Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is a neo-noir psychological thriller film that is considered a cult film[1] directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler. It was Kubrick's last film before his death. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the surreal, sexually charged adventures of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), who is shocked by the revelation by his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), that she contemplated an affair a year earlier. He embarks on a night-long, eventful sexual adventure, during which he infiltrates a masked orgy.
The film appeared on 16 July 1999 to generally positive critical reaction.[2]
Plot
The film begins in the apartment of a wealthy married couple, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), who are preparing for a Christmas party at the home of Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), a friend and patient of Bill's. During the party, a Hungarian man (Sky du Mont) tries to seduce Alice, while two younger models try to seduce Bill. Alice and Bill both resist temptations. During the party, Bill is summoned by Ziegler to his bathroom where he finds a naked woman, Mandy (Julienne Davis), who has over-dosed on a speedball. Bill helps her regain consciousness and promises Victor he will not speak of the event. Bill also meets an old friend, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), a former fellow student who dropped out of medical school and is now a pianist at the party. Nick informs Bill that he is playing at the Sonata Café.
The day after the party, Alice and Bill smoke marijuana and talk about encounters at the party. Alice confesses her feelings concerning a naval officer she saw while on Cape Cod. Because of Bill's self-assurance, out of spite she admits she was willing to abandon her future for one night with the officer. Shocked, Bill suddenly receives a telephone call summoning him to a deceased patient's home. Bill goes to the patient and the daughter, Marion (Marie Richardson), says she wants to give up her life to be with Bill. Bill resists and departs once Marion's boyfriend Carl (Thomas Gibson) arrives.
While wandering the streets, rowdy men, taking him for gay, taunt him and walk into him. A female prostitute named Domino (Vinessa Shaw) approaches Bill and solicits him. Bill accepts, but a call from Alice cuts their business after a kiss. Bill insists on paying.
He happens upon a sign outside the jazz club where Nick is piano player. As the two discuss things, Nick describes a party the night before where he is to play again tonight. Bill coerces Nick into divulging the party's requirements: a black robe with a hood, and a Venetian mask. He learns the location and the password: Fidelio.
Bill goes to the costume shop of a friend long after normal hours of operation only to find it has a new owner, Mr. Milich (Rade Šerbedžija). He offers Milich $200 over the normal price to hire a costume immediately. During their meeting, Milich discovers his teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) half undressed with two Japanese men. Milich behaves as if angry, but his daughter's calm and continued mischievous demeanor renders it unclear whether Milich's anger is feigned.
Bill takes a cab to the party in a mansion on Long Island. What he finds inside is a hierogamy-inspired sexual ritual (orgy) involving women clad in masks and G-strings and led by an ominous man dressed and masked in red (Leon Vitali). Men and women watch, masked and clad in black robes, reminiscent of a Venetian Carnival. Nick plays the organ blindfolded. As the women rise from a circle surrounding a priest-like figure, they select men from the audience. One of the masked men stares at Bill for a short time, and a mysterious woman selects Bill and informs him that he is in danger and urges him to leave, but he refuses.
He is discovered as an outsider and forced to remove his mask. The red-robed master of ceremonies demands he disrobe, but his "punishment" is "redeemed" by the mysterious woman who tried to warn him earlier. Bill is threatened to remain quiet about what he saw or suffer, then returns home.
Bill finds Alice laughing in her sleep. After waking her, she tells him of her dream. She was having sex with other men, and she knew that Bill was watching, so she laughed at him.
The following day, Bill decides to investigate what happened. He goes to the hotel at which Nick was staying and finds from the front desk clerk that Nick has apparently been brutalized for telling Bill about the party and password, and is now gone. Bill returns the costume to the shop where, Mr. Milich is now offering his daughter as a prostitute to the same men. When Bill challenges him, Milich says he has come to "an understanding" with these men, and also offers his daughter to Bill. He returns to the mansion where the orgy had taken place, but is warned off. Bill goes to Domino's apartment where he learns from her roommate that Domino received results of a blood test, which said she was HIV positive. Amanda Curran, the woman who "redeemed" Bill, is dead, ostensibly of a drug overdose behind a locked apartment door. Bill goes to the morgue and learns this woman is Mandy, whom Bill had helped to revive at Ziegler's party. He is unable to establish that the woman did die simply of a drug overdose. Bill is then called to Victor Ziegler's home, where the millionaire claims he was one of those at the ritual and that nothing further was done; according to him, Amanda was a drug-addicted prostitute and Nick was allowed to leave without further punishment. Both here and in the orgy it is implied that Ziegler was the masked man staring at Bill and that he summoned Amanda to "redeem" his friend. No evidence is presented, however, concerning the fate of Amanda and Nick, and Bill and the audience are left to decide between the explanation given to him or a possible double murder. Ziegler does warn Bill against investigating further, as some of the masked participants are said to be powerful members of society.
