Marriage or Psychology, Two Sides of the Eyes Wide Shut Debate
The M.P.A.A had a difficult task ahead of them when it was time to assign a film rating to Stanley Kubrick’s highly controversial last film, Eyes Wide Shut. The film follows the dissolution of the marriage between Alice and Bill Harford, who are portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. The fact that the two actors were romantically involved while filming did nothing to provide their characters’ relationship onscreen with any sense of comforting marital intimacy. The film is imbued with paranoid feelings of conspiracy and sexual intrigue as Bill explores a world of drug abuse, prostitutes, sexual rituals, and potential murder. Many critics have found Kubrick’s final work to be severely faulted due to its depiction of explicit sexuality, and due to its discordant method of storytelling. However, the debate over the quality of Kubrick’s final work cannot be condensed to a simple decision of complete effectiveness. The dominant theme that one takes from the film significantly alters the perception of the film’s overall quality. If the dominant theme to be taken away from the film is the complications of modern marriage, the film becomes fairly ineffectual in its storytelling. However, if the main theme that one takes from the film is the psychology behind Bill’s character, the film becomes incredibly effectual in its method of storytelling.
The controversial material in Eyes Wide Shut is often a source of condemnation for critics of the film. The scene that most often bears the brunt of these critiques is a sequence of ritualistic sexuality. Even though these scenes are arguably more immoral in their depiction of sexuality, the sexuality depicted as a result of Alice’s extramarital thoughts, or the sexuality depicted through the actions of an underage girl, is less often critiqued than the infamous orgy sequence. Some critics condemn the ritualistic orgy sequence on the basis of its ineffectiveness, rather than solely on its explicit nature. Jane Alison presents complaints based in the “staginess” of how the scene was portrayed, “This staginess was seen by harsher critics to plague the entire film- in its mannered dialogue, the artificiality of the New York set, the implausibility of Cruise in his role, the sheer ludicrousness of the plot.” (Alison). This ineffectual “staginess” is present in many other scenes in the film. At the beginning of the film, while Cruise and Kidman are dancing, his hand is not fully touching her back. Whether this particular instance of physical detachment was a conscious choice made by Kubrick to address marital separation, or an example of the ineffectual “staginess” of the film, the stiff tone present in this scene and throughout the remainder of the film can create a very jarring and ultimately ineffectual tone.
Kubrick often translates print mediums for his films, and when he makes alterations between these mediums, they can be understood as deliberate and significant choices credited to his notoriously methodical approach to filmmaking. Alison notes that a subtle yet significant change made between the medium of Schnitzler’s novella, Traumnovelle and Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is the alteration of the password for entry to the pivotal mansion party. The password changes from the location of Alice’s sexual fantasies to Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio. In addition to shifting focus from the central conflict of the marriage of Bill and Alice, Kubrick’s subtle inclusion of operatic material reflects the over-the-top presentation of sexual fantasy in the film. While over-the-top cinema is a hallmark of Kubrick’s work, the overstated drama of Eyes Wide Shut can be seen as less effective in its usage than in some of Kubrick’s other works due to the way that the overstated drama creates additional “staginess”.
The mistakes made in Kubrick’s method of storytelling in Eyes Wide Shut may have been made in deference to the technical aspects of production: “...considerations of plot were never uppermost in this director’s mind; for him, all was subordinate to the camera.” (Decter 52). One of the most noticeable techniques Kubrick uses for the benefit of the technical aspects of the film’s production is the manipulation of color and lighting. These lighting choices establish essential characterization for Bill and Alice. Harsh blue lights and soft yellow, orange, and red lights rotate throughout the film. In the context of Kubrick’s work, this rotation is anything but arbitrary. Bill is often surrounded by the warmer lighting tones, while Alice is often framed by the harsher blue lights. Janet Maslin suggests that, “The conjugal life is bathed in red, at first, and danger in blue.” (Maslin). While the warmer tones of lights do seem to be indicative of conjugal action, the blue lighting also accompanies conjugal action, rather than Maslin’s exclusive suggestion of danger. The entrance to the room where an underage girl is engaged in conjugal action with two men is lit with harsh blue fluorescents. Bill’s visualizations of Alice engaged in conjugal action with the naval officer are also lit with the harsh blue light. The pairing of this sexually active young girl and Alice’s extramarital sexual fantasies through lighting choices suggests that the blue lighting is indicative of women’s sexuality rather than of danger, and that the warmer colors of lighting are indicative of Bill’s expressions of male sexuality. This skillful manipulation of technical elements in the film works to redeem its perceived deficiencies.
