Eyes Wide Shut
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Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is a feature-length motion picture directed and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novella Traumnovelle (in Eng. Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler. The film stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Kubrick died shortly after completing editing a version of the film, and while the distributor presented it as fully completed by Kubrick, a number of critics argued that he would have continued to make further changes had he lived longer. The film was released to a mixed critical reaction.
Synopsis
The storyline, set in and around New York City, follows the surreal, sexually-charged adventures of Dr. Bill Harford (Cruise), who is shocked after his wife, Alice (Kidman), reveals that she had contemplated an affair years earlier. Throughout, there are suggestions the film exists on the plane of dream or reverie, though there is never any clear resolution of where "reality" ends and "dream" begins.Comparison to Traumnovelle
The film's puzzling narrative has inspired several interpretations, many of which see the film as a psychological allegory, often as a dream, rather than as a straightforward drama.Eyes Wide Shut is a fairly faithful adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (or Dream Story), but it leaves out one important piece of information that might have served as the key to understanding it. In Schnitzler's novella, Fridolin, the Bill Harford equivalent, is told by his wife that she first began to fantasize about infidelity while they were on holiday in Denmark. When Fridolin goes on his strange journey and arrives at the masked ball, the password is "Denmark". Schnitzler does not resolve whether Fridolin's journey is a dream or is meant to be interpreted literally.
In Eyes Wide Shut, the password is changed to "Fidelio", a word that points at the theme of marital fidelity, but does not indicate clearly that Bill's journey is a dream.
Stylistic features
Lighting and mise en scène
The lighting style in most of Eyes Wide Shut can be described as 'simulated natural lighting' because it attempts to replicate the way lighting looks in real life more closely than most Hollywood movies do, but still occasionally uses typical studio lighting techniques in order to create this illusion. One method Kubrick used to achieve a greater degree of natural lighting was to 'push' the film negative in processing to increase the speed of the film. Another method, also used in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), was to ensure that much of the lighting comes from the 'practical' lights (the lights that can be seen in the shots and are meant to be the source of light within the fiction of the story). For example, the scene with the man in the red cloak and gold mask is lit by a 'practical' spotlight from high above that exists within the fiction of the movie. However, the darker shadowy areas are lit to some extent by a diffuse fill light that cannot be ascribed to any light existing within the fictional setting (it was probably achieved with a 'china ball' or helium balloon fixture offscreen).Kubrick occasionally departs from the naturalistic lighting with overt, unrealistic expressionism, such as the intensely saturated blue light that floods the bathroom of the Harfords when they are arguing, or the same blue light that comes through the windows of Ziegler's billard room.
The shop-fronts and street signs in the film convey information to an observant viewer that the characters are unaware of. For example, before Bill enters the prostitute's apartment building, they stop at a store with the sign 'The Lotto Shop', perhaps indicating that Bill is gambling with his health.
Theatricality
Michel Ciment has related Eyes Wide Shut to theatre, saying that Kubrick creates "a trompe-l'oeil universe", where what seems real is fake, and where everything is ambivalent, deceitful. Dr. Bill Harford's shifts from a well-established world that he takes for granted to an unfamiliar, hidden world that reveals his own as false. He finds that Ziegler leads a double life (betraying his wife by trying to cheat on her at a party and by attending the masked orgy at Somerton); and that Nick Nightingale, his jazz-playing friend, also plays the piano at the mysterious night gatherings at which Ziegler participates. The film is full of characters who play one role while hiding a covert one: Militch, the owner of the costume shop is in fact a pimp for his own daughter; the two Japanese men who amuse themselves with the daughter wear wigs and make-up; and the important men ("I'm not gonna tell you their names, but if I did, I don't think you'd sleep so well", Ziegler tells Bill) who attend the masked orgy. Even Marion Nathanson, the daughter of Bill's dead patient, who unexpectedly reveals her feelings for him shows a sudden duplicity when her fiancé enters the room."Domino", the nickname of the prostitute Bill meets, is not an arbitrary name, for it suggest both dominance and a cloak with a hood and a mask (which is one literal meaning of the word 'domino'. Another name, "Fidelio" (the password that allows Bill to get inside Somerton) is both a reference to conjugal fidelity and dressing-up (in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, Leonore disguises herself as a male prison guard in order to save her beloved husband Florestan). Dressed-up as a member of a secret confraternity, Bill gains access to Somerton Manor, the place where theatricality is at its apex, where everything is carefully staged (even the moment when Bill is threatened with death was "a kind of charade", Ziegler will tell him later) and where also Bill, his face covered by a mask, participates to the general game of concealment.