Bill returns home to Alice and finds the mask he wore to the party on the pillow next to her. He breaks down crying, waking Alice before confessing about his journey. While Christmas shopping later that morning, Alice and Bill reconcile and attempts to improve their marriage seem to be underway. It is also suggested that the bulk of the film was merely a dream that Bill had, although this is deliberately left ambiguous.
Analysis
Comparison with Dream Story
The 1926 novella Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler is set (somewhat earlier than its publishing date) in and around Vienna after the turn of the century. The couple are named Fridolin and Albertina, and their home is a typical suburban middle-class home, not the film's posh urban apartment.
The couple is also Jewish in the novella. According to historian Geoffrey Cocks, Kubrick (himself Jewish) frequently removed references to the Jewishness of characters in the novels he adapted. This is reflected in the film by the fact that when Bill Harford is going home he is taunted by some young boys in the street with anti-gay slurs. In the novella, these are anti-Semitic slurs.
In the novella, the woman who "redeems" Fridolin at the sex party, saving him from punishment, is costumed like a nun, and most of the characters at this party are costumed like nuns or priests. This element is removed from the film, although the chanting and incense seen at the orgy may seem loosely religious albeit in a manner more like a Black Mass than a Christian worship service.
When Fridolin returns home, Albertina's dream is an elaborate drama that concludes with him getting crucified in a village square after Albertina fails to speak up on his behalf, given that she is now occupied with copulating with other men. Thus, in the novella, there is a parallelism between the woman dressed like a nun at the orgy saving Fridolin from punishment (by offering to be punished in his place), and his wife failing to do the same in a dream, which has disappeared from the film version.
Critic Randy Rasmussen suggests that the character of Bill is fundamentally more naive, strait-laced, less disclosing and more unconscious of his vindictive motives than his counterpart Fridolin in the novel.[3] In the novel when his wife discloses a private sexual fantasy, he in turn admits one of his own, while in the film he is simply shocked. In the novel, he long suspected the infatuation of his patient Marion for him, while in the film it is a complete surprise, and he again seems shocked. He is also more overwhelmed by the orgy in the film than in the novella. The novel's Fridolin is a bit more bold with the prostitute (Mizzi in the novel, Domino in the film).
In the film, Bill first meets his piano-playing friend, Nightingale, at Victor Ziegler's party, and then while wandering around town, seeks him out at the Sonata cafe. In the novel, there is no Victor Ziegler, and the cafe encounter with Nightingale is a happy accident.
The character of Dr. Ziegler (who represents the high wealth and prestige to which Bill Harford aspires) is entirely an invention of the film, having no counterpart in the novella at all. Critic Randy Rasmussen interprets Ziegler as representing the worst demonic potential of Bill, much as in other Kubrick films Dr. Strangelove represents the worst of the American military in Doctor Strangelove, Charles Grady represents the worst of Jack Torrance in The Shining, and Quilty represents the worst of Professor Humbert in Lolita.[4]
The novella has a clear explanation as to why the husband's mask ends up on the pillow next to his sleeping wife. In the film, this is enigmatic.
Cast
Reception
The film opened with mixed to positive reviews. The film currently holds a 78% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics objected to two features. The first complaint was that the movie's pacing was too slow. While this may have been intended to convey dreaming, critics objected that it made actions and decisions laborious. Second, reviewers commented that Kubrick had shot his NYC scenes in a studio and that New York "didn't look like New York." Lee Siegel,[5] in Harper's, felt that most critics responded mainly to the marketing campaign and did not address the film on its own terms. Others feel that American censorship took an esoteric film and made it even harder to understand.[6] Noted online reviewer James Berardinelli also stated that it was arguably one of Kubrick’s best films.[7]
In the television show Roger Ebert & the Movies, director Martin Scorsese named Eyes Wide Shut his fourth favorite film of the 1990s.[8] For the introduction to Michel Ciment's Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, Scorsese wrote: "When Eyes Wide Shut came out a few months after Stanley Kubrick's death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise. If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the earliest ones), you'll see that all his films were initially misunderstood. Then, after five or ten years came the realization that 2001 or Barry Lyndon or The Shining was like nothing else before or since."[9]
Music
- The opening title music is "Waltz 2 from Shostakovich's Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra", for years misidentified as the composer's Jazz Suite 2, recorded and released under the incorrect name by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
- In the ritual, the incantations in the background are part of a Romanian orthodox Divine Liturgy recorded in a church in Baia Mare, played backwards. The piece, named "Masked Ball", is an adaptation by Jocelyn Pook of her "Backwards Priests." When contacting Pook in regard to providing music for the film, Kubrick asked if she had anything else like Backwards Priests - "you know, weird."[10]
- One recurring piece is the second movement of György Ligeti's piano cycle "Musica ricercata". The fact that the piece uses only three tones, the dissonance created by these tones, and the unyielding performance indication of Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale adds to the unsettling nature.
