Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)

Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)
by Stanley Kubrick

List Price: $24.98
Our Price: $18.57
You Save: $6.41 (26%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.23 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases

DVD Cover Information

Movie Reviews of Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)

Movie Review: Interpretations of Alice Through The Looking Glass...
Summary: 5 Stars

At the party Alice asks Bill if he knows anyone there. Look again at her eyes when she asks Bill this -- maybe she knows at least one person there -- Nick Nightingale. Bill wants to introduce her to him. You can see Alice doesn't want to meet Nick. Look at her eyes. She says she has to go to the bathroom, but does she go?

Alice knows Nick.

Alice's familiarity with Nick may be logical because in the film's first shot Alice disrobes in a way similar to the women in the orgy ritual. (Nick's played piano at orgies before.) In the first shot a red carpet rug is on the floor and tennis rackets are nearby. Two shots later -- Bill is in the same place -- the rug is gone, the lighting is darker (symbolism -- Bill is in the dark about Alice) and a golfbag, not tennis rackets, are there. A signal that the opening shot of Alice might have been her undressing at a time altogether different from the time she readies herself to go with Bill to Ziegler's party. Alice may have been shedding her dress after returning late one night from a past orgy. I don't think she was trying on a dress for the Ziegler party, as if you look again you'll see on the bed all the "accessories" Alice is taking for the Ziegler bash. The opening shot might be of Alice undressing just before Bill returns from his "journey." When you consider that Alice's "dream" is similar to Bill's "real" orgy adventure, her "dream" needn't be a dream at all. (At the end, Bill says to Alice "no dream is ever just a dream.") Alice in her "nightmare" might be recalling the sex she had at a prior orgy, and presenting it as a nightmare -- indeed it would be -- to the marriage. ("I was f****** other men...!" Note the cruel juxtaposition of a smiling Alice looking up at Bill as he thinks the quoted phrase in these parentheses. What a moment!)

With the mask on the pillow, Alice is forcing Bill to confess to his "affairs." She might welcome Bill having an extramarital affair -- it may excite her. She smiles with a hint of relief/approval when seeing Bill with the models as she dances with Sandor Szavost. Alice may have cheated before. (Szavost says marriage "makes deception a necessity for both parties.") Perhaps Alice believes that having an extramarital affair "strengthens" the marriage -- at "Eyes" end, it seems to. (Alice says of her fantasy with the naval officer that she would have given up everything, yet at the time her love for Bill was "both tender and sad" and that Bill was "dearer than ever.") Alice wants Bill to be jealous of her -- it's her "turn-on". Alice is angry at Bill when he is not. ("Why aren't you ever jealous of me?, she shouts.) It's interesting to note in the same scene that when Bill says he "would never lie" to Alice, his eyes are closed. Alice later says, "if you men....only knew." Bill doesn't know that Alice might know Nick and Ziegler from previous orgies. She seems to know Nick -- Nick's been blindfolded at other orgies and worn the same suit at the orgy we see as he wears at the Ziegler party.

Alice -- if not at the orgy that Bill was at -- has attended these orgies before.

It's unclear whose mind we are inside, or whose dream world/reality we inhabit -- Bill's or Alice's. It would have been good to see Alice more (and not necessarily see more of Alice -- there's a difference) in "Eyes Wide Shut." The film still works -- better, even (though we'll never know for sure.) It works because we see many manifestations of "Alice". For example, Marion -- has "dirty-blonde red" hair, styled like Alice's. The topless woman patient Bill examines is a "redhead" -- her hair is styled like Alice's (note the look the patient gives Bill after he examines her -- and remember Alice's argument with Bill when she asks whether a woman patient thinks about Bill and sex when Bill examines her. Bill says that "sex is the last thing on this hypothetical woman patient's mind.") Sally is also a "redhead". Her hair is styled like Alice's. Alice is omnipresent -- either in Bill's subconscious, or in his dreams. These "likenesses of Alice" function as a kind of symbolic womens' intuition -- Alice "knows" Bill is "cheating" -- every opportunity Bill has to cheat, he does so with someone who "looks" like Alice, who knows every risk Bill is taking, risks that could destroy him (Domino's HIV) and the marriage. Even with Domino -- who doesn't resemble Alice -- Bill is "interrupted" -- by Alice herself! (Her phone call.) Alice IS everywhere!

Bill has been searching for a way to "get back" at Alice but has really been searching for Alice. Bill's fear of Alice's "fantasy" affair unleashes a need for discovery (of the "cheating" opportunities around him) not revenge. Bill discovers, and confesses.

The mirror scene of Alice and Bill is through the eyes of Alice -- Alice through the looking glass (by Lewis Carroll!) We see Bill all the time -- but Alice has her eyes wide open. She's always watching him. One last thing: as Bill journeys to "where the rainbow ends," (it ends at Alice -- Bill turns off the Christmas tree lights in the apartment -- these lights have also been everywhere) note scenes where a rainbow crescent appears. Especially when Bill and Sally stand closely against each other. On DVD you clearly see the rainbow effect on Bill's dark suit.

Summary of Eyes Wide Shut (R-Rated Edition)

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