Movie Review: Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut makes for quite the cryptic ending to the illustrious career of Stanley Kubrick. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play an affluent married couple in NYC. They seem happy on the surface but we learn quickly their marriage is built upon a number of pretenses. The story mainly focuses on the husband Bill who goes on an odyssey of sexual self-discovery over several days culminating in his accidental entry into what appears to be some sort of satanic/masonic ritualistic orgy. Bill clearly didn’t know what he was walking into — he seemed to think it would be merely a kinky party of some kind. He is scandalized by what he witnesses but so are we the audience.
That is kind of the point of the film. The hidden layers within a marriage and within our society’s handling of human sexual energy. Bill’s naivete is meant to represent us as our eyes are slowly opened. It works mainly just because of how technically brilliant Kubrick is. I can not believe this was filmed in England and not late 90’s Greenwich Village NYC (I lived there for years around the same time). The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. Every scene feels like a small story tackling different dimensions of the dilemma of sex — the streetwalker, the HIV disclosure, the Russian shop owner’s underage daughter, the weird hotel desk attendant, and of course the drama of the masked orgy. There is much tension and ambiguity. The strange ending scene with the daughter, the fate of the masked girl who sacrifices herself for Bill, Bill’s wife Alice’s connection to the events — much of it is up for interpretation. Eyes Wide Shut is at once haunting, charming, salacious, and beautiful. This one will stay with you for some time.
Grade: A-