- In the morgue scene, Franz Liszt's late solo piano piece, "Nuages Gris" ("Grey Clouds") (1881) is heard.
- "Rex tremendae" from Mozart's Requiem plays as Bill walks into the Viennese cafe and reads of Mandy's death.
- The background score during the orgy (where Tom Cruise walks from room to room) is a Tamil song sung by Manickam Yogeswaran who is a Carnatic singer.
Controversies
Claims about Kubrick's opinion of the film
R. Lee Ermey, who played the menacing drill instructor in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), claimed that Kubrick phoned him two weeks before his death to express his despondency over Eyes Wide Shut. "He told me it was a piece of shit", Ermey said in Radar magazine, "and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him — exactly the words he used."
Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother-in-law and executive producer, reported that Kubrick was "very happy" with the film.[11] According to Todd Field, Kubrick's friend and an actor in Eyes Wide Shut, Ermey's claims are slanderous. Field's response appeared in an October 26, 2006 interview with Slashfilm.com:[12]
The polite thing would be to say 'No comment'. But the truth is that... let's put it this way, you've never seen two actors more completely subservient and prostrate themselves at the feet of a director. Stanley was absolutely thrilled with the film. He was still working on the film when he died. And he probably died because he finally relaxed. It was one of the happiest weekends of his life, right before he died, after he had shown the first cut to Terry, Tom and Nicole. He would have kept working on it, like he did on all of his films. But I know that from people around him personally, my partner who was his assistant for thirty years. And I thought about R. Lee Ermey for In the Bedroom. And I talked to Stanley a lot about that film, and all I can say is Stanley was adamant that I shouldn't work with him for all kinds of reasons that I won't get into because there is no reason to do that to anyone, even if they are saying slanderous things that I know are completely untrue.
American censorship controversy
Citing contractual obligations to deliver an R rating, Warner Bros. digitally altered the orgy for the American release, blocking out graphic sexuality by inserting additional figures to obscure the view, avoiding an adults-only NC-17 rating that limited distribution, as some large American theaters and video store operators disallow films with that rating. This alteration antagonized cinephiles, as they argued that Kubrick had never been shy about ratings: A Clockwork Orange was originally given an X-rating. The unrated version of Eyes Wide Shut was released in the United States on October 23, 2007 in DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats.
The version in South America, Europe and Australia featured the orgy scene intact (theatrical and DVD release) with ratings mostly for people of 16 (Germany) and 18+ (Australia). In New Zealand and in Europe, the uncensored version has been shown on television with some controversy. In Australia, it was broadcast on Network Ten with the alterations in the American version for mature audiences of 15 and older, blurring and cutting explicit sexuality.
Roger Ebert has been misquoted as calling the standard North American R-rated version the "Austin Powers" version of "Eyes Wide Shut". This is presumably in reference to two scenes in the first Powers movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery in which through camera angles and coincidences body parts are blocked in a comical way. In fact, Ebert saw a rough draft of the altered orgy scene which was not used. It is this that he called the "Austin Powers" version, not the final R-rated version released in North America. Nonetheless many discussions have misquoted Ebert.[13]
Controversy regarding the chanting of Hindu prayers
While American censorship attempted to control the sexuality, complaints came from offended members of the Hindu community. The American Hindus Against Defamation [14] wrote to Warner Brothers requesting they change the voice-over chant that plays as Bill Harford wanders from room to room at the mansion. According to the AHAD, "the background music subsides and the shloka (scriptural recitation) from the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered Hindu scripture is played out." But, in reality, this is a modified version of an earlier piece by the film composer entitled "Backwards Priests". The main musical track in the orgy scene is the chanting of a Romanian priest being played backwards. [15] One musical cue is sung in Hindi taken from an earlier recording by Manickam Yogeswaran. [16].
When Warner did not concede, the American Hindus Against Defamation threatened to protest. Eventually, Warner Brothers agreed with the Hindu community of Great Britain to replace it with a chant of similar dramatic tone. These changes were not made in the theatrical release in North America. [17]
DVD release
The DVD release of Eyes Wide Shut corrects technical gaffes, including a reflected crew member, and altering a piece of Nicole Kidman's dialogue. Most home videos remove the verse cited from the sacred Hindu scripture,"Bhagvad Gita".
The scene in which Kidman dances naked in front of a mirror has been zoomed in on DVD copies after Cruise enters the room.
The earliest American DVD of the uncut version states on the cover that it includes both the R-rated and unrated editions; only the unrated edition is on the DVD.
See also
Notes
References
- Rasmussen, Randy (2005). Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786421525.
External links
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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
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