Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Maria Richardson
Have I Seen it Before: Yeah. I was probably in my twenties or even younger, and I felt like how I felt about a lot of Kubrick films on first viewing. I just didn’t get it. I would be a little leery of any teenager or person in their twenties why got anything out of this film other than nudity up to and including Kidman.
I was compelled to come back to the film when my festival screener duties* drifted into an inexplicable new adaptation of Schnitzler’s original novel. All it did was want me to re-visit the Kubrick of it all.
Did I Like It: It’s immaculately made—naturally—and that’s all the more mystifying when one thinks that Kubrick couldn’t possible have been in the best of health when the entire production was going through the Sisyphean task of a year-plus shoot. It’s frank and unblinking in the things it depicts, with several moments legitimately feeling like we got a peak into Cruise and Kidman’s marriage. I can only imagine what putting those moments—both banal and intense—on display did to them.
But we can talk about the sex—also both banal and intense—in the film for days, but it is only a surface reading. The sex is incidental. I’m struck in this viewing by the dynamic between Harford (Cruise) and his old medical school chum Nick Nightingale (Todd Field). You might have one read from their scenes together, but Eyes Wide Shut isn’t about those surface readings. I tend to think that if Bill hadn’t met someone at that party who rejected everything he himself had done to have a comfortable, stable life, he probably wouldn’t have gotten in nearly as much trouble as he did.
You might think I’m reading the movie wrong. I’m not, but then again it’s very hard to read a Kubrick film entirely wrong.
*No, I’m not saying which festival. You just keep submitting.