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'''Eyes Wide Shut''' is a 1999 film directed and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novella ''Traumnovelle'' (in English ''Dream Story'') by Arthur Schnitzler. The film stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Kubrick died shortly after editing the film.
The film was released on July 16, 1999 to a mixed critical reaction.

Contents

Synopsis

Critical response

Claims about Kubrick's opinion of the film

American censorship controversy

Controversy regarding the chanting of Hindu prayers

Music

Trivia

In popular culture

References

External links

Synopsis

The storyline, set in and around New York City, follows the surreal, sexually charged adventures of Dr. William "Bill" Harford (Cruise), who is shocked after his wife, Alice (Kidman), reveals that she had contemplated having an affair a year earlier.
The film begins in contemporary New York City in the apartment of wealthy, married couple Dr. William and Alice Harford. They are preparing for a Christmas party at the home of Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), a friend and patient of Bill's. During the party, an older Hungarian man (Sky Dumont) tries to seduce Alice, while two younger models try to seduce Bill. Alice and Bill both resist their respective temptations. During the party, Bill is summoned by Ziegler to his private bathroom where he finds a naked woman, Mandy (Julienne Davis), who has over-dosed from a speedball. Bill helps her regain consciousness and promises to Victor that he will not speak of the event.
Bill also meets an old friend, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), a former medical student who is now a pianist with the band at the party. Nick informs Bill that he is currently playing at the Sonata Café.
The day after the party, Alice and Bill smoke marijuana and talk about their encounters. The conversation escalates into Alice confessing to Bill her feelings concerning a naval officer she saw while they were vacationing in Cape Cod. Because of Bill's self-assurance, out of spite she admits that she was willing to abandon her life and her future for one night with the officer. Shocked from this revelation, Bill suddenly receives a telephone call summoning him to a deceased patient's home. Bill goes to the apartment of the patient and the daughter, Marion (Marie Richardson), says she wants to give up her life to be with Bill. Bill resists her offer and departs once Marion's boyfriend, Carl arrives.
While wandering the streets, a group of rowdy men, taking him for a gay man, taunt him and walk into him rudely. Soon afterwards, a female prostitute named Domino approaches Bill on the street and starts soliciting his business. Initially, Bill accepts, but a phone call from Alice cuts their business short. Bill insists on paying anyway.
He happens upon a sign outside the jazz club where Nick is the featured piano player. As the two discuss things, Nick describes a party he played at the night before and which he is to play again tonight. His interest piqued, Bill coerces Nick into divulging the secret party's requirements: a black robe with a hood, and a mask. He also learns the location and more importantly, the password: ''Fidelio''.
Bill goes to the costume shop of an old friend only to find it has a new owner, Mr. Milich (Rade Šerbedžija). He bribes Milich to get him a costume immediately. Another sexually charged situation involving Milich's teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) and two Japanese men follows.

