An enigma which demands your 'eyes wide open!'

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2001)

Having read the greater majority of the 1050 user-comments listed here, at least, the fifty odd that were WORTH reading, I feel constrained to add my own; perceptive, witty and appropriate as they are! I believe that Kubrick unequivocably was the ultimate directoral sensai. His unique brilliance shone like a red giant amongst a galaxy of variously and indifferently talented movie front-men. EYES WHITE SHUT is Stanley Kubrick's own personal black hole. Not only can no light escape from it, it totally collapsed under its own seriously weakened infrastructure. More than anything, I had wanted to immerse myself one last time in the work of an artiste, a man whose depth of vision and interpretation of life's everyday abnormalities, brought to the screen towering ambiguity and unending scope for discussion.
Despite those who obviously see what they WANT to see in this two and a half hour ad for ribbed condoms, there remains for me just one question. What happened? did I miss the fat lady somewhere?
Kubrick took the final print to Hollywood just one week before his death on March 8th 1999 in Hertfordshire England. The ultimately reclusive movie maestro had been working on the movie's post-production since filming wrapped early in 1998 after 71 weeks in production, having commenced December 1996, thus making this the longest film-shoot in history.
In line with Kubrick's reluctance to travel - especially by air, the production team recreated the Manhattan street scenes on-set in London. The story itself is based on the Arthur Schnitzler novella entitled "Traumnovelle" (Dream Story). Budget for the film allegedly topped $120 million, though HOW u would wonder, but a fraction of that is visible on screen. From concept to completion EYES WIDE SHUT occupied pretty much the last decade of Kubrick's life! Many believe that the movie reveals a humanitarian side to the master film-maker that was absent from his real-time personna. Blended surrealism and sexual liberation that could only come to the screen by way of Kubrickvision.
What DID happen to Cruise at the masked orgy? (Who cares? I hear many whisper furtively!) All this and less is revealed in the ensuing well photographed confusion. This however is the core of the mystery and perhaps the beginning of another. An elusive note perhaps on which to bow out.
Infinitely more interesting than the movie itself are the reasons behind Kubrick making it. Not a solitary reviewer appears to have questioned this aspect of the film. Although little more now than supposition, the death of his second wife Ruth at her own hand in 1968 left Kubrick with a profound guilt-complex, he having accused her of having an affair some months earlier. Later he took refuge in his self-enforced isolation, consoled in part by his inherent distrust of humanity. It was Ruth herself who proposed he should read "Traumnovelle" It is easy then to view EYES WIDE SHUT as the self-flagellation he felt he so richly deserved. Sexually, Kubrick once confided to an associate that he privately fantasised about having relations with unknown young actresses, although at the time he was clearly smitten (like so many others) with the young Julie Christie. Here was a man mortally afraid of the rejection he felt would inevitably set-in, if a man should lose control of the relationship itself.
Whatever the underlying motives, EYES WIDE SHUT though bearing all the hallmarks of the Kubrick directoral DNA, it remains a flawed work. One problem being that Kidman, perhaps entitled to be referred to as 'elegant' while dressed, is surely something less than hot-stuff in the raw. (Just MY opinion, but there again, I thought Tinkerbell had it pretty much all together in the body department!) Either way, Kidman's sterility-inducing opening scenes on the toilet were quite frankly not the aperitif most connoisseurs were hoping for.
Try as one might, to WANT to admire this work, it is lean-pickings at best and far from a fitting epitaph to a very great man.