Movie Review--Eyes Wide Shut

"Don't you think one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?

--Sandor Szavost, Eyes Wide Shut

One of the most popular erotic thrillers of the 90s is Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's final film before his death.  It also stands as one of the best somewhat mainstream explorations of sexuality in recent cinema history, even if some of its plot strands fail to fulfill their potential.  At the very least, its lead characters Bill and Alice Harford wonderfully convey their own sexual insecurities and fantasies in a world polluted by misandrist and misogynistic ideas about sexuality.  By the creators' own admission, the erotic cosmic horror game Lust For Darkness [1] was inspired by Eyes Wide Shut and even ends with a very similar line.

Production Values

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise play Alice and Bill Harford, a couple suffering from marital difficulties due to sexism, lack of communication, and sheer irrationality.  Their characters' oblivious, halfhearted attempts to understand each other and themselves are perhaps the basis for the title, as they do relationally and intellectually have their eyes shut regarding sexuality and the state of their own marriage.  Other characters come and go, but Bill Harford clearly has the spotlight all throughout, and Tom Cruise displays the nuance of Bill's hypocrisy, sexual curiosity, and reluctance to actually live in accordance with the misandrist stereotypes he claims are true.  The acting carries the film through sequences that have no need for anything more than physical sets and performers, so there is no risk of elaborate CGI ruining the movie.  The music does not have this smooth quality.  A very repetitive piano theme plays frequently throughout the film.  It comes and goes in many scenes, which might annoy viewers who focus on music while watching movies.  In fact, Eyes Wide Shut has one of the most repetitive soundtracks I have ever heard.  

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A couple attends a formal event at which Alice, the wife, meets a man who flirts with her even after she says she is there with her husband.  Alice and Bill have an argument over fallacious, sexist assumptions about sexuality, during which Bill admits to believing the asinine ideas that men are mostly hypersexual beings who do not want to know women except out of sexual motivations and that women are not inclined to have sexual interest in men beyond wanting safety and financial security from their husbands.  After this, Bill ends up attempting to infiltrate a secret group meeting for a night of open sexual expression.  However, it does not take long for the group to learn he has entered without having true membership.  A mysterious woman negotiates Bill's release, but he is warned to never speak of what he has seen, lest danger befall him and his family.

Intellectual Content

Logic reveals the distinction between extramarital fantasies--which do not have to entail any sort of adulterous fantasies--and adultery.  Even on a Biblical level, adultery is rightly treated as distinct from extramarital flirting, dwelling on sexual thoughts about someone other than one's spouse (as opposed to coveting them), and masturbating to them.  All of the latter three things are nonsinful (Deuteronomy 4:2), as none of them involve any sort of adultery, lack of relational commitment, or neglect of one's spouse.  Physical adultery is nothing more than having extramarital sex as a married person and emotional adultery is nothing more than having the emotional desire to actively commit adultery in deed.

As shown in a conversation that comes soon after the beginning, Alice and Bill have clearly not communicated with each other about such distinctions.  They have instead fallen into a completely avoidable, pointless state of disconnect on sexual issues.  They also seem to feel jealous at the thought of the other having sexual feelings for someone outside of their marriage (not that sexual attraction is even a desire to have sex with someone, as they can be wholly distinct!).  Both spouses nonetheless flirt with other members of the opposite gender at a party early in the film, expressing their potential for sexual attraction to the opposite gender despite never acting on it in a fully adulterous way.  

Alice's look at her husband talking to two other women at the party hints at possible discomfort, something that can be developed into a huge hypocrisy within romantic relationships.  Some hypocrisies pertaining to sexuality, of course, are rooted in sexism, such as what Bill suggests when he asserts that men are generally interested in talking to attractive women only out of sexual interest and women are not visually attracted to men in any significant way.  "If you men only knew," Alice says in response.  Alice and Bill make many assumptions, but Bill's sexual worldview is far more thoroughly false than his wife's, as she seems to not consider men helplessly fixated on even casual sex and unwilling to interact with women outside of professional or sexual reasons.

Conclusion

Very few works of entertainment address sexuality beyond appealing to popular notions of sexiness when portraying certain characters.  This is narratively and philosophically unfortunate, as sexuality is a far deeper and more nuanced part of human life than the vast majority of people seem to ever realize.  It encompasses far more than reproduction, cultural expectations, or the thoughtless pursuit of unexamined pleasure could ever account for.  Eyes Wide Shut has its problems as a story, such as the fact that the ultimate outcome of the protagonists' marriage could have been achieved without including anything about a secret society based on sex--the entire cult-like group's subplot could have led to so much more.  Its missed opportunities, aside, at least it directly gazes into a side of human nature that society at large hypocritically obsesses over and covers up using strong core performances.

Content:

 1.  Profanity:  "Fuck" or variations of the word are heard throughout the runtime.

 2.  Nudity:  The very first scene shows Nicole Kidman's character fully nude (other than her shoes) from behind.  She is shown multiple times in such a way.  Another woman is shown naked from the front as she sits unconscious in a chair.  In yet another scene, a woman examined by Bill has her breasts uncovered.

 3.  Sexuality:  A flashback of Alice and Bill engaging in foreplay is shown and includes sexual kissing and fondling of the genital area.  Later, female members of a sex cult stand almost naked as they take turns passing a kiss from one part of a circle onward, and more women are shown fondling each other shortly after.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/05/game-review-lust-for-darkness-dawn.html