Afterward, Bill travels to the party in a cab to a foreboding mansion. What he finds inside is a sexual ritual which turns into an orgy involving beautiful women clad only in masks and G-strings. Men watch, masked and clad in black robes, reminiscent of a Venetian Carnival. During the ritual, Nick plays the organ blindfolded. A mysterious woman informs Bill that he is in great danger, and urges him to leave immediately but he refuses.
He is soon discovered as an outsider and forced to remove his mask, revealing his identity in the presence of the entire assembly. The red-robed master of ceremonies demands that he disrobe, but his apparently pending "punishment" is "redeemed" by the same mysterious woman who had tried to warn him earlier. Bill is threatened to remain quiet about what he saw or he will suffer dire consequences. Then, he is let go.
When Bill arrives home, he finds Alice laughing in her sleep. After awaking her, she tells him of her horrible dream. She was having sex with a number of other men, and she knew that Bill was watching, and so she laughed at him.
The following day, Bill decides to investigate further into what had happened the previous night. Bill returns to the mansion, but is warned off. Bill is further troubled when he goes to the hotel where Nick was staying at and finds out from the front desk clerk that Nick has apparently been brutalized for informing Bill about the party and password, and is now gone. Bill returns the costume to the shop from which he rented it, and the owner of the costume shop offers his daughter to Bill as a prostitute. Bill goes to Domino's apartment where he learns from her roommate that Domino received results of a blood test, which said she was HIV positive. On top of that, the woman who "redeemed" Bill is dead, ostensibly of a drug-overdose behind a locked apartment door. Bill goes to the morgue and learns this woman is Mandy, whom Bill had helped to revive at Ziegler's Christmas party. Bill is unable to definitively establish that the woman did indeed die simply of a drug overdose. Bill is then called to Victor Ziegler's home where the millionaire claims that he was one of those present at the sexual party the following night and that nothing further was done. But Ziegler does warn Bill against investigating further, as apparently some of the masked participants were extremely powerful members of society.
Bill returns home later to Alice and finds that the mask he wore to the party is lying on the pillow next to her. He breaks down crying, waking Alice before confessing to her about his journey. While Christmas shopping later that morning, Alice shows that she has come to terms with Bill's actions by accepting that one night does not reflect his entire persona. Finally, Alice suggests that they need to do one thing very soon: "fuck."

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, several reviewers commented on the fact that Kubrick had shot his NYC scenes in a studio and that New York "didn't look like New York." Lee Siegel,^[1] 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.^[2]
In a special edition of Roger Ebert & the Movies, director Martin Scorsese named ''Eyes Wide Shut'' his number 4 favorite film of the 1990s.^[3]

Claims about Kubrick's opinion of the film

R. Lee Ermey, the actor who played the menacing drill instructor in Stanley Kubrick's ''Full Metal Jacket'' (1987), controversially claimed that Kubrick phoned him two weeks before the director's death to express his despondency over the film. "He told me it was a piece of shit," Ermey said in an interview with the online Radar magazine, "and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him -- exactly the words he used." Ermey did not explain what he thought Kubrick may have meant by the expression, except to remark, "He was kind of a shy little timid guy. He wasn't real forceful. That's why he didn't appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. ... He would lose control."^[4]
People who knew the director well, however, claim otherwise. Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother-in-law and executive producer, reported that Kubrick was "very happy" with the film.^[5] According to Todd Field, Kubrick's friend and actor in ''Eyes Wide Shut'', Ermey's claims are slanderous. Field's response appeared in an October 26, 2006 interview with Slashfilm.com:^[6]

American censorship controversy

Citing contractual obligations to deliver an R rating, Warner Bros. digitally altered the orgy scene for the American release of ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' blocking out images of graphic sexuality by inserting additional figures into the scene to obscure the view, thus avoiding an adults-only NC-17 rating that might have limited distribution of the film, as some large American theaters and video store operators have a policy that disallows films with that 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) with ratings mostly for people of 16 (Europe, in Germany) and 18+ (Australia) years of age. In New Zealand and in Europe, the uncensored version has been shown on public television without controversy. In Australia, it was broadcast on public television (on Network Ten) with the alterations in the American version for people of 15 years of age and older, blurring out, and cutting the images of explicit sexuality.

Controversy regarding the chanting of Hindu prayers

While American censorship attempted to control the level of sexuality in the film, complaints came from offended members of the Hindu community. The American Hindus Against Defamation sent a formal letter to Warner Brothers requesting they change the voice-over chant that plays as Bill Harford wanders from room to room at the mansion. According to the letter from the AHAD, during the offending scene "the background music subsides and the shloka (scriptural recitation) from the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered Hindu scripture is played out."
When Warners did not immediately concede, the American Hindus Against Defamation threatened to protest. Eventually, Warner Brothers came to an agreement with the Hindu community of Great Britain and edited the recitation of the passage out of the scene, replacing it with a different chant of similar dramatic tone. These changes were not made in the North American version.
In an interview at alt.movies.kubrick, Stanley Kubrick's daughter, Katherina, indicated it was a simple mistake and had Kubrick been notified of said mistake prior to his passing, he would have undoubtedly changed it.

