Kubrick's Epic Swan Song

Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut marks a point in films where sexuality and drama mix perfectly well but not to the point of being gimmicky or gratuitous. It was less a film about sex as it was about the relationship between two people and the sexuality between them. I remember when I was a kid in 1999, when this film came out, the marketing was very erotic and almost tried to bill it as a sex tape between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman so I didn't really find any interest in it (as well as my parents probably wouldn't have let me watch it). But after seeing A Clockwork Orange years later I quickly decided to buy up all of the Kubrick property I could get my hands on as his style was so much his own.
           
Eyes Wide Shut takes place in real-time over about two or three days where Dr. and Mrs. Harford (Cruise and Kidman) go to a dinner party where the wife flirts with an older man unbeknownst to her husband while her husband goes and flirts with two younger women. Upon coming home and making love, and smoking pot, the wife reveals a sexual fantasy involving a military man years earlier and how she would have given everything up for him.

After an argument, Dr. Harford has to go out on a house call only to find that the daughter of the man who he's been trying to make healthier, has been lusting after him. Thus starts his night of sexual odyssey where he sets out to come to terms with his own sexuality, his own sexual fantasy, and fulfill his own needs to maybe not just get back at his wife, but step out of his own skin for the night. What ensues is a journey through dream and reality, to a cultish orgy, a scumbag costume renter, and a prostitute's pad.

It's really hard to explain this film because there's really so much jam packed in it. Before this film, Kubrick had made Full Metal Jacket so I think a lot of people were expecting an epic picture that took over fifteen years for him to make, but Eyes Wide Shut initially flopped at the box office and got very mixed reactions by the film community-all of which Kubrick would not witness as he passed away a few days after finishing the final product. This film is epic in a way, however, as it is long, full of personal themes and ideologies that are very much Kubrickian, and has a lot of heart.
           
Right from the get-go, you are given the dinner party scene, which brings you back to the lighting that made his 1973 period piece, Barry Lyndon, so popular: the lighting. Instead of using a lot of artificial lighting, he uses the actual lighting from the rooms including a wide staircase with thousands of Christmas lights that is a wonderful scene. The lighting is so important to this film because it not only makes it realistic (as if you were actually there), but it slowly makes you spaced out as the movie progresses where you wonder if this is just a dream.

Cruise and Kidman give amazing performances in the picture as well. Their chemistry is much unattached at times, which I think is what Kubrick wanted as these people are in love with each other, but emotionally not available. The entire movie revolves around Cruise's character and he does a wonderful job in the exploits that he gets into while Kidman's character is at home waiting for him to return. A lot of people bash on Cruise these days, but I still enjoy a lot of his work (for instance, Magnolia and Vanilla Sky). Hands down, though, this is his best work as he is almost sleepwalking from scene to scene with elegance that I've never seen him accomplish before or after this movie.

What makes Eyes Wide Shut so important (and my favorite Kubrick picture of them all) is how personal the movie is and how well done everything was going into it from the script (taken from the short story, Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler) to the lighting (obviously) to the music even-especially in the later part of the movie during the cult parts. The movie just spirals downhill metaphorically and by the end of the picture you truly care about this married couple. This is also one of those movies where you have to see it a few times to really understand it, but it's so worth it. It's rich with depth and drama and is so beautifully captured by Kubrick that it is emotionally resonant to me every time that I see it. I have met a lot of people who truly hate this movie saying that it's too slow and all of that and that Kubrick just didn't put a lot into it, but I think that those people just haven't seen the same movie I have. Watched with an open mind and an atmosphere where you can devote all of your attention to it, I think that Eyes Wide Shut will please just about anybody willing.

(c) Jason Haskins, 2009



Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures, Paths of Glory, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon