Eyes Wide Shut 1999
I call this video, but it is still at the cheap seats and that’s where I saw it. I figure with a great director like Kubrick you need to see it on the big screen.
Actually, you don’t need to see it on any screen. This movie was awful. I’ve seen Kubrick films and enjoyed them. This movie is intensely slow with completely unnecessary dialog and scenes. It is so painful it reminds me of Robert Altman’s work. As a morality play it was really kind of lame since it didn’t actually explore any particular issues in any more than a tangential way. Though I didn’t see Bonfire of the Vanities, from what I have heard (and what little I have seen) this movie seems very similar. There were times in this movie when I found myself rolling my hands wanting the actor to get on with his next line rather than wait for another excruciating pause.
Kidman and Cruise did their best I suppose but this isn’t material where anyone can shine. The dialog was very forced and unnatural. There were a lot of big ACTING scenes. But there was also just plain bad acting: a costume store owner and a hotel desk clerk would have been at home in any number of really lame movies.
Even the eroticism was poorly done. Maybe it’s from leaving so little to the imagination or, just as likely, more bad writing and directing. There were any number of fantastic looking women (including Nicole Kidman) completely naked, but the most erotic scene was a very brief one with Cruise and a prostitute friend of a prostitute he talked to earlier when they were fully clothed. Of course, like everything else erotic in the movie, it amounts to nothing and leads to a completely pointless conversation making the entire scene irrelevant.
That said, this is still Kubrick. It is not your typical movie. It was often shot richly (except enough with the garish Christmas trees!) and I think the sets were well done. Kidman looks great naked but she was so much better in To Die For. So in many ways it is still worth watching and if you’re a big fan of Kubrick (then you’ve seen it already) or Altman then you should see it. But if you’re just a casual viewer I would tell you to do what the rest of the general public did and avoid it, even on video.
I give it a C-
Written: 28 Sep 1999