This blurring of the line between truth and fiction is also emphasized by the studio reconstruction of Lower Manhattan, extremely accurate in all its details, but at the same time discernibly fake.
Jonathan Rosenbaum has noted that Kubrick's artificial New York is a collage of anachronisms (such as the Sonata Café where Nightingale plays, which has 1950s decor), and references to the original novella's setting of Vienna (such as the Viennese-style cafe where Bill reads a newspaper). This simultaneously modern and bygone New York is just another facade in a world represented as entirely deceitful.
Narrative structure
The story follows a dramatic structure of leaving the familiar world, entering a strange and mysterious otherworld, and returning to the familiar world. In the third part of the movie, Bill revisits the scenes of the adventures he had the night before. This is reminiscent of the structure Kubrick used in A Clockwork Orange, in which the character Alex revisits each of the locations at which he performed violent acts in the first part of that movie. In each location, Bill's mystique is stripped from the locations that had previously been full of sexual temptation.Kubrick's initial script included a voiceover narration which was later abandoned.#redirect Many of Kubrick's films contain voiceover narration, including A Clockwork Orange.
Critical response
Critics objected chiefly to two features of the film. First, the movie's pacing is slow. While this may have been intended to convey the nature of dreaming, critics objected that it simply made actions and decisions laborious. Second, reviewers commented on the fact that Kubrick had shot his New York City scenes in a studio and that New York didn't "look like New York."[[Citing sources citation needed]]Reviewer Adam Gorightly found the acting and casting to be curious: "The choice of Cruise and Kidman in these roles is, to say the least, curious. Their emotional depth as actors--throughout their respective careers--has always appeared lacking, in my opinion. I sincerely doubt that either of them were actually perceptive enough to grasp what Kubrick was getting at with this film, which is perhaps just the sort of emotional content--or lack thereof--that the director was looking for from his characters. Eyes wide shut. This emotional complacency, for want of a better term, seems to go hand in hand with the duos involvement in Scientology, in whose members I have always perceived a certain lack of self-awareness." [link]
Lee Siegel, [writing] in Harper's, felt that most critics responded mainly to the marketing campaign and were unable to address the film on its own terms.
Notable Australian film critics Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton (The Movie Show/At The Movies) both gave the film five stars. [link]
American censorship controversy
Citing contractual obligations to deliver an R Rating Warner Brothers digitally altered the orgy scene for the American release of Eyes Wide Shut, blocking out images of graphic sexuality in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. This alteration of Kubrick's vision antagonized many cinephiles, as they argued that Kubrick had never been shy about ratings: A Clockwork Orange had an X-rating. The version released in Europe and Australia was completely unchanged (theatrical and DVD release), ratings mostly for people of 16 or 18 years.Music
- The film's title music is "Waltz 2" from Shostakovich's Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra, for years misidentified as the composer's Jazz Suite 2, recorded and released under the latter, incorrect, name by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
- In the scene with the ritual, the incantations heard in the background are actually Christian prayers sung in Romanian, played in reverse. The piece, named "Masked Ball", is an adaptation by Jocelyn Pook of her earlier work "Backwards Priests". When first contacting Pook in regard to providing music for the film, Kubrick asked her if she had anything else like Backwards Priests - "you know, weird".[link]
- One of the recurring pieces of music in the film is the second movement of György Ligeti's piano cycle "Musica Ricercata". The piece is unusual in that transitions between successive notes are exclusively either half-steps, octave jumps, or tritones (all of which are considered unacceptable in classical composition), in addition to the unyielding performance indication of Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale.
- In the morgue scene, Franz Liszt's late solo piano piece, "Nuages Gris" ("Grey Clouds") (1881) is heard.
- "Rex tremendae" from Mozart's Requiem plays as Bill walks into the Viennese cafe and reads of Mandy's death.
Trivia
- Christiane Kubrick, Stanley's wife, had an uncredited guest role as a woman sitting behind Dr. Harford at Café Sonata.
- Kubrick considered casting Steve Martin in the role of Dr William Harford, eventually given to Tom Cruise.
- During the very long shooting schedule, actors Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh could not return for reshoots due to other projects, so they were replaced by Sydney Pollack and Marie Richardson, respectively. Their scenes were completely reshot.
- Woody Allen claimed that Kubrick had considered him for the role of Victor Ziegler, but says that Kubrick "came to his senses".
- Director Stanley Kubrick died just four days after presenting Warner Bros. with what was reported to be a final cut of the film.
- The last name of the protagonist, Harford, is an amalgamation of Harrison Ford.
References and external links
- [Official Website at Warner Bros.]
- [Review at Rottentomatoes.com]
- [Introducing Sociology: a review of Eyes Wide Shut by Tim Kreider]
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