Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#151 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:29 pm

In other words: Don't look to a disc release of this major studio film for a discourse about today's elites and their abuses of power

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#152 Post by Black Hat » Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:33 pm

It doesn't have to be that, but in any case my point was I thought you misunderstood what the guy meant by saying it should be released again.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#153 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:35 pm

I didn't, but thanks for the tip!


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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#155 Post by Jack Kubrick » Thu Sep 05, 2019 10:12 pm

Discussed on the Rewatchables 1999 podcast, exclusively for premium members on luminary.
Last edited by Jack Kubrick on Fri Sep 06, 2019 6:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#156 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Sep 06, 2019 1:02 am

TwoTecs wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 10:07 pm
https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/116 ... 36256?s=09

Larry Celona, the journalistic advisor for this film, is an acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein. He flew on what is being now dubbed as the "Lolita Express". He was also the first one to break the news of Epstein's suicide.

An interesting, and perhaps disturbing, intersection of art and real life.
Someone on Twitter brought up the question if Epstein was ever parodied on 30 Rock for some reason, and later said she was watching the episode with Steve Martin as a character not too removed from him. I responded back the irony since Martin was considered by Kubrick for the lead when it was going to be a comedy.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#157 Post by TwoTecs » Fri Sep 06, 2019 11:31 am

mfunk9786 wrote:
Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:35 pm
I didn't, but thanks for the tip!
Lets not pretend the old release is anything but sub-par for a film of this caliber. A better release for Eyes Wide Shut isn't going to prevent other films from being released. Criterion has released multiple films that already had BD releases. Studios giving multiple releases to their own films isn't uncommon either.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#158 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:23 pm

It's a fine release, the film is uncensored and there's more supplemental material than one could expect with a movie like this. Is it definitive? I hope not. But it's solid.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#159 Post by Clarence » Tue Oct 01, 2019 3:02 pm


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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#160 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Oct 01, 2019 3:10 pm

Hell yeah! TwoTecs, take notice - and I hope this gets the excellent Warners UHD treatment instead of the Criterion treatment that's been whispered about for a little while

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#161 Post by TwoTecs » Tue Oct 01, 2019 3:54 pm

Wasn't expecting this when I opened the thread. UHD would be ideal.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#162 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 26, 2020 2:21 am

oh yeah wrote:
Sun Jan 01, 2017 6:48 am
I've seen EWS so many times and it's so familiar that it's difficult for me to look at it with fresh eyes, but one thing I'd say is that part of what makes it unique is its blending of so many disparate genres/modes: 70s paranoid/conspiracy thriller, 60s erotic Euro art-house film, domestic melodrama, Hitchcockian "wrong man" narrative (replete with NxNW Glen Cove reference), Lynchian dream-film, almost Gothic horror in one sequence, etc. And I think the film's nonchalant mixture of banal, quotidian reality with the most surreal, disturbing occultism is incredibly effective and not quite like anything else I've seen.
I like this eclectic reading, and I'm always amused by how Kubrick postures at all these references under a consistent tone of existential impotence manifesting as emasculation of sexuality, knowledge, mastery, self-importance.. well, everything- at least as far as Freudian definitions of 'self' go. Cruise's ego, id, and superego are all but extinguished, or worse, revealed to him as mirages that may never have really existed in stable form. The irony is that all of these subgenres listed above are cinematic gifts to transform our lives into wish-fulfillment via projecting our experiences into exciting myths, and this film constantly uses suspense to bring us back down to our banal existences, frailties, and limitations even within dreams; our fatuous drives to matter even when we're the center of the narrative. What normally disinhibits us fails at stimulating that desire, and all the cinematic tricks in the world excite us around an inescapable gravitational pull of inhibitions.

I love the two-line letter Cruise gets, asking him to stop his search, because it affirms that he's the leading player in 'this' story, but not the story of this group or really anyone else in the film, and renders 'his' story to be the most pathetic or uneventful (as far as his 'actions' go- I mean, you can't be any less 'Tom Cruise' than simply taking off your mask when told to, like a lapdog without even a fight/flight response). His confusion in certain moments isn't conveyed in the Lynchian surrealistic methodology some mention, but as normal sobering revelations. I'm thinking of the scene where Cruise returns to the costume shop to find that a simple prostitution-deal was made. It's not hard to figure out -maybe hard to swallow- but Cruise is legitimately confused, as if either his prude ideals can't fathom this information- which is ridiculous considering the night he's had- or more likely, it's another blow to his bruised psyche's assumptions of mastery. The stark truth is that his absence from other narratives is normal and his need to be omnipotent is constantly thwarted in a realistic manner, as if to say, 'Who are you to be astonished at not having omnipotence?' The contrast of the dreamy nature of the film and clear prods at Cruise's impotence and anti-cinematic life is a challenging feat to pull off, but it's somehow done, and that's just one reason why this may be Kubrick's best film.

