Stanley Kubrick’s unsettling marital thriller rewards its slow pace with an unusual understanding of jealousy. Cruise and Kidman are compelling together, though the film’s scrutiny of women’s bodies sometimes undermines its respect for their private thoughts.
Eyes Wide Shut is an unsettling, perceptive film about marriage, and its occasional ponderousness is worth tolerating. Stanley Kubrick approaches sexual jealousy through a husband’s difficulty accepting that his wife has thoughts he cannot supervise. The screenplay, by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael, gives that ordinary possessiveness the space and gravity of a thriller. Its most disturbing suggestion is that familiarity with another person can encourage some fairly foolish assumptions about them.
Tom Cruise plays Dr William Harford with an earnestness that makes his lack of understanding painfully credible. Nicole Kidman’s Alice seems capable of a private life even while he is giving her his full attention, and Kidman never makes that privacy feel like a performance of mystery. We felt uneasy during their domestic scenes, because Cruise makes the husband’s need to understand everything about his wife feel so familiar. Both actors make the strain within the marriage convincing without making the couple seem beyond affection.
Larry Smith’s photography gives the domestic intimacy a disconcertingly composed appearance; we are allowed to look without being encouraged to feel at ease. Production designers Roy Walker and Leslie Tomkins make the surroundings feel arranged for scrutiny, so that even private space seems insufficiently private. The stylisation can look mannered, but it suits a story in which ordinary encounters acquire the pressure of a nightmare. The people remain recognisable even when the places around them begin to feel strange.
Nigel Galt’s editing gives the wandering plenty of time, and some of that time is productive: anticipation becomes a source of discomfort in itself. Jocelyn Pook’s music deepens the unease, helping the film sustain its dreamlike mood across encounters that need not lead anywhere definite. But Kubrick’s insistence on deliberation sometimes becomes wearing, and the pauses do not all contain something worth waiting for. We can accept that frustration is part of the experience and still wish a few stretches moved faster.
The treatment of women is a more substantial reservation. Kubrick and Raphael give Alice’s privacy real weight, yet the film’s prolonged interest in female nudity can make the other women seem available chiefly for inspection. Kidman’s intelligence makes that unevenness more conspicuous. There is a limit to how much the husband’s restricted understanding can excuse the way a film looks at everyone around him.
Most critics are less persuaded than we are, particularly by the slow pace and the lack of erotic heat. We think they undervalue the discomfort those qualities produce: desire here can be embarrassing, stalled and difficult to reconcile with an existing life. As a sexual thriller, it asks for considerable patience with uncertainty, and its strangeness is more persuasive than its efforts to excite. The domestic scenes give that uncertainty consequences we can recognise.
At 159 minutes, this is a poor choice for a distracted evening or for anyone expecting the easy momentum of a mystery being solved. Put aside the expectation that every strange encounter will yield a useful answer. We recommend it when there is time afterwards for a conversation about the couple on screen, before anyone starts drawing comparisons with the couple on the sofa.
