EYES WIDE SHUT  (1999)  ***1/2

Reviewed 7/16/99

The Phantom Menace may have been the most looked-forward-to film by the general public this year, but Eyes Wide Shut has held that status for cinephiles everywhere since its production was announced. So let me say first that Eyes Wide Shut is one of the late Stanley Kubrick's worst films, but that it is still much more fascinating than almost everything else out right now. It is also not like anything else mainstream Hollywood has ever produced, which could also be said for Dr. Strangelove and 2001. But unlike those films, which are peak genre films, Eyes Wide Shut lacks easy categorization. Kubrick has always been a genre-focused director, even if most of his films transcend their particular genres. Kubrick was a master of manipulating genre expectations, and the deficit of genre rules to play with here seems to have resulted in a very messy film. Eyes Wide Shut has the least consistency of vision of any Kubrick film since the very early Killer's Kiss (1955).

The story, adapting Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 Traumnovelle to present-day New York, is about the relationship between William Harford (Tom Cruise), a wealthy physician, and his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman). After a lush party, the couple retire to home, and while smoking pot, begin arguing over the flirtations each had engaged in with others at the soiree. William denies his lust for other women, but Alice admits to an occasion in which she was willing to leave William for another man who had only exchanged glances with her. Called out into the night after a patient's death, William, filled with jealousy and seeking revenge upon his wife, wanders into increasingly surreal sexual situations. The night culminates in a ritualistic orgy in an enormous mansion on Long Island.

It is at this midway point that Eyes begins to stray as suddenly the movie becomes a mystery that has to be unraveled. Everything becomes over-analyzed and over-explained. While we discover how certain apparent coincidences are not so apparent, thematic exploration takes a hike. The structure of the film is reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, in which we follow the protagonist through the scenes of his "crimes" until a climatic event, then revisit the earlier scenes. But whereas those revisitations were crucial to show both sides of the free will argument in Clockwork, here they are far more aimless.

Warner Brothers had said that this edit was the one Kubrick completed just before he died. However, Kubrick usually tinkered with his films until just prior to release so there's no reason to think he would not have done so here, and additional editing would certainly have helped. While the length of the film as a whole is only slightly overlong, the pacing of individual scenes are mired. A scene with Alan Cumming as a hotel clerk drooling over Cruise could have been cut down drastically. What Eyes needed more of was Kidman's Alice. As the best actor in Eyes and representative of one half of the thematic dialogue, she is so strongly neglected for most of the film that at the end, her pontificating wisdom feels unearned. Her lack of screen time is not surprising coming from Kubrick, who has never been that comfortable with female characters. Like John Woo, Kubrick simply has little interest in female characters and does not relate to them well.

So what is the theme of Eyes Wide Shut? It is about the hypocrisies underlying marriage and monogamy in general. Kubrick is not at all saying that marriage is not a worthwhile institution, just that even well-reasoned cultural constructs naturally fall prey to the irrational, instinctual animal side we all possess. This theme is common to many of Kubrick's movies, most notably Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and Full Metal Jacket. But Alice's final message in Eyes also explains the apparent contradictions in seeking the fool-proof failsafe plan, the unerring computer, the pure human killing machine, the utter devotion to monogamy, and even Kubrick's own cinematic pursuit of perfection when none of these can ever be fully, idealistically attained.

While Eyes suffers on the side of tone and cohesiveness, it is a surfeit of style. Kubrick has lost none of his technical brilliance. The setups with his roaming camera are as resplendent as ever, especially in the opening party scenes. His choice of a grainier film stock works well to detach the viewer from the empty glossiness of most Hollywood movies. Whereas most such films ask us to be in awe of the luxurious sets and props (say, James Bond's car), the grain puts us at one remove from that reaction. Kubrick is much choicier than usual in using his signature deep focus photography, but neither does he need it here much of the time.

Nudity runs rampant throughout Eyes. Some of it feels gratuitous, but most does not. Some of the film is erotic, but most of it is not and is not intended to be. The film has sex in it, but is not about sex. Almost solely, it is women who appear nude, and again, this comes as no surprise from a director who regularly gets labeled a misogynist. Except for the case of A Clockwork Orange, I don't think Kubrick, in his filmmaking, is any more misogynistic than anyone else. The nudity in Eyes simply fits the same double standard that nudity in all other movies do in our society.

Despite what some critics have said, the digitized figures put into the orgy scene to hide some of the sex acts and keep the film from getting an NC-17 rating are indeed invasive and self-consciously distracting. I'm sure the Europeans watching the uncensored version will come out no more "corrupted" than we Americans. We Americans however must live with this hypocrisy.

Overall, Eyes Wide Shut, while a distinctly original film, has strong flaws. As much as I hate to say it, I think David Cronenberg or David Lynch might have done better with this material, or at least brought greater immediacy to it.


Copyright © 1999 George Wu