Eyes Wide Shut: The Costly Dream
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) by Stanley Kubrick is not merely a movie, but a complex web of appeals, anxieties, and obscured selves. Staying disconnected is virtually impossible, but viewing this film feels like living a mind-bending dream. The act of filming this movie, paradoxically, was an ordeal that was just as dreamlike, as it was strenuous, and, at times, the untold struggles resonated quite a bit with the plot’s underlying tension. The snapshots that were captured on a film did not only encapsulate a series of events happening between the actors, rather, it was the altogether lived experience of the cast and crew, who, at that moment, were disheartened, fatigued and battling with the meticulous demands of the director.
The Prilgrimage That Felts Like A Dream
Eyes Wide Shut can be said to be a retelling of the 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler. In it, we are introduced to Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), an affluent and esteemed physician practicing in the dynamic New York city. Along with him is his well-liked partner and spouse, Alice (Nicole Kidman), who, in a puzzling turn of events, finds herself entangled in a web of unreciprocated affection. Following him is a secluded marriage, which on the outside seems ideal, but is quite the opposite.
The film explores insecurity, jealousy, and the masks we wear more than it explores sex. Bill’s paranoia is the way guilt and, temptation gnaw at us when there is no trust, and Alice’s confessions reveal desires that society has constructed barriers around that women are forced to stifle.
But, perhaps, the most emphatic element that the film had, was the real-life marriage of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and how it was already being scrutinized by the media. This closely paralleled to how their characters had to interact with the strained closeness that, to the audience, made it impossible not to see how the fictions of their film was intertwined with reality.
The obsession of Kubrick was the reality of the cast’s plight.
Stanley Kubrick, being an auteur, was known to ask for take after take after take until he was certain that he was able to extract an almost other-worldly truth from their performances. For almost all of his other works, there was an element of more elusive perfection. For his piece, Eyes Wide Shut, that perfection was heightened to the extreme, or the other end of the spectrum, depending on how you see it.
The shoot, which was slated to take a couple of months, Clocked in at almost 400 days and in turn earned a Guinness World Record for the longest continous film shoot. For Cruise and Kidman it meant slashing other works, friends and at the extreme, parts of their personal lives all became consequences of this film. It is well known that all of them at one point, did feel a certain amount of suffocating isolation inside the constructed world of Kubrick.
Kidman felt the emotional depth of the role as well. Kubrick asked her about her feelings of marriage and infidelity and made her extremely uncomfortable. She once shared that during the shooting of her confessional scene when Alice is describing her sexual fantasy about another man, she was emotionally exhausted for days.
Cruise’s experience was different. As Bill, he had to portray the whole film and walk around Kubrick’s imagined New York (set up in London sound stages) for what seemed to forever. It is said that the lack of variety in tasks made the once instinctive actions of Cruise become mo. These different emotional states are what Kubrick was looking for in Bill’s character.
Behind the scenes, there was lack of spending.
After Kubrick’s successes such as The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, Warner Bros. practically showered him with money due to the trust they had in his genius. However due to the zillion details he wanted, it seemed to pour from the bottomless pit. The unreasonably sharp expenditures of creating New York streets in England, reshooting unnecessary scenes and spending months on editing all ballooned the budget. There was a rest period where the crew was rumored to spend unpaid overtime and exhaustion in a room where every detail, from the placement of a lampshade to the timing of an eye, would take hours.
Then came his famous secrecy. For example, he would keep sсreenshots кeyed, minimize the number of guests on the set, and would silence the actors down if scribed. Extras in the notorious masked ball scene with regards to the other soldiers
This secrecy wasn’t solely for advertising, it was his obsessive want of the
control. Many of the members of the crew saw this atmosphere and latched on to it, simliar to Bill Harford and the anxious roaming he stumbles upon throughout the movie.
The greatest illness and shadow behind Eyes Wide Shut is none other than Kubrick himself. For the past 6 days, Kubrick was in hiding, self-isolating himself with this project spent on, while his friends were and still were fully aware he was not fine. Right after he showed his final edit to Warner Bros, he ended up suffering a heart attack and passed away at 70.
His death left a creepy, shadowy feeling during the release of the film. Eyes Wide Shut became the focus of which was the last project Kubrick worked on. Has he edited it further on after? There were crew members who firmly believed he was not satisfied while the other side said the opposite, and that it was exactly what he was hoping for. It is this very aura of
the film which creates a myth around it, considering it, not only the last work he produced, but also the last kisson of cinema he polite that untangled the myth.
The strain on Cruise and Kidman
According to reports, the marriage between Cruise and Kidman was strained during the lengthy shoot. Both dismissed the notion that the film itself caused the divorce, but the correlations were astonishing. As the pair crumbled, the real desire was to view their own vulnerabilities and that real-life scenario was dangerously close to the episodes being played.
Kidman recalled that Kubrick was like a therapist to her, probing into her mind in ways that were uncomfortable but, in retrospect, valuable. Cruise, on the other hand, said the movie was the most challenging test of his endurance. Emotional exhaustion was evident from both of them and that rawness is what, even decades later, makes the film unsettling.
Censorship and controversy
The release of Eyes Wide Shut was met with a lot of controversy. The American version was the first to release and, in an attempt to avoid an NC-17 rating, altered the infamous orgy scene which sparked a lot of debates with the censorship of Kubrick. Many were upset that his European pieces remained unabashed, while the American version kept to the ‘saw the baby, and chopped the baby.’
The critics were, however, split. While a section of them thought that the movie was a masterpiece of atmosphere, the rest felt that the movie was self indulgent and slow. One thing that is common between the two parties was that the film has the audacity to be a Hollywood movie which focuses on the emotions that people tend to avoid.
A Film That Echos Its Own Making
Of all the films by Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut is often said to be the most difficult to dissect. This is partly because of the current world we live in, and partly the complexities behind the movie itself. The worrying trends of the current world seem to be mirrored in the themes of the movie, which makes it even tougher to dissect it in an objective and rational manner. Desire, paranoia, obsession, and the women trades in order to fulfill all these aspects, all simultaneously overwhelmed by an ugly paradox of prices charged and masks worn. Addressing the trade-offs required for all these themes, actresses face unresolvable worries, and the internal unrest is turned into an outward performance, dwarfed by the evolution akin to Kubrick’s inhumane dilemma. The balance between delusion and reality is made even more disturbing in the context of the utterly rational world we live in. Added to all these struggles and sacrifices made by the directors and producers is a timeless ghost, the only one of its kind, which makes the movie even more special.
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