When I first saw Eyes Wide Shut back in the good old days of VHS I wasn't impressed. Intellectual and emotional immaturity undoubtedly played their part: after all, what does a sexually-inexperienced 17-year-old with greasy hair and sweaty palms know about the intricacies of adult relationships? The opinionated, cocky little bastard that I was (some say this hasn't changed) didn't think Kubrick would waste his time on such trivial subject matter. This was the man who reduced nuclear armageddon to a grim joke and showed us mankind's destiny beyond the stars; Tom Cruise leering at a bunch of masked perverts indulging in a bit of slap and tickle was never going to compare. When Spielberg released his version of A.I. Artificial Intelligence in (appropriately enough) 2001, I wilfully deceived myself that that film was Kubrick's last work and promptly filed Eyes Wide Shut somewhere in the back of my mind alongside the other cinematic disappointments I'd rather forget.
A few years later I saw Robert Altman's wonderful A Prairie Home Companion at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester. I was puzzled by the lacklustre reviews in the British press, many of them lamenting that the great director's final film had jettisoned the acerbic wit and biting satire of M*A*S*H, Nashville and The Player in favour of mawkish sentiment. I dismissed this as truculent, ill-informed bullshit, but it got me thinking about Eyes Wide Shut again and the critical mauling that had received - not least of all from my teenage self. Unlike Prairie Home Companion, there was no indication Eyes Wide Shut would be Kubrick's last film; his unexpected death a few days after completing the edit, however, added an unenviable weight to the production. While some critics declared the film a fitting testament to a remarkable career, others described it as ponderous and mediocre. When I revisited Eyes Wide Shut shortly after reading the reviews for Altman's movie, I felt a lot more sympathetic towards it. At this point I was in my mid-20s; my viewing habits had shifted from Tarantino to Truffaut, and sexual relationships were no longer speculative. I started to understand more what Kubrick was getting at, as well as the picture's strange, idiosyncratic logic.
I've since watched Eyes Wide Shut several times over the last ten years, and I stand before you today (figuratively speaking, obviously) to argue that this misunderstood, much maligned film deserves to be ranked alongside Kubrick's finest work. Everything in Eyes Wide Shut, from the fluid cinematography to the curiously distant performances, is pure, undiluted Kubrick; we see the sublimation of themes he explored throughout his career, and the apotheosis of his visual style. It isn't his masterpiece (2001: A Space Odyssey occupies that lofty position) and it isn't my personal favourite amongst Kubrick's output (it's Paths of Glory since you ask), but it's a damn fine piece of filmmaking and long overdue for reappraisal.
It's worth going into the plot in some detail as every beat is significant. For the uninitiated, Eyes Wide Shut is a loose but relatively faithful adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle, updated from early 20th century Vienna to New York in the late 1990s. The film opens with Dr Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) attending a Christmas party hosted by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), one of Bill's wealthier patients. As Alice dances with Sandor Szavost (Sky du Mont), a suave Hungarian businessman who tries (and fails) to seduce her, Bill encounters Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), an acquaintance from medical school whose jazz band has been booked to play the party. Afterwards, Bill hooks up with a couple of models who invite him to join them in a threesome. Their liaison is cut short when Bill is called away to treat Mandy (Julienne Davis), a young woman Ziegler picked up at the party who has overdosed on a speedball. The following night, Bill and Alice discuss the events of the previous evening over a joint. When Bill reassures Alice nothing happened between him and the two models, their conversation drifts towards fidelity. Annoyed at Bill's assertion that women have a less pronounced sexual appetite than men, Alice recalls a fantasy she had about a naval officer they shared a hotel with on their last vacation:
"I first saw him that morning in the lobby. He was checking into the hotel, and he was following the bellboy with his luggage to the elevator. He glanced at me as he walked past; just a glance, nothing more. And, I could hardly move. That afternoon, Helena [the couple's infant daughter] went to the movie with a friend and you and I made love. And yet, at no time, was he ever out of my mind. And I thought that if he wanted me, even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give up everything. You. Helena. My whole fucking future. Everything. And yet it was weird because at the same time, you were dearer to me than ever. And at that moment, my love for you was both tender and sad. I barely slept that night, and I woke up the next morning in a panic. I don't know if I was afraid that he had left or that he might still be there. But by dinner, I realised he was gone. And I was relieved."
