A common criticism of Stanley Kubrick's work is that he is cold, calculated, unfeeling and detached. Most of these charges are unwarranted - he is not aloof but merely observing events as they unfold and doing so with an intellectually emotional distance while involving the audience. "Eyes Wide Shut," the late director's last work, is strangely more emotional and less distant than his last couple of films, and it is a return to the intimacy between people that he explored so masterfully in "Barry Lyndon."
The film opens with a shot of a woman, Alice Hartford (Nicole Kidman), entering a room and removing her black dress from a distance. The shot is so perfect and beautiful that it establishes Kubrick's theme immediately - we can observe sexuality but from a distance. As it turns out, Alice is married to Dr. Bill Hartford (Tom Cruise) and he will not acknowledge her presence or her looks by looking at her - his eyes are wide shut. She asks: "How do I look?" He responds: "You look fine" while adjusting his bow tie. She says: "You are not even looking."
A moment later, they are leaving their daughter with a babysitter as they go to a garish, ostentatious Christmas party given by their good friend, Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). Bill ends up wooing two women at the party and coming very close to a threesome affair. Alice drinks and dances with a charming Hungarian playboy who seduces her with talk about "The Art of Love," galleries and paintings. Both are interrupted or prevent themselves from indulging in carnivorous sex. Bill is interrupted by Victor's secretary, and Alice excuses herself and insists that a wedding ring makes all the difference.
Bill and Alice arrive home, and she alarmingly senses that Bill may have slept with the two voluptuous beauties. Bill says he wouldn't and knows she would never commit adultery. Alice is angry and confesses that she came close to walking away from her future family life for a sailor. Bill leaves the house, confused and upset and engages in an evening of missed sexual opportunities - all the while he fantasizes Alice's supposed infatuation with a sailor.
"Eyes Wide Shut" may sound like any other sexual mystery potboiler but coming from Stanley Kubrick, you know it will not be. And it isn't at all, nor should it be erroneously considered soft-core pornography (similar charges pervaded Atom Egoyan's "Exotica"). It is about the allure of sex, the possibility of sexual encounter - in other words, this film is all foreplay and circumstance. Save for a masked orgy sequence, there are no sex scenes in Kubrick's latest odyssey. We are briefly shown a sexually charged and erotic scene where Alice and Bill are kissing and fondling each other while she stares at the mirror accompanied by Chris Isaak's great song, "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing." That's about as close to eroticism as the film gets.
It is indeed an odyssey - it is a journey into Bill's fears and insecurities about Alice's sexual fantasies. During two days and nights, he finds himself in one sexual encounter after another. From a sweet prostitute named Domino to the aforementioned masked orgy to a Lolita-like underage girl in bras and panties (Leelee Sobieski) to a dead patient's daughter who flirts with him to am excited hotel desk clerk to a homophobic gang, and so on. Meanwhile, we get black-and-white images of Alice's romp in the hay.
Based on Arthur Schnitzler's "Traumnovelle," "Eyes Wide Shut" is a fascinating film because it is so voyeuristic - it could easily have been helmed by a talented artist like Roman Polanski. In fact, there are correlations between this film and Polanski's superb "Bitter Moon" - the presentation of sex and its hidden pleasures to the protagonist as played by Hugh Grant mirror Bill's. There is also a strong similarity to the over-the-top yet frighteningly real "L'Enfer" by famed director Claude Chabrol which also dealt with jealousy and sexual frustration.
>From the opening frame to the last, I was completely mesmerized and involved by "Eyes Wide Shut." Every shot is beautifully realized, composed and brilliantly photographed. We see lots of brightly and dimly lit Christmas trees, references to what lies "where the rainbow ends," sexual mind games and deceit at every turn of events, nude paintings obscured by characters (echoes of "A Clockwork Orange"), slightly canted angles to delineate tension and perhaps frustration - everything in some form or another refers to sex in some way. Kubrick has never shown sex, and the less we see the more we are compelled by the dreamlike quality of the film's journey into the heart of darkness - the realization that jealousy in a marriage is inevitable and perhaps necessary.
"Eyes Wide Shut" also has a wonderful cast. Tom Cruise eschews his trademark boyish smile (except for the opening scenes) for long stares usually at a low angle (A Kubrick motif). His slow descent into anger is thrilling to watch, and one of his most quixotic moments of his career is when he confronts his friend Ziegler and discovers the true nature behind his own adventurous and nocturnal activities.
Nicole Kidman has become a first-rate actress, and her mood swings are something to behold. I also liked her laughing fit at Bill's remarks that he would not sleep with his patients - when was the last time that a character laughed at Tom Cruise? Her final moment of realization about their marriage is stunning - this woman should be nominated for an Oscar.
Also worth mentioning is Sydney Pollack's quietly decadent millionaire character Ziegler - he is more fierce and yet just as restrained as he was in "Tootsie" or "Husbands and Wives." Vinessa Shaw displays a sweetness and sexiness not often seen on the silver screen, and she plays a prostitute! Rade Serbedzija ("Before the Rain") has one of the sole moments of comic relief as the owner of the Rainbow, a costume shop, who asks the good doctor for advice about his balding spot. Todd Field is also engaging as the piano player Nick Nightingale who plays blindfolded at some musical events.
If I have one or two gripes about Kubrick's long, difficult and splendid film, it is the abrupt ending and the inclusion of a character that would have been better omitted or replaced by another actor. The ending is optimistic (a rarity in any of his films) but somehow feels rushed. Still, this is among the late master's finest films, preferable to the pretensions of "The Shining" or "Full Metal Jacket." "Eyes Wide Shut" easily stands among such giants as "A Clockwork Orange," "Paths of Glory" or "2001." It is a bizarre, strangely moving and enlightening film guaranteed to provoke as much controversy as any of his other works. Stanley, you may be gone, but we are glad you came back with one of the best films of your career.
IN MEMORIAM: STANLEY KUBRICK (1928-1999)
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