Great effort wasted on bad story

Rating: 4/10 (18 July 1999)

Stanley Kubrick once said of making a good film, "if you have good actors and a good story it almost doesn't matter how you put the thing together." In case you ever wanted to know what kind of film you might get if you happen to have good actors and a bad story we now have an answer. It's called Eyes Wide Shut.
More than any other director Kubrick was always able to sniff out a great story. Often the stories he chose to make became emblems for an entire a generation: witness such works as 2001, Dr Strangelove, or a Clockwork Orange. One can only wonder then what on Earth was he thinking when he decided to make this film. For the story premise of Eyes Wide Shut is singularly awful.
The movie revolves around the psychological and emotional tailspin Tom Cruise's character is thrown into when his wife (Nicole Kidman) confesses a sexual fantasy she once had for a sailor. A fantasy, I might add, she never acted upon. It is the imagined picture of his wife being humped by an unknown sailor that is, if you'll pardon the pun, the driving narrative force, propelling Cruise, as a New York doctor, on a journey to lift the lid on the many dimensions of his own repressed sexual desires - necrophilia, and so on.
Now to start with, what's absolutely unconvincing is this film's very premise - that his wife's confession could throw Tom into such turmoil. I'm sorry I just don't buy it. And each time the film cuts again, and again to the black and white image of the Kidman/sailor imagined humpfest the more unconvincing the premise gets. Then, what's even worse is the sexual/psychological journey Tom end ups actually traveling - from heart of gold prostitute, to nutty costume shop owner, to masked orgy. It's simultaneously so trite and so bizarre as to be laughable. Which is really too bad because much of the rest of the film is pretty good. I mean, Kubrick certainly knows how to make a movie. Technically the film is a pleasure to watch. The camera movements, the sets, the lighting, even the acting is marvelous. And some scenes in and of themselves are great. There's a wonderful bit between Cruise and a gay hotel clerk. And another one between Cruise and a grieving woman which borders on David Lynch. As the woman sits next to her father's corpse, and Cruise tries to comfort her, she suddenly confess her love (and lust) and begins to shove her tongue down Tom's throat. It's all really quite funny.
There is some good stuff here. It's just too bad it's all held together by such a miserable and unconvincing premise.