Thighs Wide Shut: Kubrick’s Final Film

tom cruise nude eyes wide shut sex Stanley Kubrick finally emerged from suspended animation with Eyes Wide Shut, an enigmatic, puzzling finale that is not so much climax as encore. Exploring themes of instinct and ritual introduced in 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange; recasting the parallel structure of Full Metal Jacket; and finally materializing the ghosts in The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut recalls many Kubrick films while at the same time moving towards a more personal, less superlative style.

Kubrick’s films are thematically meticulous and photographically crisp. Narrative logic is readily sacrificed for idea-driven exposition and visual detail. Because of this, Kubrick’s films are also remarkably episodic. Since 2001, Kubrick’s films have contained significant breaks in narrative structure. 2001, for instance, has several distinct episodes that are loosely connected by intertitles and the enigmatic black monolith. A Clockwork Orange has definitive before-, during-, and after-rehabilitation sequences. Full Metal Jacket has perhaps the most rigorous internal division of all Kubrick’s films, with Paris Island and Vietnam sections almost binary in their separation.

Eyes Wide Shut has its own internal logic as well — an organic three-act structure of flirtation, foreplay, and sexual denial. These three acts are represented by the opening scene of the party, Bill’s descent into the New York City sexual underworld, and his final confession to Alice about his real and imagined infidelity. The initial scene, furthermore, acts as a microcosm of the film as a whole, initiating the pattern of separation, seduction, and denial that characterizes the overall narrative.

Since Eyes Wide Shut ends in sexual denial, the film itself is somewhat anti-climactic. Although sexual promise seems to lurk around every corner, Bill and Nicole stop their dangerous liaisons as soon as danger appears, denying the viewer, along with themselves, the pleasure of illicit sex. Unlike the girl-riding, sexual triumph of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut concludes with characters drained of passion and committed to a routine of domestic duty and promise. The final scene of the film where the couple makes amends in a busy holiday shopping center is not unlike the stoic end of Barry Lyndon, where Lady Lyndon momentarily reflects on her abandoned passion before continuing with financial matters and her life of somber steadiness.

Eyes Wide Shut might be anti-climatic, but anti-climax can be an effective, if not entirely viewer-satisfying, literary device. That Kubrick would deny his audience a more visceral, intense conclusion mimics the self-denial and guilt-ridden restraint of Bill and Alice in the film, and in this way, anti-climax is appropriate enough. From a popular perspective, however, Eyes Wide Shut is bound to blueball the audience. This will not be a popular movie, since popularity in the multiplex demands that Jaws be hooked, the Death Star destroyed, and the Titanic sunk. This is not a theater of cruelty, after all. In Hollywood, the third act means violence — actual, sexual, revelatory, or otherwise.

Those who are disappointed should know better than to hop into bed with “CRUISE KIDMAN KUBRICK,” especially when one of the three is Kubrick. After all, sex in Kubrick’s cinema has always been dangerous. Consider the bathtub scene in The Shining, when Jack Nicholson romances a beautiful ghost only to have her decompose in his hands. In A Clockwork Orange, sex is either rape or nausea; and in Lolita, sex is driven by madness and highly illegal.

Eyes Wide Shut is by far Kubrick’s most rigorous look at human sexuality. Bill and Nicole have an iconic beauty in the film, but their attraction to one another is compromised. Apparently, familiarity and domestic routine has produced discontent. Likewise, sex is more exciting coupled with danger, and this pushes them apart.

The film opens as Alice wipes herself with a wad of tissue and flushes the toilet. Bill stands in the bathroom with her, but pays no attention. The couple is uncomfortably familiar with one another. Later, Bill and Alice lounge on their bed half-clothed. Bill takes for granted what the audience gawks at, and what seems like sexual potential is never fully realized. The conditions of interaction between man and woman are different for married couples than prospective sexual partners. Similarly, there are different rules followed by prostitute and client, doctor and patient.

Kubrick explores the social arenas that govern distinct modes of sexuality with the conclusion that although sexuality might be instinctual in its demands and drives, it is nonetheless moderated and inseparable from societal ritual and mental modification.

This mental component of sexuality becomes especially apparent during the sex party that Bill attends. In the great country mansion, sex is ritualized to an almost religious extreme — replete with organist and high priest. Here, sex takes the form of extremism or pornography, as women are either screwed by many or admired from afar.

The masked party scene is visually exacting and sonically enchanting. It is also quite funny. The humor comes from the realization that somewhere beneath all of the costumery and ceremony is simple copulation (just as buried beneath the small talk and synthetic wrap in 2001, there is simple eating).

The fact that the party goers are rich and powerful is funny as well. Apparently, the rich are particularly refined when it comes to getting laid. They are like the ghosts of The Shining, adorned in black coats and beaver suits. The irony of the final scene is similar to that of Bunuel’s Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, where the well-to-do eat lavish meals while sitting on the toilet.

Ultimately, Eyes Wide Shut is a different sort of Kubrick film. Although the film deals with sexuality in grand, explorative terms, it does so through the eyes of human, not symbolic, characters. The same cannot be said of David Bowman in 2001, or Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove. And although films such as A Clockwork Orange and The Shining explore individual characters in great detail, the figures in these films are extreme, violent, superlative personalities — personalities as subtle as Jack Torrance chopping down his wife’s bedroom door with an ax. Bill and Alice, on the other hand, are manner-driven and believable. Some of the scenes in Eyes Wide Shut play longer than expected, allowing Cruise and Kidman to explore the nuances of their characters.

One can only wonder what Kubrick might have done after Eyes Wide Shut. This film was rumored to be a stepping stone for Kubrick to gain financial legitimacy and proceed with AI, his long-anticipated return to the science fiction genre. Many speculated that AI would be like 2001 in its range and scope — an effects-intensive, monolithic masterpiece that would redefine the genre the same way 2001 did several decades before. But Eyes Wide Shut suggests that Kubrick might have moved in a different direction, towards a less sensational and more intimate style of filmmaking. In this scenario, Kubrick might have redefined science fiction not through special effects but character psychology — the approach of Tarkovsky rather than Lucas.

Sadly, the final credits of Eyes Wide Shut complete the Kubrick oeuvre. The fade to black is Kubrick’s last and leaves us longing for more.