Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)
by Stanley Kubrick
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jackie Sawiris, Madison Eginton, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Tom CruiseDirector: Stanley Kubrick
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 159 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-03-07
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)
Movie Review: Only understood with a mind wide shut...
Summary: 5 Stars
I make it a point to watch this movie at least once or twice a year; for it is one of those films that touches you differently each and every time you entertain it. Once I feel that I have my mind made up it is completely trampled and my perception of events is altered as my mind tries to re-contemplate everything I just witnessed. That is the beauty within `Eyes Wide Shut'; a film so tragically misunderstood that many have labeled it pointless and even trashy without fully comprehending all that the film really stands for.
The film almost feels lost within itself as it shifts from scene to scene; moment to moment, and in the final thrusts of the films focus we see an explanation (or is it) starting to form before our eyes, but what is so beautiful about the films construction is that that particular explanation (or any explanation for that matter) is completely contradicted the next time we watch the film. There are no easy answers to the questions raised while watching this masterpiece and that makes for some of the most intriguing titillating post-viewing conversation. Kubrick's visual styling is incomparable and his approach to the rabid subject at hand; his frankness and blunt rashness; elevates the material and builds a pristine foundation for the films more startling sequences.
The film opens with high society couple Bill and Alice attending a party. Separated from one another we find Alice drinking her detachment away and dancing too close with a stranger while Bill weaves his way through the large mansion to make his services available to those in need, one such individual being his good friend Victor. This scene perfectly mirrors the characters development and their emotional connection to one another and to us as the audience. Both Alice and Bill are in a sense playing variations of themselves, locking away their true identities for the sake of those around them. They are not necessarily faking it or posing as someone else but more or less playing up the parts of them that others want to notice.
As the film progresses we witness Bill's emersion into a dark underworld that he is drawn to out of a perverse curiosity yet repelled from because of his desirable innocence. As he filters through his own feelings with regards his marriage and his life he tickles the keys of his own tendencies and this leads to some startling discoveries; discoveries within himself and those around him.
`Eyes Wide Shut' is unfairly recognized for its fearless depictions of immorality; sequences that have proven to be the backbone of ones distaste or admiration of the film. I say unfairly because those scenes are a small instrument used by Kubrick to paint a much larger picture. If one only sees the film for the savage imagery then they have missed the final impact of the films true nature.
Face it; we may never fully `get' this film, but to claim it nothing more than a perversion is simplifying it far too much, maybe in an attempt to justify our own misunderstandings.
Kubrick was aided by some fantastic performances by the entire cast, most notably the two stars Cruise and Kidman. Tom Cruise brilliantly captures his characters attraction to a world he doesn't quite understand. Nicole has the most complex character in the film and she tackles her performance with real bravo. Her understanding of what makes her character tick (and those priceless closing words "We have something very important to do...") adds so many layers to the films interpretation. Sydney Pollack also delivers a very controlled and memorable performance and deserves attention for all that he serves with such little screen time.
In the end `Eyes Wide Shut' is not a film for everyone, but it should be. Yes, it is graphic and it is shocking but it is all done in a tasteful (although it may not seem so) manner that carries the film to all kinds of levels of brilliance. As time passes the film continues to beam like a beacon for all other films to take notice of something far beyond their reach.
Summary of Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)
It was inevitable that Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut would be the most misunderstood film of 1999. Kubrick died four months prior to its release, and there was no end to speculation how much he would have tinkered with the picture, changed it, "fixed" it. We'll never know. But even without the haunting enigma of the director's death--and its eerie echo/anticipation in the scene when Dr.?Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) visits the deathbed of one of his patients--Eyes Wide Shut would have perplexed and polarized viewers and reviewers. After all, virtually every movie of Kubrick's post-U.S. career had; only 1964's Dr.?Strangelove opened to something approaching consensus. Quite apart from the author's tinkering, Kubrick's movies themselves always seemed to change--partly because they changed us, changed the world and the ways we experienced and understood it. And we may expect Eyes Wide Shut to do the same. Unlike Kubrick himself, it has time.So consider, as we settle in to live with this long, advisedly slow, mesmerizing film, how challenging and ambiguous its narrative strategy is. The source is an Arthur Schnitzler novella titled Traumnovelle (or "Dream Story"), and it's a moot question how much of Eyes Wide Shut itself is dream, from the blue shadows frosting the Harfords' bedroom to the backstage replica of New York's Greenwich Village that Kubrick built in England. Its major movement is an imaginative night-journey (even the daylight parts of it) taken by a man reeling from his wife's teasing confession of fantasized infidelity, and toward the end there is a token gesture of the couple waking to reality and, perhaps, a new, chastened maturity. Yet on some level--visually, psychologically, logically--every scene shimmers with unreality. Is everything in the movie a dream? And if so, who is dreaming it at any given moment, and why?
Don't settle for easy answers. Kubrick's ultimate odyssey beckons. And now the dream is yours. --Richard?T. Jameson
It was inevitable that Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut would be the most misunderstood film of 1999. Kubrick died four months prior to its release, and there was no end to speculation how much he would have tinkered with the picture, changed it, "fixed" it. We'll never know. But even without the haunting enigma of the director's death--and its eerie echo/anticipation in the scene when Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) visits the deathbed of one of his patients--Eyes Wide Shut would have perplexed and polarized viewers and reviewers. After all, virtually every movie of Kubrick's post-U.S. career had; only 1964's Dr. Strangelove opened to something approaching consensus. Quite apart from the author's tinkering, Kubrick's movies themselves always seemed to change--partly because they changed us, changed the world and the ways we experienced and understood it. And we may expect Eyes Wide Shut to do the same. Unlike Kubrick himself, it has time.
So consider, as we settle in to live with this long, advisedly slow, mesmerizing film, how challenging and ambiguous its narrative strategy is. The source is an Arthur Schnitzler novella titled Traumnovelle (or "Dream Story"), and it's a moot question how much of Eyes Wide Shut itself is dream, from the blue shadows frosting the Harfords' bedroom to the backstage replica of New York's Greenwich Village that Kubrick built in England. Its major movement is an imaginative night-journey (even the daylight parts of it) taken by a man reeling from his wife's teasing confession of fantasized infidelity, and toward the end there is a token gesture of the couple waking to reality and, perhaps, a new, chastened maturity. Yet on some level--visually, psychologically, logically--every scene shimmers with unreality. Is everything in the movie a dream? And if so, who is dreaming it at any given moment, and why?
Don't settle for easy answers. Kubrick's ultimate odyssey beckons. And now the dream is yours. --Richard T. Jameson
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