Eyes Wide Shut - Cinepinion

EYES WIDE SHUT
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Internet Movie Database Entry for full details

GRADE: A (3.7/4)

1999.

It could possibly be argued that the following may contain "spoilers".

Eyes Wide Shut unfairly bears a burden of high-expectations being, as it is, Stanley Kubrick’s swan song. It was met upon its initial release with disappointment and scorn (“A stiff” – David Denby); for many critics it didn’t adequately sum up or live up to the director’s career, who passed away after filming but before the film’s public release. It remains poorly received, according to my benchmark for general critical consensus, Videohound’s Golden Movie Retriever, which affords it a mere two bones (out of four possible bones) and calls it “less than compelling.” While it would be impossible to argue that the film should be exalted to the rank of Kubrick’s finest, it is nevertheless a great film and a worthy entry into the Kubrick canon.

Eyes Wide Shut is a very difficult picture and suffers from rampant critical misunderstanding; at first, many of its most potent virtues can come across as its most repellent features (eg. the use of sound stages rather than locations, the lack of a clear distinction between what’s real and what’s imaginary.) Steven Spielberg opines, in an interview on the DVD’s special features, that any Kubrick film demands repeated viewings. He confesses he initially found The Shining disappointing, but since it has become one of his favorite films, although Spielberg seems like the kind of guy who has a thousand “favorite films”. Thus, I encourage anyone who has responded to the film with discontent to re-examine it and discover it for the masterpiece that it is.

It’s the finest exploration of sexual jealousy and insecurity I have ever seen, notable not only for its captivating psychosexual mystery but also for its astonishing visual construction. Kubrick and his crew certainly live up to the visual standards set in his previous films in terms of lighting (the early scene at the Christmas party is perhaps the best-lit in film history), set design, and camera movement. Kubrick is able to construct an inimitable visual elegance on the screen that reminds any jaded filmgoer of just how marvelous the movies can be. It’s best expressed in his peerless mastery of the dissolve, which he used throughout his improlific career to great, graceful effect. Showing just what a true master of film he was, he’s able to express more in a single transition than many directors could with an entire sequence.

Tom Cruise plays Bill, a well-to-do doctor in a banal, bourgeois marriage to Alice (Nicole Kidman). When the security of his matrimony, and more importantly his masculinity, is threatened by his wife’s stoned confession of sexual desire for another man, Bill takes off into the night in search of reassurance in the form of a series of adventurous sexual escapades.

Bill is transformed into a gadabout in a subconscious sexual dreamscape; he wanders the streets of "Greenwhich Village", but it is really a New York of the mind – a familiar yet unplaceable setting in which every street is a dead-end. His wanderings ultimately culminate in an astounding orgy sequence that creepily resembles a Catholic mass.

After witnessing the orgy, where he confronts the collective unconscious of the married man, his dream devolves into a nightmarescape fraught with threats of danger and death. He encounters the pernicious effect of sex without love (i.e. without marriage): death. A woman mysteriously dies of a drug overdose while another is infected with HIV. He is humiliated and reduced to a state of helpless vulnerability by being forced to face his own emasculation; his mask is removed, both figuratively and literally. It is only when Bill is finally forced to literally face his “mask” (as it dispassionately sleeps next to his wife) that he is able to break down and begin reconciling with his wife.

Bill’s potential sexual encounters are never consummated, the coitus is perpetally interruptus, as they are less sexual fantasies than confrontations with sexuality itself. Thematically the film bears a similarity to this year’s Little Children (directed by Todd Field, who appears in Eyes Wide Shut as Bill’s pianist pal Nick Nightingale), as both films are concerned with misguided sexual expression as a means to filling the existential void left by an unsatisfying marriage. Both end on hopeful notes for their central characters; in Little Children, the adulterers return to their respective spouses. In Eyes Wide Shut, Alice and Bill decide to do what neither was able to do in their respective fantasies – fuck. -- Henry Stewart

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