A stunning swansong

Rating: 8/10 (23 February 2003)

Stanley Kubrick, the director of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange," returns to the screen after a twelve-year absence with a stunning tour-de-force. Sadly, this film will also serve as his swansong. He died last March soon after completing this film.
In "Eyes Wide Shut" Tom Cruise plays William Harford, a doctor who embarks on a dark sexual odyssey after his wife, whom he considered absolutely and routinely faithful, confesses she once contemplated having an affair with a naval officer she only glimpsed across a hotel lobby. This confession comes after an upscale party where they both found themselves in the hands of lustful but unsuccessful seducers. His faith shaken, Cruise examines his own lusts. After an unconsummated dalliance with a Greenwich Village prostitute, he eventually finds himself in an ominous mansion where wealthy masked participants indulge in dark ritual, orgastic sex, and perhaps even murder. But in a world where faithfulness is revealed to be little more than an illusion, can evil be any more substantive?
Cruise, who built a highly-successful career playing brash but insecure boy-men in search of absent father-figures, plays Harford with the frightened smile of a man desperately trying to hide just how completely out of his depth he has fallen. With "Eyes Wide Shut," Cruise builds upon the strengths he exhibited in his previous film "Jerry Macguire" for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Perhaps the presence of his real life wife (and soon to be ex-wife) Nicole Kidman in the role of his screen wife gave him the ability to reach deeper into himself than before. However, regardless of the true boundary of fact and fiction, this intimate on-screen pairing gives the film a strange voyeuristic quality. Kidman herself gives an excellent performance and infuses her many nude scenes with a relaxed, almost banal, naturalness.
The film is based upon the 1926 novel "Traumnovelle" by Arthur Schnitzler. Kubrick transports the characters from the decadent Vienna of the 1920's to the decadent Manhattan of today which Kubrick recreated in his adopted hometown of London. The illusion is not entirely convincing. However, rather than detracting from the film, the minute oddities and inconsistencies only add to the sense of unreality as Cruise falls from the safe world he once took for granted.
Kubrick lets the story unfold slowly. His traditionally languid pace comes as a welcome relief to the cut crazy films of our post-MTV era. Lingering master shots allow viewers with an attention span of over five seconds to sink into this opulent world beautifully photographed by Larry Smith. The film is long, but never boring. The story resolutely defies expectations. Every time you think have it figured out, it takes an unexpected, and sometimes inexplicable, turn. It moves from domestic drama to sexual obsession to murder mystery and back with ease. Nor does he offer easy solutions. He leaves the final interpretation of the events in the hands of the viewer.
Kubrick has been rightly accused of being a cold, cerebral filmmaker. This approach was justified in the past by his recurring theme of dehumanization. Astronaut Keir Dullea evolved into a post-human entity in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Malcolm MacDowell, a futuristic sociopath, found his brutal inhumanity restored to him in the ironic ending of "A Clockwork Orange." Jack Nicholson and Matthew Modine both devolve into killing machines in "The Shining" and "Full Metal Jacket," respectively. "Eyes Wide Shut" stands in a sharp contrast to those earlier films. While Tom Cruise certainly loses his innocence and his comforting sense of security, it could be argued that the film ends with him being more fully human than ever before.
Kubrick was a throwback to an earlier time when the movie-going public expected enlightenment from important filmmakers. While that remained an impossible expectation, "Eyes Wide Shut" proves that until the very end Kubrick was at least asking the right questions.