Eyes Wide Shut at 20

The film opens with a rather abrupt shot of Alice (Nicole Kidman) undressing.  Several elements in this shot make it a perfect introduction to Eyes Wide Shut.  The two rackets in the corner suggest a couple.  The two red drapes reflected in the mirror announce the mirroring and coupling that will be explored throughout the film.  Of course, the immediate undressing and revealing of Alice's naked body suggests the film itself is going to be a kind of intimate revelation.

Note:  Like the film, this review is rated "R."  NSFW.  You should be an adult to read it.  

Although he was controversial for virtually all his films from Lolita to A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, was one of his most controversial.  Not only because of its erotic content and seemingly convoluted narrative, but because the filming itself was so arduous and decadent.  It took over 15 months, including a period of 46 consecutive weeks, to produce: the longest continuous shoot in cinematic history.  Rather than film on location, Kubrick, who detested travel since the 1960's, constructed a replica of New York City streets, lavish in detail, near his residence outside London.

The lengthy shoot, the expensive production, the pairing of then married co-stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the rumors surrounding the sexual content of the film, and, of course, the Kubrick legacy itself all coalesced into very high expectations.  As happened with virtually all his other films, the critics were sharply divided and the public was initially letdown, even though it was still Kubrick’s second highest-grossing film (after 2001: A Space Odyssey).

That last part is somewhat ironic since the great director did not live to see his film’s commercial achievement.  He died within a few days of showing an initial rough edit for Warner Brothers executives.  This has led many Kubrick fans and admirers to conclude that the film is not “finished.”  In a sense this is probably true, Kubrick was notorious for tinkering with his films right up to (sometimes even past) their premieres.

Always seeking perfection, Kubrick undoubtedly would have tweaked the film further, perhaps even shortening its 159 minute run-time as he did originally with 2001 after its release in 1968, for example.  Finished or not, Eyes Wide Shut is probably the film Kubrick wanted it to be.  Any tweaks would have likely dealt with issues of pacing and clarity, not content or message and, most especially, not Kubrick's intent to affect his audience.

Which brings us to the film’s most controversial aspect.  What the hell is it about?  What the hell even happens?  There are videos online where you can explore the film’s supposed meaning(s).  Everything from occult messages (particularly with reference to the Illuminati) to its use of newspapers to indicate truths versus lies told in the narrative.  Eyes Wide Shut has a myriad of meanings and symbols.  Kubrick was well-known for his obsessive reading of a plethora of material pertaining directly and secondarily to the subject matter of his films.  This dates back at least to Dr. Strangelove.  

Each Kubrick film is dense with subtle messages, inside jokes, as well as philosophic and psychological explorations.  Kubrick’s mind was highly visual but equally diverse and expansive.  That is one of the most entertaining things about getting into a Kubrick film.  There are always new things to discover and reconsider.  After 20 years, that is especially true of this movie.

But Eyes Wide Shut is different from other Kubrick films in one significant, seldom mentioned way.  Known for the bland and seemingly inconsequential dialog of his screenplays, in Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick’s characters (especially Kidman’s Alice) reveal virtually everything the viewer needs to know concerning what the film is “about.”  It is all there in the dialog in a distinctly direct way.

In short, Eyes Wide Shut is a film about the various dualities of relationships, intimacies, and couplings.  Sex (Eros) and death (Thanatos).  Dream and reality.  Anima and animus.  Trust and infidelity.  Desire and  refrain.  Ritual and spontaneity.  Secrets and revelations.  Intent and interruption.  Exposure and cover-up.  Visually, these dualities are represented by the use of the colors blue and red throughout the film.  Red represents, as you might expect, lust and passion and fleshy material reality.  Blue is for reverie and trance and dream.  Like most of Kubrick’s film’s Eyes Wide Shut is a psychological examination of its subject; in this case, of a marriage.

The Hardford's (Kidman and Tom Cruise) are up and coming members of New York City society, on the edge of the elite.  Notice the abstract painting on the right is mostly blue and red.  Blues and reds are juxtaposed throughout the film.  All of these paintings are by Kubrick's wife, Christiane.  Kubrick loaded the Harford's spacious apartment with artwork and personal effects from his private life making it a uniquely intimate film from his perspective.

