A "movie" movie

Rating: Null/10 (13 May 2000)

Honestly, as much as I've enjoyed Kubrick's stuff through the years, I put off watching this one, just because I thought I was going to hate it.
I didn't.
"Eyes Wide Shut" is a superb film. It isn't in the "Strangelove/2001/Clockwork Orange" stratosphere; I think the best comparison to another Kubrick film would be "Barry Lyndon." Both "Eyes" and "Lyndon" are period pieces, both are beautiful to look at, both move very slowly (and thus turn many people off), and both are only indirectly "about" anything. In "Lyndon," we saw the life of a rags-to-riches-to-rags Irishmen. Here, we see a few days in the life of a wealthy American couple. What is the hardest thing to do in life today, if you're a wealthy person in our post-modern world? Stay interested? Separate reality from fantasy? That seems to be what Kubrick was saying, at least that's what I heard in the film. Of course, the sexual dynamic of man and woman is the most obvious theme, but I'll be different and state that I don't think that's really what the film is about. Kidman and Cruise's characters are so bored with life (and increasingly with each other) that they begin using sex as a weapon to tear into one another. Through a string of rather improbable events, they both "survive" intact, and at the end they both realize they've been lucky. Both of them step back from the fantasy-land they were driving each other to, and turn to each other in the end. Actually, for Kubrick, a remarkably conservative statement, I think.
Oh yes, maybe its just my somewhat indulgent sense of irony, but I for one think its wonderful that the last word ever spoken in a Stanley Kubrick film was "fu_k."
Here's to ya Stanley.