A moment of quiet ensues, the exhausted couple staring at each other in reflection before Bill's pager calls him away to attend to a deceased patient. When Bill goes round to deal with the situation, the dead man's middle-aged daughter Marion (Marie Richardson) declares her love for him and attempts to seduce Bill. Turning her down, reminding her she has a fiancé, Bill leaves and wanders the streets. He's soon approached by Domino (Vinessa Shaw), a prostitute who invites him back to her apartment. Bill seriously considers her offer until Alice calls his cell phone. Resuming his walk, Bill stumbles upon a café in Greenwich Village where Nightingale and his band are performing. After a few beers, Nightingale confides to Bill he has another gig that evening at a secret location. Offering Bill the address and password to gain admittance, Nightingale confides that guests are required to wear masks and costumes. Acting on this tip-off, Bill heads to a costume shop run by the sleazy Mr Milich (Rade Serbedzija) and gets a taxi to the mansion where this exclusive party is taking place. Upon being received into the house, Bill discovers fellow guests engaging in a variety of sexual acts. A masked woman approaches him and warns Bill he's in danger. Before she can explain, the woman is led away and Bill is taken to the grand hall where he's confronted by a hooded figure in a red cloak (Leon Vitali). After being commanded to strip naked, the masked woman reappears and offers to "redeem" Bill. The hooded figure tells him to leave, cautioning Bill there'll be dire consequences for him and his family if he tells anyone what he's seen.
Bill returns home to find Alice laughing hysterically in her sleep. When he wakes her, she breaks down in tears and confesses she was dreaming about the naval officer, her amusement prompted by Bill's sexual humiliation. Later that morning, Bill heads to Nightingale's hotel where a desk clerk (Alan Cumming) informs him that a bruised Nightingale checked out a couple of hours earlier, flanked by two intimidating men who shepherded him to a waiting car. When Bill returns the costume to Mr Milich, he discovers the mask is missing. Heading back to the mansion, he's greeted by a man at the front gate bearing a written warning to desist with his inquiries. Back home, Bill views Alice with suspicion and begins fantasising about the sexual opportunities he'd been presented with the night before. He calls Marion, but hangs up when her fiancé answers. He goes to see Domino, whose roommate Sally (Faith Masterson) reveals has been diagnosed with HIV. A brief flirtation follows, which ends when Sally expresses her distress at Domino's situation. Bill heads to the café in Greenwich Village, whereupon he discovers he's being followed. As he leafs through the local newspaper, he finds a report about a beauty queen who recently died from a drug overdose. Using his professional connections, he visits the morgue and identifies the corpse as Mandy. Upon leaving, a car pulls up and Bill is silently instructed to take a ride. Bill is then taken to see Ziegler, who explains that his intrusion into the secret society has become an embarrassment. Ziegler attempts to put Bill's mind at rest by insisting that Nightingale has returned safely home to his family and Mandy (revealed to have been the masked woman at the party) died through a genuine overdose and not as the result of foul play. A defeated Bill returns home to discover the mask lying on the pillow next to a slumbering Alice. He starts crying and promises to tell Alice everything. The film ends with the couple Christmas shopping for their daughter Helena. Alice says they should be grateful they've come through this adventure and still love each other, but stresses there's something very important they have to do. When Bill asks what that is, Alice replies: "Fuck."
