Beautiful fable

Rating: Null/10 (21 March 2004)

Eyes Wide Shut is a horribly underrated film for everyone involved in the film, particularly Kubrick. The film needs to be viewed as a gorgeously photographed fable, twice told. Twice told because the primary character played by Tom Cruise, goes on two journeys--one at night, one in the morning retracing those nightwalking steps. Twice told because the journey begins with Nicole Kidman's questions and ends with Sydney Pollack's answers. It's also a fable because of the beautiful, glowing surroundings, the surrealist characters (the costume shop owner and his daughter for example)whether masked or not,and the constantly hovering menace. The film features Kidman at her most luminous. It's also one of her first, best mature performances and can be seen as a precursor to her blossoming as an actress in The Hours and Cold Mountain. She has two particularly fine scenes, one at the beginning of the film where she wounds Cruise, and the final one in the department store, which ends the film with a tough, bitter kick. Cruise, too, is fine in a performance that is light years ahead of the phone-it-in commercial ones he usually gives. Sydney Pollack is simply extraordinary. There are some minor flaws, mostly in editing individual scenes for length, and had Kubrick lived long enough to do the final polish on the film it would be seen as a classic look at sex, trust and marriage. As it is now, it'll have to settle for near-classic.