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Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman
Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) receives advice from the
mysterious Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack)
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The fantasy comes without warning. A jealous nightmare of infidelity and sex. Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) never thought of himself as an obsessive husband. Of course, that was before his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) fueled his suspicions with a tale of an unrequited fantasy about an unnamed naval officer on a long-ago family vacation. Now, Harford can't stop the nightmarish visions.
Deep inside his mind's eye, Harford sees the lithe, naked body of his wife straddling the nameless naval officer. It is a sight that would transform any man into a raging Othello. The young officer's starched white uniform rubs against Alice's breasts. Her panties are quickly removed. And Harford can't help but remember his wife's taunting words: "I thought if he wanted me, even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give him everything. ... My whole fucking future. Everything."
The visions keep coming at Harford. In the back seat of a taxi cab. Walking the neon-lit streets of Lower Manhattan. It's all Harford sees. These flashes of an imagined tryst between his wife and this nameless man. The nightmare itself begins to acquire a bluish hue, a reflection of the anger, remorse and disbelief now coloring Harford's face. His dream has acquired the grainy look of a cheep home movie or a peep show porno reel. On a taxi ride out of the city, pulling beside the gates of an isolated country estate, these blue flashbacks continue. It is the first of many life lessons to be learned from Stanley Kubrick's enthralling adult drama, Eyes Wide Shut. Rule No. 1: Blue is the appropriate movie color for sexual obsession.
After all the tabloid speculation, saucy gossip and racy innuendo, Kubrick's final film has finally opened. Here was moviemade anticipation different from the typical brand of Hollywood hype we've become accustomed to hearing. Eyes Wide Shut thrives on our own fantasies about the film's sexual content. Never has excitement over a movie seemed so refreshingly honest. Think about it: When was the last time you found yourself fantasizing about a movie?
The greatest triumph of Eyes Wide Shut -- a film that's triumphant on many levels -- is that the "real" film actually lives up to all our expectations. Yes. Its celebrity husband-and-wife co-stars sizzle on-screen. But Eyes Wide Shut surpasses voyeuristic titillation. Its story -- a compelling tale about a marriage in emotional crisis -- achieves a dreamlike, surreal quality. Kubrick's moviemaking is surprisingly human. Unlike past Kubrick films, its storytelling is emotionally rich. Eyes Wide Shut is the rarest cinema surprise: a film that surpasses all our expectations.
Kubrick adapted the screenplay (collaborating with Frederic Raphael) from a 1926 out-of-print novella, Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by early 20th-century Viennese writer Arthur Schnitzler. It's clear that Cruise's Upper East Side doctor loves his at-home wife Alice and their young 7-year-old daughter. Theirs has been a happy nine years of marriage. But Alice's remarks about her sexual fantasies sends Harford into a simmering, jealous rage. It's not long before he embarks on his own odyssey of sexual debauchery. Gaining access with a secret password, "Fidelio," Harford witnesses things he's never seen before. It's not long before his life is in danger from certain people who want to make sure he remains a mute witness.
Eyes Wide Shut is one of those movies whose very own production made news. A planned three-month shoot grew into 15 months (second only to 1963's Cleopatra). Kubrick himself reportedly had been developing the project for more than 20 years. Before the opening credits even roll, we know that actor Harvey Keitel had been replaced by veteran director Sydney Pollack to play the shadowy character Victor Ziegler and that Jennifer Jason Leigh had been edited out of the film entirely. What we couldn't even begin to guess was just how emotionally riveting Kubrick's psychological drama would turn out to be.
At a time when more creativity is spent marketing a Hollywood film than making the actual movie, Eyes Wide Shut stands equal to the hype, rumors and saucy speculation launched by dozens of supermarket tabloids. We've watched the 90-second trailer over and over again. Our fantasies are crass speculations of pure cinema joy. Is Hollywood powerboy Tom Cruise in drag? Does wife/co-star Nicole Kidman really bare her butt, boobs plus everything in-between? Is the sex steamy, kinky and frequent?
From its early moments, while Alice, clad in a black bra, stares at herself in a full-length mirror, Eyes Wide Shut capitalizes on the allure of the moviemade celebrity. There is no such thing as seeing too much. "Don't you think one of the charms about marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?" a smarmy Hungarian stranger tells Alice at an elegant Christmas party. Nearby her husband walks arm-in-arm with two beautiful young models. Drunk with too much champagne, Alice only laughs at the Hungarian's flirtations. "Don't you want to go to where the rainbow ends?" he whispers into her ear.
