# Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

### reviewed by
David N. Butterworth

    EYES WIDE SHUT
    A film review by David N. Butterworth
    Copyright 1999 David N. Butterworth

    *1/2 (out of ****)

Lauded as a genius by many, Stanley Kubrick commands a superlative filmography that includes such critically-acclaimed films as "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "Lolita," and "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Now, sadly, he's added "Eyes Wide Shut" to that impeccable body of work and his final film is the first and only blot on his near-flawless copybook.

            Kubrick, alas, should have quit while he was ahead.

This much-publicized psycho-sexual tease-a-thon, with its star billing of real-life marrieds Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, is nothing more than one long (two-and-a-half hours long) boring exercise that features Kubrick operating with talent wide shut.

Kubrick, faithless to Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella "Dream Story," has confused eroticism with nudity. He has confused intellectualism with talking slowly. He has confused profundity with pretentiousness. In addition, the director has made some strange casting choices, leaving Sydney Pollack in and leaving accomplished performers Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh out. Pollack, the director of such box-office hits as "Tootsie" and "Out of Africa," is normally solid in his occasional acting stints but here he's miserably out of his depth ... and there isn't much depth to begin with! Unhappily, there's not likely to be a director's cut of this film to determine whether the decision to exorcise Keitel and Leigh was the right one.

In fact, with the exception of the stark black-and-white credits, snatches of baroque music on the soundtrack, and many, many grainy tracking shots down lavishly-decorated corridors, there's none of Kubrick's trademark brilliance in this film.

            It doesn't help that the story, as delivered, is ridiculous.

Cruise and Kidman, who bring little more than marital torpor to the project, play well-to-do New Yorkers Bill and Alice Harford. He's a doctor and she's an unemployed art gallery director and they share a Central Park West address. At an opulent party hosted by their friend Victor Ziegler (Pollack), Alice gets a little tipsy and starts dancing with a Jeremy Irons-like Hungarian, who's singularly determined to get her in the sack. Bill, too, is seen arm-in-arm with a couple of models before he's pulled away to deal with an overdoser.

Back home, Bill and Alice smoke a little pot before Alice's aggressive jealousy kicks in. As retribution, she confesses to her husband that she once had deep feelings for a naval officer she eyeballed at a hotel where she and Bill once stayed. This hurtful admission sends Bill into a tailspin; he pounds the streets of the Village in his heavy black overcoat struggling with black-and-white images of Alice in the grip of a horny midshipman. It's all way too much for him.

For revenge, Bill almost has sex with a hooker. He almost has feelings for a underage girl he sees in a costume store. Then he almost does the hooker's roommate. And he's almost involved in an overblown rococo orgy when an old college chum of his tips him off to a mysterious, password-protected party where everyone wears masks and "the women are incredible" (i.e., naked). This "erotic" set piece, a cult-ish bacchanal complete with chanting, incense, and lots of strategically-placed partygoers covering up the dirty, might impress the likes of Hugh Hefner, but it's a lot less shocking than it's intended to be.

What's the big deal? Bill doesn't exactly *do* anything (other than throw his money and credentials around), and Alice only ever lusted in her heart. Whoop-dee-doo. Still, they make up at the same agonizingly slow pace--was Kubrick, notorious for multiple takes, paying them at an hourly rate?

Even geniuses have their bad days. "Eyes Wide Shut" just happens to be Kubrick's bad day, an unerotic, disappointing, and altogether pointless end to an otherwise memorable career.

    --
    David N. Butterworth
    dnb@dca.net

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