...a meticulously photographed exercise in mood and imagery, the poetic evocation of a dream.
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The films of Stanley Kubrick have never been easy: Not to define, not to categorize, not to understand. So it goes with "Eyes Wide Shut," the filmmaker's last motion picture before his death.
Steven Spielberg said that Kubrick never made the same movie twice, that he always tried for something different. Some were masterpieces, like the black comedy "Dr. Strangelove," the sociopolitical satire "A Clockwork Orange," the antiwar drama "Paths of Glory," and the lyrical outer-space saga "2001." Others were near greats: the gorgeously photographed "Barry Lyndon," the wickedly bizarre "Lolita," the epic "Spartacus." Even Kubrick's flawed films, like "The Shining" or "Full Metal Jacket," transcended the work of his contemporaries.
It's fitting, then, that Kubrick went out in style with an uneasy film like "Eyes Wide Shut," one that had critics divided and audiences baffled.
Inspired by Arthur Schnitzer's psycho-sexual novel "Traumnovelle" ("Dream Story"), the film was co-scripted, produced, and directed by Kubrick. It is a Freudian look at the lives of a seemingly happy married couple, Dr. William Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman), attractive New Yorkers with money, security, a nine-year marriage, and a seven-year-old girl. Then, one day things fall apart. Alice confesses an erotic fantasy to her husband, and he suddenly feels threatened by her honesty. Although she tells him she has never been unfaithful except in thought, he is perturbed and jealous, anyway, and goes out on the town in a funk. During the course of the next day and a half, he has a sexual odyssey that opens his eyes to the world around him and to his relationship with his wife, a relationship he had apparently taken for granted all the years of his marriage.
His sensual adventures increase in complexity throughout this period, each time taking him to the brink of infidelity. Yet, each time, fate steps in and saves him. He must fend off two ravishing models; the grieving daughter of a recently dead patient; a street-corner hooker; the roommate of the street-corner hooker; the very young daughter of a costume-shop proprietor; and a gay hotel clerk. His escapades culminate in an elaborately staged and exceedingly creepy orgy in a country mansion, a scene with the feel of "The Shining" or Mozart's "Don Giovanni," and one that in turn takes the story in the direction of a mystery thriller.
Clearly, the viewer is not expected to believe that all of these ominous and sexual encounters could really have happened so quickly; and, thus, we must view them as more probably the workings of William's imagination, a walking dream, as he experiences a psychological awakening.
The American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti defined poetry as "what exists between the lines." Perhaps Kubrick was, above all, a poet. He used images the way writers use words. Ferlinghetti also wrote that "Like a bowl of roses, a poem should not have to be explained." When Kubrick's films are explained, they don't amount to much. What was "2001," after all? Its plot, like that of "Eyes Wide Shut," could be spelled out in a minute. But watching it unfold was the experience.
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