Criterion 'Eyes Wide Shut' 4K Review: Unmasking the Dreamer

It's still Stanley Kubrick's most misunderstood film, though time is indeed vindicating.

Warning: this review contains spoilers, but it’s my belief that to appreciate the movie fully actually requires them.

Jesus is famously quoted as saying that even looking at a woman with lust is equivalent to committing adultery in your heart. But what if you do so in your dreams? Is it fair to be held responsible? Does it matter if it’s “fair”?

To me, that’s the meaning of the title Eyes Wide Shut. You may have wide eyes lusting at people other than your spouse in dreams...but in reality, your eyes are closed. Stanley Kubrick’s final film arguably blurs the lines between dream and reality, but not in the usual way. He isn’t David Lynch, and he doesn’t make surrealism so thick that a narrative gets obscured. He presents us realism, and offers only small clues that everything we see might not be entirely on the level.

It’s also arguably his most postmodern film – like many theories, this one is subject to debate, since Kubrick, like many artists, didn’t enjoy explaining himself. But I’m reasonably convinced that Eyes Wide Shut calls attention, in small ways, to the fact that it is a movie, which is a sort of collective dream in and of itself. Everyone knew at the time that stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were married for real – they both claim Kubrick never said anything about that being a deliberate choice, but most observers presume it was, just like the decision to cast major, familiar movie stars.

Now, did he really reproduce New York City streets in an English studio backdrop solely because he was afraid of flying? That’s a possibility. However, it also gives him more control over manipulating the environment, and adds a level of artifice to once again suggest a dream reality (closeups of Cruise walking actual New York streets are achieved by the actor walking on a conveyor belt in front of rear projection, an uncanny valley effect so subtle you probably wouldn’t consciously notice if you didn’t know). There’s something surreal about cities at night anyway, from the lives that fully lit store window displays suggest and try to sell you, to the lights that are on suggesting something’s afoot, but you don’t know what. The director’s sense of humor manifests so subtly in his more serious films that casual audiences don’t notice it, but do we not think that having a flower store called “Nipped in the Bud” and a restaurant called “Verona” in the background are significant in-jokes? Certainly a newspaper headline reading “Lucky to be alive,” at a point in the narrative that Cruise’s Dr. Bill Harford is particularly paranoid, is the movie’s best gag.

Other bits just feel dreamlike in their simplicity. At a club, Bill simply orders “a beer,” and without asking what brand, the waiter brings back a pint glass full of lager. Later, the hooker knows Bill’s name despite his never having told her. Bill knows he needs a black cloak for the orgy despite Nick never actually specifying. Christmas trees and lights are everywhere, even in establishments that might not normally indulge. Nobody’s getting any gifts, though. At best, they’re learning what they could lose, rather than receive.

The character name itself is a bit of a joke – “Harford” comes from the director’s notion that the lead should be a Harrison Ford type, while “Bill” allows characters to address the lead as “Doctor Bill,” a word choice which typically suggests a heavy cost for services rendered. When his wife is referred to by a hooker as “Mrs. Doctor Bill,” it may be to pointedly suggest that marriage, while beneficial, comes with a price tag. The original novella, Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, adapted pretty faithfully by Kubrick standards, is set in Austria and names its main characters Fridolin and Albertina. Mrs. Doctor Bill (Kidman) is named Alice, and looking-glass imagery abounds, from a literal large mirror to her vivid dreams. The signature “Kubrick stare” gets some modification here; Kidman tilts her head slightly askew, and looks over glasses (natch), playing with the fact that the signature shot usually denotes insanity. When it’s pointedly off-kilter, aimed at Bill, it asks him to interpret. Is my wife just smiling at me, or is she nuts? If the latter, is that all in my head?

