If human being’s minds are to be called a "Black Box", then Stanley Kubrick had the most darkest of the lot in Hollywood.
His films, barring one or two, are all deliberately paced twisted art films that deals with heightened philosophical ideas and principles - some repellent, some masterstrokes, and others ideological potholes(like Clockwork Orange).
There’s never been a more polarizing director than Kubrick, and his very last film entitled "Eyes Wides Shut" underlines that fact. This is a superb work in terms of its scripting better than Clockwork Orange in that regard, but its the cinematic elements that is a downer here.
Eyes Wide Shut follows the lives of Bill Hadford, played by Tom Cruise and Mrs. Alice Hadford played by Nicole Kidman - The then real life celebrity couple! The couple from New York who confronts with reality/morality/obligatory conundrums of love, lust and human comfort.
Bill& Alice has been married for 8 years and are experiencing the real nuances and complications of what it means to be married.
In the film’s most pivotal scene and perhaps the most achingly hilarious in all of Kubrick’s, we see Alice break their bedroom foreplay pushing Bill aside, whilst reciting an anecdote to her Hubby dating back to the bygone summer of how she was induced to engulf in ex-marital affairs with a Naval officer, which is formally called as Infidelity.
The anecdote dismantles Bill all the way down to his subconscious and makes him wallow around the streets of Man Hattan like a frenzied mad-man, when he goes to visit one of her patient’s house who departed only a moment ago and when he traverses through New York’s most infamously hidden nocturnal underworld syndicate!
He keeps envisaging about Alice’s plausible intercourse with the Navy guy and Kubrick masterfully submerges his angst with a color desaturated morphed image that is hard to obliterate from your memory even after hours of watching this film! Fabulous!
His trademark photography style full of close-ups and minimalism efficaciously paints a hypnotic acoustic nocturnal overview of Times Square that is kind of a footnote to Cruise’s own sci-fi reality warp thriller "Vanilla Sky".
And Just like that Camerone Crowe film, what follows next is an errotic lucid nightmare that maddeningly depicts the angst, insecurities and anxieties of its protagonist.
Eyes Wide Shut isn’t a Hitchcockian Noir thriller although it plays like one but its a script challenging enough to summarize the multiple physical as well as sexual dimensions of its protagonists.
It keeps you yawning and gripped both at the same time before the final revelation hits you like a shot in the arm.
What I interpret from the film is that things in life, both fortunate and unfortunate; controllable and uncontrollable, happen no matter what and we, as human beings should be intelligent enough to accept the realities as the realities and move on with our lives while expecting a brighter future.
Kubrick refuses to be nihilistic as he was in Clockwork Orange and provides a satisfying conclusion in Eyes Wide Shut that exhorts opportunistic anticipation from us 9 times out of 10.
The ending is well earned and subtly explained away and in case you don’t like it - then you’ve made the mistake of judging it by its face value. In fact all the explosively negative reviews have made the mistake of judging it by its face value - " No Kubrick film is hollow and blatant as some of the other Shlockmeister film’s".
But the problem with the Eyes Wide Shut, doubles back to the director’s own inherent cinematic weaknesses - slow mauling pace, style over substance, deliberate camera angles and a storytelling format that is so self indulgent and subdued which ends up being a mile away from the Original master of cinema you know who?
Tom Cruise’s middling performance lacks depth and unlike Jimmy Stewart’s from "Vertigo" you can’t root for his sympathetic dimensions/repercussions simply on an automatic pilot.
Nicole Kidman is left as a mere caricature but in whatever little screentime she gets to act - she does enough to embody the vulnerability and the eroticism of a middle aged housewife.
The theme music is pretty much in sync with the overall mood and atmosphere of the film even when the narrative tumults pendulum in between tantalizing and downtrodden.
The sequences of Cruise walking through an almost deserted times square looks like an acoustically mellowed down version of David Aames from Cruise’s own film "Vanilla Sky".
But this isn’t anywhere close to being bright& uplifting as that tantalizingly entertaining Camerone Crowe film released in 2001. The result is problematic with few perk points and plenty of negatives.
I’m voting thumbs down to Kubrick’s last work here but considering its momentous occasion, I do like to point out that his precocious writing prowess and almost inaccessibly transcendent direction are worth commending!
If you are a fan of his and had synchronized well with the cinematic values of Kubrick then "Eyes Wide Shut" mustn’t be missed. If you can’t deprive cinematic values then I would say skip this film.
My arbitrary 3 star rating and non recommendation are contradictory which I know it but after taking all things into account - I’ve to say this is Kubrick and this is how his film’s are meant to be.
Maddening, erotic, tantalizing and a little bit off putting.
My rating? 3 out of 5. And FYI - this is a fitting swansong for a legendary career.
Wanna know which is his best work to date? It says here - "2001: A Space Odyssey". Nothing beats that ghee whiz wonder in space. NOTHING!