A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Eyes Wide Shut

Date Viewed: 7/24/99

Details:

Tom Cruise

Nicole Kidman

Sydney Pollack

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Score: +

The Review: Kubrick's last film. Paranoid attempts at plot sequestration. A minimal but star quality cast. Such was the advance information.

At the surface, Eyes Wide Shut is a three-day character study of a marriage: Tom Cruise as a successful and charismatic doctor, Nicole Kidman as a wife between jobs, a stable and apparently happy marriage of nine years, and a young daughter of seven. They are presented on the edge of high society in the days immediately prior to Christmas. But these are three very long days, as Cruise wanders through NYC and the suburbs in a daze, fretting about his wife's recently revealed fantasy and dreams, while catalyzing and experiencing such incredible events that, to anyone else, might be prime dream archetypes. The separation of dream and reality is never in question, but the future of their marriage is.

Under the surface? I won't presume too much. Well-crafted as both a psychological thriller and a mystery -- I found the mystery aspect more interesting, personally -- it is also highly erotic and sexually charged. There is a lot of skin visible, and at frequencies that make some of it seem gratuitous. Or perhaps it is intended simply to provide ample evidence of the desirability of the women involved, including Kidman. If so, it certainly succeeds. The dialog starts out seeming to be even more banal than that in 2001, but this improves as things progress. The language is a bit raw in some places, being used more as weapon than as communication. For me, this was the most jarring aspect of the film, but perhaps this was influenced more by the cross-section of my shared viewing audience than by the sheer shock of the words. This is not a film to which you take your grandmother.

Some of the cinematography reminds me of Barry Lyndon -- filming with low and available light, generating occasionally grainy images and joltingly odd colors. Consequently, for a 4am bedroom scene, the external light is almost glaring.

The pacing seems incredibly slow in some places; perhaps intended as dramatic tension, it doesn't always work. There's a lot of time for the characters to ardently and silently emote. And some of this does work -- as with the tight close-ups on the faces of several of the women Cruise encounters, with nuances of light, shadow and muscle making it quite clear that waves of conflicting emotions are crossing to and fro (this sounds grotesque in verbal description, but is quite effective as executed on-screen). But much of it falls short, or its opposite, actually: in particular, the scene in the morgue is much too long.

Music has been an important feature in most Kubrick films. Here it is a less-successful melange of familiar and obscure classical works coupled with contemporary jazz and pop. This mixture does not seem to work as well as it did either in 2001 or in The Shining. As the plot progresses, the music becomes progressively more atmospheric and spartan. Late in the film, the background solo piano themes are stark but effective, if a bit overloud. The mixing has obliterated some of the dialog in a few places. Overall, recommended.

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