kidman will speak later of their intense experience with [Stanley] Kubrick, but many people on the set [of "Eyes Wide Shut"] note the director's special attachment to Kidman. He likes to have her around all the time, even though in the final film she is onscreen only a third of the time given to Cruise.

A director is an interloper in any marriage, if he is male and his actress is married. I do not mean he has intercourse with the woman. That is a blunt transaction compared with his demands. He says, I have to talk to you privately, intimately, because I have to talk to you about the way your desires -- your desires, Nicole -- may merge with and give body to your character. Alas, this has to be done away from your husband. It must be just the two of us. And in the case of "Eyes Wide Shut" there is this extra twist -- Oh, Tom, I must take Nicole away to somewhere private. This afternoon. We may stroll in the garden, or in the lanes of Hertfordshire. We have to talk. You understand. For you and I talk in the same way, when she is not there. Cell phones were created to mark and define this torture.

Finally: Thomson's Belle de Jour fantasy!