Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is a neo-noir psychological thriller film that is considered a cult film directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novella Traumnovelle ( Dream Story ) by Arthur Schnitzler. It was Kubrick's last film before his death. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the surreal, sexually charged adventures of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), who is shocked by the revelation by his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), that she contemplated an affair a year earlier. He embarks on a night-long, eventful sexual adventure, during which he infiltrates a masked orgy.
The film appeared on 16 July 1999 to generally positive critical reaction.
Plot
The film begins in the apartment of a wealthy married couple, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), who are preparing for a Christmas party at the home of Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), a friend and patient of Bill's. During the party, a Hungarian man (Sky du Mont) tries to seduce Alice, while two younger models try to seduce Bill. Alice and Bill both resist temptations. During the party, Bill is summoned by Ziegler to his bathroom where he finds a naked woman, Mandy (Julienne Davis), who has over-dosed on a speedball. Bill helps her regain consciousness and promises Victor he will not speak of the event. Bill also meets an old friend, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), a former fellow student who dropped out of medical school and is now a pianist at the party. Nick informs Bill that he is playing at the Sonata Café.
The day after the party, Alice and Bill smoke marijuana and talk about encounters at the party. Alice confesses her feelings concerning a naval officer she saw while on Cape Cod. Because of Bill's self-assurance, out of spite she admits she was willing to abandon her future for one night with the officer. Shocked, Bill suddenly receives a telephone call summoning him to a deceased patient's home. Bill goes to the patient and the daughter, Marion (Marie Richardson), says she wants to give up her life to be with Bill. Bill resists and departs once Marion's boyfriend Carl (Thomas Gibson) arrives.
While wandering the streets, rowdy men, taking him for gay, taunt him and walk into him. A female prostitute named Domino (Vinessa Shaw) approaches Bill and solicits him. Bill accepts, but a call from Alice cuts their business after a kiss. Bill insists on paying.
He happens upon a sign outside the jazz club where Nick is piano player. As the two discuss things, Nick describes a party the night before where he is to play again tonight. Bill coerces Nick into divulging the party's requirements: a black robe with a hood, and a Venetian mask. He learns the location and the password: Fidelio .
Bill goes to the costume shop of a friend long after normal hours of operation only to find it has a new owner, Mr. Milich (Rade Šerbedžija). He offers Milich $200 over the normal price to hire a costume immediately. During their meeting, Milich discovers his teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) half undressed with two Japanese men. Milich behaves as if angry, but his daughter's calm and continued mischievous demeanor renders it unclear whether Milich's anger is feigned.
Bill takes a cab to the party in a mansion on Long Island. What he finds inside is a hierogamy-inspired sexual ritual (orgy) involving women clad in masks and G-strings and led by an ominous man dressed and masked in red (Leon Vitali). Men and women watch, masked and clad in black robes, reminiscent of a Venetian Carnival. Nick plays the organ blindfolded. As the women rise from a circle surrounding a priest-like figure, they select men from the audience. One of the masked men stares at Bill for a short time, and a mysterious woman selects Bill and informs him that he is in danger and urges him to leave, but he refuses.
He is discovered as an outsider and forced to remove his mask. The red-robed master of ceremonies demands he disrobe, but his "punishment" is "redeemed" by the mysterious woman who tried to warn him earlier. Bill is threatened to remain quiet about what he saw or suffer, then returns home.
Bill finds Alice laughing in her sleep. After waking her, she tells him of her dream. She was having sex with other men, and she knew that Bill was watching, so she laughed at him.
