The joke is that "Eyes Wide Shut'' is an adult film in every atom of its being. I have now seen the polished version of the technique, and will say it is done well, even though it should not have been done at all. In rough-draft form, this masking evoked Austin Powers' famous genital hide-and-seek sequence.
The events in question are seen at a certain distance, without visible genitalia, and are more atmosphere than action, but to get the R rating, the studio has had to block them with digitally generated figures (two nude women arm in arm, and some cloaked men). The orgy, alas, has famously undergone digital alterations to obscure some of the more energetic rumpy-pumpy. The masked figure who rules over the proceedings has ominous presence, as does the masked woman who warns Dr. Bill gate-crashes and wanders among scenes of Sadeian sexual ritual and writhings worthy of Bosch. They all lead up to and away from the extraordinary orgy sequence in a country estate, where Dr. Bill almost literally on her father's deathbed.Īll of these scenes have their own focus and intensity each sequence has its own dramatic arc. And Marie Richardson is the daughter of a dead man, who wants to seduce Dr. Carmela Marner is a waitress who seems to have learned her trade by watching sitcoms. Rade Sherbedgia, a gravel-voiced, bearded patriarch, plays a costume dealer who may also be retailing the favors of his young daughter. The movie's funniest scene takes place in a hotel where Bill questions a desk clerk, played by Alan Cumming as a cheerful queen who makes it pretty clear he's interested. Bill and shares some surprisingly sweet time with him. And there is also a wonderful role for Vinessa Shaw as a hooker who picks up Dr. Todd Field plays Nick, the society piano player who sets up Bill's visit to a secret orgy. Sydney Pollack is the key supporting player, as a confident, sinister man of the world, living in old-style luxury, deep-voiced, experienced, decadent. The film pays extraordinary attention to the supporting actors, even cheating camera angles to give them the emphasis on two-shots in several scenes, Cruise is like the straight man. He makes a deliberate choice, I think, not to roll them together into an ongoing story, but to make each one a destination-to give each encounter the intensity of a dream in which this moment is clear but it's hard to remember where we've come from or guess what comes next. Kubrick pays special attention to each individual scene. Bill is not really the protagonist but the acted-upon, careening from one situation to another, out of his depth. Shooting in a grainy high-contrast style, using lots of back-lighting, underlighting and strong primary colors, setting the film at Christmas to take advantage of the holiday lights, he makes it all a little garish, like an urban sideshow. Kubrick's great achievement in the film is to find and hold an odd, unsettling, sometimes erotic tone for the doctor's strange encounters.
And he is forever identifying himself as a doctor, as if to reassure himself that he exists at all. The film has two running jokes, both quiet ones: Almost everyone who sees Bill, both male and female, reacts to him sexually. And now begins his long adventure, which has parallels with Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown and Scorsese's "After Hours,'' as one sexual situation after another swims into view. Bill leaves the house and wanders the streets, his mind inflamed by images of Alice making love with the officer. And I thought if he wanted me, only for one night, I was ready to give up everything. The next night, at home, Alice and Bill get stoned on pot (apparently very good pot, considering how zonked they seem), and she describes a fantasy she had about a young naval officer she saw last summer while she and Bill were vacationing on Cape Cod: "At no time was he ever out of my mind. Meanwhile, Bill gets a come-on from two aggressive women, before being called to the upstairs bathroom, where Victor ( Sydney Pollack), the millionaire who is giving the party, has an overdosed hooker who needs a doctor's help.Īt the party, Bill meets an old friend from medical school, now a pianist. In a long, languorous opening sequence, they attend a society ball where a tall Hungarian, a parody of a suave seducer, tries to honey-talk Alice ("Did you ever read the Latin poet Ovid on the art of love?''). Bill and Alice Harford, a married couple who move in rich Manhattan society.
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