Title: Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Director: Stanley Kubrick Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise Review: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is ...
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise
Review:
Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is a film that explores what happens when a relationship becomes stale. This is something that can happen when two people have been living together for so long, that the spark that was once there when the couple first met is gone. There is none of that thrill and excitement that the couple might have felt in the early stages of their relationship. So they start considering infidelity, they start looking outside of their established relationship for that thrill. The question that the film asks is: are you sure you want to do that?
On this film we meet a couple who has reached success in their lives. They each excel on their respective fields, they have a daughter, and they have an enviable apartment. This wealthy couple has wealthy friends who invite them to expensive parties where the rich and powerful mingle. But, even though this couple has everything they could hope for in terms of material things, their relationship is in shambles. The routine and hassle of their daily lives has destroyed a once fruitful relationship. So much so, that they both toy with the idea of betraying their matrimonial vows. They even have an extensive conversation about it while smoking a joint. Nicole Kidman’s character goes into this whole monologue about how she was mentally unfaithful to him years ago, how she desired this other man. One day Tom Cruise’s character meets up with an old college buddy of his who ends up giving him the address to a secret gathering. He doesn’t give him details as to what goes on in these gatherings, but Cruise is intrigued. What does this exclusive group of people get together to do? And should he even be considering going there?
On this film Kubrick was exploring various themes. One of them is how the rich and powerful can numb themselves with every possible sensation and experience money can buy. And then they get bored. They have it all, they’ve seen it all, so now they feel compelled to look for new thrilling experiences to entertain themselves with. This is a theme I saw played out in an old Hammer film called Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), a film in which four rich dudes are so bored with everything that they accept the invitation to participate in a black mass to resurrect Dracula himself. Of course, they end up regretting they ever accepted the invitation and end up paying dearly for their lust for excitement. On Eyes Wide Shut, the rich protagonist is looking for new ways to entertain himself as well. He is bored with his married life, so he is looking for outside entertainment; something new to liven up his sexual life. But instead of participating in Black Mass like the aforementioned Hammer film, Cruise decides to join a group of rich people who like to participate in all sorts of sexual escapades. By sexual escapades I mean of course orgies.
On this film Kubrick was exploring various themes. One of them is how the rich and powerful can numb themselves with every possible sensation and experience money can buy. And then they get bored. They have it all, they’ve seen it all, so now they feel compelled to look for new thrilling experiences to entertain themselves with. This is a theme I saw played out in an old Hammer film called Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), a film in which four rich dudes are so bored with everything that they accept the invitation to participate in a black mass to resurrect Dracula himself. Of course, they end up regretting they ever accepted the invitation and end up paying dearly for their lust for excitement. On Eyes Wide Shut, the rich protagonist is looking for new ways to entertain himself as well. He is bored with his married life, so he is looking for outside entertainment; something new to liven up his sexual life. But instead of participating in Black Mass like the aforementioned Hammer film, Cruise decides to join a group of rich people who like to participate in all sorts of sexual escapades. By sexual escapades I mean of course orgies.
The group behaves in many ways like a religious cult. Their religion being sex. They gather in a secret temple, they perform ritualistic dances and ceremonies before indulging in their sexual acts. They wear ceremonial garments which include these awesome looking masks. By the way, whoever was responsible for making the beautiful masks in this movie deserve some sort of mask making award. But I don’t think Kubrick was necessarily trying to comment on the nature of cults and religion. He was talking more about sexual behavior. The question the film asks is, are you sure you want to venture out into the world in search of a more intense sexual experience? On the one hand, Cruise tries to have sex with a prostitute, in search of this new excitement, but the film shows us that that kind of search can lead to all sorts of dangers, of the venereal kind. So in this way Kubrick is saying: you go out looking for sex in the streets you might catch something you don’t want to catch! It is a dangerous game to play, with way too many risks.
The other comment Kubrick makes is on how much aberrant sexual behavior there is in the world. There is one moment in the film in which Cruise is walking down the street, he walks past a bunch of porn shops, a porn theater, and he walks by a group of teenagers which hurl sexual insults at him. This scene encapsulates how sexually charged the world is, in a way expressing what Freud said about humans being entirely sexual creatures. Sexual desires can lead one down dark paths, if you don’t think so then you should watch the first ten minutes of a film called Irreversible (2002), where a character walks into a night club for people who enjoy the truly twisted and downright sick part of sex. There are a couple of characters in Eyes Wide Shut that represent this type of behavior; Kubrick is obviously warning us with this film about the dangers of choosing to go down these perverted paths.
Visually and technically speaking, Eyes Wide Shut is flawless, as is the norm with a Kubrick film. But I noticed one thing was different with this movie: the colors. Kubrick is known for the use of whites and blacks in his films; white being the color that dominates most of his works. But on Eyes Wide Shut things were a little different. Warm colors dominate the films palette. I thought this was very adequate because of the films sexual themes. Another interesting aspect of this film is how it contrasts these warm colors (mostly different shades of yellow) with blue, a color that can be considered cold. Was Kubrick contrasting the warmth of sex with the coldness in the main couple’s relationship? I thought so.
I’m going to wrap this review up now, sorry if I stretched things out too long, but when a film is this good, reviews just flow out of me and I can’t seem to stop typing! Eyes Wide Shut was made in 1999, yet the film felt timeless. In contrast with other Kubrick films which obviously reflect the times they were made in, when I re-watched Eyes Wide Shut the film felt like it could have been made yesterday. Another interesting aspect of Eyes Wide Shut is that it was made while Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were still married, which of course makes the intimacy between the characters that much more legitimate and genuine. But I’ll warn you, if you are expecting an explicit or graphic sex scene between Kidman and Cruise’s characters, you will be disappointed. This never really comes to be. Strange how a couple of years after this film -a film which tries to reinforce the importance of strengthening the marital bond- Cruise and Kidman split up. Maybe the themes they explored while making this film touched them in a deeper way than they expected? That being said, I think a great job was done by all. Kidman and Cruise gave stand out performances, and Kubrick delivered his last great film.
Rating: 5 out of 5
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