Eyes Wide Shut [Blu-ray]

1999's future classic--"It's not about sex"
1999 was one of the greatest years in recent memory for film. Yet Eyes Wide Shut is all but absent from the end-of-the-year awards ceremonies and most critics lists.

The first thing to bear in mind are that this film was hyped way beyond necessity. As if the general public had any interest in the "Kubrick" listed below "Cruise" and "Kidman". To them this was just another Big Actor's next Big Movie. Passing it off like a "real Hollywood couple gets busy on the big screen" heightened expectations for something Kubrick wasn't trying to achieve. It suffered the same audience reaction as The Phantom Menace, and made only a fraction of the money.

Critics seemed to be lining up to take potshots at this film. Why? Recent history shows us that all of Kubrick's films from 2001 onward have been attacked critically, and subsequently hailed as classic years later. The same is true of most of Orson Welles' work. Few critics took the...

Good News, Kubrick and Blu-Ray Fans
Kubrick's final effort is also his greatest masterpiece: a humane and expressionistic fable, endlessly complex and guardedly optimistic.
A few notes about the Blu-Ray disc of "Eyes Wide Shut:"
The Blu-Ray is the unrated version of the film, meaning it does not have those CGI figures added to the orgy scenes to obscure the simulated sex. (The CGI figures were added in order to secure a U.S. theatrical release rating of "R," without Kubrick's input; their only purpose was censorship. The version released on Blu-Ray, which was released theatrically in Europe but until now has not been available in the U.S., restores those shots to the way Kubrick filmed them.)
The Blu-Ray disc contains all of the special features from the standard-definition DVD in the boxed DVD set, and they are interesting enough. The aspect-ratio of the Blu-Ray is 16x9, which is a vast improvement over the old 3x4 DVD, as 16x9 is much closer to the theatrical aspect-ratio for which the film's shots...

Marriage is always under siege
Eyes Wide Shut is not the self-indulgent, opaque film that I had been led by some reviewers to expect. It is clear and focused with an important and worthy theme. Kubrick is exploring the nature of human sexuality in light of recent conclusions derived from evolutionary biology. The theme can be stated simply: "marriage is a fortress continually under siege." To be able to use Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as his married couple, who not so incidentally were actually married to one another at the time, was quite a coup since it lent accessibility and immediacy to his theme. We are able to catch glimpses of what their married life might have been like and to see that marriage played out against the temptations of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Indeed with their subsequent separation, Kubrick's theme is ironically supported.

Cruise plays Dr. Bill Harford, an attractive, high status, confident male who has always deceived himself about his sexual nature and the nature of women...

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