This is one of my favorite films and I have watched it in its entirety around a dozen times, and probably 30 to 50 times more in bits-and-pieces or playing in the background while I’m doing other stuff. The aesthetic of the movie and the weird, detached dialog captivated me. I think it’s probably Cruise’s second best film, behind Vanilla Sky - which, coincidentally, also involves Cruise wearing a mask.
The masks in the film, by the way, are Venetian style masks, though many of them are exaggerated modernist takes on the traditional style. The one worn by the Man on the Balcony (who may or may not be Ziegler) is a bauta, which I think is one of the scarier looking masks because of its blank features and weirdly angled jaw. When I was a kid of 5 years or so, I saw the videotape cover for The Music Teacher at the video store, and it disturbed me greatly. I’ll never forget the weird feeling that came over me when I first saw that mask.
Harvey Keitel was originally going to play Ziegler. Supposedly during a take he masturbated into Nicole Kidman’s hair and was subsequently fired and replaced by Pollack, although I always doubted the veracity of this story. But I guess it’s possible. In any case, it is certainly a deliberate choice that the audience is left to wonder if it was really Ziegler on the balcony watching Cruise. We can only speculate. But it is worth mentioning that Ziegler seems to not be very high up among the ranks of the masked party group. He claims towards the end of the movie, in the final conversation with Cruise, that he was the one who “recommended [Nightingale] to ‘those people’,” and that they were angry with his decision after it became known that Nightingale disclosed the party to Hartford. This phrasing would indicate that Ziegler is not one of the higher ups in the group and rather is someone whose own position among the members might be uncertain and insecure.
He claimed that if Hartford knew the identities of some of the other people in the group, he “wouldn’t sleep so well.” We can only assume this means that many people in positions of great influence in society were part of the bizarre sex club.
One quirk of the party scene that I always enjoyed: as Hartford is being led into the main room by the guards to meet Red Cloak, he goes through a little ballroom dance where many couples of masked man/nude masked women are dancing. Among them, if you pay attention, are two homosexual couples as well: two tuxedoed women dancing together, presumably masculine lesbians, and two completely nude men, presumably gay. (The two men are British porn legends Tony DeSergio and Lee Henshaw.)
Also great: Red Cloak is played by Leon Vitali, who also played another one of my all time favorite characters - Lord Bullingdon, in Barry Lyndon. His voice during the angry interrogation of Hartford, while raspier and deeper with age, is still obviously the same one who delivered the great dressing-down tirade against Lyndon.
There are many other great little quirky details in the film; I am tired now but I will post more if this thread gets some more replies.