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I’ll bet, of all the things you’ve ever heard about Stanley Kubrick, you never expected somebody would compare the last movie he completed before his death to Muppets from Space. But as with that film, critics seem to be lining up to damn Eyes Wide Shut with faint praise. The difference is, said pundits are too far removed from childhood to appreciate Kermit in a season when having intercourse with pastry is considered fresh and inventive, while apparently they don’t want to be seen as having much good to say about Kubrick’s finale since they thought everybody else would be fawning over him post mortem. Sure, the fact that the film has probably been the object of more hype, rumor, and anticipation than anything in movie history besides maybe the second Star Warsmovie back in 1980, and took even longer to finish than the work on I-85, didn’t ingratiate them much either. I, for one, thought it was great.
But, oh, those rumors. Given Kubrick’s obsession with secrecy, little concrete was known about Eyes Wide Shut other than it starred genetically impossible ubermannen husband and wife Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was based on a 1920s German fiction titled Traumnovelle, took nearly three years to complete -- including tossing out footage of supporting players Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh when they couldn’t come back for reshoots a year after they thought their work was done-- and had something to do with sex. To take up the slack, and with a lot of time on their hands from its start to completion, the press and the Web went full-tilt nutso reporting such heresay as, Cruise did scenes in a dress and stilettoes, he and Kidman performed full-frontal marital acts on camera, and -- one that didn’t sound so implausible, given that the source material’s title translates as “Dream Story” -- that the whole movie turns out to be a dream. None of which is true. (Brief digression: I don’t usually like to give too much plot away for the sake of those who plan to see a film, but having read this item on a usually pretty accurate internet movie rumor website, it negatively affected my viewing a bit. As things we’ll get to directly got stranger and stranger, I sat in the theater thinking, “Surely Kubrick had more class than to pull a Bobby Ewing on us.” And if you don’t get the reference, you’re too young to be seeing this movie anyway. No, wait, that was rude of me, not to mention mathematically inaccurate, since someone might possibly remember watching “Dallas” when s/he was three years old, or could have caught a rerun on The Nashville Network -- okay, “Surely Kubrick has more class than to pull a Freddy Krueger.”) The only, pardon the expression, scuttlebutt that proved true was some last-minute gossip about the American release having computer-animated figures inserted during an elaborate orgy scene to block our MPAA-guarded eyes from seeing anything really nasty (but this does provide the unintended entertainment of playing Spot the Digital Keester).
Cruise plays Dr. William Harford, a wealthy Manhattan physician married for nine years to his indescribably desirable wife Alice (Kidman). Near Christmas they attend a seasonal party at which, due to suspicious but innocent circumstance -- innocent for William, anyway -- Alice suspects he might have been fooling around. When they return home she makes a compelling confession of sorts that sends him on an intense gambol way, way out on the wild side for a night of things you simply have to see to believe, putting the marriage to a thorough test. Part of his misadventure involves the eerie, elaborately ritualized orgy mentioned above, but there’s much more, and less, to it than that. Over the next couple days, that night haunts William more than any Shakespearian specter could, inspiring much hand-wringing and many repetitions by several characters of “To be perfectly honest...” And, not surprisingly, before it’s all over, some surprisingly insightful things are said about trust, guilt, and the contrast and similarity between men and women.
Eyes Wide Shut, more than any film I can ever recall seeing, effectively portrays stumbling through a waking dream, a walking phantasm. (This is due nearly as much to Kubrick’s selection of music as his manipulation of actors and camera. Not many direrectors could get away with using both the ZZ Toppish Chris Isaak song from the early trailers, but the hauntingly simple, monophonic piano theme in later previews, in the same movie.) But that’s not to berate Cruise, who, with much more to do here than his Oscar-nominated wife, shows a level of dramatic maturity previously unseen in his work. And while some may find the film disturbing -- it’s supposed to be, to an extent -- it is actually surprisingly pure and good-hearted, all while being an enthralling, immaculately detailed, refreshingly unpredictable experience. None of which may make any sense, given my feeble description, but if ever this cliche applied, it’s here: you just had to be there. A
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