Do you like scary movies?

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 1999)

Perhaps his best, undeniably his bleakest, Eyes Wide Shut provides us with the most depraved view of the human condition we've bore witness to in a Kubrick film.
Beyond the engaging storyline, lush cinematography and flawless performances, Kubrick's view of human depravity manifests itself not on the fields (or training grounds) of war, nor in government facilities, nor in space, but in the apartments and homes of New York's millionaires, billionaires and prostitutes. In this veritable horror film, there are neither characters who find redemption nor those who escape their own predicaments unpunished.
Sidney Pollack, whose drooglike visage hovering over the unconscious prostitute during an overdose, a foreshadowing of some real nastiness, shows us that wealth and evil do compliment each other quite nicely. A woman who lunges at Cruise's Dr. Harford exclaiming "I love you!" while her father's corpse lies behind them and her fiancee enters the apartment, pales in comparison to the likeable prostitute who contracts HIV.
Beyond its devastating cinematography and score, (I can only imagine the number of takes for this one) the masked-ball orgy sequence provides us with a new and undeniably disturbing understanding of the relationship between sex and power and violence. Only in a world constructed by Kubrick could such scenery serve as backdrop to the doomed marriage reduced to one convincingly uttered word by Mrs. Kidman in the toy store during the final scene. Someone mentioned a bleakness comparable to Bergman's Wild Strawberries. I think this is worse. And better.