Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 movie directed by Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange). Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

First of all: Kubrick is not everyone’s cup of tea, and if you like Bruce Willis’ movies (with all due respect and even devotion), maybe Eyes Wide Shut is not a movie for you.

What is about? It s difficult to tell in what was the last movie of its director, who worked in all genres and in this one he gets into the erotic-mysterious field. A doctor’s marriage is a bored and he meets an old friend who invites him to an exclusive party where something like Roman orgies are practiced….but without being Roman and with Venetian masks and capes (the movie won my heart for its cool aesthetic).

It’s a strange movie that leaves you with the same usual question when we talk about the director of A Clockwork Orange: what have just seen? What the hell was he thinking? Kubrick interrogates the viewer and he doesn’t give him the movie mulled over, he has to work on it a bit. Do we learn anything from A Clockwork Orange? Kubrick in movies is a lot and for some people he is something like a God. Other people (I would dare to call them ‘the classics’) lament him and feel something in their stomachs that is not good every time his name is mentioned. I am one of those who adore him and this movie is one of my favorites for its subject matter and aesthetics, for its narrative formula and because it is Kubrick: cold and dry, strange and fascinating.

In this movie, he goes deep into the sexual field, always so difficult to face in any work. And he does it successfully and with a different and complex glance, like that look he had as a good Englishman. It is said that he was half crazy and that he made the strangest requests, that he had to repeat the scene 20 times until everything came out to his taste (from my point of view, he liked to be a nuisance to the actors)

I recommend this movie for one single reason: the glance of peculiarity. You will remember it, you will love it or hate it or something totally different, you will watch it again and maybe you will still not understand anything but… once even I was flirting and, do you know what? I didn’t know why either, just like I don’t know why I love this movie that, aside from the capes and the masks, and the aesthetics, and the cinematography and the script and that it’s Kubrick… wow, so many things.

I love it.

Movie Reviews

“You experience this 159-minute movie at his deliberate pace and from his oddly distanced perspective. The effect is disorienting but mesmerizing.” Desson Thomson: The Washington Post

“Every shot and camera angle was selected with great care (…) For those who view cinema as something more substantive than an evening’s diversion, the release of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is an event (…) Rating: ???½ (out of 4)” James Berardinelli: ReelViews

“A film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense.” Kenneth Turan: Los Angeles Times