The final line from Kidman is bittersweet as previously mentioned, but even more ironic because it challenges Cruise to do something that the entire film has repetitively proven he cannot do, or has no passion, confidence, or motivation to make meaning out of in an authentic way: connect with another human being on a truly intimate level, and satisfy another person to any complete state. We can't be the sole provider of another's wholeness, and the nebulous bearings we have on our own impediments indicate that we can't provide or find a path to feel 'whole' ourselves either. What appears to be an offering to move on from Kidman, or a signal that Cruise is chosen as the key player in his narrative, is actually a biting reminder of his failure to actualize this position independently. Of course from an objective, non-emotional position we can concede this is something that we can't do, since we can't control other people, fulfill all of their sexual or romantic desires, emotional needs, deepest fantasies, etc. - but it's the act of hovering on this emotional awareness that we are not the center of everyone's world that cements our insignificance, and makes such a vapidly-delivered proposition sting.

The film's execution of themes is magnificent because this is a realization I think many of us have from time to time (or if not, will one day wake up to like Cruise's character), of the dissonance between what we 'want' to get or to be for ourselves and others and within the scope of the world.. and the reality of how those desires and existential needs aren't reciprocated with the same determination by our neutral milieus. Our narratives are definitively meaningful to us and simultaneously not to the rest of the world. How isolating, devastating, and also validating and empathetic. Of course, a movie that has us empathize with ourselves reinforces that irony that is laughing at us with absurdist philosophical mockery, and with us to tears with compassionate sensitivity, all at once. Kidman seems to suggest an inherent resilience in persisting on, but also acknowledge a deficit in certainty, knowledge, trust, or commitment in ourselves and others. The word "forever" and all it implies is frightening. But so is the fact that your partner finds your use of "forever" frightening.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#163 Post by black&huge » Thu Jun 24, 2021 4:19 am

I decided to rewatch this tonight since it's on HBO max and surprisingly and oddly it's the censored version regarding the orgy scene.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#164 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Thu Jun 24, 2021 8:53 am

black&huge wrote:
Thu Jun 24, 2021 4:19 am
I decided to rewatch this tonight since it's on HBO max and surprisingly and oddly it's the censored version regarding the orgy scene.
Good to know. I won't choose it for my family zoom movie club then. No point in making my mother watch a toned down orgy scene.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#165 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Jun 24, 2021 11:03 am

The first time I saw this, I remember thinking, "wasn't there supposed to be an orgy?" not because of the censorship but because I got the impression from Brain Candy, There's Something About Mary and others that real orgies involved dozens and dozens of people bunched together having open sex.

(followed by the inevitable police raid and lame defense "I was using the bathroom")

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#166 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:18 pm

Also in the wrong AR on HBOMax, oddly enough it was in the academy ratio when it was on Showtime last year.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#167 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 25, 2021 3:11 pm

Had my annual Christmas Eve viewing of this film (which I always start after midnight, gotta get in the spirit of the film!) and it's as perfect as ever. Rereading my writeup above, I’m not sure if I'm indicating that Cruise has a vacant life, but if so that's certainly not the case. Rather, his complacency disallows him from (and by contrast, allows him to avoid the dysphoria of) realizing that he is not that important, that his marriage -like nothing in life- is totally safe ‘forever’, that the fantasy of sexual liberation is a lot more boring in actuality, that our fears obstruct us from engaging in them, and that it's unbearable for us to have doubts about this certainty we seek. Cruise wants both the fantasy to be real, and he wants to know the truth- but he can't have both, or maybe neither! (John Cope's post about the poolroom scene from like twelve years ago upthread is fascinating around this point- I hope you have or do finally get around to writing your piece on it). Cruise is constantly trapped in a state of impotence when he’s ‘woken’ from this delusion of security, and the way his relationship to complacency is explored goes the extra mile in ambiguously arguing that perhaps the path of physically and psychologically concealing oneself (engaging in fantasies from a safe distance, assuming the ideological safeties of marital vows to be permanent, believing oneself to be the star of their own movie in this life with fake confidence which births real confidence, believing surface-level explanations of truth as valid) is the preferable option.

