Eyes Wide Shut (2007, HD DVD)

Throughout the history of films, every filmmaker cites another filmmaker as an influential force in cinema. Whether its Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Elia Kazan, and George Cukor to more recent big-time directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino. Then, there's one director many filmmakers in the past 30 years have cited as a seminal figure in film and has been imitated one way or another than anyone in film. Many consider him the ultimate auteur director while he has reputation of being a control freak, perfectionist, recluse, and all sorts of things which some of them were true. The man was none other than Stanley Kubrick.

Often considered one of the greatest directors to ever make films, Kubrick made a film that always stood out against anything that was going on whether it was the 1956 crime film The Killing, 1957's anti-war film Paths of Glory, 1962's risqu Lolita, 1964's war-satire Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying & Love the Bomb, 1975's subtle 18th Century period piece Barry Lyndon and 1980's horror flick The Shining to the sci-fi masterpiece of 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1971's ultra violent film A Clockwork Orange, and 1987's Vietnam epic Full Metal Jacket. Every one has a Kubrick film they loved or hated but everyone can't deny the fact that he is one hell of a filmmaker bringing out great images and moments that can be defined as Kubrick. Sadly on March 7, 1999, Kubrick died of heart failure at age 70 leaving behind a legacy of great filmmaking. His death was just after more than a week he had finally completed his final film in the dreamy, Freudian sex-drama entitled Eyes Wide Shut.

Prior to the making of Eyes Wide Shut and the time after the release of Full Metal Jacket, many wondered what happened to Kubrick during that time. In the 2001 documentary film A Life in Pictures about Stanley Kubrick, his widow Christiane had always said that he had hated doing so few films and wished had done more and didn't have this reputation as mind-controlling perfectionist. In the early 90s, Kubrick tried to make a movie entitled Aryan Papers about the Holocaust but at the same time, Steven Spielberg was making his masterpiece Schindler's List in which, Kubrick reluctantly shelved the project fearing that he would be a follower rather than the innovator he had uphold for many years till Full Metal Jacket since there were so many Vietnam films released prior to Full Metal Jacket.

Kubrick then focused on another project called A.I.: Artificial Intelligence but because of technological reasons, he decided to wait for it while making Spielberg his collaborator about the idea of a Stanley Kubrick production of a Steven Spielberg film which Spielberg did make in 2001 that still debates the question whether the film is more towards Spielberg or Kubrick's vision. Then in the mid-90s, Kubrick finally decided to work on his next project entitled Eyes Wide Shut.

Two and a half years in the making, Eyes Wide Shut is a very cerebral, dreamy film about marriages being put on the test and what kind of sacrifices would be done in the subject of infidelity. Based on the novel Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler and adapted into a script by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael, Eyes Wide Shut is a compelling drama that is filled with mystery and deception as a married doctor discovers his own desires away from his marriage while lurking into a mysterious underworld. Starring then-superstar Hollywood couples Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman; Kubrick brings in a subtlety to the film with an ounce of suspense in the dark setting of NYC (though the film was entirely shot in London). While it's not in the league of masterpieces like A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Barry Lyndon, or Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut is an excellent and worthy farewell from one of the greatest auteur directors of the 20th Century.

The film begins with a rich married couple getting dressed in their NYC apartment as Dr. William Harford (Tom Cruise) and wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) are getting ready for a party as they said goodbye to their daughter Helena (Madison Eginton). The Harfords arrive at the party held by friend Victor Ziegler (filmmaker Sydney Pollock) as William and Alice dance the night way in Victor's lavish, elegant party. William meets an old medical school buddy Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) while he's being flirted by two very beautiful women while Alice is being flirted by an old, charming Hungarian Sandor Szavost (Sky Dumont). While William is flirting with the two women, Victor's secretary summons him as he sees a naked woman who had overdosed on drugs as Victor is looking on. Alice is charmed by Sandor's talks as she states that she wishes she could sleep with him but she's married while William revives the naked woman and saves Victor from something that could've been damaging.

After the party, Alice is listening to Chris Issak's "Baby Did A Bad Thing" naked as she is making out with William as she is looking very eerily about the night. William does his doctor duties as usual while Alice is with Helena wrapping Christmas presents and does their usual family activities, as Alice gets ready to roll a joint for the night. She and William talk about the party where William is very evasive if he ever wanted to sleep with the two women he was flirting with which he denies. He talks about the Hungarian and angers Alice since he implied that the only reason men want to be around her because they want to have sex with her and he's not jealous about it. She knows he is in denial as she tells him a story about during a family vacation, she saw a naval officer (Gary Goba) and confessed to William, while being stoned, that she was willing to throw her marriage and everything she had just to f*ck the naval officer which makes him jealous but he gets a call that a patient of his named Lou Nathanson (Kevin Connealy) has just died.

