Eyes Wide Shut

A wife, upset by her husband’s lack of jealousy, begins to flirt around and admit to having thoughts of adultery. Her husband, shaken by his wife’s forthrightness in this respect, spends the night wandering from one very odd sexually induced circumstance to another.

This film is not for everyone. It is a complex, overly symbolic, turtle-paced, dramatic sexual investigation, which features some great acting from Tom Cruise, a consistently intriguing eye from director Kubrick, a creepy score and plenty of beautifully photographed sequences. Did I fully understand the whole movie? Certainly not. Would I be willing to watch it again after discussing its complete potency with others? Certainly. But understand that if you are the type of viewer who likes a film’s meaning handed to you on a silver platter, certainly, this one ain’t for you. This film is basically a big-budget art-house flick starring the Cruises and directed by a legend in the field of movie creation. It’s also very nice to look at, with some solid acting, but much like many other art-house films, there is way too much that is left to interpretation, leaving you feeling somewhat hollow immediately after the film’s conclusion. The film’s message, much like any other piece of art, is left to be quite subjective, and certainly better understood after several viewings, or at least some coaching.

Having said that, I do believe that the film moved along at too slow a pace, with many coupled conversations seeming to go on far beyond their interest point. And this is all despite the fact that the subject matters at hand, jealousy and sex, struck a nerve with me. I personally would have appreciated a much deeper insight into their rooted interplay, as opposed to the larger emphasis paid to one very particularly strange scenario featuring a lot of naked people. I don’t think I’ve seen this many breasts parading around in a movie since the last porno that “a friend left at my house.” The film’s brighter points feature a superb presentation of sights and sounds through a grainy-gaze, plenty of joyous Christmas lights sprinkled all around, and a typically memorable score by the man named Kubrick (Despite its obvious use for dramatics at certain points.)

All in all, much like many of Mr. Kubrick’s other films, this is not the kind of movie that can be fully digested in one sitting. If you are the type of person who likes to decontruct puzzles, loves naked people and has a hard-on for either Tom Cruise or Stanley Kubrick, then check this one out, you might truly enjoy its uniqueness. If, on the other hand, you don’t like long, generally slow and esoteric films, featuring Nicole Kidman laughing way too much, then I suggest you skip out on this one altogether, and maybe check back into it in a couple of years. Who knows…your eyes might be willing to be much more wide open by then 🙂 (Sorry, but it’s been a long day, and that’s the only cheezy pun that I could come up with at this late hour…)

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian