Kubrick's Last Flip-off, or Just a Bad Art Film?

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 2001)

I must begin my analysis of the great Stanley Kubrick's last film by describing my personal experience with "Eyes Wide Shut." That experience can best be described like this; "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......"
Admittedly, "EWS" does have that fascinating Kubrick look on occasion. But the visuals are absolutely the only interesting part about it. If this movie had not been shot by Kubrick, recalling set and lighting design from many of his previous films, it would be no better than any other immature flick foisted on us by yet another self-important first time art film director whose movie dies a quick late-night death on the Independent Film Channel. Except longer. This is a two hour and forty minute movie in which about fifty minutes worth of stuff happens.
The film has been called "deliberately paced" and that it is. And there's nothing wrong with that, if the film in question eventually takes you someplace. take Jim Jarmusch's movies, for instance--they're slow, but there are surprises along the way you couldn't see coming. With "EWS" Kubrick and his co-scriptor give us long, drawn-out dialogue sequences that end up concluding just as we knew they would when they started--with no surprises in-between!
The plot, such as it is, and without revealing any of the surprises, such as they are, is simply this: A rich New York psychologist and his wife (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) have a fight after a party in which she accuses him of flirting. When he laughs off her pot-inspired accusations, she tells him a story of a time when she really wanted to be unfaithful--not a time when she actually was, mind you, just a time she thought about it (and if Kidman weren't dressed in flimsy lingerie during the scene, it would have no interest at all--as it is, it's a dirty old man's mild wet dream). Cruise deals with his wife's shattering non-revelation by wandering the city at night, tentatively attempting to hunt up some stray bootie.

As plot, only two sequences hold any surprises or interest. One involves Leelee Sobeskie in her underwear--I won't spoil it. The other is he famous setpiece which takes place at a super-secret party where everyone wears druid robes and "Amadeus" masks while they watch people screw (this is the scene which was infamously toned down with digitally superimposed figures covering up the simulated sex acts).
Neither sequence can save the film from its dull, ponderous pretend pretensions, however. In fact, the notorious sex society sequence is little more than laughable.
Wow--a sex club in the Big Apple? My god!!! What imagination! Let's get real: the only thing unusual about this place, pomp and circumstance aside, is that it's secret! In reality, this "club" would be running ads in the tabloids like the rest of the live sex dives! Perhaps if the movie had been set back in the 50's or before, the deadly seriousness of the secret sex society would have made sense.

If all of the dead spots in "EWS" were removed, the entire movie could have been boiled down to a typical late-night skin flick on Cinemax (it makes as much sense).
Considering the occasional beauty of its cinematography and the dead zone created by its narrative, "Eyes Wide Shut" would have been much more successful as a dirty coffee table book.