The final film that Stanley Kubrick created, 1999’s EYE WIDE SHUT is almost an EXCELLENT film. Save for 2 uncharacteristic mistakes by the famed Director, this film would be up at the top of his best films. But, as it is, this film is one of his worst - which still makes it very, very good.
After a 400 day shoot - a shoot that stands in the Guinness Book of World records as the longest, continuous movie shoot in history - Kubrick delivered his final cut of this film 4 days before his surprise death by a heart attack. Consequently, this film will stand as the finale of an illustrious career.
After a 400 day shoot - a shoot that stands in the Guinness Book of World records as the longest, continuous movie shoot in history - Kubrick delivered his final cut of this film 4 days before his surprise death by a heart attack. Consequently, this film will stand as the finale of an illustrious career.
The rare Kubrick film with BIG NAME stars, EYES WIDE SHUT stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (in the heyday of their relationship) as a struggling couple that serves as Kubrick’s advocates in an exploration of marriage and sexuality, fidelity and jealousy.
The first half hour of this 2 hour and 39 minute film is pretty strong with Kubrick establishing mood and tone and Kidman delivering a deep, dark performance as Alice Harford the wife of New York City Dr. William Harford (Cruise) a man who thinks highly of himself and fancies himself a “playboy”, but in reality is a homebody and his bravado in public is “all show”. Alice, however, is NOT all show and in a monologue that is about as good as ANYTHING that Kubrick has shot, Kidman knocks it out of the park as she tells her husband how unfulfilled she feels in this relationship.
This revelation, then, spins this movie in a direction that is one of the 2 major flaws in this film - it focuses on Cruise’s (and not Kidman’s) character for the next hour and a half as he tries to come to grips with what his wife has told him. He does this by deciding to make her jealous by having a sexual dalliance. This sidelines the most interesting character (and performance) by far in this film and focuses on a rather thin, “surfacy” character.
And…that would be fine if this character was in the hands of an actor that could play the nuance of the character and drive it to deeper depths, but Cruise - at least at this point in his career - just wasn’t capable of driving any depth of feeling in William Harford. And that is the 2nd (and more dertrimental) flaw in this film. The character that Cruise was portraying felt like he was putting on a mask the entire time and I didn’t once believe this character - and certainly did not feel what this character was feeling and, more importantly, I didn’t care what happened to him.
And that thinness of performance becomes even more apparent when Kidman’s character shows up again for the last 1/2 hour of the film. At this point, it was a breath of fresh air to actually see a deep, well-acted character - whether you loved (or hated) her.
As is usual for Kubrick, the pictures that he paints on screen are stupendous works of art that had me grabbing for the pause button on the remote to drink in the imagery of the scene on the screen. Combine that with the unsettling score by Jocelyn Pook and you have a film of stylized bizarre ambience/sensuality that really points out how out of place Cruise’s character is in that world..
All-in-all a less than stellar finale for a Master of the Art of Filmmaking - but one that does solidify Kubrick as a true, unique visionary of the Cinema Universe.
Letter Grade: B
7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank (ofMarquis)
NEXT MONTH: The BankofMarquis starts a new Director’s Series focusing on the works of legendary Writer/Director BILLY WILDER with 1942’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY - a film that, incredible as this is to believe, I have never seen.
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