Home Page | Alphabetic Index | Ratings Index | Web Resources

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

A review by Damian Cannon.
Copyright © Movie Reviews UK 2000
Given the amount of footage processed each year by the global porn industry, a figure far in excess of that for all other films combined, it's clear where consumer interest lies. People, as a generalisation, want pure, magnified mechanical sex and lots of it. The performers don't have to be beautiful, smart or talented; they just need to spend a lot of their time in genital contact. No one cares why these folk are fucking, it's enough that they're doing it in the first place. In itself this fact demands that we be eternally grateful for directors like Stanley Kubrick, for his fascination (at a cinematic level) with everything but the act itself. Yes, our lives may never parallel Eyes Wide Shut but we can understand (and fear) the potential that it represents.

As a film Eyes Wide Shut distils themes that have run, more or less continually, through Kubrick's career. Like the mother lode, this is a place of purity, of potential for wealth and misery. Here Kubrick really gets to grips with the two-sided nature of man, on how what you superficially see is often tangential to the underlying personality. This insight leaks through constantly. It's the catalyst for Doctor William Harford's (Tom Cruise) three-day odyssey into a world of nightmare and paranoia. It's a behaviour pattern observed in the many denizens of darkness that swarm around Harford. It's a description of Eyes Wide Shut itself, perhaps even of Kubrick himself. Here substance and insubstance mingle freely, mind and body confused by design; no longer can the senses by depended upon to speak in truth.

Sadly the entire weight of this sexual autopsy tapers down onto the slight shoulders of Cruise. Now it's not as though he's a particularly poor actor or somehow lacking in technique, but his ability evinces a distinct absence of breadth. Cruise is fine, perhaps even perfect, in some vehicles, those that play to his strengths and provide corset-like cast support. Just think back to Top Gun, Rain Man or The Color of Money. Yet here Kubrick, notoriously demanding anyway, is placing all of his eggs in Tom's basket; how could Cruise ever hope to come up to scratch? So he lopes along, mind expanded as if a blind man gifted (or cursed) by sight, naively hoping that he'll find answers by searching long and hard enough. It's left up to his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) to suggest that sometimes you survive by just walking away.

Viewed impartially, Kidman surely gives the stronger performance. Her dreams of unexpected sexual fulfilment haunt Eyes Wide Shut, hinting at the possibilities that lie just beyond flirtation's reach. As Alice dances close to the dangerously charming Sandor Szavost (Sky Dumont), her champagne-loose body bends in sympathy to his, vulnerably open; their lips drift so close that erotic sparks bridge the gap. Fortunately, unlike her weaker husband, Alice maintains self-control when tempted. This scene, early on in the film and perhaps Kidman's longest, demonstrates both her physical beauty and control. She resonates with fidelity, sure enough to speak her thoughts and challenge sloppy reasoning; it's a pity that Kubrick gave her so little to work with.

Oddly Eyes Wide Shut engenders within you an urgency to continue watching, as if your disconnected participation can lift Cruise from his self-created dream. It's not obvious why, or indeed how, this comes about, but it surely does. Kubrick hooks into your psyche almost below the level of conscious thought. As your higher brain processes contemplate the too-slow pace, the over-concentration on a single performer, your lizard brain stem is compelled to gawp by dark pheromones and uncivilised impulses. Maybe it's the lure of Eyes Wide Shut's open-ended ambiguity, its posing of numerous questions that are never answered. As humans we hunger for closure, yet all Kubrick serves is a purposeful decision to artificially terminate the affair. In a tale where all but Cruise are a shadow or an enigma, emotional nutrition is not on the menu.

On a production level though, Eyes Wide Shut demonstrates the rich bounty of obsession. The sets, designed by Les Tomkins and Roy Walker, are opulent and delightful, utterly complete, an enclosed and self-sufficient world. Their attention to detail is such that when the pace slows dramatically, the eye can rove and become satiated. As for the set lighting, it's a wonderful combination of warm and cool shades, layered one upon another, reinforcing the script's tonality without detraction. Elsewhere, at swanky balls both masked and unmasked, the screen swells with aristocratic settings, costumes to die for, atmosphere and beauty. Never so grandly as to overwhelm the film, but stunning nevertheless. As an epitaph, Eyes Wide Shut runs true to Kubrick; it challenges, rewards, frustrates and leaves one wondering what else he might have created in time.

Home Page | Alphabetic Index | Ratings Index | Web Resources