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Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/437141
44 Issue 70 / 2014 FILM guestlist.net Tinsle, mistletoe, crippling existential terror? Sounds like Christmas to us. It's that time of year again, and what better way to celebrate than with a voyage into the twisted sexual underbelly of New York's glitterati? Stanley Kubrick's final picture before his untimely death, Eyes Wide Shut turns the concept of the Christmas film on its head, utilising the season of familial love as a ubiquitous reminder of our ability to buy into illusion. Whether that illusion be ole' St. Nick or the assured and continued sexual fidelity of our better half, Kubrick's opus touches on universal themes of love, guilt, fear and temptation framed through the prism of a well to do cosmopolitan couple. Try as he might, Tom Cruise will probably never appear normal to most people, yet there's an intimacy and sincerity to his on screen relationship with then-wife Nicole Kidman to give you the warm Holiday feels, even if his exploits take the pair into dark and fractious emotional territory. It could even be said the picture contains the closest thing to a happy ending in Kubrick's entire oeuvre, just in case this is all sounding a bit bah humbug for you. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novel Traumnovelle (dream story), Eyes Wide Shut follows socialites Dr. Bill Harford (Cruise) and his wife, Alice (Kidman) as the pair's proximity to the sexual profligacy of the debutante party scene raises questions of infidelity for the pair. While attending a lavish Christmas party thrown by an affluent patient of his, Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), the pair go their separate ways an engage in a bit of abortive yet sexually charged flirtation. Alice with a smooth talking European silver fox, Bill with a pair of nubile young models. The next night, the pair smoke a joint and probe each other on their dalliances, with the mood rapidly souring after Alice confesses to Bill a secret desire for a young naval officer the pair encountered on holiday a few years ago. Reeling from this revelation, Bill goes on the hunt for some extra marital sex of his own. Drinking away his troubles in a jazz bar, Bill bumps into a pianist friend of his, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field). Nick tells him he has an engagement later that night playing blindfolded for a private party. Intrigued, Bill presses him to discover that attendees must be in possession of a mask, a costume, and the password: fidelio. After acquiring the costume, Bill takes a cab to the country mansion where the event is taking place. Upon entering, we are confronted with a bizarre, quasi-satanic ritual orgy, complete with corrupted Catholic iconography and a truly chilling musical motif. After being warned off by a mysterious masked woman, Bill is rumbled as an interloper and brought before the gathering. The same woman reappears and offers herself to the group to secure Bill's safety, and Cruise is unceremoniously evicted with a stern warning that any further investigation as to the events he has witness will bring swift retribution from the group. So begins a campaign of insidious intimidation as Cruise's troubled search for the truth takes him to the edges of what he knows to be true, including his perception of the life he has built for himself with Alice. This is just an example of the depth of human feeling the ostensibly cold, overly techincal Kubrick sought to express through his filmmaking, and as a swansong feature Eyes Wide Shut is a fittingly challenging and uncompromising expression of the director's idiosyncratic mastery of the medium. If watching this bona fide masterpiece hasn't quite yet become a Christmas tradition in your house, it probably should. Like any Kubrick picture, Eyes Wide Shut cries out for multiple viewings, and the experience deepens and matures with the viewer, continuing to communicate with us in new ways. A VERY KUBRICK CHRISTMAS