CNN Review - Not Good

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Review: 'Eyes Wide Shut' - All
undressed with no place to go

Web posted on:
Thursday, July 15, 1999 5:58:20 PM EST

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- From a critical standpoint, the
late, great Stanley Kubrick can't lose. To
suggest that one of his films is anything
less than a masterpiece or that the man
himself was even a brick short of
unadulterated genius means setting
yourself up for ridicule as a philistine.

Even casual moviegoers who wouldn't
know a wide-angle lens from a box of
Milk Duds are ready to pipe up and say
nobody can touch Kubrick. It's been
pounded into their heads for so long,
there's no point in suggesting otherwise

Judging from the initial reviews, the ducks
are waddling right into line once again for
"Eyes Wide Shut," the sexually charged
farewell from a director who was brilliant,
unyielding in his personal vision and
wholly capable of making suspect films.
Just like a real person.

So much has been conjectured and
written about "Eyes Wide Shut" before its
release that it almost seems ridiculous to
introduce the key players. (Us magazine
had a hilarious cover story several weeks
ago, the writer wondering whether this is
the sexiest film ever made ... before
anybody had even seen it.)

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star as
Dr. William Harford and his gorgeous
wife, Alice. The Harfords live charmed
lives. To begin with, they look like Tom
Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But their
general lifestyle is the kind of thing that
keeps the unwashed masses lying awake at night.
They've got a magnificent New York City apartment, a lovely little
daughter and socialite friends who throw lavish parties full of
champagne and flirting fashion models.

Kubrick's rubrics
It seems a little strange that Kubrick, of all people, would want to
make a film about sexual peccadilloes. He'd already broached the subject
with "Lolita" (1962), which -- from the sex angle, anyway -- was
terminally tamed by early-'60s production standards. But the director's
auteur calling card from then on was always one of cold, calculated
dehumanization. "Barry Lyndon" (1975) features some languid sex, to be
sure. But the closest Kubrick came to exploring the topic in his
post-"Lolita" years was with "A Clockwork Orange" in 1971. Tellingly,
the film is about a happy-go-lucky rapist.

Kubrick took so long to make his films, and re-shot individual scenes so
many times, that a spontaneous erection would seem beyond the realm of
his imagination. Unfortunately for "Eyes Wide Shut" (and for the few
critical audience members the film will actually draw), Kubrick never
really loosened up.

The story follows Cruise's character through an absurdly eventful night
of almost-sex, but this is the most passive character you'll ever see in
a movie that's supposed to be about one man's descent into the darker
recesses of his psyche. And don't let those big block letters that
scream CRUISE.
KIDMAN. KUBRICK. in the ads fool you -- this is Tom Cruise's movie.
Kidman is on camera for 40 minutes, tops, and disappears for the vast
majority of the second act. That's too bad, because the scenes that
feature Cruise and Kidman together are, far and away, the best in the
film.

An important early sequence -- in which the couple shares a joint and
Alice winds up telling her husband way too much about her secret sexual
fantasies -- is prime Kubrick. It's funny while remaining borderline
ugly, the same unnerving vibe that Kubrick successfully nurtures in all
of "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), and, every now and then, in "A Clockwork
Orange" and "The Shining" (1980).

But it sets the table for a biting black comedy that somehow never
materializes. Instead, you get a slow-motion morality tale full of hot
female bodies and thoroughly uneventful "mystery."

Post-Fellini

It helps that the pot-smoking scene, unlike most of the rest of the
film, is relatively well written. It allows us to glean something about
the characters through their words and postures, rather than forcing us
to watch Cruise sleepwalk through what appears to be a series of
Penthouse letters shot by Federico Fellini.

