Eyes Wide Shut

I switched my computer's region code to Germany so I could watch the uncensored Eyes Wide Shut. It would have been nice to watch it projected that way when it came out, but I live in America and am therefore kept safe from such things.

I'm not even going to bother referring to the main characters as Bill and Alice, because they are clearly Tom and Nicole. This is one of the great examples of - let's call it realist casting. That's when the filmmakers are not in some fantasy land where the audience is expected to forget the real-life identity of the celebrity who was hired because they are hugely famous, but rather in reality, where they know the audience is never going to forget that your star is your star.

A lot of filmmakers get this on a basic level*, but Kubrick is a master of it, and therefore everything you knew or had heard about Tom and Nicole when this movie came out only helps the emotional story. So Tom and Nicole it is.

::

Stanley made films very carefully, and if you watch carefully there are great returns. Consider two details in the opening party scene:

1. Nicole puts down her champagne.
After downing the champagne she grabbed the instant she was out of her husband's sight, she sets her second glass a few inches farther away from her than would seem natural. Just a few inches. But this is the invitation that leads to her extended flirtation with Sandor Szavost - a flirtation which comes within one reluctant syllable of becoming a quickie upstairs. Watch the way she touches him, and lets him touch her- how close their faces hover together. Observe all of this, then let's go see what Tom's up to.

2. Tom greets the models.
Tom is a good looking, charismatic man at a swank party and he's alone talking to two beautiful women. Gayle and Nuala are bringing the full flirt, and Tom is flirting back. But how hard? When he greets Nuala he does not place his hand on her shoulder or hip, both of which are inviting and close, but reaches across the space between them to shake the hand that is around Gayle's shoulder. Is there a less intimate option for greeting a beautiful woman at a champagne party? I suppose he could have waved. A moment later, when they try to lure him upstairs, he is walking with a model on each elbow as his hands are clasped together in front of him. Another choice would have been, I don't know, putting his arms around their impossibly sexy waists? It's another option.

Do you see our characters now? Because the details are not accidental; not with Kubrick. They tell you very specific information about our characters. Tom is not thinking about boffing strangers, Nicole really really is.

Later, they get stoned and have the big bad talk. Tom expresses that he "knows" that Nicole wouldn't cheat on him. He holds this absurd notion because he doesn't think like that, and he assumes she doesn't either. Nicole straightens him out on that point, and this is Tom's initial loss of innocence. His mind is blown, man. (Yes, we're dealing with a coming of age story starring a thirty-seven year old. It is, in many ways, a pathetic little tale. But human, and true, and magnificently told, so - onward!)

Tom takes his new unpleasant feelings into the night looking for, what? A revenge screw? The first time he's offered one he doesn't take it - but, in fairness the circumstances (the deathbed of the woman's father) are not ideal. Later a hooker offers him another shot, under perfect circumstances, and he doesn't take it again. He doesn't want a revenge screw.

So what does he want? He doesn't know, because he is a child in these matters. When he hears about the party from Nick Nightingale it sounds perfect: a big secret thing that he can't actually picture but which sounds like it certainly trumps Nicole's little sailor story. An orgy! That's just gotta relieve his terrible, confusing feelings!

Of course, loss of innocence leads not to quick understanding but to complex feelings and often more confusion. Adult questions lead to more adult questions. Poor Tom. Imagine how much worse it would have been if he'd actually done anything. Tom takes his tour of the sex museum as an observer only - he engages in exactly nothing before being chased away from the grown-up's party.

So his terrible feelings have not gone away, only now guilt has been added on top. He retraces his steps on his night of discovery and finds at the end of each path a different end.

At Nick's apartment he meets Alan Cumming's queer desk manager and the story of Nick's rough treatment. Both can be seen as non-traditional sexual behaviors.

At the mansion he meets total rejection.

At the costume shop he meets normalized pedophilia and child prostitution.

At the hooker's apartment he finds AIDS.

And at the morgue with the over-dosed beauty queen he stares death right in the face.

Nice little run of sexual fears there, Mr. Cruise! Then his friend Sidney Pollack, (symbol of cinematic authority since Tootsie) gives him an out. Sid tells him it was all a charade and he can just walk away if he wants. All those bad ends can just vanish from your mind, Tom, if you just agree to walk away from the whole thing.

Throughout the film, the rainbow has symbolized the sexual world. The models try to take Tom to "where the rainbow ends", the costume shop has a big rainbow on it's signage and rainbow-lit Christmas trees are prominent in the hooker's apartment and the deathbed house. It's a perfect symbol for Tom's view of the sexual world - twinkly bright, but he doesn't have enough information to name it any specific color. It's all colors jumbled up, because he has no idea what he's trying to imagine. When Tom returns to his house for the final time he turns off the Christmas tree. With this, we can know that Tom has chosen to turn away from the path he had oh so cautiously begun to follow.

Tom sits on the bed with Nicole and tearfully announces he will "tell her everything". What everything? He's going to confess to all the wild stuff he thought about maybe doing before he ran away in fear? Later, Nicole is tearful, but I can't help wondering if her tears stem from the realization that she's saddled for life with a man who will never probe or grow that dark part of himself that might have connected to the dark part of her that is clearly so lonely for companionship.

This is a story of an innocent who sets out to investigate sex, is scared to death by what he discovers, and runs tearfully back to naivete. That's the meaning of this film, says I.

And if you doubt, may I point out that it's actually in the title: Eyes Wide Shut.

Also, it makes a great double feature with Risky Business, which is essentially the same movie.


*although clearly some don't.