Eyes Wide Shut


Starring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Marie Richardson, Thomas Gibson, Leelee Sobieski, Rade Sherbedgia, Todd Field, Sky Dumont, Vinessa Shaw. Co-written and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Dr. William Harford (Cruise) and his beautiful wife and art dealer Alice (Kidman) live in a tastefully decorated luxury New York apartment with their bright and lovable daughter Helena. They arrive at the society party of Victor Ziegler (Pollack), with champagne flowing and people flirting with one another with abandon. The next day Alice, after getting just a bit high on pot, questions William about his chatting up two young women. But of course, nothing happened, and Alice doesn't really believe anything did. William, who noticed that Alice was dancing with a suave and persistent older man, tells her he's not concerned because she would never cheat on him. In response, Alice recounts in graphic detail her brief, obsessive affair with a sailor, where she thought of giving up her entire future for a man she just met, and who might leave her at any moment. Or did she really have the affair?

William is totally thrown by the news. Called out to comfort the family of a patient who just died, he doesn't go home after he leaves. Instead, he spends the night walking, trying to make some sense of it all. Along his unsettling and sometimes terrifying journey, he's propositioned by the middle-aged daughter of the deceased (Richardson), picked up by a gentle young prostitute (Shaw), and stumbles upon a young lolita (Sobieski) caught by her father Milich (Sherbedgia) as she was frolicking partially undressed with two middle aged men. After old friend Nick Nightengale (Field) gives him a secret password, he ends up at a country manor in the middle of a mysterious medieval costume ball, complete with masks, satanic chanting, and plenty of nakedness and carnal activity. But the mystery has only begun.

Completed days before his death after two years of filming and multiple re-shoots, the notoriously reclusive perfectionist has created one of his best films. It's a story where sex is just the backdrop to an examination of obsession and the time we spend looking for love and fulfillment. No matter how sophisticated and adult we try to be, underneath humans are controlled by their baser instincts. And he postulates with both Kidman and Richardson that women are not always motivated by seeking home and family, but can be obsessed with love and attraction in a far deeper way than men. Men may be ruled by their dumb stick in a clumsy desire for conquest and ego-building, but women's desires are much more unpredictable, and often more intense.

Directed in his usual deliberate manner, the characters continually find it difficult to connect with one another, despite their desperate need to become close with another. The plot is not very complex, but then the movie is not about plot. It is a series of episodes where various characters try to make a human connection, but they are always thwarted by something - human frailty, guilty conscience or a lack of understanding about what makes the other guy tick. But possibly the most interesting feature of the movie is that Kubrick is playing with us. As the movie unfolds, we don't always know what is real and what is a dream, even if we think we do. We also don't know whether the characters have been totally honest with us or each other. Despite the serious dramatic content and the actors playing everything seriously, there is a wealth of black humour throughout, such as in the affair revelation scene, where no matter how understanding or diplomatic William tries to be, his wife finds a way of twisting his response into some kind of slight. And the ending is a jarring jolt, totally appropriate to the preceding events.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Kidman stands out, delivering a complex performance of a beautiful woman who loves her husband and home, but is not completely satisfied with her life. Richardson is sensational, displaying the intense desperation of someone who has loved a man whom she barely knows from afar, but is willing to risk her stable but boring relationship with Carl (Gibson) to have some kind of connection with William. Sherbedgia is quite funny and a bit scary as the costume shop owner who does more than sell costumes. And it's great to see Pollack acting again, displaying a genial facade hiding a twisted and cold-hearted soul inside. But the star of the film is Tom Cruise, who lays it all on the line, playing a nice guy who is consistently clueless about life and what's going on around him. Reminds me of myself. Cruise allows his own gay rumours to be played with, twice being mistaken for gay, first by a bunch of drunk macho high school kids, and then by a near flaming hotel concierge. If you are squeamish with kinky or sexual situations, the film may not be for you, but if you yearn for a meticulously crafted film examining some pretty dark sexual themes, Eyes Wide Shut is an exceptional movie you'll want to see.




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