Eight years to the day and I bring this thread back from the dead.

Just re-watched it on Netflix (today is its last day streaming), first time I'd seen it since in the theater when it was new.  To save anyone having to strain a muscle scrolling up the page, here's what I wrote
way back then...

I thought this was rolling along just great till the...umm...arousing group scene at the end. Maybe this was great in the book, and it occurred to me as I watched it that maybe somebody like Scorsese or Spielberg or even
David Lynch might find some way to make it work, but, as filmed, I thought it was pretty disastrous. I saw the movie in a theatre with a large audience. Everyone seemed into the film till THAT scene. At first there was 
muttering, then chuckling, then some pretty hearty laughter. I chuckled a bit myself. Admittedly, under the best of circumstances, it would be tough to make such a scene work, but this didn't even come close.

I haven't really changed my basic opinion, but just adjusted it a bit. On this viewing I thought it really worked like gangbusters for most of its length. Really good, really good-looking, and a fascinating 
story. But I still think the mass orgy scene throws a monkey in the wrench. It did seem less troublesome this time, but I wonder if that was simply because I was watching it alone on a TV screen, and didn't 
have a crowd around me cracking up at the silliness of it.

It's an almost impossible thing to really pull off well, I think. These people seem to have been well-coached and highly willing. Still, I saw one guy, so anxious for his big moment, clearly looking right 
into the camera as it approached him. And some of the folks -- even allowing for their intended mood of unfettered ecstasy -- were just a leeetle overboard in their reactions, and that raises the silliness
quotient.

But again, I'm not sure the director has been born who could have made such a sequence really work. Maybe you'd need a whole crowd of not just extras willing to disrobe, but a whole crowd of first-
rate actors willing to disrobe. That'd be a tough casting job.

Overall, though, this has definitely gone up in my estimation, and I'm glad I watched it again.

All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.