Worth discussing.

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2001)

I've just watched Eyes Wide Shut for the third time. I think the movie has great depth and can invoke good discussions of its meaning. The performances of the actors are generally good except for the two principles. I found Cruise wooden and Kidman overemoting but both were passable. It's just that they were surrounded by a talented cast. What was the movie about? (SPOILERS lurk ahead). I think the movie is a metaphor of marriage. Cruise's sexual ego becomes damaged after Kidman confesses to sexual fantasies, about another man. He encounters sexual situations that further shake his already damaged psyche. He then discovers his alter ego,what he might want to be if freed from his conventions, in the form of Nightengale and obtains the password to a place that promises forbidden pleasures. The apparent orgy he then attends is, in fact, the metaphor for marriage. The women are anointed, or blessed, by the high priest, then they reveal their sexuality. They choose a man and go off to enjoy all kinds of sexual pleasure. Cruise the intruder is unmasked and told to leave and not to mention what goes on within the mansion. The sexual pleasure is only to be enjoyed within the mansion, or within the confines of marriage. Outside of the mansion, or marriage, sexual pleasure brings about dire circumstances. A hooker dies of a overdose and Cruise visits another, (naively bearing pastries for the prostitute), and is warned off by the possibility of death from disease, the HIV. He is further warned to stop his enquires, into infidelity, when he shows up at the mansion again. (How does he get into the mansion? By, falsely, promising fidelity.) He goes home and finds the mask on his pillow. Was this an invitation to enjoy sex within the bounds of marriage with his wife? I've wondered about the ending sequence, and the last word, and its meaning and I think it shows sexual freedom is allowed within the marriage.
Maybe my interpretation is a stretch but the movie allows for that stretch and that is why is so good.