Another painting by Christiane, this one is quite erotic, featuring a nude pregnant woman in sexual arousal.  More reds, of course.  It serves as the backdrop for Arthur Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) explaining to Dr. Harford what happened to "Mandy," a gorgeous escort who has almost overdosed while shooting-up before sex in the bathroom during the Christmas party.

An older gentleman dances with, flirts with, and makes a pass at Alice during Ziegler's Christmas party.  There are several octagrams like the one behind the actors scattered through the party.  This is a classic occult symbol.  But try not to read too much into that.  These same stars appear inside Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz as well.

Meanwhile, Bill ends up with two hot young models wooing him with promises to go "where the rainbow ends."  But this flirty threesome is interrupted, as is every erotic encounter during Bill's secret, mysterious quest of self discovery.

In Kubrick:  Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, author Thomas Allen Nelson reveals a great deal about the film’s inner structure and flow of its narrative.  He believes the ultimate duality present is a “Dream Story” and “Sex Comedy” in 3 parts:

“Not only does the film use a married couple for it psychological and emotional focus, but in part 1 it establishes a potentially lethal instability in the Harfords’ happy marriage through Alice’s haunting confession of extramarital sexual desire, and then provides in its climax/reconciliation of part 3 a symmetrical match for Alice’s earlier declaration of Bill’s emotional confession.  In part 1, we see the two faces of Victor Ziegler; the charming mask that he wears as downstairs host, in the company of guests and his wife, Ilona, and that of the partially undressed debauchee standing over the nude Mandy in his upstairs bathroom.  During that important scene, we see two nude women in almost identical poses” the drug-overdosed Mandy, sprawled out in a semi-conscious state on a red chair, and a nude portrait of a woman in a state of uninhibited sexual invitation on the wall.  During the Christmas party in part 1, Bill flirts with two models (Gayla and Nuala), who promise to take him ‘where the rainbow ends,’ and then in part 2 he takes two nocturnal journeys that develop events which both mirror and reverse each other.  Not only does Bill make two calls on Marion, one to express condolences as the doctor of her dead father and the other (a phone call) to set up a sexual liaison, but he also makes two separate trips to Domino’s apartment, the Sonata Café, Rainbow Fashions, and Somerton.  In a Greenwich Village apartment, he has two sexual encounters with two different women, the first (Domino) interrupted by a phone call from Alice, and the second (Sally) interrupted by the revelation that Domino has tested positive for HIV.  He encounters two Japanese gentlemen in each of his two trips to Rainbow Fashions, where he is propositioned twice, once by Milich’s daughter whispering in his ear, and once by a previously outraged Milich now pimping his daughter.  Two naked women, their identities obscured by colorful Venetian carnival masks, confront Bill during the orgy at Somerton; one seductively invites him to go with her to someplace more private, and the other mysteriously warns him of danger and begs him to leave.

“Primarily through a system of narrative and sexual teases, not only does Kubrick separate the ‘Sex Comedy’ from the serious ‘Dream Story’ of Eyes Wide Shut, but these devices help him integrate as well both the Bill/Alice marriage story and the mysterious Somerton story.  Toward the end, the film’s narrative develops a series of carefully placed interruptions that often make fun of Bill Harford’s emotional and psychological shortcomings, but that also satirize those members of the movie audience who, not unlike Bill, seek vicarious forms of erotic titillation.” (pp. 270 – 271)

The film is completely set up in the first 35 minutes or so.  Dr. Bill Harford (Cruise) and his artsy wife, Alice (Kidman), are living at the edge of New York City’s ultra elite.  They are invited into this privileged world via a Christmas party thrown by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) where each end up being hit on - the doctor by two sexy young models, his wife by an older, highly cultured Hungarian gentleman.  These are both rather stereotypical sexual situations and, therefore, they should not be mysterious to the audience at all.  It is also interesting to note that these party encounters, each being pretty alluring in its own way, are not the source of any jealousy between Alice and Bill.

Rather, Bill becomes jealous of a dream Alice had triggered by a passing glance she received last summer.  This sets several narrative elements into motion.  One is the Harford’s own sexual relationship which is shot with the couple naked before a mirror, making out just before the shot cuts to the next scene. It features a wonderful last glance by Alice into the mirror before turning to her husband which is universally heralded as a superb example of “the Kubrick gaze.”  Another is a series of unconsummated erotic confessions by Alice that fuel Bill’s (rather fumbling and equally unconsummated) quest for similar, but more physical, sexual explorations.  As I mentioned, this all ends up being far more psychological than physical, which is probably what confused and disappointed audiences back in 1999.

