Film: Eyes Wide Shut

I watched this again last night for the first time since I saw it in the theater. One of the most striking things about Kubrick films seems to be the dialogue. It's not as fast, stagy, and patronizing as most other pictures. Voice inflection is flatter, lines are spoken slowly, and there is more hesitation. For me, this is a better reflection of how people talk in the real world. The other fantastic part of this movie is the lighting. Kubrick was able to use the natural room lighting for most of the scenes, so the Christmas lights or the desk lamps in a particular scene are the actual light sources we see illuminating the actors' faces in the finished product instead of some artificial off-camera light.

*** SPOILER QUESTION BELOW ***



On a plot note, for anyone familiar with the film, who leaves the mask on Tom Cruise's pillow at the end? Was it his wife, who may have found it, or was it someone from the secret sex society, perhaps placed there as a threat?

poll added %)

seen this film probally a dozen times, movie is perfect, i love all the symbolism used, such as the colors, red and blue, the bald head guy at the somertron, the masks, the christmas tree's, how bill uses money, etc. about the mask, no for sure answer, but one would say it was never REALLY there, it was just a symbol of bill's guilt. 5 stars without a doubt.

Loved it.

As for your question about the mask, I assumed it was his wife.. never occured to me it could have been placed there by sex cult or whatever as a threat.. maybe you could make a case for it though.

Yah I think the wife leaves the mask.

Also: I really liked this movie even if Cruise is a douchce and it woulda been better if Nicole Kidman had bigger tits.

Still a titalating movie...orgy scene was good as was the strobing light sex secene with Kidman and the Navy officer.

Movies that are a visual and auditory feast?

alasdair

I think of the mask not as a symbol of his guilt, but representative of our double natures. The taboo desires that we keep cloaked as a individual part of a society. One could say that the mask is put there to show that those desires, while put away and hidden, come out, whether we like it or not. The mask itself is a symbol of those desires, not the guilt for having them.

EDIT: The fact that the mask is on the bed, where many of our licidious acts take place, is no coincidence I think.

^ i think Kubrick is seldom unintentional in his filmmaking

Alasdairm, i absolutely agree, this film is visually lush.

This thread is surprising me as much as the AI thread did. I know very few who liked these films as well as I.

I thought that the dialogue was only "reasonably good" but not quite "excellent."

That said, I thought that the concept, the plot, the pacing, the cinematography and the acting (particlaurly Pollack's) were all excellent.

LL-O-Meter Rating: 3.4 stars out of 4.0.

P.S. - Please, Bluelight Powers That Be, for the love of God, re-re-vamp the star system so that it:

(a) is out of 4.0 stars (rather than out of 5.0)

(b) gives a much wider variety of choices so that people can give a true and accurate rating to better describe, with a number, how much they enjoyed a movie.

First of all, forcing us to rate movies out of 5 stars is un-Earthian - it's like asking us to rate women's looks on a scale of 0 to 13.

More importantly, by not including more choices, each of us is forced to give the same rating to our favorite movie of all time as we would give to our twenty-fourth movie of all time (assuming that most of us are movie-philes who have watched literally hundreds of movies, and for forum-regulars, I think that's a pretty good assumption).

C'mon guys - I know there'd be a little bit of work invoved, and while I'm not a techie, I'd be happy to pitch in in whatever way I could, but this is a rating system that would be of FAR more value to the Bluelight Movie Loving public (and, I would argue, would be UTILIZED by a far wider audience):

4.00 stars - Among the All-Time Pantheon Of Greatest Movies Ever

3.75 stars - Worthy of Winning The Academy Award For Best Picture

3.50 Stars - Worthy of Being Nominated For Best Picture

3.25 Stars - Worth Watching A Second Time

3.00 Stars - Worth Watching Exactly Once In The Theatre

2.75 Stars - Worth Watching Exactly Once, At Home, If Desperate

2.50 Stars - Flawed But Watchable

2.25 Stars - I Want My Two Hours Back

2.00 Stars - I'm Embarrassed For Whomever Recommended This To Me

1.00 Star - I'm Puking Right Now Just Thinking About It

0.00 Star - I'm Intentionally Swallowing Said Puke So I Can Forget The Fact That I Watched This "Film"

There you go - from zero to four stars, broken down by quarter stars for all movies above 2 stars only.

Alternatively, if the powers that be are against the idea of having fractional stars as options, a simple rating system from zero to ten gives the same range of eleven choices.

I shall now end this missive, as it is starting to rival The English Patient in length and in relevance.

Peace,

LL

I worked in the projection booth of a large movie theater when "Eyes Wide Shut" came out. A dorky co-worker of mine about had a fit as he passed the projector for this movie and saw what was playing on the screen. Apparently he was convinced someone had replaced the reel with a porn flick. :D

i've been putting seeing this movie off for so long mainly because of my dislike of both tom cruise and nicole kidman, but i really think it's time... i *heart* kubrick, i just wish it wasn't those two playing the leads

so i watched it... and it was brilliant. beautifully shot (i seriously am in love with kubrick), emotionally engaging... suspenseful. tom cruise is a bad actor though. he's not shockingly bad but he's still bad. nicole on the other hand is good. i might not like her as a person but she's a good actress. i was really struck by the way that she was able to give so much more depth to her character than tom was able to.

also something that i found myself thinking when the movie finished was how if it had of been directed by bertolucci i probably would of hated it as he really tends to lack that psychological depth which is needed when it comes to portraying stories that question such things as sex and morality, unlike kubrick.

i also didn't expect the film to end when it did. it gave me a shock initially but afterwards i thought that it was fitting and left me feeling very impressed with this movie as a whole.

5/5 stars.

dapurpman said:

seen this film probally a dozen times, movie is perfect, i love all the symbolism used, such as the colors, red and blue

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YES! i loved that too, and i was just thinking how particularly fantastic the way he utilised those two colours in the movie was

sorry drEaMtiMe*@#, this is the film that made me conclude kidman is overrated as an actor. her acting in the dope smoking "confession" scene has to be the worst ever included in a kubrick film. i liked the film of course (it's kubrick!), and i find it's kubrick's most symbolic, however this underlying theme of servitude and hierarchies was so hidden, so much so that one almost requires an arts degree to grasp any of it at all, that on the surface the film is left to come across as an entertaining but extremely drawn out exercise in pretension (wow that sounds pretentious lol).

a very good film, i just wish it were a little more accessible.

that movie is ridiculous


dreamtime qoute -
also something that i found myself thinking when the movie finished was how if it had of been directed by bertolucci i probably would of hated it as he really tends to lack that psychological depth which is needed when it comes to portraying stories that question such things as sex and morality, unlike kubrick.


bullshit

^^^ ahhh do you want to maybe elaborate on that rather then just saying what i wrote is bullshit?

and ss, you're right about nicole in that particular scene. since i wrote that review i watched the movie again and surprisingly not in a sober state of mind i found her very irritating. however i still stand by the fact that tom cruise is a fucking shit actor and thus he will make anyone who is even slightly better than him stand out in comparison.

I saw this a few years and didn't really enjoy it, I felt everything after the orgy scene was unnecessary. I was surprised that I didn't like it considering I really enjoy Kubrick's other work. I'm going to watch this for a second time and see if it sparks anything.

Like it a lot, though I wouldn't call it a great movie. Why? Because it's just hot. Because it oozes sin. Thematically, it reminds me of a more hoity-toity "Blue Velvet"--they're both about secret worlds just beneath vanilla appearances.

This is my favorite Kubrick movie, and my second favorite movie of all time.

then vote for it in our kubrick poll here

this film shakes me more and more with each viewing.