William leaves for the night but is troubled by the image of Alice having sex with the naval officer as he meets up with Lou's daughter Marion (Marie Richardson) who seeks comfort from William. He counsels her a bit but she ends up trying to seduce him and suggests they have sex on her father's deathbed but that doesn't happen since her fianc Carl (Thomas Gibson) arrives as William decides to go for a walk in NYC. William walks around the streets as he is being hassled by college hooligans who suspects him of being a homosexual as he meets up with a young prostitute named Domino (Vinessa Shaw). She takes him to her apartment as she seduces him while he is wondering if he should have sex with her but gets interrupted by a phone call from his wife on his cell phone. He then goes to a nightclub where he meets up with Nick as they talk about their old school days until Nick gets a call from a mysterious figure about a secret party with a password that is "Fidelio".

The party Nick is going to since it's a private one that just requires a black cloak and a mask intrigues William as he goes to a costume store owned by a Russian immigrant named Milich (Rade Serbedzija) late at night when it's closed. Milich lets him in as he asks William about a bald spot and he hears a noise that involved two Japanese men and his daughter (Leelee Sobieski) who tries to seduce William while he's trying to do business with Milich. William drives out of the city in a cab and into somewhere upstate in the woods where he comes across a mysterious manor where he gives the guards the password and he enters a secret underworld. The place William enters has a very strange and ominous ceremony with Nick playing keyboards, wearing a blindfold, as William sees women taking their clothes off to a man in a red cloak (Leon Vitali of Barry Lyndon fame). Accompanying William to this underworld is a mysterious woman (Abigail Good) wearing a mask and feathered headdress as she tells him that he's trespassing but William wants to see what's in this place. What he finds is an array of people having sex and an orgy that is endless of men wearing tuxedos and masks f*cking these women, who are also wearing masks.

William gets seduced by a couple of women as the mysterious woman appears and he is then summoned by a patron where he is confronted by the man in the red cloak. The man tells William to remove his mask and to take his clothes off as William wonders what's going on and he knows he is in danger when the mysterious woman appears and will take the punishment for him. William is let go but is warned never to come across the underworld again. William arrives home hearing Alice having a nightmare where she reveals that she is being f*cked by all of these men and they're all laughing at him as he now begins to questions the risk of infidelity. The images of his wife sleeping with the naval officer is instilled in his mind as he looks for Nick about that secret party but the hotel clerk (Alan Cumming) tells him that he saw Nick with bruises and had just left abruptly as William wonders what is going on. He then goes back to the costume place to return the costume where he saw Milich having a little party with the Japanese men and his daughter as William forgot about the mask as he was forced to pay for the missing mask.

William goes back to the mansion gate where he gets a threatening note not to come back as he pursues the underworld that he's just been to while he thinks there's a connection to what is going with him and his wife. He walks around the city looking for answers as he finds himself being followed while meeting up with Domino's roommate Sally (Fay Masterson) who he seduces for a bit where he learns that Domino is in the hospital for a disease. William then comes across the newspaper about a mysterious death as he looks around and recognizes the woman where he turns to Victor for answers and everything comes to place with just more questions than answers over what happens and how it affects the marriage of William and Alice.

What makes Eyes Wide Shut so compelling isn't just the fact that it bore all the elements of a Stanley Kubrick film but its subtle and brooding tone that makes the film seem something obtuse whether what you're seeing is a dream or something that is real but not really sure what's going on. This sense of confusion is one of the reasons why there's been so much debate about the film in comparison to the past movies of Kubrick. Really, I think it's a dream film where everything doesn't seem right and its brooding tone is paced at a sense of subtlety that makes the film seem dreamy and Freudian in some cases. Kubrick manages to bring lovely visuals to the film, especially in the NYC apartments where there's loads of Xmas lights all over the place and how he manipulates the mind into making the audience believe they're in NYC but they're not really since it's really London. This is an example of the genius of Stanley Kubrick.

Another part of Kubrick's genius is his use of music. In the past, he always uses a piece of music for suspense, notably with Wendy Carlos's scores for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining and in Eyes Wide Shut, it's essential Kubrick where score composer Jocelyn Pook uses a lovely string accompaniment to channel the sense of subtlety into the film while Gyorgy Ligeti's piano composition brings a sense of suspense to some of the film's climatic moments. So there's all the elements you would expect from Stanley Kubrick but why has this film been the most criticized?