Things develop further when Alice tells Bill about a sexual fantasy involving a naval officer that she has had for awhile.  “And I thought that if he wanted me, even if it was for one night, I was ready to give up everything.  You.  Helena.  My whole fu#king future.  Everything.  And yet it was weird ‘cause at the same time you were dearer to me than ever and at that moment my love for you was both tender and sad.  I barely slept that night.  And I woke up the next morning I a panic.  I didn’t know if I was afraid that he had left or that he might still be there.  But by dinner I realized he was gone…and…I…was…relieved.”

This is one time when Bill is not interrupted.  He makes out with Alice in front of a mirror.  The scene cuts at the moment things heat up, teasing and possibly disappointing the audience in typical Kubrickean style.

Nicole Kidman is outstanding as Alice, a very strong performance. In this scene, she moves through rage to confession of a fantasy just to prove to Bill how wrong he is about women.

Blues and reds and a woman stripped down to reveal...

...a sex dream...

This pot-induced confession of erotic fantasy is immediately followed by the reality of death.  Bill receives a phone call that an elderly patient of his has died. After paying a visit to the deceased that night, Bill walks home with the image of Alice’s fantasy in his mind.  He meets Domino and goes through a pair of red doors to her apartment to “have a little fun.” Just as things approach the edge of passion, Bill gets a phone call from Alice.  This interruption leads to a change of plans.  Bill is no longer in the mood.  His walk continues.  It ultimately leads him to the Sonata Café where he meets an old college buddy who now plays piano.  The friend tells Bill about a gig he has that night at a secret location for a high-end sex party.  This eventually leads Bill to the film’s infamous orgy sequence.

Outside of the Bill/Alice relationship, the orgy/sex party is the central narrative element of the film, the balancing focal point to Alice's dream and fantasy confessions.  It is both highly erotic and completely terrifying.  It is easy to see how audiences would be confused by such a strange, yet brilliant juxtaposition.   The party sequence (a mirror of the earlier Christmas party) lasts for about 16 minutes (the same length as the Christmas party) including the occult ritual components.  It primarily consists of the camera dollying forward through a series of lavish rooms in a mansion where various acts of exhibitionist sex are being performed.  

Everyone is masked and some are cloaked.  The rest, male and female, participant and spectator, are naked.  Ultimately, Bill’s roaming is far more noticed than he realizes and he stands in judgment by a bizarre official court of this erotically occult gathering in the middle of the night.  This court charges him to absolute secrecy on penalty of “the most dire consequences for your family.”  At 4AM he returns home to Alice, who he finds dreaming.  She is distressed when he awakens her.  She tells Bill of a dream she was having.

“We were in a deserted city and…and our clothes were gone.  We were naked.  And…and I was terrified.  And I…and I felt ashamed.  Oh god.  And I was angry because I thought it was your fault.  But you…you rushed away to go find my clothes for us.  As soon as you were gone it was completely different.  I…I felt wonderful.  Then I was lying in a beautiful garden, stretched out naked in the sunlight.  And a man walked out of the woods.  He was…he was the man from the hotel, the one who I told you about.  The naval officer.  He stared at me.  Then he just laughed.  He just laughed at me.”

What is easy to miss, perhaps, is that Alice is perfectly (metaphorically) describing Bill’s experience at the sex party.  She doesn’t realize it, of course.  It is Bill’s secret.  Just as Bill couldn’t get Alice’s erotic fantasy out of his mind earlier, now Alice appears to have the essence of Bill’s nocturnal adventure in her dreams.  By sharing her intimate secrets so vividly with Bill, she makes his choice to keep the secret (that he has just been told he must keep by an intimidating masked court) even more of a lie, because she is opening up to Bill as he is closing off from her.  Every relationship I have ever known about has had this dynamic, with the roles constantly changing between the sexes.  

