Fidelio

Rating: 10/10 (18 January 2018)

It was Stanley Kubrick's final film.. and what a film it was. The Kubrick filmography after 2001: A Space Odyssey was big budgeted, highly conceived and highly anticipated event pictures. Eyes Wide Shut was given none of the pomp and circumstance in it's marketing campaign and neither was there any in the production phase. If anything, Eyes Wide Shut is a bookend to Kubrick's beautiful cinematic journey. It's a throwback, in many aspects, to the Film Noir wave of the 1950's, of which Kubrick made his name being apart of. In the genres of romance, mystery and suspense, Eyes Wide Shut remains to be one of the greatest films of it's kind ever made.
But why? Simply, it's about the minimalism. It's actors are tabloid hollywood caliber, it's sets and locations are based in the everyday and yet Eyes Wide Shut is hauntingly extraordinary. In short, it's dreamlike. The way Kubrick tackles sexual paranoia cuts to core of what every man and woman fears when they are in a monogamous relationship. Kubrick illustrates these fears through the metaphor of the sex cult that Tom Cruise's character visits. Of course, that scene has become famous in it's grandiose imagination and unforgettable mis-en-scene. But the sex cult was never intended to be taken at face value. In fact, many viewers mistakenly assumed that that was what the entire film was centered on. In reality, the cult was just one of the many sexual tests that Cruise is forced to take.
Cruise, over the course of the picture is put though a gauntlet of sexual temptation. For instance, visiting the house of the NYC prostitute, or the scene of the emotionally wrought, sexually starving widow of a dead patient. One of the most striking tests for me was the scene in which Cruise buys the costume from Rainbow Fashions, only to discover that the owner has a nymphomaniac of a daughter who he catches with a duo of Asian businessmen. She looks on at Cruise, with a flirtatious grin, telling him without saying a word, that he can have her anytime he wants. Kubrick explores sexual temptations from the covert to the overt and psychotically, the audience is challenged as well. How much would you get away with without your wife or husband knowing? On top of that, Kubrick asks an even scarier question. Are monogamous relationships a sham? Are we all just sexual creatures waiting for the next person to mate with? Nicole Kidman's monologue on her desire to cheat on her own husband is forever chilling. Kubrick, by no uncertain terms wants us to know that women can be just as sexually repressed, and potentially, just as unfaithful if they ever wanted to be.
I'll never forget the experience of watching Eyes Wide Shut, and neither will anyone else who watches it. It's the definitive swan song of the career of a man changed cinema as we knew it.