The previous installment of the Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) retrospective discusses “Lolita.”
After “Eyes Wide Shut” there would never be another Stanley Kubrick film. There would be no more controversy, no more staring madmen, and no more elegant long takes. The man who made “Dr Strangelove”, “2001”, and “Barry Lyndon” died just after the completion of his 13th feature film and his first since 1987’s “Full Metal Jacket.”
“The heir to no one and, unlike his contemporaries Bergman, Antonioni, or Godard, has no direct inheritor” was how Michel Ciment described Kubrick. The director’s reputation had grown to mythic proportions during his 12-year absence from our cinema screens. Countless stories, rumours and intrigues about Kubrick and his next project surfaced during this period. Even a conman, Alan Conway, could pose as the director without remotely looking like him because of Kubrick’s long hiatus from the media glare.
Toss in the A-List hand grenade of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, then Hollywood’s golden couple, a three-year shoot, and the promise of erotic subject matter – “Eyes Wide Shut” was never going to survive such intense critical scrutiny and come out of it completely intact. But we quickly forget how Kubrick always divided both audiences and critics alike. Ciment and Alexander Walker were largely biased in his favour but David Thomson called the film, “A travesty” and Kubrick a “ ’Master’ who always knew too much about film and too little about life.”
Now that the dust of hype has had time to settle over ten years, what can “Eyes Wide Shut” tell us about film and life? For one, the film is a testament to the power Kubrick still held in the business despite his advancing years and lengthy absence. Who else could have kept Cruise and Kidman on a film for the same amount of time? The Cruises’ rich and fabulous lives are up there on the screen, only slightly less rich and slightly less fabulous as New York socialites Mr. and Mrs. Dr. Bill Harford.
And what a life they lead; a stunning apartment, Manhattan’s elite as patients and invites to all the best parties. It’s hard to feel sorry for the privileged in “Eyes Wide Shut,” as their misfortunes seem to be all of their own making. We open with the Harfords barely noticing one another as they get ready a Christmas party hosted by Victor Ziegler, one of Bill’s clients. Shostakovich’s Waltz 2 plays in the background, joyful in comparison to the complacency that has set in their marriage, especially for Bill who compliments his wife’s hair without even looking at it.
As they step out of their palatial home, Bill abruptly turns off the music, the first indication that Kubrick is indulging in self-parody, an “Airplane” style spoof of his own movies, perhaps. Bill and Alice are soon surrounded by luxury at Ziegler’s party, the Overlook Hotel Ballroom transplanted to New York. Larry Smith’s golden cinematography shimmers over the great and good of Gotham society as both Harfords flirt independently of one another. However, Alice stops of her own accord, whereas Bill is rudely interrupted from his tryst with two model sirens.
Would Bill have cashed in on his chance at infidelity and does Alice regret not going through with hers? Kubrick keeps this deliberately ambiguous but a stoned revelation by Alice throws the cock-sure Bill a curve ball that he has trouble dealing with.
Kidman’s performance here is like Jack Nicholson’s in the “Shinning,” her disdain for her husband smeared all over her face as Bill becomes her Wendy, the force that wants to stifle her creativity and sexuality. “If you men only knew!” She lays seeds of doubt in Bill like ego-tripping mines, and hurls forth lines like “Why haven’t you been jealous of me?!” Bill has no reply and is literally saved by the bell, the daughter of a wealthy patient calling to let him know her father has died.
His Ivy League bravado shattered, Bill strops off into the night like a petty teenage boyfriend. With high insight, are we watching the collapse of Cruise and Kidman’s marriage right before our eyes? Has Kidman, like Alice, grown beyond her husband? In the back of a cab, Bill’s mind works overtime – imagining Alice cheating. Is his “Top Gun” fantasy a way of exorcising his guilt at what he could have done at the party, or is the Maverick look-alike having sex with his wife a fabricated excuse for his odyssey of sexual misadventures to come?
Kubrick delights in leading the superstar by his nose through a dreamlike New York where everyone he encounters comes on to him. It’s almost as if Bill went to sleep in front of the television showing a Kubrick retrospective that in turn invades his dreams and then his reality. The daughter of his dead patient confesses her love for him beside the bed from “2001,” a prostitute picks him up on the street from “Killer’s Kiss” and takes him back to Lolita’s adult room. The Rainbow fancy dress shop houses costumes from other Kubrick movies, as well as the possibility of paedophilia, as in “Lolita.”
Through a friend, the piano player Nick Nightingale, himself visible in a “Shinning”-like photograph, Bill gatecrashes a preposterous orgy. Passwords and secrecy abound like a million dollar M25 rave in the 80’s and his late night journey through the country is straight out of “A Clockwork Orange.” The orgy itself is both explicit and a turn off, the brothels from “Barry Lyndon” modernized.
Here the movie takes on the appearance of a noir thriller with Bill entwined in a possible murder conspiracy. He is clearly out of his depth, just as many criticised Cruise as being too much of an artistic lightweight to work with Kubrick. This is unfair, as Cruise is unique amongst his peers, having worked with almost every top director in modern cinema. Kubrick teases Bill throughout, making him repeat everyone else’s lines, the logical conclusion to Kubrick’s measured dialogue that rarely overlapped throughout all of his movies.
Kubrick’s love of a symmetrical narrative is once again used in the second half of the film as Bill flashes his medical pass as if it were a police badge when he is plunged deeper into danger. He revisits the scenes of his near misdeeds and we are reminded of past Kubrickian moments as if the director knew this was to be his last film. Cruise’s Bill is most like Ryan O’Neal’s Barry Lyndon, trying to climb into higher society, but snubbed at every turn by the New York Elite. Bill has money but not that kind of money.
Bill eventually makes it home and confesses his near misses with infidelity on seeing a mask he used at the orgy laying guiltily beside Alice. Although absent from large sections of the film, Alice dominates every scene. Her hold over Bill grows steadily more powerful as the film progresses. She sews the original doubt in him, invades his subconscious, and may even be involved with the conspiracy behind the orgy.
Alice, now in control of their marriage says, “I think whether real or only a dream we should be grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures.” “Eyes Wide Shut” may need another ten years to fully mature, but Alice’s line is a fitting epitaph for the director who was most adept at blending myth and reality, Stanley Kubrick.
This concludes our retrospective. Thanks for reading and – in honour of Stanley Kubrick – stay weird.