The balance of honesty is something each couple must wrestle with to some degree.  Far from being vague and confusing, Kubrick is quite clearly, through his dialog, probing the intimate nature of any sexual relationship married or not.  But because they are married, with all that means in the modern western world, it amplifies the secret in a way that it could not if Bill and Alice were just casually living together.  They are formally bound to each other.  To me, this is the best part of film.  Kubrick is flashing his brilliance as a screen writer in addition of his directing.  

Alice confesses her dream desire of leaving her life behind just to have sex with a naval officer.  It was only a dream.  Right?

This is immediately interrupted by the death of one of Dr. Harford's wealthy patients.  He pays a visit in the night.  The woman behind him is the old man's daughter, who thinks she is in love with Dr. Harford.  One of the many troubling aspects of the erotic but unsettling narrative.

Ironically, it is Bill, the one with the secret to keep, that probes Alice.  Challenging her that “that’s not the end is it?”  We hang suspended with these two actors awash in blue light, the brilliant music by Jocelyn Pook lifts us as we wait.  (As always, Kubrick’s musical choices for the film are superb.  Only Quentin Tarantino rivals Kubrick in this regard.)  Bill: “Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?”  Alice: “It’s too awful.”  Bill: “It’s only a dream.” They embrace.  Alice: “He was kissing me.  Then making love.  Then there were all these other people around us.  Hundreds of them everywhere.  Everyone was fu#king.  And then I…I was fu#king other men…so many…I don’t know how many I was with.  And I knew you could see me in the eyes of all these men…just fu#king all these men.  And I wanted to make fun of you.  To laugh in your face.  And so I laughed as loud as I could.  And that must have been when you woke me up.”  Alice was laughing in her sleep before Bill woke her.

Interestingly, it is Domino who solicits Bill.  "Wanna have some fun?"  Just through those red doors.

Bill procures a costume in the middle of the night from Milch (Rade Serbedzija) the owner of Rainbow Fashions.  More reds and blues.

The Somerton Mansion where the sex party is being held, bathed in blue light.  Bill conspicuously arrives at the gates via taxi and is taken up to the house in a red vehicle.  The taxi is a dead giveaway that he is not meant to be there, although he is unaware of this and is greeted courteously, at first.

The blindfolded keyboard player is a old college friend of Bill's.  That's how he obtained the password "Fidelio" necessary to gain admittance to the mansion.  Bill immediately walks in to observe a bizarre sex ritual. 

One of several sex shots throughout the Somerton party sequence.  The entire sequence is scandalously controversial but this shot is a controversy within a controversy.  The two women in the center of the shot were not filmed by Kubrick.  They were computer generated into the shot in order to hide the explicit nature of the masked man and woman having wild sex on a piece of furniture.  The European version of the film was uncensored but in more prudish (at least officially) America the shots were deemed pornographic and required this censorship to obtain an "R" rating.  Tom Cruise and others spoke out against this manipulation of Kubrick's intended shots.  Famous film critic Roger Ebert called it a "desecration."

Bill in masked costume moves from room to room watching these sex acts.  In this shot he has just passed an orgy on a dining room table as other masked and cloaked spectators enjoy the exhibitionism.

Here is another example of censorship in this sex act on a table surrounded by spectators.  In the uncensored version, Bill walks into this room and gazes for a moment before a cut to this shot minus the dark cloaked figure in the middle covering up almost everything.  The cloaked figure is supposed to be Bill watching the masked couple in lurid copulation.  I own both versions of the film.  For myself, these shots were never pornographic to begin with.  They are artfully shot without so much as a moan or groan coming from those involved.  I doubt they would rate highly on pornhub.  Sex can be art and it most certainly is in this sequence.  

Suddenly, Bill finds himself placed in judgment for "crashing" the ultra exclusive sex party.  More reds and blues.  Bill is asked to remove his clothes or the red cloaked inquisitor will have them removed for him.  It is an uneasy moment until a masked girl, supposedly "Mandy" from Ziegler's Christmas party, shouts that she will "redeem" him.  This is an unnerving scene, especially when set to Gyorgy Ligeti's Musica Ricercata. 

Alice, bathed in blue light, tearfully confesses her dream of having sex with hundreds of men.  An orgy of the subconscious that mirrors the physical orgy/sex party Bill just witnessed.