Since when has movie erotica become such a bad thing? Especially when it is as substantial, thoughtful and artfully charged as Eyes Wide Shut. The performances from Cruise and Kidman are compelling. Their situation of marital strife is believable, credible bookends of bedroom drama that balance the film's suspenseful centerpiece.
Sex has always been part of Kubrick's movies: In Fear and Desire (1953) a soldier loses his mind after killing his female kidnap victim. James Mason's professor Humbert Humbert lusted over Sue Lyon's nymphet in Lolita (1962). Malcolm McDowell was a teen hooligan raping a writer's wife to "Singin' in the Rain" in A Clockwork Orange (1971). These were intentionally heartless depiction of sex. Something Kubrick balanced with films that avoided sex entirely: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket.
Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that sex remains the core dramatic element of Eyes Wide Shut. The shock is that Kubrick has crafted a sexual tale more human than anything we've seen from him before. There is evident joy in the Harfords' lovemaking, although moments of seemingly innocent flirtation quickly turn sinister, suspenseful and destructive.
"Tell me something," Alice asks her dumbfounded husband. 'Those two girls at the party last night, did you by chance happen to fuck them?" Harford is evidently surprised by the question.
"What are you talking about?"
Alice remains relentless.
"I'm talking about the two girls that you were so blatantly hitting on. Who were they?"
Kidman's red hair sparkles in the blue back-light from the bathroom doorway. Her white nightgown matches the bedroom's beige walls. The room's red drapes are the perfect companion to her hair. Never have I witnessed such colorful synchronicity. It's evident that Kubrick chose the color of the walls, just as he chose the color of Kidman's nightgown. You imagine that he made sure there was enough varnish on the chest of drawers and that the beige heat register was just right. Here is a scene of simple beauty that sparkles with a visual precision. All other Hollywood movies look dull compared to Eyes Wide Shut.
"Anyway, who was that guy you were dancing with?" Harford asks his wife. "What did he want?"
Her answer is a brutal stab. "Sex. Upstairs."
Harford struggles to maintain his composure. "Is that all?"
"Yeah," replies Alice.
"That was all he wanted, to fuck my wife."
Eyes Wide Shut reminds us that Kubrick is the great cinema technician. I can't imagine a colder master of moviemaking. Lighting. Colors. Camera angles. He possessed an uncanny mastery of the medium. That was always the point behind Kubrick's films. The alluring sheen of the visual majesty. Nobody but Kubrick could film strings of Christmas lights at some swell-elegant party in a more stunning manner.
So the final surprise with Eyes Wide Shut is that Kubrick, the cool technician, has ended his career with a film that's about performances. Eyes Wide Shut thrives on its emotion. It's really a talkie.
Some of its drama unfolds with a banal sense of the everyday. A couple getting dressed for a formal party. A wife staring at herself in a mirror. "Is my hair OK?" she asks her husband. His reply is always the same. "Beautiful. You always look beautiful."
Later, these same two people will face each other and fan the flames of their jealousy, sexual malcontent and emotional dissatisfaction.
The result is adult, explicit, challenging storytelling. Finally, with Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick has made a film about people. I don't mean to shatter innuendo when I say that Tom Cruise does not appear in drag in the film. He dons no dress or a single high heel. Sorry to ruin the surprise, although the bigger surprise is the fact that Cruise buoys the film with a forceful performance. Cruise always showed presence throughout his career. It is the secret to his megastardom and audience likability. His looks are decidedly all-American. His smile is a mile wide. The eyes never stop twinkling. Yet Eyes Wide Shut is the first film to take advantage of Cruise's pretty boy appearance and turn it into a dramatic asset instead of some emotional liability. Cruise's frequent on-screen heroics seems so blasé compared to what we see in Eyes Wide Shut. He's still the charming smug boy-toy here, all smarmy ladies man and upper middle-class snob.
But Kubrick reaches beyond Cruise's artifice and pulls out something emotionally substantial. Eyes Wide Shut makes full dramatic use of his pin-up appearance. What was once so shallow about Cruise is now so interesting. Here is the performance that should define Cruise's career. Not since Risky Business, that far away film that so deftly captured teen-age angst, has a movie allowed Cruise to open up and reveal someone human, emotional and utterly captivating. We have seen Cruise's bare butt before. This is first film that shows him emotionally naked.