Tom Cruise at the time was as close to being out of Scientology as he ever got; Kubrick’s daughter Vivian, also a Scientologist, was already estranged from her father. I don’t think Scientology is the right lens through which to analyze the film, though one certainly can, given that it involves a faux-cult of rich elites that has people followed. Rather, I think Cruise giving himself over to Kubrick rather than Scientology-fluffed vanity results in an effective deconstruction of his persona. Unusually for his films, he comes across as a short guy with a big head, literally and metaphorically. As a doctor, he’s supremely confident, but the moment he’s thrown out of his routines and sense of familiarity, he stammers, repeats questions to buy himself time, and reveals that shtick like THAT grin and THAT laugh are affectations masking insecurity.

The entire plot is about Bill, upset at Alice’s fantasies and dreams, trying to indulge his own and cheat on her but failing spectacularly every time. Imagine the narcissistic Cruise of today, whose last few movies may as well all have been called “I Can Do Crazy Shit for Real XVII: Definitely Still Not Old” volunteering to make a film in which he pointedly has no game. Hell, he doesn’t even do sex scenes any more because he has determined his fan base doesn’t want them.

These days, Cruise’s public behavior feels like that of an alien trying to approximate normal American human behavior – just like you, he loves movies SO MUCH, that he gets TWO large popcorns and shovels fistfuls into his mouth! In 1999, for a moment, he felt like an admittedly rich and successful guy subject to the same insecurities we all are. You can be the best at what you do, whatever that may be, but if your wife cuts you down, even in private, that all takes an instant backseat. Dr. Bill discovers quickly that even though he’s rich and successful and has a wallet that seems to be full of infinite supplies of cash (way more than is smart to be walking the streets of NYC after hours with), there are people so far above him that he can be humbled any time, above and beyond the humbling his wife might dish out. Bill earned his wealth by going through medical school, which his old friend Nick (Todd Field) couldn’t handle, but he’s an interloper in the world of serious generational power, allowed to be at their parties only as a favor for his professional services. Not unlike the hookers also in attendance, at both the public holiday party and the double-secret sex one.

After the first such holiday party in which both Bill and Alice separately flirt with other people, they go home and have sex, but Alice then confides a fantasy she had about a real person. Bill can’t get the image out of his head -- when he’s called, late at night, to come to the home of a rich person who has died, the deceased’s daughter tries to make out with him even as her fiance is on the way. Bill declines, but heads out into the night looking for...what, exactly? He may not know, but temptations come to him, via a hooker (Vinessa Shaw), the probably underage daughter (Leelee Sobieski, then the Next Big Thing, now retired from acting as of 2012) of a costume-shop owner (Rade Serbedzija), and finally a secret sex party that turns out to be a creepy masked orgy at a fancy estate out of the city.

He comes home to hear about yet another of Alice’s dreams in which she cucked and humiliated him, but which she claims was a nightmare. Kubrick rarely uses score to cue an audience how to feel about something – he’s more known for classical music or pop songs setting the mood, as they do elsewhere in Eyes Wide Shut as well -- but when Alice makes her confessions, Jocelyn Pook’s original music very subtly underscores it, offering hints of how the reveal is hitting Bill. The next day, in daylight, he revisits the scenes of the prior encounters, perhaps doubly determined to cheat as payback, and in short, finds they’ve all gone horribly bad; even if he hadn’t screwed them all up, he would have regretted indulging his desires. It’s not insignificant that he has lost the mask from his costume; his game face is also slipping, and hard.

Contrary to Wikipedia’s summation of the modern Rotten Tomatoes page, Eyes Wide Shut was met with extremely mixed reviews. I remember, because it’s the only Kubrick movie I experienced the release of in real time, that I was old enough to see. (Full Metal Jacket and The Shining were not for young me.) I might argue that in my twenties I was not yet truly old enough – it helps to be married to appreciate Eyes Wide Shut fully. Indeed, I felt quite mixed about it, because I think there was a lot of misdirection. So much attention in the run-up to release was put on the orgy scene that needed to be censored stateside with digital figures blocking the naughty parts, that many of us thought the movie was about that. It presented in the public consciousness a bit like a cult thriller, as if it were Spellbinder, in which fellow Scientologist Kelly Preston flees a creepy cult and has wild sex. If you think it’s about that, you will be disappointed the moment the movie blows off that subplot completely. It’s about jealousy and temptation, and the pseudo-cult is just the most extreme manifestation of how out of his depth Bill is, in not knowing his proper role.