Music

★ The film's opening 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 in Romanian, played backwards. 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."''^[7]

★ 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, augmented fourths, or octave intervals. The fact that the piece uses only three tones, that the intervals between these tones are considered inappropriate in classical music theory, and the unyielding performance indication of ''Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale'' adds to the unsettling nature of the piece.

★ 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.

★ The background score during the orgy scene (where Tom Cruise walks from room to room) is a Tamil song sung by Manickam Yogeshwaran who is a well-known Carnatic singer. (Tamil is a classical Indian language spoken by over 74 million people worldwide today. Carnatic music is one of the two styles of Indian classical music that is popular in South India.)

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, which was 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. 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 a week after presenting Warner Bros. with what was reported to be a final cut of the film. However, to this day some fans argue that the cut presented to Warner was actually a very early cut and that Mr. Kubrick specifically told them this.

★ According to writer Frederic Raphael, the final form of Bill's family name (Harford, as opposed to Scheuer in the novel) was inspired by a debate about Bill's character. Raphael felt Bill should be Jewish as in the original, but Stanley Kubrick insisted Bill and Alice be "vanilla" Americans, without any details that would arouse any presumptions. Kubrick said that Bill should be a bit like Harrison Ford - hence the name Harford.

★ When Harford returns to SoHo, a sign on the side of a building reads 'BOWMAN.' David Bowman was the protagonist of Kubrick's ''

★ One of the patients that Harford counsels is named Kaminsky, which was the name of one of the hibernating crew in ''2001: A Space Odyssey''

★ Most of the sexual ritual and orgy scenes were filmed in Elveden Hall, a large private country house in Suffolk, England that was once home to an exiled Indian Maharajah.

In popular culture

★ The film is referenced in David Icke's book "Children of the Matrix" as being a portrayal of Satanic sex rituals practised among secret societies.

★ The film is referenced in Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" as evidence of sex cults.

★ The film's title is spoofed in the name of ''The Simpsons'' episode ''Jaws Wired Shut''.

★ The film is homage to setting in anime "Speed Grapher" [2005]

★ The film and its infamous orgy are referenced throughout an episode of the Australian comedy series, ''Kath & Kim''.

★ The film made the cover of ''Time'' Magazine on July 15, 1999.

★ The film was spoofed in an episode of the television series Stella titled "Meeting Girls".

★ The film is referenced in the music video "Shake Ya Ass" by American rapper Mystikal.

★ The film is referenced in the Nintendo 64 Rare video game Conker's Bad Fur Day where the password to get into a nightclub is also "fidelio". Rare also made references to many other Kubrick films in this title.

References

1. http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/ews/reviews/harpers.html
2. http://www20.sbs.com.au/movieshow/index.php?action=review&id=169
3. http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/ebertandroeper/index2.html?sec=7&subsec=29
4. http://www.radaronline.com/features/2006/10/tough_love.php
5. http://www.dvdtalk.com/janharlaninterview.html
6. http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php?story=20061024toddfieldinterview2&query
7. http://www.iht.com/articles/1999/10/27/pook.t.php

External links

★ Official Website at Warner Bros.

★

★ http://kentroversypapers.blogspot.com/2006/03/eyes-wide-shut-occult-symbolism.html

★ Review at Rottentomatoes.com

★ Reviews at Metacritic.com

★ Introducing Sociology: a review of Eyes Wide Shut by Tim Kreider

★ ArchivioKubrick's Copies of several articles involving the concerns of the Hindu community of Britain

★ Eyes Wide Shut - Shot by Shot: an deep analysis by Jeffrey Bernstein

★ An in depth review of Eyes Wide Shut