On December 25, A24 released “Babygirl,” a controversial ‘erotic-thriller’ that follows a powerful woman’s existential crisis. With the holiday season looming and Nicole Kidman as the lead – notably present in every single frame – many are drawing comparisons to the Australian luminary’s Christmastime film of a similar genre, “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999). Even Halina Rejin, the director of “Babygirl,” cites “Eyes Wide Shut” as one of her incentives to explore the complexities of monogamy through a female lens. On Letterboxd, a social networking website for cinephiles, user Tyler Whitmore quips in his review of the 2024 blockbuster, “welcome back Eyes Wide Shut,” and user David Chen playfully observes, “I can’t believe Gen Z got their own version of Eyes Wide Shut and it also stars Nicole Kidman.”
More rom-com than thriller, labeling “Babygirl” the Gen Z version of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic swan song prescribes, frankly, a lackluster cultural trajectory to Gen Z. Other than the obvious theme, not a lot ties the two movies together. One is a brilliant, visually opulent commentary on high-society decadence and the meaninglessness of intimacy; the other attempts provocation through female-centered sexual politics but is repeatedly curtailed by obnoxious sets, made-for-TV lighting, and the same shallow, consumerist jargon that runs like a viral toxin through fourth wave – or, ‘girlboss’ – feminism. Nonetheless, as Letterboxd user Justin LaLiberty notes, “Babygirl” unfortunately seems to “[carry] the torch for art-house transgression circa 2024.”
Amidst the normalization of media illiteracy fed by ‘woke’ discourse that has surpassed its point, cinema today is often devoid of artistic risk. Perhaps gratuitous sex scenes are at their most rampant, but these graphic components seldom manage to convey an objective. Moreover, when a film’s intentions are bold, this boldness is explicit and thus diluted; audiences are marginally trusted to decipher broader implications on their own. However, not all is lost from Kubrick’s Hollywood. Central to the plot of “Babygirl” is a love triangle between Nicole Kidman’s character, her doting husband, and a young intern.
Another triangle plagued the set of “Eyes Wide Shut”: Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, and Scientology. Married for eleven years, Kidman and the “Top Gun” actor tend to emerge in the public imagination during waves of 90s ‘it couple’ nostalgia. Their sudden divorce in 2001, accordingly, remains crowded by speculation. Still, not always accounted for or examined is the role that Scientology may have played in the split. Especially following revelations from Mark Rinder’s 2022 book, “A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology,” it seems almost absurd that one could bring up the Kidman-Cruise saga – or even the stars’ collaboration with Kubrick – without mentioning the divisive religion.
Introduced to the organization through his first wife, Mimi Rogers, in 1986, Cruise’s Scientology membership began just as his career was starting to take off. While films such as “A Few Good Men” (1992) and “Mission: Impossible” (1996) cemented him as Hollywood royalty, his name – inextricable from the church’s lux and looming “Celebrity Centre” in Los Angeles – became an essential bridge between Scientology and mainstream America. This prestige, as well as Cruise’s multi-million dollar donations, continues to keep the group afloat today. Thus, despite Kidman’s father being a psychologist – a connection that would normally disqualify membership – she was let into the church shortly after her and Cruise’s wedding in 1990. Yet, Scientology executives’ discomfort with Kidmen never quite eased, and her reluctance to engage in fanatic behavior exacerbated this wariness.
In accord with the director’s reputation for meticulous set procedures, Kubrick put his cast in relative isolation over the 400-day, record-length shoot of “Eyes Wide Shut.” Over this production period, Cruise, unable to regularly attend Scientology meetings, was likely prone to skepticism. Following his apparent failure to return a series of phone calls from Scientology chairman David Miscavige, alarm bells went off over Cruise’s extended time under the influence of his wife and co-lead. So, Rinder and other leaders allegedly had a private investigator wire-tap Kidman’s phone to discern whether she was actively trying to deprogram him. All returned to normal, however, when they sent a top executive to “audit” Cruise – a process in which followers are questioned with an e-meter (a type of polygraph) to unearth spiritual trauma and thereby elicit loyalty.
By the end of “Eyes Wide Shut,” the church had reinstated Cruise as their strongest asset and, having violated her privacy, dramatically escalated their hostility towards Kidman. Not coincidentally, the couple terminated their marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences,” less than two years after the film’s release. Around the same time, Kidman left Scientology, making her a “suppressive person” – founder L. Ron Hubbard’s term for “antisocial personalities” who in some way pose a threat to the organization’s prosperity. The list of such people ranges from Hitler and Stalin to anyone who criticizes or decides to leave the group. Once an individual is labeled a suppressive person, practicing scientologists are barred from contacting them. Although Cruise, as a [sought-after] member, would be exempt from this rule, his two adopted children with Kidman – both now climbing the ranks of scientology themselves – have reportedly been estranged from their mother for nearly two decades.
