A deep, beautiful movie. Classic Kubrick.

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 1999)

WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN EYES WIDE SHUT
I'll start off by saying that "Eyes Wide Shut"(EWS) is a Stanely Kubrick movie. If you have not seen one of his films before do not start with this one as it is a very strange movie as compared to today's short attention span theater. Now that I have cleared that I can begin.

Where do you begin to talk about a movie that includes necrophilia, sex cults and orgies, prostitution, pedophilia and infidelity? I guess what I want to do is spoil the surprise and say that there is no infidelity.

The most interesting thing about Kubrick's final film is through all the hoopla over the sex people missed the fact that the story revolves around two people who care for each other. Alice admitting to Bill that she has sexual fantasies, not involving him, was a blow to his ego(As it would be to most men). He gets called away and gets involved in several sexual encounters. A lot of which parallel some of Alice's fantasies. He never strays from Alice and in the end, when he does go back to the prostitute, he gets "slapped" with with a helping dose of reality. Totally blown back by the fact that she is a victim of HIV. The movie is masked (as the people at the sex cult) in this "big sex flick" stereotype and that in itself is a joke by Kubrick. Nearly everyone went to see a "sex flick" and came out bewildered because it was not. It teases you(purposely) with taboos but the truth behind it is the relationship between Bill and Alice and a deep look into Bill's sense of his marriage and how that is rearranged and at the same time strengthened.
Kubrick is a master film maker but unfortunately, like a Picasso or a Poe his work is greatly misunderstood, even worse today where people are making Will Smith a millionaire because he can spew cheesy one liners in front of digital bugs all the mean time while some one decides that the faster the cut and the more funky angles you have the "cooler" the movie is. One amazing thing about Kubrick which today's people often talk about is that Kubrick is one of the few artists(Listening Lucas) that actually "kept it real," never straying from his vision and his own sense of style. In this modern era, where movies borrowed styles from MTv videos (Progress?) I welcome EWS with open arms.