Eyes Wide Shut

I had seen this movie years ago as a teenager for all the wrong reasons. But I remember it haunting me a little. I couldn't really remember why. About a year ago, I stumbled upon Jeffrey Overstreet's very positive review of the movie and it clicked. I rewatched the film this weekend and am again haunted. It's scary. I felt uneasy the whole time. It's chills are earned with constant raising of the stakes. Precarious situations only escalate further from the smallest slip of the tongue to the death of a hooker from a orgy ball with masks and cloaks and the creepy "plink (pause) plink (pause) plink" piano of the score. Alice (Kidman) tries to hurt her husband, Bill (Cruise), with a harsh story of missed passion. Jealousy ensues and drives Bill toward...what? Anger, infidelity, lies, hurt? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. The impact of a mean word shared between stoned spouses erupts into something awful. Even when Bill fears for his safety after the ball, he keeps moving toward destruction.

And I could see it. Stanley Kubrick incorporates a walking motif. His main characters, primarily Bill, move towards the camera, or away, but always moving. Moving towards nowhere. Bill thinks he's going to hurt Alice the way her story devastated him, but he can't satisfy that hurt. When he stops, when he finds the mask next to her sleeping body, then he can deal with what he had been spending the whole movie moving away from - his wife.

This role is easily Cruise's most restrained performance. Instead of his usual intensity, he favors quiet looks of regret, fear, and devastation. Kidman gets some great chunks of dialogue that seem to say more about the movie's intentions than a viewer could surmise on their own. The title's meaning becomes clear in her final piece of dialogue. Wake up.

There is that crazy orgy ball scene. Try as he might, Kubrick can't make it seem believable. Although, the chief fault with the scene is not his, but of the necessity of the costumes. It proves difficult to pull emotions from a face behind a mask. Still, I can clearly see that the scene stands out not for its believability but for the surreality it creates. It's weird, scary, creepy, and dare I say sensual (arc of eyebrow)? And this crazy combination of feelings and visuals create one surreal, frightening, and memorable cinematic moment.

Side note: Apparently, the answer to marriage difficulties is sex.

***1/2