Eyes Wide Shut-1999
Director Stanley Kubrick
Starring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman
Top 250 Films #125
Scott’s Review #464
Reviewed August 14, 2016
Grade: A
Eyes Wide Shut is a film that I saw in theaters upon its release in 1999 and found fascinating, to say the least.
I have watched the film twice more in the years following, and it is even more fascinating today- it gets better and more nuanced with each viewing.
It is not an easy film to follow or explain, but it is rich in mystery and psychologically challenging.
A huge Stanley Kubrick fan, I found this film an eerie, plodding, cerebral psychological/sexual thriller.
The creepy piano score is very effective, and Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are both excellent as affluent, yet restless, thirtysomethings living in New York City.
Cruise plays Bill, a successful doctor, and Kidman his gorgeous wife, both sexually restless and escaping into fantasy and otherwise real dalliances with other partners as they bicker about fidelity and jealousy as they lounge in their underwear and smoke pot.
It’s a film about relationships, temptation, and desire, and does not always make perfect sense, but boy, will it leave you thinking.
The supporting characters are some of the most interesting I’ve ever seen, as they compel and mystify, and one wonders how they fit with the main characters.
The naughty Long Island orgy is as bizarre and surreal as one can imagine.
The movie reminds me somewhat of The Ice Storm (1997), Magnolia (1999), and Mulholland Drive (1992), which is the ultimate compliment as the aforementioned are film masterpieces.