While Bill and Alice struggle with infidelity and lust throughout the film, the resolution of Eyes Wide Shut depicts hope for their marriage. Richard Brody compares and contrasts Kubrick’s depiction of marital discord to David Fincher’s film, Gone Girl. While both films depict the dissolution of a marriage, there is a stark difference made between the two directors’ depictions of marriage at the conclusion of their films: “Fincher appears to be more pessimistic about love than Kubrick was. Eyes Wide Shut, a post-Freudian work, takes sexual desire very seriously as a realm where the revelation of inner monsters makes it possible to live with them, with ourselves, and with each other.” (Brody). While Kubrick’s relatively more positive depiction of the future of Bill and Alice’s marriage may seem to be a source of redemption for the concept of marriage in Eyes Wide Shut, the final scene between Bill and Alice ultimately compromises the film’s effectiveness. In other films, Kubrick refuses to provide a satisfying resolution of the action of his films in order to maintain the integrity of his storytelling. This ambiguity is one of the most intriguing qualities of Kubrick’s brand of filmmaking, but it is lost in the attempt of Eyes Wide Shut to resolve itself, “The reconciliation at the end of the film is the one scene that doesn’t work; a film that intrigues us because of its loose ends shouldn’t try to tidy up.” (Ebert). A “happy ending” simply isn’t congruent with Kubrick’s style, and it makes the entire film less effective in its analysis of marriage.
While there is a sense of “otherness” in Bill and Alice’s marriage, the concept of the “other” is posed repeatedly in Eyes Wide Shut, but is never fully embraced by the characters. While Bill and Alice express their desires to venture into a world of the unfamiliar, neither fully embraces the concept of the “other”. This idea of the “other” is essential to the artistic interpretation of Kubrick’s final film: “Much talk- some of it real, a lot of it fake- has been in the air over the last decade about empathy for the ‘other,’ for people different from us. But no one has dwelled on the essential otherness of a work of art.” (Siegel). The strongest defense of this film’s effectiveness is the strong reaction that it has elicited from a wide range of critics, both positively and negatively. These strong reactions make Eyes Wide Shut effective in its storytelling because its “otherness” is actually a keenly intuitive expression of the audience’s own darker nature. This is an innate human truth that viewers would like to ignore and repress in the way that the film’s characters repress their darkest natures. Bill’s abandonment of the unknown world of sexual intrigue that he has discovered creates a larger commentary for the role of male psychology in the process of interpretation for this film.
The fairly episodic method of storytelling used in Eyes Wide Shut beautifully reflects the inner workings of Bill’s mind. This is done through reflecting the way that his mind is quickly jumping from one train of thought to the next as he tries to riddle his way out of the deviant world he finds himself immersed in. This methodical approach of jumping from scene to scene inversely creates a commentary on female figures in the film through the reflection of Bill’s mind, in the way that scenes involving women do not shift focus as quickly as the scenes involving Bill. The extended close-ups of Kidman during Alice’s confessions of sexual fantasies reflect the mystery that Bill has found in the wife who was initially introduced as a mundane figure while the couple got dressed for the Ziegler’s Christmas party. The sudden shift from Bill’s confusion through disjointed shots to the intensely focused shots depicting women suggests a mystery between the genders at play in Bill’s mind.
The manipulation of the inner workings of the male mind is the most defendable aspect of Tom Cruise’s heavily criticized performance in Eyes Wide Shut. Amy Taubin thoroughly explores the male psychology at play in the film in her essay, “Imperfect Love: Stanley Kubrick’s Last Film”. The scene in which Bill views the naked corpse of a woman in the morgue; whose identity is uncertain to him, reflects the uncertainty of his own identity after the chaotic events of the film (Taubin). Emasculation plays heavily into this interpretation of male behavior through the character of Bill. This idea of emasculation enhances the tone of constant threat in the film that weighs heavily on the audience through the innate male fear of emasculation. The psychological concepts of Eros and Thanatos, the instincts of sex and death, are used by Taubin as a defense of the film’s commentary on mortality through the fear presented in these characters. Kubrick’s depiction of mortality, which is so tangible in this film, upsets the distanced relationship between audience and filmmaker by presenting a harsh reality involving man’s innate fear of his own mortality.
The relatively crass presentation of the gritty nature of human life makes Eyes Wide Shut both critically controversial and psychologically manipulative in a way that is ultimately effective as a method of storytelling. The presentation of marriage is flawed and uneven, but the psychological themes at play make the film an effective and brutally honest commentary on the animalistic nature of human life. True to the style of Kubrick’s other work, there is no sugar coating in his presentation of these ideas, but instead this film presents large ideas about society through skillfully covert manipulations of the art of filmmaking.
Works Cited
Alison, Jane. "Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut: A Masque in Disguise." Post Script Fall 2003: 3+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.
Brody, Richard. "David Fincher's Portrait of a Marriage." The New Yorker.com. The New Yorker, 03 Oct. 2014. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.
Decter, Midge. "The Kubrick Mystique." Commentary 108.2 (1999): 52. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.
Ebert, Roger. "Eyes Wide Shut Movie Review & Film Summary." All Content. Ebert Digital LLC, 16 July 1999. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.
Maslin, Janet. "Eyes Wide Shut (1999) FILM REVIEW; Bedroom Odyssey." www.nytimes.com. The New York Times, 16 July 1999. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.
Siegel, Lee. "Eyes Wide Shut: What the Critics Failed to See in Kubrick's Last Film." Harper's Magazine 299 (Oct. 1999): 76-82. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski and Scott T. Darga. Vol. 112. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.
Taubin, Amy. "Imperfect Love: Stanley Kubrick's Last Film." Film Comment 35.5 (Sept.-Oct. 1999): 25-33. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski and Scott T. Darga. Vol. 112. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.