A Look At Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut

For me, Eyes Wide Shut has always seemed vaguely illicit, maybe even pornographic. When I was younger, about 10 or 11, I remember hearing about the film, seeing it on magazine covers and hearing my parents talk about seeing it. I knew it was something I wasn’t supposed to see, which I suppose planted it firmly in the back of my brain to recall at a later time. I think by doing this I created a sort of automatic hesitation whenever I saw it on the store shelf or playing on HBO. In truth, I just saw it for the first time this summer, while I was trying to watch every Stanley Kubrick film. The evening I saw the movie was preceded the night before with Barry Lyndon, which I put off for a while just because it looked immensely boring (It isn’t, but I’ll get to that next time). Even as adult, just renting it made me feel kind of dirty, like I visited an adult video store instead of the family-values chain bordered on all sides by a wall of new releases, the Fool’s Gold and What Happens in Vegas pantheon of dull, marketable romantic comedies.

Stanley Kubrick called Eyes Wide Shut his best film. Although we might not allow that to be accepted as true as long as we have 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove on our collective film minds, I think we owe the movie many reexaminations in consideration of his comments.

On the magazine covers I still remember, and in the marketing and hype prior to the film’s release, Eyes Wide Shut was being labeled “The Sexiest Movie Ever.” Watching it now, I can understand why people going to see this film with that idea in mind would be disappointed, because it’s not a very sexy movie at all. A Clockwork Orange is far more titillating, even disturbing in terms of its (at times) graphic depictions of what might be called sexuality. But I have to question the reasoning behind anyone going to see this movie hoping for nudity or sex. You’re not seeing a peep show; you’re going to a mainstream film, by one of the most revered and acclaimed directors of all time. Something should have told you that a Stanley Kubrick movie dealing with sexuality would not deal with it in any normal, traditionally exciting way. If the majority of initial critical disappointment at this movie dealt primarily with a lack of sexual excitement, and if it still is the reasoning, then I think this may be one of the most misunderstood movies ever made. Of course, this is also a movie by a director who has always been better understood 10 years later. With the exception of some of his early films like Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick’s films were generally received with mixed and sometimes altogether poor initial reviews. However, a decade later of reflection tended to give the film the aura of a masterpiece, with many of these same critical turning around completely in their opinions. One need only to look at the reactions to 2001 recently and contrast them with the reviews it received in 1968 to understand this phenomenon.

Another common critical complaint is the film’s pacing, an admittedly meandering 159 minutes. The movie, much like Barry Lyndon, is very slow, slow camera movements and long, wide shots. Nothing is hurried or rushed here; it is the confidence of an assured director. In one scene in the film, Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) returns home to find his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman) laughing in her sleep. When he wakes her, she tells him about a dream she was having. In the dream she is sleeping with another man, and while doing so she knows Bill is watching, and she laughs at him witnessing her infidelity. The entire movie seems to have this aesthetic about it, a dream or a fantasy Bill is having, or maybe Alice, or maybe even our own dream. The film moves slowly like a dream, building suspense only near the end, while the rest of the film draws our interest with measured and unhurried intrigue, a sort of sluggish curiosity. The sets also seem to be manufactured by unconscious activity, like something will pay off very soon, yet it never does. It does not look like quite like the New York City we know, and I think that may be the point. Something about it is off; it doesn’t look quite right. I feel this only adds to the surreal element of the movie, the trance we seem to be in, the same slow cadence of the characters in their daily, tedious lives.

All the nudity and the sex the movie contains is taken from a distance. The viewer is never invited fully into the action, much like Bill. It is isolated, and like a dream, it seems you have no way of deciding what happens. It lulls you into a state of satisfaction with your remote position on the periphery.

The primary physical action of the film – the suspicion of a double murder – is never properly concluded. We are never given any reason for or against the group suspected of killing these people. It is up to us to decide that on our own. However, this is not the message of the film. I believe the film has deeper meanings connecting us to unconscious wills, and a belief in the full and complete exploration of these feelings. It’s about dreams and desires. Looking into the lives of these people, especially Bill and Alice, is a mirror; both seem to be bored with each other, and both hold repressed sexual desires which fuel the movie’s action and development. Their world is artificial, much like our own can be.

Early in the film, when both Bill and Alice are preparing for a party, Alice asks Bill, “How do I look?” Bill, without looking at her automatically responds with, “Perfect.”