Bill: No dream is ever just a dream.
Intro:
The films of Stanley Kubrick have a vitality far beyond most of the other work, even though the details of the films are often complex or obscure.And when he chooses to deal with the subject of sexual behaviours and trust between men and women, the film promises to create ripples.’’ Eyes Wide Shut ’’ is more than just nude bodies and hindu mantras.
The sexual angle of the movie and the glittering star cast made it an instant favorite among tabloids.There was obviously a tremendous hype around the release of this film, which resulted in several rumors about the plot.
Plot:
Tom Cruise plays the character of a very innocent doctor whose wife Alice played by Nicole Kidman admits to having sexual fantasies about a Naval Officer she met some time back. Bill is shocked and finds himself being called a hypocrite by his wife, cause he doesnt seem to be honest in admitting to his own fantasies.
Bill’s mental stability is disoriented and he becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter. Bill finds himself looking out for his sexual whims and in the pseudo-dream encounters a dead man’s daughter and a prostitute.
He visits a nightclub and learns about a secret sexual group and decides to attend one of their meetings. What follows is the protagonist’s experience with his own conscience and sexuality. The film leads us to the unsolved puzzle of the psychological aspects of human sexual interactions and the dark side of trust and faithfulness.
Alice: ...And at no time did he ever leave my mind..
Performances:
Tom Cruise does an outstanding job. He totally discards his camera-conscious demeanour and surprises with his mature, gripping performance. He makes us feel for him which helps the viewer to understand his side positively and it helps by making the entire movie take a more positive note.
Nicole acts her part well though she has got a lesser screen time. Kidman is seen in the beginning, and she has brief and crucial scene in the middle, and a deft and brilliant one at the end. And I must say she has a wonderful body.
Direction:
Stanley Kubrick rarely explores the limits of film making while telling his story. He is mostly interested in divulging the plot in most simplistic manner, taking no liberties to support the movie with technical wonders. But Kubrick tries to be an innovator within that relatively narrow context by examining novel ways of telling his story.
In this movie he shows his tricks in portraying the geometry of reality with the dreams of the protagonist. Both the husband and wife encounter sexual fantasies and on both occasions the invariably translate into threatening situations.
Where Kubrick excels is the way in which he manages to evoke ambiguous reactions from viewers by presenting the fantasy dream of the protagonist as if it were `real.’ The dynamics of the real time intertwined with the surreal dreams present a challenge, which Kubrick handles with immense grace.
My Review:
Does it live up to the reputation of Stanley Kubrick? The answer is yes. It certainly deserves its place among other Kubrick masterpieces like DR. STRANGE LOVE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
Kubrick exquisitely conveys the beautiful imagination patterns of our dreams, full of sexual symbolism and other dream-like symbols which creates an ambience of entropic movements. They remain consistent, with every scene and dialogue playing its role both as in the development of the plot and as the contrast in its reproduction on screen.
Conclusion:
This is the sort of film one sees more than once. Once is good to cleanse our mind of all the bollywood crap that have been misunderstood as movies. See it again to appreciate the graceful, nearly flawless finale of a timeless man.
Watch the film for yourself, and for once ignore what you have heard about it and when the movie sinks into your mind, visualize the master-strokes of the genius, recollect the subtle hints, the nuances of the procedures. Analyse what the film does to you, and what it makes you think about.
I think in all the movies that Kubrick makes he wants to transport us into his ideas and then let us go free after the shock. And its our point of view and the understanding of the motion picture which determines the degree of Kubrick’s achievement. I bet you can’t say this about most of the other movies.
Alice: Millions of years of evolution, right? Right? Men have to stick it in every place they can, but for women... women it is just about security and commitment.
Bill: A little oversimplified, Alice, but yes, something like that.
Alice: If you men only knew...
Comments are always welcome even if I am not the Stanley Kubrick of Review writing