Eyes Wide Shut

It doesn't matter if it's Stanley Kubrick's best or worst. It's a movie that makes you think.

Stanley Kubrick is one of those filmmakers who didn't make a lot of films. Over the course of his forty-year career, he only made thirteen feature films. Very little... However, if we look closely, almost all of them are familiar and immediately entered the pantheon of cinema. They are not perfect films, nor was Kubrick perfect no matter how methodical he was, and there are films of his that are unpalatable (I've already written that in some of them). But each of them, for its reasons, is its own, a very different work. In this film, he makes a case study around desire, sexuality and how we, individually or as a couple, deal with it.

The script follows a doctor and his wife. An apparently happy couple who, after a party where they both flirted with other people (without consequences), have a fight where she, perhaps to take away his self-confidence, confesses that she wanted to have another man, some time ago. The revelation leaves the doctor speechless. That night, he doesn't seem to know what he wants: he desires other women, but refuses their advances. But when a pianist friend tells him about a strange party, full of beauties, where he has to play blindfolded, he wants to see it up close. Yes, the party was a gigantic chic orgy, with touches of unholy religious ritual to accentuate the sense of sin and lust. Of course, the unwary guy ends up being discovered and unmasked… and from there, the film becomes denser, with the character increasingly afraid of what might happen to him.

The film makes us think a lot about sexuality, monogamy, the importance we give to marital fidelity. I don't know what it was like in 1999, but today it's common to see couples in open relationships, or relatively discreet saunas and swing clubs that throw liberal parties with some regularity. There is still a universe apart – private parties, organized by social networks and for gu...

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Kubrick’s final masterpiece.

A hypnotic journey into the hidden world of elite secret power. Kubrick subtly exposes the terrifying reality of secret societies, their links to sex slavery and pedophilia, not through lectures or obvious dialogues, but through chilling atmosphere, ritual precision, and subtle images. The danger is woven into every frame, visible only to those paying close attention. Most normies see an “erotic thriller”. The intelligent feel the danger.

Kubrick films orgies with the most beautiful naked bodies imaginable and masterfully makes them completely asexual. The nudity is clinical, geometric, drained of heat, a cold ceremony of raw, aseptic bodies rather than erotica. Sex becomes ritualized, commodified, and instinctively alienating. It’s genius level control of atmosphere.

The only other director who pulled off something similar is Robert Altman in Pret a Porter (1994), where he had top models walking completely naked on a catwalk and turned it into something completely asexual, just another absurd raw and sterile human spectacle.

P.S. A conspiracy theory claims that Kubrick was murdered right before finishing the final cut editing in order to replace his original exposé ending with a mindless final scene.

Physician to the well-heeled "Bill" (Tom Cruise) and his wife "Alice" (Nicole Kidman) are enjoying the Christmas season by attending the usual whilrl of social engagements hosted by his wealthier clients. Tonight they are heading to a swanky affair as guests of "Victor" (Sydney Pollack) but instead of just going through the polite motions of an evening, the doctor finds himself rolling up his sleeves and so leaving his wife to explore a little more of the party than she might otherwise have experienced. When they get home, she is distinctly unsettled and they embark on a conversation that shines quite a light on the somewhat pedestrian nature of their sex lives. Both have their fantasies and to be honest, they rarely include each other. Maybe an open marriage is a solution? Well they certainly don't discuss or agree to that, but upon his return to work he starts to notice women in an entirely different way to that he was used to. He's not just looking for an hookup though, and his interest is piqued when his university pal "Nick" (Todd Field) tells him of ultra-exclusive parties where everyone has to wear a mask and where more traditional morals are left in the car park. Thanks to "Milich" (Rade Serbedzija) he manages to procure the necessary costume and heads of to a remote stately pile - despite warnings from his friend to leave well alone, and promptly enters an environment that has something of the kinkily masonic to it. As he explorers, he assumes that his anonymity is assured. Oops, well that's where he was wrong and he is brought to book by their grand wizard. About to have to get naked, he is rescued by a stranger who offers herself in his place. He is warned to keep his mouth shut and sent packing, but an article in the newspaper a few days later causes him to confront his own conscience and his friend "Victor" about just what he had inadvertantly and unwelcomingly stumbled upon. Meantime, he has to go home to his wife who is not unaware of the changes in h...