director/producer
Stanley Kubrick
screenwriters
Stanley Kubrick
Frederic Raphael
based
on the novel Traumnovelle by
Arthur
Schnitzler
cinematographer
Larry Smith
music
Jocelyn Pook
editor
Nigel Galt
cast
Tom Cruise (Dr. Bill Harford)
Nicole Kidman (Alice Harford)
Sydney Pollack (Victor Ziegler)
Todd Field (Nick Nightingale)
Alan Cummings (Hotel Desk Clerk)
Vinessa Shaw (Domino)
Marie Richardson (Marion)
Thomas Gibson (Carl)
Rade Sherbedgia (Milich)
Leelee Sobieski (Milich's daughter)
Julienne Davis (Mandy)
Abigail Good (Mystery Woman)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 159m
u.s.
release: July 16, 1999
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other stanley
kubrick films
reviewed on this website:
- full
metal jacket
see also:
- kubrick:
the films, 1955-1999
- eyes
wide shut: the DVD review
|
As
a die-hard fan of the work of Stanley Kubrick, I thoroughly enjoyed
his swan song Eyes Wide Shut, but I have my doubts as
to what the general public -- those not already attuned to Kubrick's
style and rhythm -- will make of it. Will they simply respond
to the plot? There really isn't one. Will they go expecting Tom
Cruise and Nicole Kidman to show us all what they do in the privacy
of their own bedroom? They don't -- except for that kissing-in-front-of-the-mirror
scene most people have seen anyway. In fact, it now seems clear
that Kubrick may have cast Cruise and Kidman as a sort of conceptual
prank: the hottest married couple in movies, and they're apart
for most of the film.
Eyes Wide Shut is an exquisitely stubborn work -- a repressed
erotic movie. Based more or less on Arthur Schnitzler's tightly
written 1926 novel Traumnovelle (or Rhapsody: A Dream
Novel), the screenplay by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael follows
Cruise's character, Dr. Bill Harford, on two long and bruising
nights after his wife Alice (Kidman) has confessed to having
sexual fantasies about a man who once caught her eye. Bill, conflicted
and haunted by his visions of his wife in bed with another man,
goes forth into the New York night and does ... well, not much.
Part of the sly joke of the book and the movie is that its main
characters haven't done anything to feel guilty about.
The shame derives from the erotic theater of the mind.
The story is essentially a psychological odyssey and won't hold
up under literal-minded scrutiny. Kubrick's "New York"
is a soundstage New York, created in London (of course) and intended
to stand in for any city, where the possibilities of both pleasure
and pain are endless. Bill wanders about, running across a variety
of available women who keep throwing themselves at him. In the
film's centerpiece, he finds himself at an orgy, a sort of mad
ball in which anonymous people in masks and cloaks go at each
other joylessly. The sequence, I think, is meant to dramatize
the folly of sexual freedom, which can be another kind of prison.
(For the record, the digitally inserted figures obscuring some
of the action only serve to make the film dirtier, since
your naughty imagination just fills in what's being hidden.)
After the orgy, Eyes Wide Shut loses a little steam. Kubrick
keeps his pace slow and steady, but the film slackens near the
end when it should tighten (as it tightens in his other films);
the last 20 minutes or so begin to wear you down. In particular,
a billiard-table chat between Bill and a tycoon acquaintance
(well played by Sydney Pollack) drags on as much as the men's-room
talk between Jack Torrance and Grady the waiter in The Shining,
only without that scene's sinister undertones. It's especially
wearying because nothing is disclosed in this dialogue that we
haven't already guessed. The final act of the master's final
film feels like a saddening winding-down -- a loss of energy,
a capitulation to convention.
Still, I'm aware that some of Kubrick's other movies hit me in
similar ways upon first viewing. Eyes Wide Shut obviously
looks great, the slightly saturated images unfolding smoothly
and meticulously. And Kubrick gets avid performances from Cruise
and Kidman, as well as a slew of supporting players -- Marie
Richardson as a grieving woman, Todd Field as a mysterious pianist,
Vinessa Shaw as every man's soft, pliant dream hooker, Leelee
Sobieski conveying Lolita-esque naughtiness with a bare minimum
of dialogue. One must remember, too, that Eyes Wide Shut
is no more "about" its events than The Shining
was "about" a haunted hotel or 2001 was "about"
a space mission gone awry. Like all Kubrick's films, this one
will take time, and multiple viewings, to yield up its full meaning
and resonance. Armed as I am with just one viewing under my belt,
I can confidently say it's a worthy capper to a great body of
work. |