My colleague Andy Klein said to anyone who would listen at the time that even though he too had a mixed response, anyone with any knowledge of Kubrick should understand that his films always get better – and better understood – over time, and it was sheer foolishness to write it off quickly. I find the same is true of PT Anderson, though many other critics love his films immediately; The Master and There Will be Blood played better for me once I knew going in for viewing #2 what they weren’t, as much as what they were.

Another colleague, Robert Koehler, enthusiastically asserts now that Eyes Wide Shut is one of the 5 best films of the ‘90s, though I don’t know if he immediately thought so, as I barely knew him then. A lot of the mixed reviews, I’m sure, come from misdirection – to complain about artifice in it, for example, really misses the point. Listen to the slow, almost underwater pace of Kidman’s line delivery during the opening party. Look at some of the obvious disjointed cuts; one example is the scene in which Bill gets gay-bashed, and immediately recovers full composure as if a brief time skip happened (there are others). Sometimes actor accents seem to slip, even once for Kidman – don’t tell me someone as meticulous as Kubrick, with up to 50 takes of some shots, made a gaffe and didn’t notice.

All naked bodies don’t look the same, either – two different actresses play the same character, due to the fact that she’s completely masked for one sequence. A third – an uncredited Cate Blanchett doing an American accent – provides the voice. Do you think we aren’t meant to notice, or that the artifice is the point? Kubrick often stated that he didn’t want “real” – he wanted “interesting.” In a movie whose final thesis is that the line between dream-cheating and real cheating isn’t as clear cut as a pure rationalist might believe, “interesting” plays to the point. As does our knowledge, as viewers, that when Cruise kisses Vinessa Shaw, he’s really kissing someone who isn’t his wife, in a movie that costars his wife. Everyone accepts that’s part of the job – but is it the equivalent of cheating in a dream if, in the moment, both actors have to believe they want it?

It’s the mark of a masterpiece that even when it’s long, I want to watch it again right away. Eyes Wide Shut certainly fits that bill for me, today. I don’t know if it’ll hit that way for first-time viewers. This is one film where I think going in cold and spoiler-free might hurt more than it helps, because confused thriller fans will find it disappointing. But Kubrick fans, who understand this is his analysis of jealousy, that he took decades to finally make, dying when it was done, considering it his masterpiece...you’ll get it. Cruise was still in peak form of wanting to work with the best directors rather than fluffers, and while it may not be the whole point, Kidman is peak hotness and ambiguous intent.

For what it’s worth, the uncensored orgy makes a big difference. It’s meant to be seen as the ultimate escalation of cheating thoughts, and if you don’t see the crazy humping and thrusting, it doesn’t quite play that way. It’s as idiotic to suggest Kubrick was killed for this scene because he was somehow exposing Jeffrey Epstein as it is to say he faked the moon landing. Bill is not a pedophile (he never shows any lascivious interest in Sobieski’s character, and her dad does offer her up), and the women in the orgy scene are consenting adults. The only one we learn anything about is a well paid drug addict whose services one participant has purchased previously; while that may blur the issue of consent – though she explicitly, vocally volunteers -- the only illegal part is her addiction.

Unlike many Criterion 4Ks that I own, Eyes Wide Shut is not simply a previously released Blu-ray with an extra 4K disc packed in. It’s a three disc set – the movie on 4K the movie on Blu-ray, and an extra Blu-ray of extras. The movie has been re-color graded, which may upset longtime fans who watch the film frequently. I hadn’t seen it since 1999, so no issue here with the fact that some blue shades look like teal. It’s a tricky situation, trying to intuit what a director “always intended,” especially since so many lie: at worst, you get George Lucas adding stupid CG slapstick to the Star Wars trilogy. At best, arguably, a re-edit of Touch of Evil based on Orson Welles’ notes.

