A delightfully weird, poignant piece of satire on twisted morals

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2019)

Critical disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut was unanimous, and the complaint was always the same: it isn't not sexy, it debases human relations. Reviewers sounded like gymnasium practitioners who had gotten out of the theater three hours later feeling horny, frustrated, and fooled: Kubrick was old, out of key with his time. The movie's sexual mores and taboos, extracted straightly from Arthur Schnitzler's fin-de-siecle Viennese Dream Play - jealousy over fantasies played out, guilt-ridden visits to prostitutes, tense discussions of HIV tests that echoed the old terror of syphilis - seemed apparently timid and naif by 1999 standards .
By 2019 , however, the ongoing backlash against the film is blamed on its cynical, miscalculated ad campaign.
Really? The movie's title told us that we were not to really see what we were staring at. In other words, Eyes Wide Shut was neither about sex nor porn. Its real obscenity was in the depiction of the shameless wealth of playful Manhattan, and its effect on society and the human soul. In fact, Kubrick once said he wanted to make a film about doctors because "everyone hates doctors." The Harfords do not, like typical Hollywood villains, speak with a foreign accent: they are "nice" people - attractive and well-educated, - a couple who collect art and listen to erudite music. The author's point was, evil among the elite is often a question of ignorance, passivity & blindness rather than of cruel alienation. Stanley Kubrick only emphasized - once again in his unique oeuvre - that culture and erudition may have little to do with goodness or depth of character.