Made Twenty Years Too Late

Rating: 5/10 (19 April 2001)

"Eyes Wide Shut" might have been considered director Stanley Kubrick's most controversial masterpiece . . . if he'd filmed it in the early 1980's, as he originally intended. While artistically and visually brilliant, "Eyes Wide Shut" suffers from relying on a script that would've been considered daring and shocking in years gone by, but for 1999 and beyond it offers nothing particularly outrageous. With little substance behind the intended shock, the film is left with little else to entertain the audience. It's kind of like watching "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" or even "Basic Instinct" today -- at the time those films were released, they pushed a lot of emotional buttons, but now the issues and topics they dealt with seems rather tame.

The film deals with the relationship between Dr. William Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), a wealthy, happily married couple with a small, lovely daughter (Madison Eginton). However, in an awkward moment Alice confesses to William that she considered cheating on him early on in their marriage. She never actually acting on her adulterous thoughts, but William becomes so enraged that he goes out alone into the night, contemplating the future of his marriage and looking for a random sexual encounter with which he can gain a certain amount of revenge.
And that's it. There's a lot of scenes (some imagined, some real) of kinky sexual encounters, but nothing incredibly over the top, nothing that hasn't been seen in mainstream films before. William's reaction to his wife's confession seems entirely too strong. No, I don't think that any man ever wants to hear from his wife that she thought about having an affair with somebody else, but to react as strongly as he did seemed slightly odd. If she'd actually had the affair, it might've made more sense. Scenes that could've been built into dark, brooding, tormented sequences of William agonizing over what to do often seem pointless because of this . . . and over two hours' worth of them is mind-numbingly boring overkill.
There's still a few highlights -- Cruise puts in a solid performance, considering the material he has to work with, and Kidman actually shines in what really is a supporting role as Alice. Also, the mood, the camera angles, the odd lighting -- in terms of technique, the film ranks as one of Kubrick's finest efforts. Considering all the hype that went along with this film, though, it's very disappointing, and even on its own merits, it's average at best. Decent fare for a Kubrick fan, but otherwise, don't bother. C-