Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

 Based losely on a 1926 Austrian novella (translated title is 'Dream Story', by Arthur Schnitzler), 'Eyes Wide Shut' holds the Guiness certified record for the longest continous film shoot at an even 400 days. Director Stanley Kubrick submitted his final cut of the film six days before dying of a heart attack in his sleep.

 Staring Tom Cruse and Nicole Kidman as their real marriage was deteroting and famous for an operatic orgey scene, the contoversal film attracted a curious audience and made $162.1 million at the box office off a $65 million budget. Critics were genrally positive, it has a 76% on Rotton Tomatoes.

"I don't know what this is", is the phrase that kept coming to my mind as I watched the film, trying to figure out how to pin it down, what lense to use on it, how to process what I was seeing. In hind sight the answer is obvious, an unusually artistic erotic thriller. It's a film very interested in lines, there being crossed or headed. It's extremely sexual in focus, most scenes are either people having sex, or have just had sex, trying to get sex, or considering having sex. 

The orgey scene, built up in reputation over all these years, wasn't nearly as debauched as I'd been expecting. The film is artifical in sets, often (intentionaly) stilted in language. It goes from flat to intense, it has a dreamy quality, I'd describe the film as being high. 

The plot is fairly simple, after a longish pre amble at a Christmas party (this is a Christmas movie), doctor Tom Cruse has a fight with wife Nicole Kidman, there are mutual charges of adultery. Dr. Tom gets summoned to a night time house call, then decides to take his time coming home, makes a number of stops along the way, one of which leads him to the aforementioned operatic orgey; a decadent, ritualistic, masked affair, his attendance has consequences that play out over roughly the last third of the movie. 

It's very well made, it's surreal, it has a number of things to say. The secret society aspect, that's a puzzler. What does it mean? Why is it there? It's a comment on the larger themes, but why this particular device? I didn't love this movie, but it is rather mysterious and very intriguing. I think I'll have to watch it again and see what more I can sift out. ***1/2