(4 of 5)
That something is Cruise and Kidman. Kubrick was usually star shy, preferring ensemble casts of solid players to huge names. But when Terry Semel, who runs Warner Bros. in tandem with Robert Daly, gave the project its green light, he said, "What I would really love you to consider is a movie star in the lead role; you haven't done that since Jack Nicholson [in The Shining]." Kubrick was concerned that a movie star wouldn't share his tireless work ethic. Nevertheless, the Cruises were approached.
The couple gave themselves over entirely to the project. It was, as both Cruise and Kidman agree, never a question of filling in the preordained blanks as efficiently as possible. Nor was it a matter of dithering over lining up or lighting a shot. All the technical side of moviemaking Kubrick had long since absorbed into his bones. It was always a question of getting the emotions right, bit by painful, exhilarating bit. Kubrick insisted on working as no one else in movies does, but as artists in the other forms--painting, music, literature--do: finding the piece as it goes along. That, of course, requires time, and with that he was profligate, ever willing to explore the possibly rewarding digression.
Sidney Pollack, the film director, who replaced Harvey Keitel as Victor Ziegler, the character who ties together all the evil that Cruise's character discovers and who is the most significant addition to the original story, observes that "Stanley had figured out a way to work in England for a fraction of what we pay here. While the rest of us poor bastards are able to get 16 weeks of filming for $70 million with a $20 million star, Stanley could get 45 weeks of shooting for $65 million." In short, says Pollack, "he ensured himself the luxury of trying to work out something that's as complicated emotionally as this film was."
Cruise and Kidman, perhaps still caught up in their detailed work with Kubrick, prefer to see the movie rather indeterminately. "The movie is whatever the audience takes from it," says Cruise. "Wherever you are in life, you're going to take away something different." Kidman says, "I don't think its a morality tale. It's different for every person who watches it." But others draw distinct lessons from the film. Pollack says this "is the story of a man who journeys off the path and then finds his way back onto it, a man who almost loses himself because something awakens a darker part of him, and he follows it against his own better sense." When "he realizes that what he's lived through was about values so far below what he's lived his life for, he's devastated."