Completed mere days before his death in 1999, Stanley
Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is an
erotically charged thriller starring the then married Tom Cruise and Nicole
Kidman. Based on the 1926 novella Dream
Story by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler the plot revolves around a rich New York City doctor Dr.
William ‘Bill’ Harford (Cruise) and his wife Alice (Kidman) during a tumultuous
few days in their marriage. The sexually charged Bill is accused of flirting
and wanting to make love to women at a party and to his patients by his jealous
and paranoid wife who then gets upset when her husband tells her that he isn’t
the jealous type and trusts her implicitly. She drops a bombshell on Bill who
then receives a call to attend to a patient. During the night Bill ventures
into the city on a journey of sexual discovery and mystery which leaves him
worried for his safety.
Eyes Wide Shut is
split into two distinct halves, the first of which is an often explicit tale of
sex, debauchery and passion. The second half mostly drops the erotic nature of
the story in favour of all out thriller. Both halves were massively tense but
equally enjoyable. I thought the film was fantastic and although it could be
argued that in the hands of a lesser director and without the A List cast this
would end up as a straight to video release, in the capable hands of Kubrick it
is a taut and creeping film which I couldn’t take my eyes off.