Eyes Wide Shut has long been the subject of a genre classification dispute. It's often categorized as an erotic thriller, which broadly speaking it is - except it isn't particularly erotic and the thriller element plays second fiddle to character study. Because Eyes Wide Shut didn't deliver the steamy sex and edge-of-the-seat intrigue audiences had come to expect after Paul Verhoeven's 1992 smash Basic Instinct, which defined the erotic thriller as one of the most profitable film genres of the decade and spawned a glut of imitations, it was swiftly deemed an artistic failure. Some critics accused the movie of jumping on the bandwagon, unfavourably comparing Eyes Wide Shut to earlier Kubrick productions now considered to be in the vanguard of their respective genres. Once again, this is bullshit. While 2001 was unprecedented, made at a time when science fiction was largely considered a trashy, second-rate genre, other films in the Kubrick canon prove that he was not only fascinated by trends in mainstream cinema but willing to actively engage with them. When noirish crime thrillers were a staple of American movies back in the 1950s, Kubrick dutifully followed suit with Killer's Kiss and The Killing. In the early '60s a number of films appeared imagining the horror of nuclear war, among them On the Beach, Fail-Safe, The Bedford Incident and Kubrick's Dr Strangelove. After the enormous success of John Carpenter's Halloween kick-started the blood 'n' gore horror renaissance in the late '70s, Kubrick quickly joined the party with The Shining. By the mid '80s, when Hollywood was already exploring the legacy of Vietnam, Kubrick offered Full Metal Jacket as his take on this most divisive of modern conflicts. If Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick's attempt at piggybacking on the box office clout of the erotic thriller, it's in good company. All of the films listed above see Kubrick experimenting with narrative and form in an attempt to redefine their respective genres, and Eyes Wide Shut is no different.
Anyone expecting titillation in Eyes Wide Shut is going to be severely disappointed since Kubrick makes it clear from the outset that gratification is completely off the table. When Bill attends to a naked Mandy after her overdose, we're not encouraged to feel even the slightest quiver of excitement at the sight of her bare flesh. Instead, Kubrick presents her like the subject of a Renaissance painting depicting a Biblical martyr, recalling the correlation of sex and death in religious dogma. The orgy sequence, arguably the centrepiece of the story, is also far from arousing. The Venetian masks worn by the party goers add a malevolence to the visuals, transforming the film's sexuality into something hideous and malign. But then, sex in Kubrick's films is rarely straightforward and never takes place between loving couples: whatever sexual encounters there are tend to centre around rape (A Clockwork Orange), forbidden desire (pederasty in Lolita), prostitution (Full Metal Jacket) and humiliation (the woman in Room 237 in The Shining), while other times it becomes something peculiarly abstract (Dr. Strangelove opens with the bizarre image of two bombers refuelling, like birds copulating in mid-air, and the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" segment of 2001 boasts the audacious spectacle of the bulb-headed spacecraft Discovery ejecting Bowman's sperm-like EVA pod into the monolith's vaginal star gate). Eyes Wide Shut, on the other hand, places sexuality upfront, but viewed through the wrong end of the telescope.
Bill Harford's character is the key to understanding the film's peculiar logic and rejection of genre convention. Everything in Eyes Wide Shut is related to us from Bill's perspective, which frequently veers between fantasy and subjective reality. The use of first-person narrative is a regular device in Kubrick's films, where the personality of the chief protagonist informs the tone of the work: Full Metal Jacket, for example, is comprised of a series of vignettes and anecdotes to reflect Joker's sardonic outlook, while A Clockwork Orange is presented as a balletic, bawdy romp to emphasise Alex's youthful exuberance. The Shining also uses this device, but it's not as explicit since the film doesn't employ voice-over narration. Instead, Kubrick uses a sophisticated series of dolly shots, often tracking the characters over their shoulders, to represent Jack, Danny and (to a lesser extent) Wendy's gradual descent into madness. Eyes Wide Shut employs a similar technique, which is why the story appears so ludicrous if taken literally. Because Bill is a very earnest and largely humourless man, the film adopts a palpable air of sombreness as it follows his sexual misadventures. Nothing we see or hear can be considered "true" in an objective sense. Bill's imbalanced, not to mention smug, sexual politics are threatened by the realisation that Alice is possessed of a colourful and highly developed sexual imagination he simply doesn't share: the bizarre events that follow are not only Bill's attempt to make sense of his jealousy in the wake of Alice's confession, but also construct his own fantasy world that allows him free reign of his desires. He interprets his encounters with other characters in purely sexual terms, but in each instance the fantasy is compromised by the moral and ethical considerations that define Bill's character. He rejects the bereaved Marion's advances because he recognises it as misplaced grief, and chooses not to seduce Sally for similar reasons. Although tempted into doing business with Domino, it's only the acknowledgement of his wife's concern for his well-being that stops him pursuing the transaction. Bill's journey into the heart of erotic desire ultimately leads him to the realisation that fantasies, however potent, are always constrained by moral temperament.