The last hour of the film is basically Bill retracing his steps from the prior evening but everything has changed, mirrored in a way, as suggested in the Nelson quote above.  Characters that interacted with him in a particular way the first time around are now behaving differently.  Other characters have vanished.  At least one has died.  It is all very strange and interesting but this is simply Kubrick crafting a psychological maze, enhancing Bill’s erotic odyssey.  For Kubrick, the erotic is a deep reservoir of physical lust and emotional peril.  Bill’s would-be sexual exploits are foiled at every turn, sometimes in a creepy fashion, with an air of danger and mystery about a possible murder just to help the viewer become more uneasy and somewhat threatened by the consequences of what is happening.  Kubrick, as usual, is totally manipulating his audience.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Eyes Wide Shut is that Kubrick created a mysterious experience out of something that is all too common.   Obviously, the ritualistic orgy/sex party sequence is anything but ordinary but the impact of the rather shocking sequence (for both Bill and the audience) is the same as if Bill had had a torrid affair with some other woman, which he never does.  The couple have sex only with each other in the movie and even then Kubrick cuts away just as they start kissing and fondling.  That might also be a source of confusion for the audience but, as in The Shining, Kubrick creates a feeling within the viewer that is more important than what is actually being shown.  Though rationally and artistically captured on film, Eyes Wide Shut affects the viewer more at a subconscious level.  So the viewer may be simultaneously confused yet impacted by the film.

An example of the large set constructed representing Greenwich Village in the film.  This is a sound stage, not New York City, but it sure looks like it is.  Kubrick used this set in interesting ways to make it seem like several different streets. 

This actually is New York City, shot by the film's second unit to make the set in the previous shot seem even more realistic.  Bill walks in solitude through the night, ruminating on the experiences he has witnessed.  At one point he realizes he is being followed by an unknown observer, building upon the narrative's fundamental tension.

Ziegler's billiard room.  He offers Bill a version of the truth about the sex party.  Is he telling the truth or lying?  By this point in the film neither Bill nor the audience can really be sure anymore, which is Kubrick's intent and helps to further the film's disquieting effect.

Notice anything about the use of color in this shot?  Eyes Wide Shut is about the sexual tension between fantasy and reality, between emotions and physicality within a marriage specifically and within human experience generally.

Bill, utterly confused and broken by all the events he has witnessed and the possible murder of Mandy, completely breaks down when he returns home to find the mask he wore at the sex party laying on his pillow next to Alice as she sleeps.  "I will tell you everything."  Judging by Alice's reaction in the next scene, he apparently does just that.  The film actually is a testament to honesty, which often gets lost within the psychological intricacies Kubrick creates and explores.

In the end, Bill is shaken to his core by his blind, amateurish experience with the erotic.  He confesses everything to Alice.  She is naturally upset at what he was trying to do even though he didn’t physically do anything at all.  When the couple takes their daughter, Helena, Christmas shopping, Bill looks to Alice for guidance on what should happen next with their relationship.  She responds this way with two short lines of his edited out.

“Maybe I think we should be grateful.  Grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures.  Whether they were real or only a dream.  Am I sure?  Um…only…only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can never be the whole truth.  The important thing is we’re awake now and hopefully for a long time to come.  Forever?  Let’s not use that word.  It frightens me.  But I do love you.  And, you know, there is something very important that we need to do as so as possible.  Fu#k.”  Roll credits.

Like I said, the primary “meaning” of the film, to the extent it has one, can be found in the Alice’s dialog throughout the movie.  She is both the catalyst and the interpreter of the film for the relationship and the audience.  An interesting fact is that Kubrick chose to decorate the Harford’s spacious New York apartment with his personal effects, paintings and decorations that he and his wife lived with in real life.  Knowing that, and seeing how Kubrick portrays the travails of sex and intimacy in Eyes Wide Shut, this final film of his exceptional career is perhaps his most personal and revealing.

Eyes Wide Shut is not Kubrick’s best movie but neither is it as bad or as impenetrable as some of the critics claim.  The truth is that it is a bold, deeply insightful attempt to capture contemporary love and sexuality not in an ordinary sense, but in an unexpected way that deeply affects the discerning viewer.  Even if Kubrick never got to tinker with it after the initial edit, I think it largely achieves what he wanted to convey and with how it psychologically provokes the audience.  I would give it a solid 8.  Like almost all of Kubrick’s films, it merits and rewards repeated viewings.  There is no other film quite like it, a Christmas movie not for the whole family.