Chris Duncan
Stanley Kubrick, the much-exalted boundary pusher of late-twentieth century filmmaking, died in March of 1999. He left behind a finished film, which opened in July of that year. Eyes Wide Shut is, thus, not just another one of Kubrick’s films, but his final one, and considering its release after his death, it is easy to consider it not just as his final film but as a film inextricably tied with his death itself. Twenty-five years later, it’s much easier to just appreciate the film for what it is: a bold story about love, desire, and the aspects of ourselves that we’re afraid of, whether because we don’t understand or, or do all too well.
The most important scene in Eyes Wide Shut is early on in the film; It comes after the party at the very beginning—the conversation that drives our lead, Doctor Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) into his long night that makes up the film’s second act. Bill’s wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) erupts, accusing him of withholding from her, of not giving her straight answers, of being, essentially, dishonest about who he is and how he thinks. She blows up at him; “the pot is making you aggressive,” he retorts. She tells him about the sexual fantasies she had had about a navy officer they briefly encountered on vacation. He’s caught off guard, unable to give her real answers to anything she asks of him, which she seems to understand, in a disappointed fashion.
Their argument then interrupted by a house call, Bill’s dead patient’s daughter professes her love for him, which he also shoves aside, seemingly breaking the woman’s heart. He’s driven to roaming the streets, alone and steely. Eyes Wide Shut’s long nights evoke, of course, Scorsese’s After Hours and the work of Franz Kafka that highly influenced both films. Like Paul in After Hours or someone like the K., the protagonist of Kafka’s book The Castle, Bill is arrogant and finds himself in more trouble than he can take because he insists on going places he’s not supposed to go. He causes trouble in pursuit of something that will satisfy him, something that will reconcile his deep repression with his deep, perhaps even devious, desires.
He seems to get close at the masquerade—the massive orgy in the ornate house. Bill gets the password and address, so he knows how to get in, but he so obviously shows he’s not meant to be there, showing up in a grubby taxi to a remote mansion expecting none to be the wiser. Bill is a fool, and, as shown by how he seems to idly roam through the party content to just observe, a bit of a coward, maybe a square. He’s drawn to these dramatic, scandalous experiences but stops short of acting on the things he so clearly wants to do.
This scene is where the vast majority of the film’s iconography comes from, so people who have not seen Eyes Wide Shut, as I had not until I was in my late teens, might think of it as mostly big masks and sex parties, when the masquerade itself is really a single sequence that takes about twenty minutes. The sequence is a dramatic break from expectations, though, dropping any pretenses and confronting Bill, and the viewer, with the unabashed expression of desire that Bill, spurred by Alice, seems to be looking for.
“The Party” might have been beyond Bill’s wildest expectations, or it might have been disappointingly tame, but either way, after being found out and narrowly escaping, he wants more. Bill’s pursuit of answers on the nature of the masquerade, in spite of all signs telling him that it would only harm himself and his family, just further illustrates his own foolishness. But is he blind to what he truly wants, or does he know exactly what he’s looking for, but is simply afraid of finding it?
It’s this question that we also need to ask of Alice, who, when Bill returns home from the party, reveals that she’d dreamt that she’d participated in an orgy just like the one Bill had seen. She describes her darkest fantasies, her desire in the dream not just to cheat on Bill but humiliate him. She’s horrified by her dream, and that she confided in him to describe it shows that, despite her hang-ups with him articulated earlier, she still loves and trusts him. Might one take this as a lesson on what Bill ought to take out of his very real experience? Surely it is significant, not just that Alice was comfortable telling Bill about her dream, but the fact that her dream paralleled what Bill actually saw—they are more in sync than they know.
Later, watching Bill take his paranoid journey around New York, be followed, and act reckless in Eyes Wide Shut’s “third night” is remarkable fun. Worth highlighting is how Kubrick shoots New York. Being uncomfortable flying, and ever the demanding perfectionist, Kubrick shot Eyes Wide Shut on sound stages in London, where his crew created a remarkably elaborate and textured representation of Greenwich Village. New York at Christmas time is lit up like a surreal carnival, with colorful lights everywhere that can be both enchanting and blinding.
Eyes Wide Shut is made even more memorable, and eminently rewatchable, by its atmosphere. The party of the film’s opening is overwhelmingly bright and ornate, which does well to introduce Eyes Wide Shut’s world of a dreamlike high society New York.The masquerade orgy is in a similarly ornate mansion compared with the fancy apartment of the opening, with bright ballroom lights as well as the dark shadows of backrooms and parlors.
The Sonata Cafe, a seedy jazz club lit up for Christmas, is a particularly striking place Bill visits. The contrast of the blue neon and Christmas lights is striking and bold, and is a particular exemplar of Eyes Wide Shut’s obsession with artifice and sheen. There, where Bill’s friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) tells him about a very discreet party where Nick is hired to play the piano with a blindfold on, Bill finds out about the masquerade and becomes determined to see it for himself.
The costume shop where he goes next, Rainbow Fashions, has a slightly run-of-the-mill look in the front, giving way to the shop’s back room, a hallway full of elaborately costumed mannequins, rows and rows of wild clothes, and, again, those damned Christmas lights. This room is particularly interesting for its atmosphere, but also for what is discovered back there by Bill and the shop owner Mr. Milich, namely that Mr.Milich’s underage daughter had been hosting men there for sex, likely for money. The film’s settings, then, continually speak to its world of artifice and pretension on the surface with deep desire lying hidden.
Later, Bill is called by his friend and patient Victor (Sydney Pollack) and invited to visit him at his home to talk. Victor reveals that he was at the party, and saw Bill reveal himself, and was having Bill followed as he poked his nose around. This scene sees Bill, essentially, give up on getting the concrete answers about the party. As Victor explains to him, it is neither as dire, or, seemingly, as exciting, as he thinks. But it is dangerous, and Bill finally takes it to heart that he is not equipped to take on this danger.
Like a good Kafka story or noir mystery, the ultimate answers don’t necessarily matter; what matters is the truths that the characters uncover about themselves and the ones that matter to them. In this sense, Bill and Alice both force each other to grow and change, and become at one with the sides of themselves that they seemed to hide from each other.
Eyes Wide Shut is so predictably dense as one would expect from Kubrick, with its enigmatic characters, enchanting settings, and bold narrative. Kubrick’s final film is a strange way to send off one’s career; it’s not like that was Kubrick’s intention, but it is what we are left with. Eyes Wide Shut is still bold and boundary-pushing, and shows that even in his late career, Kubrick was still ambitious and exacting—at least, anything but content.