The soft-core stuff is triggered by Alice's confession that she once
fantasized about a young naval officer while having sex with her
husband. This is meant to generate a dark night of the soul in William,
but your jaw hardly drops over the revelation. Obviously, no husband
would be pleased to hear that once stood in for a stud his wife spied in
a hotel dining room. But it would make as much dramatic sense if
William's emotional collapse had been
triggered by finding a three-speed vibrator in Kidman's sock drawer.
The film feels like it was artfully crafted out of tons of vaguely
related footage, with a talky scene near the end playing like frantic
thread-tying. (In that scene, co-star Sydney Pollack systematically
deflates everything that we just watched.) There's certainly little
impetus for the adventure William ends up going on.

Within minutes of hearing his wife's confession, he's kissed
passionately by a bereaved woman who barely knows him (and plays no role
in the rest of the movie); shoved to the ground by a gang of homophobic
teen-agers (who are never seen again); and propositioned by a gorgeous
West Village hooke (who's revealed to be HIV-positive later in the film,
not that William actually sleeps with her).

It should be noted that the hooker is a wildly optimistic variation on
the lost souls who are actually roaming the streets of New York selling
sex to strangers. The erotic charge of the film is based solely on the
fact that every woman Cruise's character encounters is built like a
brick Playmate. The underlying complexity of his carnal desires has
nothing to do with it.

Cruising slowly

The most distressing scene -- dare I say bad? -- is when William
attempts to sneak into a depraved masked-ball orgy full of profoundly
chest-heavy women. A mask and costume are required if you're to attend,
so William has to wake up a clothing store proprietor to secure an
ensemble.
To begin with, the sequence takes forever, a truly ridiculous amount of
time. The pace of the movie in general is excruciating. It's so full of
portentous, lingering shots of Cruise doing things like ringing buzzers,
unfoldingnewspapers and methodically sipping beers, you start to giggle
after a while.
It's all rather mundane. Then, completely out of nowhere, Kubrick leaps
into his shrieking slapstick mode.

Leelee Sobieski, playing the proprietor's teen-age daughter, is suddenly
caught red-handed frolicking in her underwear with a couple of Japanese
businessmen. William is clearly shocked, and the shop owner acts enraged
... and then the costume is packed up and our hero exits for the orgy.
The girl and her father are encountered again a while later, but the
"pay-off" to the interlude is so obvious it verges on inconsequential.

The whole film is like this, with Cruise gawking at a variety of kinky
activity that neither comments on his stance toward the world nor alters
his perceptions of sexuality. It just happens because Kubrick has
decided to deal with panties and breasts.

The scene that everyone will be talking about, of course, is the orgy.
As always, Kubrick's visual mastery is beyond reproach. The film's lush
production design and elegant lighting are dazzling, and the elaborate
masks that the revelers are wearing during the debauchery create an
honestly unnerving atmosphere. But the sheer silliness of what you're
looking at hamstrings the sequence.
Again, this is nothing that can't be
found in a Penthouse video, albeit
shot by a man who had an almost
mystical grasp of film's technical
capabilities. Scores of unspeakably
beautiful women march around
servicing a variety of masked men
(no, the Lone Ranger's not there),
with incense and red robes lending
the proceedings a religious
undercurrent.

But can anybody in her or his right mind take this seriously? At least
Fellini pulled out the stops from the first minute when he wanted to get
surreal.
Here, realism fades into surrealism, then into outright foolishness.
Morbidly paced foolishness.

The ultimate point, when it's all finally over, seems to be that
everyone has sexual fantasies, but it's absurd to let them drive you to
distraction if you've
got someone who loves you waiting at home. Anyone from Ann Landers to
a priest could've told you that. It doesn't take a genius
"Eyes Wide Shut" is the ultimate nudie film. Wild sex at the orgy is
partially obscured at all times, but the naked women stroll around like
they're looking for detergent at an A&P. There's also bad language.
The entire movie is encapsulated in one shot, during which Cruise
verrrrry slowly leans in to kiss a well-built female corpse, then
verrrrry slowly pulls back without doing it. Rated R. Better bring a
lunch: It's 159 minutes long.
"Eyes Wide Shut" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company
Warner Bros., a Time-Warner property.

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