Eyes Wide Shut

When Stanley Kubrick's final movie came out, there was so much buzz--Nicole and Tom together on screen in Kubrick's last cinematic gesture--that all that media hoopla got in the way of what is a truly excellent film. I've seen it several times now and watching it again tonight, I marvel at how deeply probing and profoundly honest this film is about human relationships and how they're both reinforced and threatened by our conscious and unconscious desires. In the film, Tom Cruise plays Bill, a doctor with a foxy wife played by Nicole Kidman. Together they traverse the traditional bonds of marriage: they flirt with other people openly at a party, they smoke dope only rooms away from their precious red-headed daughter (whom, it seems, they both merely tolerate--there's not a lot of gushy love for their kid). What sets the movie rolling, though, is a frank discussion--a deadly discussion, really--about sex: Tom Cruise argues that men want sex only, that women aren't driven by desire. Nicole Kidman, aghast, says that Bill has no idea and then tells a story that is the psychological equivalent of murder: she confesses that last summer, on Cape Cod, she saw a sailor who she found so attractive, so wildly alluring, that she would've given up EVERYTHING--her marriage, her daughter--for just one night with him. The look on Tom Cruise's face is one of devastation: it's as if she ripped his heart out and pissed on it.

And the rest of the movie is how he deals with that. What has she done to him? How can he get revenge for a crime that she never really committed--a crime that took place in her head? Tom Cruise wanders the streets and begins an adventure of his own. Is it a quest for revenge? That's not clear, but by his actions it is clear that he wants sex: or to get close to sex. He goes home with a prostitute and just when they're about to, perhaps, get hot and heavy his cell phone rings: it's his wife. (Saved by the bell: we later learn the prostitute was HIV positive.) But the great set piece is yet to come: he finds a piano bar where an old friend of his, Nick Nightingale, is playing. And it's when Nick's set is over that he learns that Nick's next gig is at a secret party, the location yet to be revealed, where he'll play blindfolded. "But last time," Nick confesses, "the blindfold slipped" and the women, he tells Bill, were the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. Immediately Bill wants in. And it's Bill's lust for adventure, for danger, and--of course--for sex that brings him to the brink of travesty.

Anyone who's seen the movie knows what unfolds: the famous orgy scene. Its not so much an orgy scene, though, as a cultish nightmare. The sea of masks that Kubrick photographs so gorgeously is the sea of anonymous faces you see out when you go to a club or a bar or anywhere late at night in rooms filled with possibility and only the slightest hint of danger. That's why this movie is so brilliant: it captures the allure, the excitement and the palpable thrill of sexual adventure and then, of course, it demonstrates how such an adventure can destroy you and everything you love. (We see this play out every day on the news: a Florida Congressman just busted in a men's room for soliciting a cop.) By the end of the movie, one person is definitely dead, another is missing and Bill is face-to-face with the mask he was wearing the night before placed menacingly on his pillow. That mask, of course, is the face of Bill's unconscious desires and its physical presence causes him to unravel: he breaks down crying and says to Nicole that he'll tell her everything.

Filled with unforgettable images (the Christmas lights, the masks, the mysterious man following Bill down the street) and an unbelievably haunting and disarming soundtrack (that piano key hit over and over again, almost inducing madness), this is a movie worth revisiting. It may not be Kubrick's best, but it hits upon the best of Kubrick: notice how the camera outside the mansion gate is a bit like HAL in 2001, or how the little girl at the costume shop screams of Lolita, or how the sprawled out naked hooker in Sydney Pollack's bathroom matches the painting on the wall (done by Kubrick's wife) in a way reminscent of the painterly tableaus in Barry Lyndon. This is the work of a master and like all works done by masters, it deserves your attention.

Comments

[flutter]

You know, I loved this when it came out, partially because I found it a little ribald.

The artistry of it really is breathtaking

[Dennis]

Think the point of the movie was the different approaches (male/female) to sex. A male approach to sex is that it doesnt violate faithfulness which is a frame of mind. Thats why he was so upset with his wife: she wasnt faithful in her mind. A womens perspective is the reverse. The movie was really about how they both worked through this difference.

[Louise]

After trying to add a comment to your reader survey of Jan.10 I received this comment: Too many comments have been submitted from you in a short period of time.Please try again in a short while. Quelle horreur!What an insult.Lots of luck in your future endeavours. Former reader.

[Kamagra Discount]

nice article.. thanks ;)

[viagra online]

excellent post about Eyes Wide Shut thanks for sharing

[uyCharlotte]

When students are willing to have A+ on every subject you should buy list of dissertation and buy thesis. I did such stuff several times. I told just about buy dissertation at research paper writing service.