Kubrick's epitaph to Humanity ...

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2011)

There is something profoundly sad in "Eyes Wide Shut" ... is it because it's the last film of Stanley Kubrick, the Maestro, this gifted talent who put the word genius and movies together ? or because of this feeling of melancholic futility inhabiting the life of this couple who's got everything to be happy, yet seems to have registered to a formula where sex is an episodic necessity made of an ephemeral pleasure, and the rest is an ersatz of normality built around not to feel like something precious is being wasted ... indeed, boredom never seemed so real, so palpable, in a movie ironically made of movements and dialogs ... but the sadness is from this couple who chose "deception as a necessity" ... the boredom is inside, imperceptible, which makes it even more pathetic. Only Kubrick could have made Cruise and Kidman so charming and pathetic in the same time.
There is a kind of inner pathos in this bourgeois way of life, that would be scary if it wasn't so comic sometimes. Take Bill's insistence that he's a doctor as to give himself more credibility in some critical situations where self-importance might be helpful, Alice's morbid and paranoid pot-smelling approach to marital relationships, looking for an excuse to make her husband jealous, this jealousy used to spice up a meaningless life ... marriage as a false remedy and real catalysis of perversity (indeed, since perversity literally means, to deviate from). And that's the meaning of these acts, deviating from the road of monotony. It's not about sex but about feeling alive through desire, desire as a desire to be desired.
Felling alive through the desire to be desired? Why? Is that because it's so normal to be desired by a husband that the feeling of love becomes artificial, does it feel like belonging to a world with no room for passion, for heart, for life. A fake world. A dreamy world, like sleeping and waiting for the awakening. Like a lucid dream with no awakening, is that Alice and Bill's nightmare ? Is that marriage ? a mutual lucid nightmare ? Bill lives in the illusion of happiness when Alice lives in the pursuit of an adulterous desire. But Bill is too intelligent not to realize the sadness of his condition and Alice too in love, not to admit the futility of her quest. They need each other, because Bill has no alternative and neither has Alice. Hence the lucid nightmare, and the only way to wake up is honesty ... or an extraordinarily scary journey into the "other world".
Yes, the turning point is Bill's sexual "adventure" during the film, discovering sex outside the marriage, like an odyssey into the underground, the world of illegitimate sex, through an investigation consumed by a jealous flame lit by Alice. A world made of fantasy expressed during the most peculiar moments, a world of extreme decadence where sex sounds like sect ... from a philosophical commentary of the danger of marital routine, the movie turns into a fascinating thriller where things doesn't seem like the way they are, making us wondering what hides behind those creepy masks, those pagan psalms. A reminiscent of the paranoid feeling from "Rosemary's Baby" making us wondering if this is staged, or real, if its meaning is scary or if it is meant to be scary. The rituals we witness from Bill's point of view behind the thrills, highlight how we, humans, finally still need conventions even in the satisfaction of our lowest instincts, sex with a prostitute as a retributed service, sex as a fantasy hiding behind the curtain of reality, and sexual adult games so staged and sacred they become as institutional as marriage. Maybe we need to humanize our bestiality, to make it ridiculously human, not to feel like animals. Normal people go perverse to feel alive, and perverse people act conventionally to feel human, normality leads to perversity which fatally gets you back to normality. This is the whole vanity of perversity ...
And at the end, Bill realizes he didn't value his luck to be with Alice and Alice realizes that her thirst and desire of lust was just a burst of ego, that would have made things worse and scarier had they become reality. They were saved by their love for each other like Bill's faithfulness prevented him from sex with a prostitute that'll be revealed to have AIDS and Alice realizing through her fantasy that she indeed loved her husband, even if it was in a very sad way. How such a positive conclusion can be so sad? Maybe because the "other world" is even more dangerous and scary, and the illusory warm comfort of a castle made of bullshit stinks less than the reality of this bourgeois debauchery. Kidman sums it up quite well, when she expresses her disdain towards the "Forever" word, nothing is sure, let's just admit it, but not say it. Now, they feel normal but they must feel alive, by igniting the desire that was almost extinguished by those doubts and treacheries. They just need ... she uses the F word, probably less obscene and more sincere than "Forever"
Oh yes, I really didn't expect these last lines, but they couldn't be truer and more powerful, they perfectly fit the film, and I guess after "Don Corleone" these will be my most memorable concluding lines from a movie, I didn't expect such an optimistic, or let's say bittersweet ending ... all I can say is that the Maestro knows how to fit a music with the theme of a film. Optimism and sadness, fear and nostalgia, desire and passion, wisdom and realization ... beautifully embodied in the beautiful Waltz that made me cry at the end, with my eyes wide open, before shutting them and letting one tear running on my face, a tear to the memory of an immortal genius called ... Stanley Kubrick.