A major component of Bill's personal story arc is Kubrick's (and co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael's) device of using Ziegler as a darker version of the character. Ziegler, who doesn't appear in Schnitzler's novella, is a fascinating creation whose sexually loaded language reflects his perception of himself as an Alpha Male. When Bill asks what happened to Nightingale, Ziegler replies they put him on a plane and sent him home where he's "probably banging Mrs Nick." Reflecting on how Nick came to be hired, Ziegler's admission that he "recommended that little cocksucker to those people" has a decidedly homophobic edge. (Perhaps there's a shared sense of homophobia here: it's interesting how Bill considers going back to Domino's apartment after being called a faggot by a group of jocks, not to mention his awkward bonhomie when the desk clerk at Nightingale's hotel hits on him. Is he afraid that his masculinity has been called into question?) On the subject of Mandy's fate when Bill was evicted from the orgy, Ziegler shrugs off the suggestion that anything untoward happened to her by reminding him that she's "just a hooker" and, as such, "had her brains fucked out." Ziegler's insistence on reducing everything to purely sexual terms establishes him as the mirror image of what Bill could easily become should he abandon his better nature to unchecked carnality. He follows in a long line of antagonists in Kubrick's films who act as doppelgangers to represent the conflicted personalities of the central characters. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert's obsessive love for the eponymous teenage vixen is contrasted with Clare Quilty's predatory paedophilia, while Jack Torrance's antipathy towards family life in The Shining grants him considerable sympathy from the spectral form of Charles Grady, who murdered his own family. Bill's confrontation with Ziegler is the penultimate step on his quest to understand himself (the discovery of the lost Venetian mask on his pillow, placing him face to face with his own drives, completes the journey), but it also feeds into another important theme in Eyes Wide Shut: namely, the tyranny of language.
Words frequently mask deeper motivations and impulses in Kubrick's work. Consider the sepulchral double entendres in The Shining ("I've had lots of ideas, none of them good ones..."), the Stars and Stripes editor in Full Metal Jacket informing his cub reporters to substitute "sweep and clear" for "search and destroy" in future articles, or the disturbing moment in 2001 where HAL runs through his vocabulary bank to find the right combination of words that will prevent Bowman from deactivating him. In the context of Eyes Wide Shut, we wonder whether or not Ziegler is telling the truth about Mandy and Nightingale - he asks Bill to trust him, but since he's in a more powerful position than Bill it's quite possible he could engineer a cover story to safeguard the interests of the society he represents. Although this question is left for the audience to answer, the scene where Mandy offers to "redeem" Bill at the orgy suggests this mysterious cabal has an exclusive set of codes that hint at theatricality and game-playing perhaps supporting Ziegler's innocence. Elsewhere in the film, words obscure thoughts and actions rather than explain them. Consider Alice's confession to Bill quoted above. There's a distinct ambiguity in the way she reasserts her love for her husband: love and pity collide in such an alarming fashion it's no wonder Bill's haunted by her words. It's also highly significant at the end of the film that she suggests her and Bill 'fuck' rather make love: the word denotes an attempt to rekindle instinctual passion rather than one based on an intellectual and emotional connection.
A number of critics have commented upon the Christmas setting, suggesting various theories about the conflict between commercialism and spiritual values. This is a perfectly valid analysis, but it overlooks the fact Eyes Wide Shut uses its festive setting in much the same way public holidays often form the backdrop of Elizabethan and Jacobean satirical drama: a device where the social abandon permitted by this revelry exposes the characters' true selves in heightened, often exaggerated ways. Milich, for example, reacts with moral indignation upon discovering his daughter in flagrante with a pair of Japanese businessmen, only to drop any pretence of respectability when he realises he can gain financially from the situation. His hypocrisy is astonishing in its brazenness, yet entirely appropriate given his position as a man who provides the means for others to temporarily escape their social identities. Elsewhere, when Ziegler comments to Bill that he "wouldn't sleep so well" knowing the names of the people involved in the secret order, it's clear these are public figures who form part of the apparatus of state: moral guardians whose sexual proclivities are played out in a hedonistic concoction of carnivalesque rituals which mirror the gathering of families to sing carols by the gaudy lights of the Christmas tree before carving the turkey. The use of masks as a symbol throughout the film takes on a double meaning here, serving not just as a metaphor for the conflict between the outward and inward self, but also as a visual pun for the traditional court masque.
