Eyes Wide Shut
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Fuck! What a great ending of a great director's filmography. Eyes Wide Shut 1999 was the last film directed by Stanley Kubrick, who died towards the end of post-production of this movie. There are rumors that Stanley Kubrick's death is related to the content of this film. And that somebody wasn't very happy with what he did. At that time Stanley Kubrick had the final cut rights at Warner Bros. Meaning that he would be the person that approves the movie that will be shown to the audience. There was a story of somebody overhearing yells at Stanley Kubrick that he can't show that stuff from one of the executives on the movie. And 6 days later Kubrick was dead. Perhaps just a conspiracy theory. But considering what the movie is about, there might be something to those theories.
This movie opens with a butt of Nicole Kidman. It ends with Nicole Kidman saying "Fuck" to Tom Cruise. From these two, you can probably already tell what the movie is about. Wikipedia says that the movie is an erotic-thriller. Which is kind of - yes. It's is rather erotic, though not in a way that somebody like Lars Von Trier would do. And it is also very much a thriller.
The biggest stunt Tom Cruise pulls off in this movie, is driving up to a gate in a car, stopping that car and getting out of it. So there is no action in this film. The whole story from beginning till the end is all drama. But boy, what a good drama it is.
I don't think it is necessarily a spoiler, because looking up the movie online would reveal it anyway, there is a very weird scene in this movie. Tom Cruise's character Bill, ends up on a Satanic masked ball full of ultra-rich people. I remember seeing the movie for the first time. Any horror film compared to this one scene is just a joke. This was so intensely terrifying on some kind of a cosmic level that I don't even know how to describe it. It was stupidly scary. With time I got a little used to that scene. And today in particular while watching this scene I was trying to spot whether I'm watching the censored version of the unrated cut, so it wasn't as scary. But boy! What a scary scene that was when I saw it for the first time.
There are rumors that ultra-rich actually conduct such parties and that they do way worse shit on them. And there are also rumors that there were like 25 minutes of the movie removed from it. Perhaps showing all of this darker stuff. And perhaps this was the reason Stanley Kubrick ended up dead. But nobody knows for sure and it could all just be a silly conspiracy theory.
About the quality of the film itself. Stanley Kubrick rather liked to use Steadicams. Before the new stabilizers and drones where a thing, a Steadicam was a way to move the camera through the scene in a somewhat smooth fashion. Kubrick uses the Steadicam a lot in this movie. Even though there are also a lot of static shots and zoom shots too.
There is a very strange choice in the film to light all of the dark areas of Bill's apartment with a bright blue light. It makes you very confused sometimes. There is a scene, for example, that should be happening at about 3 or 4 o'clock in the middle of the night. But the blue light makes it look like early morning.
Technically speaking, perhaps it is a way Kubrick tried to solve the issue of showing what is happening in the dark. But then the light is a bit too saturated and too bright for just a simple visibility ambiance. So I don't know what was the thinking here. Perhaps it's just a stylistic choice.
The city of New York in the movie was made with a mix between real photography of New York and a set that was dressed to look like New York which was built in England. Stanley Kubrick didn't want to travel all the way to America to make this movie. So a set was made. But this set added to a weird feeling of strangeness to the whole place. Perhaps also a stylistic choice.
Acting-wise I enjoy, for example, watching Tom Cruise walk around the city, talking to people. There is enough randomness in the script that this is very interesting. Also the cast is so different and you have many interesting faces and characters that do not need to be that interesting, that make the whole movie a lot more alive than it would be otherwise. Which is probably why the movie works in the first place. Because it is rather slow.
Steven Spielberg said something about Stanley Kubrick that is definitely true about this movie. He said that Stanley Kubrick's films are unpredictable. And there were a lot of moments in this one where I was utterly surprised. Kubrick's direction and sense of flow makes it so it's hard to anticipate what will happen next.
Also the movie feels very important. Like you are watching something that was meant to tell everybody the truth about everything. The first time I saw it, the conversation between Bill and his wide in the beginning actually shocked me. So much interesting information was revealed about relationship dynamics that I felt like I just saw something very important.
After thinking a lot about freedom and diving deep into various freedom paradoxes I started understanding relationship dynamics a bit better. And today when I re-watched Eyes Wide Shut, the scene made me laugh at the exact moment where Nicole Kidman's character laughs in the movie. It was profound even after seeing the movie a bazillion times. But in a new way.
So I think this would be my review of Eyes Wide Shut. I don't want to tell you whether to watch it or not. I hope that by reading this review you will be able to answer the question yourself.
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