Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

[*** stars/*****]

What does monogamy in marriage mean? Surely fantasizing about another person is not betrayal? 

How many of us assume that faithfulness in marriage is natural ...or as Bill puts it - woman are loyal to their partner by nature?  

Dr. William "Bill" Harford (Tom Cruise) and Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman) seem happily married, and live in New York with Helena, their seven-year-old daughter. 

Then one Christsmas eve, the handsome, beautiful, and well-off couple are at a party hosted by one of Bill's affluent patients, Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack).

Bill ends up running into good friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), medical school dropout and now pianist. 

Meanwhile, a Hungarian businessman Sandor Szavost (Sky du Mont) attempts to unsuccessfully seduce Alice. 

Bill is flirted at by two young models, then abruptly called in by his host to help Mandy (Julienne Davis), who apparently overdosed on a drug while having sex with Ziegler. 

Mandy recovers, thanks to Bill's timely intervention. 

The next evening at home, Bill and Alice smoke marijuana, and idly discuss monogamy and temptations. 

Bill sounds traditionally righteous, that he is never jealous of other men hitting on Alice, as a women's nature is to be faithful. 

Alice laughs at this remark, and reveals how she fantasized having an affair a year ago. 

She was charmed by a naval officer whom she never met, during their summer vacation hotel stay back then. 

Alice casually admits that she considered leaving Bill and Helena for the officer.

The disclosure shakes up Bill, and in a turn of events over the next couple of days, he strongly considers having sex outside marriage, leading to dangerous, alarming events.  

Kubrick's last hurrah 
Though Eyes Wide Shut limps to its last act, turning into a mitigated, ambiguous social satire (hence the title) from an erotic mystery thriller, I was blown away by the sheer visual power. 

The Larry Smith cinematography, the Jocelyn Pook score and eerie use of classical music, including a Tamil song in the shocking mansion scenes, director Stanley Kubrick lured me unblinkingly deep into the half-baked conflict.  

Every frame is magnificent and painstakingly clean in detail, the art direction is exemplary. 

Adapted, with many major changes, from Traumnovelle (Dream Story), a 1926 German novella by Arthur Schnitzler, Stanley Kubrick last film (he died six days after a director's cut screening to Warner Brothers and the lead cast) is undone by its writing and boxed characterization. 

Prominent questions are seldom confronted or juggled around with. 

The one-track journey of Bill's search for sexual encounters, required a varied voice of Alice to build up the drama. 

But Alice's side in largely muted by Bill's journey, which, despite the shock, doesn't add up. 

Bill is played up as a Hollywood hero, rather than a person, creating a detached feel - Cruise only lacks a superhero cape.  

Eyes Wide Shut is muted in voice and reason, neither does it deliver on its dark and potentially devastating premise. 

The resultant nudity, sexual imagery and orgy scenes end up as gimmicky, having no bearing on the story. 

Eyes Wide Shut is worth a watch for its incredible visual charisma, the Cruise-Kidman and ensemble acts, despite the failed yet assured attempt at cinema immortality as in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and The Shining (1980). 

Wonder what more lethal worlds Kubrick would have conjured, if he had lived a decade more. 

(Eyes Wide Shut is streaming on Netflix.)