So it's shocking to watch Kidman upstage her co-star/husband. She grabs the screen with a series of searing monologues that are breathtaking. Cruise and Kidman make convincing lovers. Still, there is something more to Eyes Wide Shut. They portray obsession believably. Kidman's growing boredom with her domestic life becomes evident, a heartfelt message made clear by her vulnerability, both physically and emotionally.
Eyes Wide Shut is Kubrick's least commercial film despite its celebrity stars. It is adventurous in its adult content and themes. The film is almost experimental in its refusal to tie up its bedroom drama with a tidy conclusion. Few films climax on a single sexual phrase. I imagine some audiences will exit Eyes Wide Shut with puzzled looks on their faces. The bigger question is whether they are sexually charged or simply bemused.
Filmed under the level of secrecy that would make the CIA proud, Eyes Wide Shut is a movie of unheard creative control. Here is the final film from Hollywood's last true auteur. Uncompromising. Unabashedly adult. The movie that Kubrick wanted to make. Look around at the moviemade playing field and a sick feeling settles in your stomach. Who is left in the arena of big-budget studio moviemaking to replace Kubrick in the arena of creative control? Clint Eastwood?
Certainly box-office mavens Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and James Cameron have the cachet to do whatever they want to do, although they seem to be more interested in pedestrian special effects than anything dramatically adventurous. Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, brilliant as it was, created nothing more than a gripping Sgt. Rock adventure. I can't imagine any one of them using their clout to make a movie as adult, sexual and daring as Eyes Wide Shut. Here is the end of carte blanche filmmaking -- final cut privileges, veto rights over where his films played and the ability to cut his own trailers -- as we know it.
There has already been controversy about the film's kinkiest moment: a voyeuristic trip by Cruise's caped and masked Manhattan doctor through the rooms of a country mansion as he watches a mass orgy. It's saucy stuff. Writhing pretzels and wiggly puzzles of taut flesh. Yet it is only a brief 65 seconds of erotic imagery that's questionable for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). It was insisted the scene undergo a "digital adjustment" before it would issue an R rating. This haunting scene, a crescendo of surreal suspense that shifts the film midway, boosts the "blue" mood. The hullabaloo is over the fact that MPAA gave the film a NC-17, something Warner Bros. -- and we're told Kubrick himself -- never wanted. So digitized bodies, capped and hooded individuals were strategically placed in front of the nude revelers. It's the newfangled, digital version of a black bar covering up undesirable images. Yet I must admit I never felt cheated watching the R-rated version.
Maybe I was already too enthralled by the emotional power in the scene. Kubrick's camera revolves around a circle of cloaked women in the large ballroom of a country estate. When their cloaks fall to the floor, they are naked except for skimpy black thongs. The scene is a powerful reminder of the visceral power of film to raise one's body temperature by a few degrees. Clad in a long black cape and hood, Harford watches the bizarre ritual. It is utterly fascinating. And like Harford himself we can't pull ourselves away.
Is Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick's final masterpiece? The answer is a simple and redundant yes, just as many of Kubrick's films were acts of masterly filmmaking. Kubrick was one of a few contemporary directors who earned the adjective "brilliant." His status as a filmmaker/artist was established a long time ago. Now, newfound fans, cinephiles and inquiring film buffs will probably spend the remaining summer months watching and rewatching past films from the "Stanley Kubrick Collection."
Is Eyes Wide Shut, his final work, also Kubrick's greatest film? Alas, the answer is no. Yet, to even attempt a conversation about movie quality when discussing Kubrick is to take the moviemade measuring game to a new height. Kubrick -- like other great American filmmakers Howard Hawks, John Ford, D.W. Griffith, William Wyler -- exists in his own heightened level of artistry. All his films are exceptional. To say that some are better than others is the equivalent of splitting subjective hairs. It's not enough to say "great" anymore. One has to develop new categories. So we agree that Spartacus is Kubrick's most commercial and audience-friendly film. We know that 2001 made the most impact on movies themselves, and Barry Lyndon was the most technically impressive.
His Cold War comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb remains his ultimate masterpiece, a film that transcended the realm of black comedy to become a bold political statement even with a tongue wedged deep inside the filmmaker's cheek.
But Eyes Wide Shut is Kubrick's most adventurous film. Unlike his other productions which all qualify as movie epics, Eyes Wide Shut works on a small scale. It's personal and almost emotionally claustrophobic.
It is hard to imagine life at the movies without Stanley Kubrick. Eyes Wide Shut is a brilliant conclusion to a significant career. Already cinema feels less exciting.
CityBeat grade: A.
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