Eyes Wide Shut [Blu-ray] [1999] [US Import]

Much of the best of what is here is to be found in occasional moments of stillness--Cruise walking through a morgue--or wild comedy--Cruise's attempt to hire a costume in the middle of the night interrupts major shenanigans at the fancy-dress shop. Cruise and Kidman do what they can with material that never means as much as it aspires to, and the standout performance is Sydney Pollack's, as a worldly wise client.

On the DVD: Eyes Wide Shut on DVD is presented in lavish Dolby Sound that makes the most of the obsessive Ligeti piano piece and Shostakovich waltz that dominate the score, and in the 1.33:1 ratio that was Kubrick's considered choice. It has subtitles in English, Arabic, Bulgarian and Rumanian, two TV spots and informative interviews with Kidman and Cruise, as well as with Steven Spielberg, to whom Kubrick had talked at length about his artistic intentions. --Roz Kaveney

I came to this film for Nicole Kidman, just as many probably came to it for Cruise. It's really a Tom Cruise feature, I have to say, with Kidman scoring a lot less screen time than I expected. Now, I love Nicole Kidman, and I was mesmerized by this entire movie, but I don't think this was one of Kidman's better performances. Maybe it's just the fact that racy language coming out of her mouth just doesn't sit right with me, but I was definitely uncomfortable watching Kidman work her way through the more emotional scenes (which seemed a little overdramatic). Cruise, for his part, is great, and the whole supporting cast (including Leelee Sobieski in a small but scintillating role) is excellent.

Bill and Alice Harford have a complex relationship. Following a strange party which finds them each flirting with other people, Alice starts a discussion that ends with her recounting her fantasies about another man. Bill, who sits there with a blank look on his face throughout the uncomfortable scene, then gets called away to the home of a patient who has just died. As you might expect, images of his wife with another man just keep running through his mind, and the unexpected advances of his dead patient's daughter sort of tip his precarious grip on reality a little too close to the edge. Opportunity begins to become temptation, and he moves ever closer to infidelity. Just when you think you have the movie figured out, though, it runs off like the Road Runner escaping the grasping hands of Wile E. Coyote. Bill finds his way to an exclusive, secretive party of costumed men and women doing things that are far removed from the morality of the everyday world. The whole scene is just amazingly surreal and weird - yet certainly exciting and stimulating. The things Bill witnesses at this party set the stage for the rest of the film. This is as much as I want to say about the plot, but I must emphasize just how multi-layered the story is. It's a brilliantly complicated film that touches all sorts of emotional buttons.

In the end, Eyes Wide Shut is a movie about relationships, particularly marriage, with infidelity and jealousy standing as the touchstones of Kubrick's elaborate exploration of the most intense and vulnerable of emotions. People wear all sorts of emotional masks, they indulge in fantasies and sometimes give in to temptation, and Eyes Wide Shut plays extremely well on these themes. Kubrick really weaves all sorts of disparate elements together in the most mesmerizing of ways. I can certainly understand why some people just don't like the movie at all, though. Daring, complex, surreal, intellectual, visionary motion pictures usually divide critics and viewers, inspiring either love or hate. I can barely begin to do the movie justice here, but I personally feel that this is a brilliant motion picture that will garner more and more critical acclaim over time.


Misunderstood masterpiece   September 10, 2002
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Many critics of this movie complain that it never truly makes a point. After my first viewing, I didn't quite know what to think, other than I had just seen a visual masterpiece where a brilliant filmmaker squeezed every last drop of acting out of several incredibly talented actors. Nicole Kidman proves that she is certainly one of the best around, and Tom Cruise didn't miss once in his portrayal of Dr. Bill. I've seen many negative reviews about Tom Cruise's acting, but I think they are really complaints about Dr. Bill, who often has less depth than a kiddie pool as he alternates between pitiful, dense, and occassionally unlikeable, which is perhaps not what people expected or wanted from Dr. Bill or Cruise. The Dr. Bill you see on screen is entirely necessary to making you believe that he could consciously make so many pathetic choices, one after another, before beginning to realize his own ineptitude, which makes it impossible for me to swallow that any portion of his portrayal was not completely deliberate.

After several subsequent viewings, it became clear to me that this movie is much like life itself: vague, ambiguous, and chock full of important messages buried within an often confusing barrage of distraction. It would be fairly boring (and perhaps even sensory overload) if this movie had the equivalent of blinking neon signs explaining every important message, and the subdued manner of relaying them suits the movie, and its director, perfectly. Kubrick wonderfully balances startling revelation with seemingly intentional wandering that allows the viewer to ponder what they've just witnessed, and the messages are so skillfully woven in the space between that it's no surprise many people don't recognize them.