Established in 1954, the church has been subject to a multitude of scandals and exposés. While financial exploitation of members – most of whom are not A-list actors, nor among the wealthiest of this class – has become more or less common knowledge, Scientology’s list of alleged offenses is as extensive as it is disturbing. Over the past fifteen years, for example, many ex-scientologists have attempted to shed light on what they refer to as a “prison camp”: The Hole. Implemented by David Miscavige, the Hole is located just north of San Jacinto, California, on a compound known as the Gold Base.
Sometime in the early 2000s, Miscavige began to confine senior executives who contested or upset him in two double-wide trailers, allowing them to leave only for Scientology meetings and events. Mark Rinder illustrates in the documentary “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief” (based on Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name): “The doors had bars on them, the windows all had bars put on them, and there was one entrance door that a security guard sat at 24 hours a day.” Inside of the Hole, members were fed only “barely edible” leftovers, subjected to physical harm from Miscavige, and forced to play demoralizing games – such as a round of musical chairs where only the winner is permitted to remain in scientology – that would often turn violent. With up to 100 incarcerated at a time, high-ranking scientologists would cohabitate in this detention center for a period of months or even years.
How accusations to this level – which also include coercing abortions and framing suppressive persons for domestic terrorism under the church’s ‘fair game’ policy – have been left unpunished for so long is one of Scientology’s great wonders. Largely to blame, however, are the elite class and government forces who either actively champion the organization or yield to its barrage of lawsuits and intimidation tactics. In 2009, following accounts of human trafficking and forced labor, the FBI investigated Scientology for the first time in three decades. By 2011, the case was voided by the defendant’s status as a religious institution, which gives it protection under the First Amendment. Most recently, Scientology has faced charges of attempting to “derail” the criminal rape trial of Danny Masterson – one of their prized celebrity constituents – through harrasment of prosecutors and witnesses. It is sadly probable that the organization will again bypass legal repercussions.
In a 2013 New York Times review of “Going Clear,” Michael Kinsley employs Lawrence Wright’s disclosures to align Scientology with the American Communist Party in the 1930s and 40s. He observes that – like the CPUSA at its most influential – paranoia, interrogations, de facto prison camps, deep-seated control over members’ lives, and suspicious disappearances are central to the church’s endurance. “Except that while the American Communist Party,” Kinsley proposes, “including a few naïve Hollywood types, merely turned a blind eye to events happening in faraway Russia, Scientology… ran, and maybe still runs, a shadow totalitarian empire here in the United States, financed in part by huge contributions by Tom Cruise and others of the Hollywood aristocracy.” He then elaborates, “‘Naïve’ doesn’t begin to describe the credulousness and sense of entitlement that has allowed actors, writers and directors to think they were helping themselves and the world by hanging around the Scientologists’ ‘Celebrity Centre,’ taking ‘upper level’ courses and gossiping about who was about to be labeled a ‘Suppressive Person’ (bad guy).”
Indeed, regarding Cruise’s involvement with the establishment, “naïve” does not quite cut it. Not only because he can spend 400 days shooting a movie about an illicit, authoritarian-run cult of elites who exploit and victimize the ultimate underclass of society, sex-workers, and then return comfortably to Miscavige’s fold, would the term be insufficient. It is also because, to Scientology, Cruise is not simply another movie-star who was lured in for publicity. Since he essentially funds their operation, Cruise resides at the top of the scientologist hierarchy, with masses devoted to keeping him satisfied. Of course, this position has brought him multiple allegations of physical abuse towards Scientology underlings – “Sea Org” employees who earn $50 per week to do whatever he asks. Thus, throughout his career, Cruise has been profoundly ignorant, outrageously egotistical, and perhaps even sadistic, but not just naïve.
Over the past decade, various American political commentators, from both sides of the aisle, have made claims of outsized social progress. As their palpable impacts are gradually dismantled by aggressive, anti-progress policies, the legitimacy of these claims falls into question. Certainly, their rhetoric has affected our art, our cinematic expectations – but does society actually imitate that which it sees on screen? Or have artistic endeavors of affirmation and mainstream accessibility become so irritating that their messages are nullified or, worse, resented?
“Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) was Cruise’s highest grossing film to date, earning nearly $1.5 billion at box offices. His upcoming film, “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning” (2025) is projected to also surpass $1 billion. Why? Why now, when all of this information about scientology is readily available, and when social-consciousness has apparently grown overbearing, is Cruise soaring towards the height of his stardom? Because, at some point, the woke movement’s noble fight against patriarchal oppression amounted to not much more than a sanctuary for anti-intellectualism. Because Cruise, in terms of how our society prefers to treat him, is not so different from Johnny Depp, or Justin Baldoni, or even the current U.S. president. We enjoy the facade of evolution but we refuse to let alleged crimes or character flaws – no matter how severe – disrupt the power of men who appear charming.
