4 August 1999

Jamie: "To my way of thinking, the menace in Eyes Wide Shut is not the literal happenings in the movie: the orgy, the threats, etc. Instead, Eyes Wide Shut is about the menace of truth. We are completely locked in to the good doctor's self-absorbed belief in his own perception of the world, even though he's an unreliable POV.

Unreliable POV? Where's the evidence of that? Exhibit A: He doesn't think of his wife as having her own unique desires, and that discovery is completely threatening to him. Exhibit B: Everybody, and I mean everybody, is attracted to Tom Cruise at some level. It goes to his point with his wife: for a man, every woman is a potential conquest, or whatever. Is it any surprise that when we're locked into Tom's POV, we run through that same experience with the hooker, the daughter, the girl at the party who later saves him at the orgy, and even the concierge? Exhibit C: Nobody turns out to be who Tom thinks they are. In the costume shop, not only is the costume shop owner not who Tom expects when he first shows up, but he also turns out to be not a raging father, but a pimp angling for a percentage of his daughter's take. The drug-addled model turns out to be a heroine. The beautiful hooker turns out to be doomed.

Finally, does anybody buy the coincidence of the model saying she'll atone for Tom's sins, and Sidney Pollack's feeble explanation? Look at the paradox of the title: Eyes Wide Shut is the blindness men wish for. Why does the sex seem Victorian and staged? Tom is only a voyeur, watching the action but not participating--it's staged the same way porn, or anything else we see without experiencing, directly carries a level of artifice. Nothing is true--it's filtered through Tom's experience, and whenever there's a truth outside of that experience (his wife's desire, the model's death), it's too painful for Tom to deal with, and he retreats.

Because our narrator never digs below the tip of the iceberg, we only see a small percentage of the potential darkness and threat of sexual desire, and it's more than poor Tom can deal with. At the end of the movie, Tom chooses the safety of his family, because in his basic decency, he's incapable of running with the wolves that he's witnessed.

I think it's unfortunate that the unreliable narrator trick is turned out so rarely in the movies that when we do see it, it must be handed to us through flashback (Rashomon or The Usual Suspects). I think--well, actually at this point, I hope, Eyes Wide Shut will get its due as in part being the story of a man who did lead a sheltered life, and who couldn't quite cope with the little taste of danger that he sees, and chooses to retreat back into his old, safe life and blind himself to the darker consequences of the mystery he has experienced.

Sorry to go on so long. I think it's okay to like or not like Eyes Wide Shut, but I think not liking it because it was too mild or too pretentious misses the point. Expecting Eyes Wide Shut to be about kink and sexual experimentation is like expecting The Shining to be just another Friday the 13th movie. There is more "there" there than is explicitly written. If you want sexual danger spoon fed, there's always Basic Instinct."

And last, but not least, this from Eva: "Where to begin? I read your long review about it (it's enough to make one go color blind) and your other thoughts on it and I have to say that although I agree with some of the things you say, I think Eyes Wide Shut is a bad film, unworthy of Kubrick. Is it better than other crap out there? Sure. It's still Kubrick, beautifully shot, carefully thought out frames, great performance from Kidman etc. but it fails miserably. Not because it doesn't entertain - or any other such elitist reason - but simply because it gets lost somewhere in the beginning and doesn't know where it's going. The film should have stuck with the conflict between the couple, which Alice so bravely brings to the front. The acknowledgement of irrepressible sexual desire has yet to be dealt with appropriately in film, much more so when it relates to women. And this is where the film really goes wrong. I don't generally consider myself a feminist but this film made me furious.

Why that first shot of Nicole's ass that opens the film? Why, after that beautiful "confession" do we drop her character like a sack of potatoes and instead concentrate on Dr. Bill's infantile need to assert his masculinity? And what the hell is up with that "orgy" scene? And why is everyone calling it an orgy scene? It is never explained why such a large number of women (who are of course all whores and/or junkies) would submit themselves to this "game" where their integrity as well as their life is in danger. Which leads to your point, David, that we cannot take the film "realistically". In other words, that certain parts of it are constructed, or a dream, or part of some sort of illusionary world. To make this short, if that indeed is "the point" of Eyes Wide Shut, it does not make itself clear.

I am not someone who expects a film to explain itself from beginning to end, nor am I of the school of "why should I work so hard to understand it?" but I do think that if a film needs 5 or 6 viewings to even begin to understand it, there is something wrong there. I am a great admirer of Kubrick. There are things in 2001 that I still don't understand and I have seen it a good number of times. But the structure of it and the irony of the topic is strong enough that I can leave it up to the filmmaker to make that choice.

Enough of this, I could write as long as you did on it, David. Unfortunately, I just don't think this is a good film, as much as I would like it to be. One last thing: What is this whole "regular" people versus critics? Are critics not regular people?

DAVID RESPONSE : No, critics are not regular people when it comes to looking at movies. As I wrote before, they can be. Populist criticism has its place. But people who consider themselves Critics have a specific job. (Note the capital "C" and understand that my occasional reluctance to call myself a "Critic" comes for the fact that I reach beyond my own idea of professional film criticism as I add elements such as the business, production issues, etc, etc.) They are supposed to be experts in film to the degree to which they can distinguish the qualities of value that may not be apparent to the "regular people". That doesn't mean that a Critic has to love only obscure, difficult films or must hate every popular film. The whole point is that a Critic should be free of the bias that the audience brings. Indeed, he or she should be above that. A leader. Great Critics may disagree. But a great Critic does not fail to ask the important questions, such as "If Kubrick is a great filmmaker and if Kubrick has made films that seemed iffy at first that we changed our minds on, and if Eyes Wide Shut seems stilted, why is that? Could it be intentional? And if it is intentional, what does it mean? Disliking Eyes Wide Shut is a completely feasible choice. However, I continue to feel that any Critic who treated Eyes Wide Shut like the third movie he/she saw that week, Dismissing it without really trying to figure out what went wrong (other than "Kubrick was old and couldn't do a sex movie right") loses the capital "C" and is just someone with an opinion. Nothing wrong with being "just someone with an opinion," but I want a qualified opinion from a Critic.

As far as the film being somehow misogynistic, I couldn't disagree more. Alice is the strong, smarter member of this couple. She makes decisions and sticks by them, even in her dream. I love the first monologue, but the second dream is really the fascinating one. In that, Alice explains the relationship and the fall from grace. (Idyllic city Adam and Eve bite the apple and he doesn't stay by her side. She hates him for that though she realizes later that he left her side in order to get them clothes/protect them. Her sense of the only way to break through the fog is to not only have sex with one man, but to have sex with thousands of men indiscriminately - and for that matter without any noted pleasure - laughing in his face to get his attention. When she wakes up, she wants him to be awake with her, but his journey isn't complete yet.)

E ME: Thank you all for your wonderful letters. I'm sorry I couldn't print even more of them, but the odds of anyone reading all of these 7500-plus words (other than my editors...sorry if I gave you the day from hell) is thin enough and I could never get you all in. But don't be shy if you want to write in with more theories. And keep reflecting.