It would be impossible to spell out many of these messages without completely dissecting the movie and taking away the wonder of discovery you will feel when you see them for yourself. It's also highly likely that you will find others I did not.

It is basically a story about a man who smugly believes that he has life figured out and under control, progressive to a point and seemingly perfect. When that shimmering illusion is torn away by a mind-numbing revelation from his wife, his perfect world spirals out of control. His need to get back at her puts him in a series of bizarre and increasingly dangerous situations until he becomes lost in a world where he doesn't understand anything, bumbling through choice after choice in an attempt to return to his flawed life, which doesn't seem all that bad after all.

If you are not a person who can watch movies more than once, then this movie is not for you, but if you have the time and the inclination, it is well worth it.


Exquisite visual journey into one man's sexual subconscious   March 10, 2000
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Twenty years from now "Eyes Wide Shut" will be just as alive, brilliant, unsettling and confounding as it was when it first released in 1999.

Because the mark of a great film is one from which newly-found appreciation and interpretation can be gleaned in subsequent viewings, "Eyes Wide Shut" is a great film that works on numerous complex psychological levels. Narrative structure is invisible. Music, dialogue and visual spectacle predominate and are symbolic of deeper meaning. The viewer enters the world of Stanley Kubrick, a world where reality as known to the filmgoing audience is non-existent -- non-existent even within the audience's own common understanding of suspension of disbelief in movies.

The Kubrick world is distant, cold, mechanical and disturbing. Kubrick's Manhattan (filmed in the UK) has a opposite pace to the New York most know or hear of -- Kubrick's Big Apple is very slow -- and disorienting to the audience, to the point of creating in the viewer the same feeling of alienation and discomfort that Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) has in his nocturnal adventures.

When Harford is unable to control his circumstances or grasp meaning in several of the bizarre events he witnesses, his psychological fibre is challenged. And so is the audience's. "Eyes Wide Shut" is a beautiful vision for adults. Sometimes the macabre themes in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" are present here. Other times, the delusions and mysteries in David Fincher's "The Game" -- particularly that repetitive singular piano note.

But at all times the look, feel and haunting atmosphere of this film is Kubrick, Kubrick, Kubrick. One of the interesting aspects of "Eyes Wide Shut" is that its big-name actors (Cruise and to a lesser extent Nicole Kidman) look so much unlike themselves from other films. From Cruise and Kidman's vacant expressions, we seem to understand that in "Eyes Wide Shut" we are in an altogether different human universe.

Watching this film again and again on DVD where the elements that made it so powerfully great in the cinema (its excellent colours, music and lighting are enhanced tenfold) will be a treat and a refreshing analytical pleasure. "Eyes Wide Shut" is a colourful visual puzzle that provokes viewer thought and solution the more it is watched. In the strangest sense, it's a cinematic equivalent of the ol' Rubic's Cube. "Eyes Wide Shut" is Kubrick's Cube -- a spellbinding mystery with many questions, answers and dozens of ways to get to the end of its rainbow -- and you will be confused, frustrated, enlightened, satisfied or thrilled with the conclusion (or solution) that you reach.


Confound your expectations   March 18, 2002
 15 out of 19 found this review helpful

Generally, this film has inspired more verbiage than most. Like any great artist, it seems Kubrick never saw the point of saying the same old thing in the same tired way, so each of his films is in some part an exploration. For me, this seems like a remarkably simple plot of sexual jealousy and fantasy that any long term couple can identify with. Indeed, I would suspect that many of the negative comments come from profoundly single young men, perhaps hoping for a little more obvious sleaze. Nevermind. The challenge facing any film maker tackling the obsessive psychology of eroticism and power is how to produce a creation that extends beyond hormonal gratification.
The character of Dr. Bill (Cruise) reminds me a lot of Marcello from La Dolce Vita in his frustrated search for an emotional and sexual framework that can justify both his tenuous social position and his relationship with his wife (Kidman). Compared to many, Dr. Bill is highly successful, and yet he can only glimpse a world of real power and excess. As his wife merrily acknowledges her fantasies, Dr Bill is steadily drawn towards his own.

For me, this is not only one of Kubrick's greatest achievements, but also one of the finest films ever made. Most of Kubrick's films were trashed by critics on release, only to be revered years later as masterpieces and the magnificent sexual content of this film makes it even more difficult for a critic to jump off the bandwagon. Fortunately, this is not your problem.