Normally, the reviews I write here are for movies I have seen for the first time. Only under certain circumstances, like when I rewatch something for the podcast that I really hope to get back to some day, will I write up something I have seen before. And, as I am something of a Stanley Kubrick fan, of course I saw his last movie Eyes Wide Shut when it hit cable back in 1999 or so. I remembered a friend describe it as just Tom Cruise walking around for two hours, and at the time, I figured he was right. I didn’t much care for the movie. Since then, I have learned more about Kubrick’s directorial style and my tastes have matured. I figured Eyes Wide Shut has probably earned a second look now that I am older to see if my opinion has much changed.
Besides, this movie starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman back when they were still married, and here I am over 20 years later wondering how these two have seemed to barely age.
Physician Bill (Cruise) and his wife Alice (Kidman) are a well-to-do couple living in New York City. They attend a Christmas party where during a moment when the two are separated, both are hit on by other people, but then they go home and have sex. Sometime after that, Alice confesses something Bill cannot bring himself to believe: Alice almost cheated on him once with a naval officer. Shaken by this reveal, Bill stays out for a while after a house call, fends off advances from a woman mourning the death of her father, almost sleeps with a prostitute, meets up with a former med school classmate where he learns about what sounds like an odd orgy, and ends up there only to see a lot of masked people having sex. He’s found out and forced to leave, but he leaves with more questions than answers, answers he seeks the next day.
In the end, he and Alice reconnect in a toy store where Alice basically says she wants to have sex with him as soon as they get home.
Now, I said I learned a lot more about Kubrick since I first saw this movie, and the one thing I learned that made a lot of sense here was Kubrick’s directorial style was to create an emotional distance between his audience and his characters. Tom Cruise is not one of my favorite actors by a long shot–Kidman’s work I enjoy a hell of a lot more–but his bland Hollywood demeanor and star power actually helps here because his lack of a distinct personality works well within a Kubrick film. He’s just a guy shaken up and looking for…something even he isn’t sure of. He runs into a number of encounters with sexual undertones, and somehow, he just doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on. That fits well for a Kubrick film.
Likewise, the famous orgy scene shows a lot of people wearing masks as they have sex, and given the masks are immobile and cover the entire face, making the various participants look more bored than excited, particularly since most of them seem intent to simply watch others engage in activity. This is a movie where everyone talks sex, but no one seems to be really enjoying it. Even Alice and Bill are questionable as, during a sex scene early on, Kidman’s Alice glances in a mirror with a look of detached disinterest. Perhaps in the end, due to the fact the two of them love each other, and they are the only married couple featured in the movie, they come out of it perhaps OK despite some vague threats that shake Bill to his core more than even some vague explanations given to him by a wealthy friend (Sydney Pollack).
So, did I like the movie more? Yes, though it’s far from my favorite Kubrick movie. I’d still much rather rewatch a movie like A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, or The Shining. I can see why the twentysomething me was unimpressed by this movie: Kubrick’s emotional distance from his subjects seems like an odd fit for a movie about sex. But this is sex without love and intimacy and that disconnect that Bill temporarily feels from Alice, well, that’s right up Kubrick’s alley.
Maybe I should really check out Barry Lyndon one of these days.
Grade: A-
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