The Christmas setting also plays into Kubrick's dazzling use of colour to denote his characters' emotional states and relationships throughout the film. We notice for instance that the interior of Bill and Alice's apartment is bathed in bright oranges and reds to suggest homeliness and warmth; when the couple discuss sexual politics prior to Alice revealing her fantasy, their bedroom is also lit in the same colour scheme. After Alice takes Bill to task for his pious views, she moves towards the window where she's haloed in a harsh blue light, establishing the bitterness and disunity growing between them. The next time we see the bedroom, when Bill returns to find Alice having her nightmare, the entire screen is awash with cold, oppressive blue-green shadows. Standard stuff, maybe - except for the Fauvist and, more significantly, Expressionist paintings adorning the walls (courtesy of Christiane Kubrick). We know Alice works in an art gallery, so on a character level it makes sense for her professional interests to spill over into her home life, but the prominence of these paintings serve a wider, stylistic and thematic function: to establish a direct tap-root to the influence of European artistic movements, film styles and intellectual attitudes on the narrative.
In Jan Harlan's documentary film Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, director Alex Cox points to the record shop scene in A Clockwork Orange, where the 2001 soundtrack is prominently, almost shamelessly, displayed in pride of place above the counter, as an example of Kubrick's self-contained artistic sensibilities. While I don't quite buy into this theory (I've always seen this apparent self-promotion as a thematic tool, emphasising that the future depicted in 2001 is just a fantasy and the dystopia of Clockwork Orange is the reality), it's true that Kubrick was always wary of openly acknowledging his debt to other filmmakers. Although we occasionally glimpse wider movements and artistic styles penetrating his filmography (Killer's Kiss and The Killing clearly ape the aesthetic of classic noir, while the French New Wave certainly drives a number of the combat scenes in Dr Strangelove), Kubrick learned early in his career that simply wearing his influences wasn't good enough: he had to assimilate them. While filming his magnificent Paths of Glory in 1956, Kubrick, invigorated by the European shooting locations and fascinated by his own European roots, drew heavily upon his cinematic idol Max Ophuls to help find the film's style. Kubrick was a great admirer of Ophuls' use of stately tracking shots to establish his characters in relation to their environment, which would not only inform Kubrick's Great War epic but the rest of his canon. Kubrick made this technique his own, using it as a psychological tool to observe his characters' journeys through their emotionally-compromised worlds. If anything, Eyes Wide Shut sees Kubrick repaying his debt to Ophuls by inhabiting the same Freudian assault course of psychosexual mores the latter explored in La Ronde (based on Schnitzler's 1900 play Reigen), and Letters from an Unknown Woman. Whether or not Kubrick himself knew Eyes Wide Shut would prove to be his last film, it seems entirely fitting at the end of his career he would reflect on the formative influences that made him the master filmmaker he undoubtedly became.
Eyes Wide Shut doesn't deserve to be treated as a disappointing footnote to an otherwise exceptional career - or worse, disregarded as a minor work: it's a picture of texture and depth made by a director at the peak of his creative vision. Nevertheless, it's ironic that in an age where film criticism is becoming increasingly democratised, and critics themselves are quicker than ever to champion movies that never quite get their due, Eyes Wide Shut continues to be classed as a pariah in the Kubrick pantheon. We forget all too easily that most of Kubrick's films received mixed reception on their original release, only to obtain classic status after years of study and re-evaluation. It's time to return to Eyes Wide Shut with (yes, I will say it) eyes wide open and embrace it as an original, distinctive piece of filmmaking so bold in its execution and intent that it continues to linger in the mind and haunt the imagination long after many of its imitators (naming no names, but Wes Anderson's smartarse Grand Budapest Hotel deserves an honorary mention) evaporate from memory.
