The Reel Critic

Author: Jason Gutierrez

MOVIE: Eyes Wide Shut
DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick
STARRING: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman

I've reviewed films for this paper for about a year and a half. Since taking up this post, I have been asked for my favorite film on a weekly basis. I get the impression that people ask this of all film majors, but I also get the impression that the deadly combination of critic and student makes this question come up more often for me. I've never had a ready answer for people, to what I self-centeredly see as their disappointment. I vaguely considered reviewing a new movie this time; I mean, "X-Men: Wolverine" did come out this past week. But, in the end, I decided that I didn't want to end my time as The Campus' film critic writing about some Hollywood blockbuster; instead, I wanted to answer the aforementioned question. Well, here is my potentially surprising answer: Stanley Kubrick's last work, 1999's "Eyes Wide Shut," is my favorite film.

To try to write about a Kubrick film is to realize the limits of words' applicability to film. It is possible to describe every frame of every shot in "Eyes Wide Shut," but even doing that would not convey the dreamlike majesty of Kubrick's haunting final masterpiece. The plot concerns a married Manhattan doctor (played by Tom Cruise) who, after a marijuana-fueled conversation with his wife (Cruise's then-wife Nicole Kidman), realizes the fragility of their bond. Thus begins Cruise's odyssey into the New York night, where he is confronted with obsession, love and jealousy. The film's plot, little more than a series of anxious and paranoid sexual temptations, is less important than its dreamy tone. Kubrick is not interested in an examination of sexual psychology, but rather in depicting that inner psychology in images and in showing how our most basic instincts manifest themselves in a modern world that tells us these instincts must be suppressed. This emphasis on rendering inner psychology visual allows Kubrick to play with audience expectations and toy with conventional notions of film storytelling. Shots are held longer than one would expect. Characters' glances off screen are bizarre and stilted. The pace is languid and spacey. The dialogue is fascinatingly off, almost as if these characters exist in a dream rather than a film. Tom Cruise, an aggressively mediocre actor at the best of times, turns in a performance that would be horrendous in any other film but that, here, fits seamlessly into the otherworldly tenor created by Kubrick's lighting, camera movements and shot composition. The New York City that Manhattan-bred Kubrick depicts is like no other New York ever depicted. It is so obviously false as to be unrecognizable, but that only adds to the film's majestic surrealism.

"Eyes Wide Shut" might not be Kubrick's best film, but it is the most fitting epitaph imaginable. Delivered to Warner Brothers four days before Kubrick's death, it is austere like "Barry Lyndon," surreal like "The Shining," contemplative like "2001: A Space Odyssey," and, like "A Clockwork Orange," feels as though it could have been made by no other. It received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Some felt alienated by its cold style, while others yearned for the black humor found in Kubrick's other work. I, however, find myself transfixed by the frigid austerity of Kubrick's images and the boldly straightforward nature of the emotional complexity on display. Here, Kubrick doesn't hide behind a fa