Well, there are really two big reasons why it's not up in par with Kubrick's past films. One is the presentation of something as a Freudian, dream film that Martin Scorsese has said in the A Life in Pictures documentary while some people saw the film as a messy, tedious sex drama. In some cases, I saw it as a dream film but something incomplete since the film brings up more questions than answers in the end. The subtlety that Kubrick had used in the film gives the idea of something very stimulating and smooth that he hadn't really done although it's one of the ideas that is new from him though most recently, Sofia Coppola has perfected the subtlety of a dream film with her recent masterpiece Lost in Translation. Seeing Eyes Wide Shut once is not enough, it has to be seen in repeated viewings, I don't know how many, not to just figure out the plot but the presentation as well.

Of course, because it feels incomplete for a reason, I feel like I have to ask a question here. In the past ten years, there's been a couple of film adaptations Kubrick had done that has been remade, one was The Shining for ABC and the other was Adrian Lyne's version of Lolita, which was a bit closer to the book than Kubrick's version. So I want to ask every film lover in Epinions.com this question, should Eyes Wide Shut be remade sometime in the future? I think it's a film that some should come back to and present it the way Kubrick would've wanted it to since he never had the chance to present it the way he had intended.

That is another reason why the film has so much criticism, notably the orgy scene. The scene featured these CGI-created guys in black cloaks that were covering the activity of the patrons having sex in the orgy. Kubrick originally wanted to show everything but the MPAA wanted to give the movie the dreaded NC-17 rating, which would've gotten people away from watching the film. Kubrick and the people in Warner Brothers were forced to add special effects and it was completed one week before Kubrick's death. The CGI-images in Eyes Wide Shut I feel is a complete insult to Kubrick's original vision. Why did the MPAA wanted it to be re-edited just because it showed a lot of sex and some naked men showing their penises? Well, I don't mind seeing naked guys as long as women wanted to see them. Since there's always been some female nudity for the men, why not show some naked guys for the ladies, it's fair enough. You can't take risks to make it in films. Kubrick in the past had to battle everyone for the sake of his art and the sad thing about Eyes Wide Shut was that it never became the great film that Kubrick had intended it to be.

On the performances, every actor did an excellent job in Kubrick's final project, notably the supporting cast. Originally supposed to play the Victor Ziegler character was Harvey Keitel but Kubrick ended up using filmmaker Sydney Pollock for the role. Though Keitel would've done a better job in the film role bringing in some comedy to his brash style, Pollock does an amazing job as Ziegler though I would've preferred Keitel for the role. The same situation happens for Marie Richardson's character of Marion who was originally played by Jennifer Jason Leigh but Kubrick re-filmed her scenes with Richardson. Richardson does do a good job but Leigh would've added more depth to the character. Vinessa Shaw, Leelee Sobieski, and Abigail Good brings in good performances as the sexual objects in the film while Sky Dumont shines as the radiant Hungarian trying to charm Nicole Kidman. The smaller performances of Alan Cumming, Fay Masterson, Todd Field, Madison Eginton, Thomas Gibson, and Leon Vitali are all used very well while Rade Serbedzija is hilarious as the Russian costume storeowner.

In the leading performances, Nicole Kidman provides the film s best performance as Alice Harford where Kidman displays elements of beauty, sex appeal, and wide ranges of emotions in her character. She even brings in some great lines and masterful acting when she played stoned while being brooding at the same time. While I often consider Tom Cruise to be a somewhat overrated actor, he does an excellent job as the evasive, brooding Dr. William Hanford who explores the underworld and his own marriage at his deepest. Cruise does a great job playing the voyeur although the chemistry between him and Kidman on some parts, particularly the love scenes lacks spark but do well in the more dramatic tones of the film.

In the end, Eyes Wide Shut is an excellent farewell from Stanley Kubrick that some know, could've been a hell of a lot better if he had things his way and with more time. While it can stand up to par on some aspects with his other films, many will know the film has a bit of disappointing elements, notably the CGI-created orgy scene where thankfully, there's an unedited version from Europe. Kubrick fans will love the subtle tone in its cinematography and dreamy textures in the film as well as the performances of now, ex-spouses Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. So in the end, Eyes Wide Shut is a film that keeps on getting better after repeated viewings and it's a strong farewell from one of the greatest masters of cinema, Stanley Kubrick.

The Stanley Kubrick Collection:

Full Metal Jacket (1987):

(Coming Soon)

The Shining (1980):

(Coming Soon)

Barry Lyndon (1975):

http://www.epinions.com/content_197109911172

A Clockwork Orange (1971):

http://www.epinions.com/content_182675148420

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968):

http://www.epinions.com/content_436155813508

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb (1964):

http://www.epinions.com/content_355477196420

Lolita (1962):

(Coming Soon)

Spartacus (1960):

(Coming Soon)

Paths of Glory (1957):

(Coming Soon)

The Killing (1956):

(Coming Soon)

A Life in Pictures-Stanley Kubrick (2001):

(Coming Soon)