Though as John Cope mentions, that latter point about fatalistically craving mystery driven by egocentric needs, wanting to know 'deeper' conspiratorial knowledge about the group which would feed his false narrative of being 'special' in knowing more than others and/or being smart enough to uncover deeper truths, is also present- continuing the vicious cycle of self-destructive failure to fulfill this desire. In seeking this, Cruise will always find information that reminds him of his limitations, that he's not special, that the fantasies he wants to engage in are impossible to realise, etc., ironically all in the mission to sustain narcissistic delusions with solipsistic clawing. So the 'ignorance is bliss' charge is only preferable to a complacent person, but none of us can actually turn off our striving psychological muscle once sober. Cruise is now forever trapped in this strained existence of anti-comfort. Maybe he can find comfort in that unstimulating revelation- through present-minded tangible acts like the one Kidman offers in the final frame- but nothing will restore or sustain the fantastical equilibrium of assurance Cruise had at the start of the film. I think that's a good thing, so the ending is a lot more satisfying than I used to think it was: The shattering of illusory constructs is the only thing that can humble us towards growth. But it's also a brutal scarring that lasts forever.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#168 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 10, 2022 3:13 am

I was watching Billy Bathgate for some reason, and although the film was terrible, there was a single distinct moment that hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm confident that Kubrick became enraptured by one brilliant shot, just as I was, where we watch Kidman about to undress from a distant fixed POV position, serving as the perspective the titular character and her lover. She stops, turning to our surrogate/selves, and makes him/us her world, walking towards the camera to embrace the man who is 'everything' to her, who can satisfy her needs in full- and in turn, that satisfies our vulnerable delusions of infinite romantic egos. Fast forward to the end of the decade: Eyes Wide Shut's first image is a near-carbon copy of what feels like the exact angle, lighting, and set design of that shot, only during the next stage of the disrobing, without casting a look in our direction. Kubrick has recontextualized a frustrating waste of an almost-beautiful moment from a frustrating film, by concocting its antithesis; reinforcing his film's themes of impotence, disregard of our narcissistic supreme importance, and the destruction of the solipsistic male gaze. He's also capturing a non-intrusive peek that's quickly edited away in a dismissive deflation, evoking the theme of merging antithetical fantasy and reality. Brilliant.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#169 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:54 am

Some day I'll watch this film around the holidays and not have anything to say about it, but this year my annual revisits of L'Avventura and Eyes Wide Shut lined up in close proximity, and further deepened my appreciation of this masterpiece. About halfway through, I had a new revelation that this is what happens when Sick Eros festers in a state of inertia for the remainder of the century, as western cultures prepare to bridge the new millennium without having evolved our capacity to evade our narcissistic impulses to locate humility in our most intimate relationships, or investigate our own identities in a consciously meaningful way. In a sense, Eyes Wide Shut is a twisted appendage to L'Avventura, that threatens to overwhelm those initial concerns rooted in a familiar and lucid corporeal reality, by propelling them into a nightmarish dreamscape of fear, doubt, insecurity, and layered in a collage of various thriller subgenres, themselves emasculated via a thorough deconstruction into the banal and impotent state of its protagonist. This is what happens when you do find some clarity, Claudia- it just makes everything worse, because we can't handle it. I wonder if Antonioni saw this before he died, and what he'd've thought of such an aggressively vivid, cynical answer to his somewhat-hopeful abstract four decades prior. It doesn't help that the denouement shows the couple using holiday-spirit "gratitude" as a protective delusion to avoid the process of zooming into or out from their problems, because they can't trust themselves to control the outcome produced when flexing those muscles, but they can hedge their bets on some kind of existential hell

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#170 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sat Feb 17, 2024 1:50 pm

Analysis of title and whispered dialogue:
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/eyes-wide- ... r-whisper/

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Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#171 Post by Matt » Fri Feb 23, 2024 3:19 am

There is a recent scan of an original 35mm print circulating online. The print is pretty worn and sounds kind of rough (both because I think it just uses the stereo optical track, and Kubrick IIRC died before the final sound mix was completed). But it looks wonderful with all that practical lighting from Christmas lights and table lamps and neon signs and the marvelous grain and blown-out highlights. The early dancing scene with Kidman and her Vittorio DeSica-esque suitor is just gorgeous and mesmerizing with the camera spinning and hundreds of warm little white lights flaring all around them.

It’s actually nice to see it in its (admittedly flawed) original version with the crew member’s reflection visible in the overdose scene, the grain un-smoothed, and reel change markers, which I miss so much. (They were always like the gentle quarter-hour chimes of an old clock to me, rhythmically marking the passing of time and subtly letting you know where you were in the runtime of the film. Just one more thing to detest about our sleek, steam-pressed 21st century digital culture.)

I think I only ever watched a home video version once since the opening day screening and it felt like it was encased in lucite. Seeing it on a scan of an actual print, even though I’m watching it on a laptop, makes it feel so much more alive, so much weirder than everything else of its vintage. Nicole Kidman’s drawn out, stoned line deliveries in the first half-hour or so—which I somehow still have mostly memorized—are just so hypnotic, so stylized. Tom Cruise is used just as Kubrick used Ryan O’Neal and Keir Dullea—as a bland cipher, an empty vessel to fill with suggestions and anxieties, tossed around like a ragdoll by events he doesn’t initiate or control. It’s not a good “performance” but only because a performance was the last thing Kubrick wanted out of him. He’s one of the most charismatic actors of our age, but you can just see how Kubrick stripped that all away (probably through take after brutal take) until he got at Cruise’s cold little core. I love Cruise and have for decades, but I think he’s like Cary Grant in that his persona has so taken over the person that even Tom Cruise sometimes wishes he was “Tom Cruise.”

