My First Time…Watching ‘Eyes Wide Shut’

Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week and this writer had never seen it before. Why? I was 14 years old when it was released in theaters and while I had a very cool mom, I did not have that cool of a mom. I could rent A Clockwork Orange and watch it at home if my mom was in the room, but I could not go see Tom Cruise go to a weird orgy in movie theaters. Parents are weird.

Anyway, how creepy, artsy and edgy does Eyes Wide Shut seem today? Well, here are this humble writer’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts while watching the film.

1:29 – I immediately don’t buy Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise as a couple, which is weird because they were still a couple when they were shooting this film.

20:07 – Wait, wasn’t this the trailer for the movie? Why is it happening 20 minutes in the middle of the movie? We are already watching this film. You don’t have to sell it. Please don’t sell it. I’m in it.

27:40 – I had to pause the film for about 30 seconds to laugh hysterically at the line, “The pot is making you aggressive.” Is this film Kubrick’s great unheralded comedy masterpiece?

42:47 – Um, maybe you don’t want to make out with a married man. Your dead dad’s corpse is watching.

44:46 – SEE! HE’S WATCHING!

47:52 – Oh, look. It’s Siberian prostitute Barbie. I had one of those when I was a kid.

1:07:19 – I TOTALLY FORGOT THAT LEELEE SOBIESKI STARTED HER CAREER AS A BABY SLUT.

1:09:50 –  Cool, it’s Wayne Manor. Maybe Batman will show up soon. That would be a twist I didn’t see coming. A Batman-themed orgy.

1:12:20 – BOO! It’s a not a Batman-themed orgy. It’s a Catholic Church-themed one.

1:15:11 – Do you think this is what Terry Richardson does to unwind?

1:18:50 – “You are in great danger!” Again, I had to pause the movie to laugh at this dialogue (and the wooden delivery) and again I have to wonder if this is a comedy.

1:21:30 – There’s seems to be a lot of bored people at this orgy. One of them is kind of me.

1:27:30 – The camera dramatically zoomed on this 99% naked woman flatly demanding that a room full of Illuminati pervs let Tom Cruise go, and again, readers, I cackled hysterically.

1:38:07 – I’ve never been married, but like, maybe don’t tell your husband about your dream in which you humiliated him by laughing at him while participating in an orgy. You know, that’s just something you should keep to yourself. Like, maybe that’s one of the secrets you keep in a marriage: your bizarre sex dreams.

1:41:52 – Alan Cumming, you old flirt! Fancy meeting you in a film like this.

1:54:21 – There are so many Christmas trees in this movie. What do they all mean? Are they phallic? Are they symbols of hope? Are they set dressing to tell us that it’s Christmas?

2:00:18 – If there’s a moral to this movie it’s probably that you can’t have promiscuous sex in NYC without someone getting AIDS. This time, it’s Domino. AKA Siberian hooker Barbie.

2:04:16 – The New York Post makes a cameo as a sight gag newspaper that broadcasts how lucky Bill is to be alive.

2:12:57 – “And I think you just might have the wrong idea about one or two things…” Like how me and my rich orgy friends are murdering people and having rich people orgies. Sure, Sydney Pollack. I could see how we might have the wrong idea.

2:26:51 – Cry, Tom. Cry.

Final thoughts:

Wow, this is definitely a Stanley Kubrick film.

What I mean by that is that it’s exquisitely shot, paced and planned out,  and everything has been carefully positioned to create feelings of unease in the viewer. Eyes Wide Shut is all about questioning the morality of sexual promiscuity, whether that promiscuity is physical or only in our private fantasy world. Is mental infidelity better or worse than actual infidelity? I don’t know, but I think Kubrick is saying that fidelity in general is a rare and noble virtue.

I have two big quibbles with the film: I thought the acting was atrocious and I thought many of the situations Cruise’s character found himself in were so ridiculous that I couldn’t take them seriously. But then, Kubrick probably planned it that way. My inability to emotionally connect with what was going on was the source of most of my unease while watching the film. So, well done, Kubrick.

When I told a friend that I was watching the film for the first time, she said that she had been devastated by it when she saw it in theaters. 15 years ago, Kidman and Cruise were Hollywood’s golden couple and their public relationship made all the orgies and suggestions of infidelity more upsetting for the 1999 audience. Today, Cruise’s romantic life is the subject of many hacky punchlines, so I have to wonder if seeing the film outside of its original context ruined my perception of it.

Basically, I think Stanley Kubrick wanted to creep us out. He did creep me out a bit. From now on, whenever one of my friends sneaks me into a snazzy Upper West Side house party, I’m just going to presume the hosts have dangerous, yet boring, orgies on the side.

GoWatchIt: Eyes Wide Shut