has its moments, but overall a disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 1999)

I have had the pleasure of seeing every single Kubrick film on the big screen. While some were better than others, each one surprised with its unconventional storytelling, and usually with innovative visuals that stay with the viewer long after leaving the theater. Most Kubrick films are adapted from novels, but Kubrick felt quite free to vastly alter the original story for his own purposes. Films like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange use intriguing imagery to give physicality to books which have more to do with the workings of the protagonist's mind than his interaction with his surroundings.
How strange, then, that Kubrick would adapt Traumnovelle, a story that takes place almost completely inside the protagonist's head, and that the adaptation would be so literal...setting aside, of course, the fact that Eyes Wide Shut takes place a century later than the novel. Bill Hareford (Tom Cruise) is clearly growing more and more obsessed about both his wife's sexual fantasies and a world full of sexual practices foreign -and inexplicable- to him. And yet, excepting black and white hallucinations of his wife with another man, his obsession, his confusion, is mostly implied, his specific thoughts and theories mostly left for us to be guessed at. And that's irritating, not just because we as an audience want to understand the character we're watching, but also because Kubrick has such a reputation for inventive dialog and imagery that simultaneously entertains and advances the story, while also giving us insight into what the characters are thinking. Of course, very often, as in 2001 or Lolita or Full Metal Jacket, not much context is required to understand the thoughts and motivations of any given character: they are driven by lust, survival, fear. But its harder to tell what Bill Hareford is driven by. Why does he go to the costume party? In the novel, it's a way of dealing with his growing irritation that perhaps he isn't as suave and cosmopolitan as he thought. In the movie, it's less clear. In the hands of a master storyteller like Kubrick, ambiguity can be quite appropriate, but in this film there is too much of it, or it's in the wrong places, or something. All I can say now, less than twenty-four hours after viewing the film, that the placement of ambiguity often felt intuitively wrong to me.
The scenery is colorful and well-lit, the costumes are chic, the acting is good, and there are plenty of attractive naked women to look at, but with one notable exception - the already-famous costume party ordeal in the middle of the film - there is little here that is going to stick in my mind for very long. And...how...slow...Nicole...Kidman...talked....I...realize...it...was...on.. .purpose...but...it...got...old.
What was so great about these scenes that they had to be filmed over so many times? And the hubub about the sexiness of the film is really misplaced...there have been much bolder, sexier, more shocking movies, many of them with an R rating. I would have liked to see the unedited NC-17 cut, but I fear genitalia and graphic sex would regrettably not make the story any more interesting.