The following day, Bill decides to investigate what happened. He goes to the hotel at which Nick was staying and finds from the front desk clerk that Nick has apparently been brutalized for telling Bill about the party and password, and is now gone. Bill returns the costume to the shop where, Mr. Milich is now offering his daughter as a prostitute to the same men. When Bill challenges him, Milich says he has come to "an understanding" with these men, and also offers his daughter to Bill. He returns to the mansion where the orgy had taken place, but is warned off. Bill goes to Domino's apartment where he learns from her roommate that Domino received results of a blood test, which said she was HIV positive. Amanda Curran, the woman who "redeemed" Bill, is dead, ostensibly of a drug overdose behind a locked apartment door. Bill goes to the morgue and learns this woman is Mandy, whom Bill had helped to revive at Ziegler's party. He is unable to establish that the woman did die simply of a drug overdose. Bill is then called to Victor Ziegler's home, where the millionaire claims he was one of those at the ritual and that nothing further was done; according to him, Amanda was a drug-addicted prostitute and Nick was allowed to leave without further punishment. Both here and in the orgy it is implied that Ziegler was the masked man staring at Bill and that he summoned Amanda to "redeem" his friend. No evidence is presented, however, concerning the fate of Amanda and Nick, and Bill and the audience are left to decide between the explanation given to him or a possible double murder. Ziegler does warn Bill against investigating further, as some of the masked participants are said to be powerful members of society.
Bill returns home to Alice and finds the mask he wore to the party on the pillow next to her. He breaks down crying, waking Alice before confessing about his journey. While Christmas shopping later that morning, Alice and Bill reconcile and attempts to improve their marriage seem to be underway. It is also suggested that the bulk of the film was merely a dream that Bill had, although this is deliberately left ambiguous.
Analysis
Comparison with Dream Story
The 1926 novella Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler is set (somewhat earlier than its publishing date) in and around Vienna after the turn of the century. The couple are named Fridolin and Albertina, and their home is a typical suburban middle-class home, not the film's posh urban apartment.
The couple is also Jewish in the novella. According to historian Geoffrey Cocks, Kubrick (himself Jewish) frequently removed references to the Jewishness of characters in the novels he adapted. This is reflected in the film by the fact that when Bill Harford is going home he is taunted by some young boys in the street with anti-gay slurs. In the novella, these are anti-Semitic slurs.
In the novella, the woman who "redeems" Fridolin at the sex party, saving him from punishment, is costumed like a nun, and most of the characters at this party are costumed like nuns or priests (though this element was present in the original screenplay). This element is removed from the film, although the chanting and incense seen at the orgy may seem loosely religious albeit in a manner more like a Black Mass than a Christian worship service.
When Fridolin returns home, Albertina's dream is an elaborate drama that concludes with him getting crucified in a village square after Albertina fails to speak up on his behalf, given that she is now occupied with copulating with other men. Thus, in the novella, there is a parallelism between the woman dressed like a nun at the orgy saving Fridolin from punishment (by offering to be punished in his place), and his wife failing to do the same in a dream, which has disappeared from the film version.
Critic Randy Rasmussen suggests that the character of Bill is fundamentally more naive, strait-laced, less disclosing and more unconscious of his vindictive motives than his counterpart Fridolin in the novel. In the novel when his wife discloses a private sexual fantasy, he in turn admits one of his own, while in the film he is simply shocked. In the novel, he long suspected the infatuation of his patient Marion for him, while in the film it is a complete surprise, and he again seems shocked. He is also more overwhelmed by the orgy in the film than in the novella. The novel's Fridolin is a bit more bold with the prostitute (Mizzi in the novel, Domino in the film).
In the film, Bill first meets his piano-playing friend, Nightingale, at Victor Ziegler's party, and then while wandering around town, seeks him out at the Sonata cafe. In the novel, there is no Victor Ziegler, and the cafe encounter with Nightingale is a happy accident.
The character of Dr. Ziegler (who represents the high wealth and prestige to which Bill Harford aspires) is entirely an invention of the film, having no counterpart in the novella at all. Critic Randy Rasmussen interprets Ziegler as representing the worst demonic potential of Bill, much as in other Kubrick films Dr. Strangelove represents the worst of the American military in Doctor Strangelove , Charles Grady represents the worst of Jack Torrance in The Shining , and Quilty represents the worst of Professor Humbert in Lolita .
The novella has a clear expla
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