It would be wonderful if Criterion put this out in a reference-quality 4K with both theatrical and uncensored cuts and the A Life in Pictures documentary. I wouldn’t even want anything more than that. I don’t see why they wouldn’t put it out since they license from Warner Bros. all the time now, and it’s the 25th anniversary (!) of the film’s release in July and of Kubrick’s death in March. Alas, I haven’t heard a peep about a new scan or any kind of anniversary screenings. Maybe at Cannes.
Last edited by Matt on Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#172 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Feb 23, 2024 3:38 am

I've been very grateful that the theaters around NYC have screened a 35mm print every year during the holidays - as Matt wrote about the practical lighting from the Christmas decorations, it really is absolutely gorgeous to look at it, especially the first act of the film and the visit to the prostitute. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten a 4K release yet, but hopefully they do it right when it eventually happens.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#173 Post by ianthemovie » Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:08 am

Beautifully said, Matt. I must have seen an original 35mm print of this because I went opening weekend. But I was so young and it was so long ago I don't much remember the texture or the feel of the print, or how the experience of watching it on 35 may have differed from watching it later on video. In fact my memories of going to the movies weekly back in the days before digital, when everything I saw would have been on 35, feel so hazy now that they barely seem real.

Anyway I do remember an issue with the sound in the theater during Eyes being muffled, which another audience member went up and complained about, and which got fixed mid-way through Kidman's monologue. And there was a group of three office-lady types who seemed baffled by the film and kept nervously giggling at every glimpse of nudity. It was immediately clear that this was a weird film, certainly not what anyone had expected it to be, which may account for why the initial reaction of some Kubrick fans at the time (myself included) was one of disappointment. As with almost all of his films it would take years if not decades before it could be properly appreciated.

I will never miss seeing those CGI party guests again, though, nostalgia or no!

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#174 Post by Matt » Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:57 pm

Actually, I mis-spoke. I stopped the film at the very beginning of the orgy scene (to watch some old game shows before bed) and only continued it today. This must be a UK or European print as there are no CGI figures. Ironically, this makes the film less “dirty” because the energetic full naked humping on display is so obviously fake and performative, the most unerotic of pantomime, contrasted by the static or slowly ambling cloaked observers. This whole sequence feels like something from a post-Porno Chic European art/exploitation crossover from the 1970s that might have been directed by Bertolucci or Visconti or one of their lesser imitators like Tinto Brass. None of this is to say it’s bad, it just feels out of time, and definitely out of time for 1999 which was so horny and sex-obsessed (all of those American Pie films, There’s Something about Mary, and such). I remember the build-up to the film and all the wild rumors that appeared: that Harvey Keitel was replaced by Sidney Pollack because he ejaculated in Kidman’s hair and that Jennifer Jason Leigh left the production because Kubrick asked her to do a sex scene that was not in the script. Just ridiculous stuff when you see the final product.

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Re: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

#175 Post by Matt » Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:16 pm

Very funny at the end when Cruise
SpoilerShow
breaks down and says “I’ll tell you everything.” Like, what is he going to tell her? “I think I got hit on by those two weird girls at that party, then I helped out a naked girl who had overdosed. I got a little freaked out by your naval officer fantasy and flirted with a prostitute and gave her money even though all I did was sit on her bed. Then I got razzed by some homophobic frat boys, rented a costume from a guy who might be pimping his teenage daughter, took a taxi to a weird sex party where I wore four layers of clothes and got kicked out within ten minutes, and then saw that overdose girl in the morgue.” Wouldn’t you just laugh and laugh? “You woke me up in the middle of the night for this?”
I don’t think that’s not a main point of the film, though: how this uptight, bourgeois little doctor gets so bent out of shape about his wife having an innocuous sexual fantasy that he sees sex looming everywhere and gets mortally freaked out by it. You just know his idea of kink is licking Reddi-wip off a boob.

I do still think that Pollack was terribly cast, especially for his big scene in the third act. I know he came in at the last minute and that he does play the part of a rich New Yawk prick extremely well, but he’s performing in a different movie. He needed to have that undercurrent of menace seen so often in Kubrick’s secondary male characters. Here he’s just more “Hey man, that was kind of a dick move, you know? Pretty dumb if you’re askin’ me.” I don’t doubt that Keitel would have been exactly the same, though.

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