In a featurette on the extras about his entire career, director of photography Larry Smith swears that Kubrick died before finishing the color grading, and that what he saw at the premiere was absolutely wrong. The new 4K version represents what Smith best believed they were both trying to achieve at the time, visually with Kubrick pushing the exposure and compensating in post. Believe it or don’t, but I think the film plays the same way regardless. If different shades of color are a dealbreaker, however, hang on to your older WB Blu-ray.

The cover of the Blu-ray features rejected promo art by Christiane Kubrick, depicting Cruise and Kidman’s faces as masks. The studio, naturally, wanted unaltered images of the stars’ real faces, though it was to their credit that Kubrick’s name was above the title, in equal size font to “Cruise” and “Kidman.”

Other featurettes include new interviews with set designer/second-unit director Lisa Leone (who was also corralled into playing Bill’s receptionist) and Kubrick archivist Georgina Orgill – both offer good details about their roles in the whole thing. A newer mini-doc hosted by Malcolm McDowell digs into the history of Kubrick’s begun-but-canceled Napoleon and Aryan Diaries; an archival one gives a good broad-strokes look at Kubrick’s whole career, while a 2019 one gives more insight into the whole history of Eyes Wide Shut, with the director’s interest beginning in the Spartacus era. Many accounts of Kubrick by those who know him best go out of their way to puncture the myth of him as a humorless recluse. Extremely social to his friends, he merely disliked public speaking or talking to the press, and the one major clip of him that we get, accepting a DGA award via prerecorded message, affirms that fact: he’s stiff and awkwardly reading his speech, even with no audience, but it’s great to see him.

Everyone who talks reiterates a point the director clearly made at some point: when it comes to jealousy, it’s hard to tell a definitive story because “everyone’s an expert.” As a guy who was a mid-20s virgin with no relationship experience when I first saw the movie, I would disagree. Nor would I claim to be an expert now, but I certainly see things I recognize, like (from a husband’s perspective) the way you can suddenly find yourself in a significant argument over nothing because you didn’t communicate your point very well. It perhaps bears mentioning that the movie and its source book are about specifically heterosexual jealousy, though Kubrick probably didn’t think of it in those terms – a gay friend of mine, upon hearing I was writing this piece, dismissed the movie as a whole and said he was offended by Alan Cumming’s performance as the hotel receptionist, feeling it was stereotypical. I felt Cumming was playing it simply as a big kid hiding a secret, but I try never to tell anyone they aren’t entitled to be bothered by a thing if it strikes them that way.

Along with some archival trailers, there’s also a French press conference with 37 year-old Cruise and Kidman. Unmoored from the cult, Cruise sounds more introspective and smart about his art than he has in years, while letting “Nic” do the majority of the talking, and predicts a future in which he’ll help young filmmakers, including a fellow he just shot a “cameo” for named P.T Anderson. The only significant omission on the disc, I feel, is a potential segment on the music. Since Jocelyn Pook’s score is notable and her disturbingly backmasked “Masked Ball” probably the most distinctive original song made for a Kubrick film (at least since “Lolita Ya Ya”!), it seems worthy of further discussion.

The booklet includes an enlightening interview with Sydney Pollack, and an essay by Megan Abbott. More of this stuff is newly released than usual, and it’s all exciting to dig into if you’re a Kubrick head like I am. The 4K package, now available, runs a reasonable $39.96, and you can always wait for the annual half-off sale.

I think all of Kubrick’s major releases are now on 4K, save maybe Fear and Desire; as the last big holdout, this was a truly welcome addition to the shelf. It was, perhaps ironically, a Valentine’s gift from my wife, who prefaced it with this statement:

“I love you more than I hate Tom Cruise.”

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All images courtesy of Criterion/Warner Bros.