Just another piece of smut disguised as cinema

Rating: 1/10 (6 October 2018)

This week I watched Eyes Wide Shut (1999). To be be frank it was nothing short of smut wrapped in the title of "cinema." Storytellers everywhere should be embarrassed that we continually get away with this. There was nothing interesting about this film and I'm surprised that Kubrick would ever had thought this was his "finest work." There was probably ten minutes of well written story and the rest was just smut scenes. Let's say we get away from the smut for a minute, the rest of the story was really stale, surface level, and pathetic. The characters were extremely immature and uninteresting and it felt like there were major loopholes in these characters. For example, the way that Alice speaks isn't at all how women speak to the people they are with. The only time words like hers exit a female's mouth is when a man is sharing his fears with her and claiming that's what she said to him in his dream/thoughts, etc. Not only is her dialogue clearly written by a man, but she seems to be suffering some sort of mental disorder, and the doctor, who is likely trained in medical matters, marries this mentally ill character anyways? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but let's go ahead and chalk this film up to what it really is an unapologetic man-tasy (male fantasy). Now, this supposed doctor, who has had to master the art of psychological disciplines like maintaining focus on sleep he likely only got days ago, among the other mental toughness of a doctor, psychoanalytic training, etc, can't deal with something his mentally ill wife said to him, so he, being highly emotionally unstable for some reason, gives himself license to have an affair? Okay, let's just run with it. Now, every important female in the movie is a cookie cutter version of Kubrick's fantasies. Everyone of them has the same body-type, the same color hair, and similar facial features. If you wanted to continue arguing that somehow this smut is "art" then you at least need to change up your "artistic elements" or you're really just validating the case for sexual eroticism for the sake of pleasure. I would also be more sold on this being of "artistic value" if somehow the playing field was equal, but, lo, it is not. T and A is available in just about every scene, but heaven forbid we see a man's dongle. It is merely ever suggested that a male character's manliness was ever exposed, whilst women had the privilege of exposing themselves fully. If you want to cry "art" then you should have fully exposed both sexes, otherwise it just comes across as derogatory and chauvinistic. There is no substance to this film. If it wasn't an assignment I would have shut it off in the first ten minutes and never looked back.