Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
a review by Christian Pyle
Everything I know about the movies I learned from Stanley Kubrick. "The Shining" was the first movie of his that I saw, and as I watched the scene where Danny big-wheels through the large room I understood for the first time in my life that movies don't just happen, that everything in a movie is carefully crafted and pieced together. My crude sense of filmmaking prior to this epiphany was that someone just pointed a camera and actors did stuff in front of it. That, I figured, was pretty much the whole process. Then I saw a Kubrick movie, and "it skinned my eyes for me" (line borrowed from "The Horse's Mouth").
It would be a few more years down the road before I would devote myself to seeing all of Kubrick's movies. By that time, "Full Metal Jacket" (Kubrick's most recent film until now) had long since gone from the big screen to late night cable. So, all the Kubrick I had seen until today had been on the small screen. I've followed the trickle of reports about the progress of "Eyes Wide Shut" for two years; with the death of the director earlier this year, "Eyes" became my last chance to see a Kubrick film on the big screen when it was first released.
The plot: After a party where they both flirt with other people, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) learns that his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) lusts after other men. This revelation sends Bill into New York City on a sexual odyssey. An old friend (Todd Field) tells Bill about an underground orgy. Bill bluffs his way into the party, which takes place at a secluded mansion. The trappings of the orgy resemble a black mass-everyone is cloaked and masked, and the sex is preceded by a ritual. A woman, naked except for her mask, warns Bill to leave before he is exposed, but he fails to heed her advice. The rest of the film concerns Bill's investigation into the sexual coven.
>From the moment when Bill's delusions about his wife are shattered-the moment when his eyes go from wide-shut to wide-open-everyone around him is changed. Suddenly his mere presence seems to elicit extreme lust in women: one woman (Marie Richardson) mauls him only a few feet from her father's corpse; the daughter (Leelee Sobieski of "Deep Impact") of a shopkeeper (Rade Serbedzija of "The Saint") offers herself to him with her eyes.
Although "Eyes" is based on a German novel ("Traumnovelle" by Arthur Schnitzler), it could just as easily be an updating of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown." In that story, the title character discovers that all of the seemingly virtuous people in town, including his wife, are part of a satanic cult. The essential difference between "Young Goodman Brown" and "Eyes Wide Shut" is that Bill does not have the comfort of being the only virtuous person in the world. He is as corrupt as those around him, and his sins bring harm to others. Like the Hawthorne story, "Eyes" is an allegory with Calvinist overtones (every human is utterly depraved and undeserving of redemption).
I've given "Eyes" two grades: one for Kubrick fans, another for everyone else. For those who look at the film stylistically, it is a wonderful experience. For those who aren't devotees of Kubrick's work, "Eyes" will probably seem dull and predictable.
Tom Cruise still can't act. He's one of those stars who generally plays variations on a single persona, but the character of Bill Harford is nothing like the impulsive young hotshots that are Cruise's stock-in-trade. However, that Cruise is obviously out of his depth works for the role in a strange way: Bill is also out of his depth. Also, Cruise has a natural talent for seeming dense, and Bill is very dense (after nine years of marriage he's just discovered his wife has sexual desires). However, Cruise is especially effective in Kubrick's trademark close-ups; he manages to look as if his whole world has just shattered.
Kidman and Sydney Pollack (who plays a friend of Bill's) are excellent. Kidman is especially riveting, but she has only a few scenes.
I saw "Eyes" a week after it hit town, and the theater was still packed. Even though this meant that I had to sit on the front row and look up at a 90-degree angle for three hours, I was pleased to see that so many people realized that the release of Kubrick's last film-twelve years after his penultimate film-was a major event. But I also worried that many of them would leave disappointed because they came with mistaken expectations.
A few months ago I saw a magazine cover with a photo of Cruise and Kidman and the text "THE SEXIEST MOVIE EVER?" I grimaced; even then I knew it wouldn't be sexy at all. Kubrickian eroticism is an oxymoron. The essential defining element of his style is its coldness. All of Kubrick's best works are essentially horror movies, and horror of the first order-it doesn't scare you, it chills and disturbs you deep in your gut.
Despite all the fuss over the rating, "Eyes" is also not shocking. The simulated sex at the orgy is oddly pedestrian (so much so that we're left to wonder why the coven would go to the lengths they do to cover up their activities). In an age where the internet provides a carnival sideshow of every possible perversity and where the President of the United States uses cigars as dildos, the humping in "Eyes" hardly even seems dirty. If you're looking for shock, try Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom."
"Eyes" is not for those seeking cheap thrills, but it is also not for people who aren't tuned into Kubrick. A friend who went to "Eyes" with me (and who had to be dragged against her will because she has a phobia of Tom Cruise) challenged me to defend the movie. I can't defend it; I can't even explain why it affected me as deeply as it did. "Eyes" resonates on a purely aesthetic level that defies description or explanation. Trying to explain Kubrick to someone who isn't attuned to his style is like trying to describe sunlight to someone blind since birth.
The experience is akin to seeing my first Van Gogh painting up close and personal ("Undergrowth with Two Figures" at the Cincinnati Art Museum). The power of the painting smacked me right between the eyes and left me dumbfounded as it washed over me. But others might look at the same painting and be unaffected. What it boils down to is you either get Kubrick or you don't. If you do, you should rush out to see "Eyes;" if you don't, you will probably find "Eyes" to be silly, but you owe it to yourself to study his work when you have the time.
Grade: A- (for Kubrick fans); D- (for the rest of you)
© 1999 Christian L. Pyle
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