Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut may be master craftsman Stanley Kubrick’s most hated film. It was also his last. Eyes Wide Shut finally takes Freud’s obsession with dreams into interesting depths. Eyes Wide Shut is based on the 1926 novella Dream Story by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. Schnitzler was a friend and correspondent of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

Stanley Kubrick was obviously still an old horny man before he died. Eyes Wide Shut features the most explicit sex scenes out of any of Kubrick’s films. He also wasted no time getting Nicole Kidman to drop her clothes for the film. Kubrick must have known the power of art as he obviously utilized it.

I wouldn’t say it is too farfetched to say that Eyes Wide Shut was inspired by the films of David Lynch. Stanley Kubrick was a huge fan of Lynch’s Eraserhead and he made no effort to hide it. Eyes Wide Shut if full of the mystery, perversity, and dreamlike nature that makes David Lynch a great director. It would be no doubt interesting to see Lynch’s reaction to Eyes Wide Shut.

Eyes Wide Shut also deals with secret societies and assumed freemasons. The sex orgy scenes of the film make you really wondering what secret societies are about. The cloaks and masks these individuals wear are interesting to say the least. I would even goes as far to say that the secret society meeting is the best part of Eyes Wide Shut. I still find the scene intense every time I revisit it.

Was Eyes Wide Shut a good film for Kubrick to end his career and life with? I think so. It may not be Kubrick’s greatest film but offers much more than Spartacus (which Kubrick just did for the money). Tom Cruise contrives his niceness and is quite annoying. The only disappointment for me in Eyes Wide Shut was that Tom Cruise didn’t get killed at the sex orgy.

-Ty E