With haunting circus music playing on the soundtrack that sounds like something featured on an ominous merry-go-round, Bill and Alice get ready for a fancy dinner party thrown by Bill’s rich patient, Victor Ziegler, and Ziegler’s wife. Cruise’s real-life wife, Nicole Kidman, plays Harford’s wife Alice. In the updated story, Tom Cruise plays Dr. Taking a cue from his friend Freud, Schnitzler’s works are primarily known as witty, stylistic explorations of the pathological and the problems of love and sexual faithfulness and, that’s exactly what the modernized EYES WIDE SHUT offers the audience thematically, albeit couched in Kubrick’s own singular vision. Other than that, Schnitzler’s works have remained mired in Freudian obscurity. Director Max Ophuls made a famous, well-respected French film in 1950 of Schnitzler’s play, LA RONDE, about sexual affairs (and sexual disease). Kubrick based EYES WIDE SHUT on a novella titled “Traumnovelle” or “Dream Story” by Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), a Viennese author, playwright and friend of Sigmund Freud, the “father” of modern psychology. Much of the movie is a Playboy-inspired, demonic circus of smut that exploits the bodies of women, while hypocritically keeping male modesty intact. EYES WIDE SHUT, regrettably, continues that trend, even though some mainstream critics (and filmmakers) are still struggling to shower Kubrick with undeserved kudos. Also, except perhaps for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, they have had a less-than-impressive artistic success. While Kubrick’s technical brilliance cannot be denied, his movies since 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY have been burdened with ever-stronger R-rated material. People will be debating the merits (and meaning) of the late Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, the controversial EYES WIDE SHUT, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, for years to come. More Detail:Ī work of genius? Or, a tedious exercise in Freudian psychobabble? Freudian humanist worldview with strong pagan elements of voyeurism in the beginning & middle & moderately strong moral elements near the end, plus depictions/references to homosexuality (especially male fantasies about nude lesbians kissing during orgy) & occult, demonic sex cabal of powerful people haunts confused protagonist 36 mostly strong obscenities & 5 mild exclamatory profanities like "Oh, God!" mild violence such as young men knock down man, threats of violence to man & his family, & image of nude dead corpse in morgue secret masked cabal of powerful people meets to hold orgy, depicted fornication during extended orgy sequence, obscured & implied oral sex during orgy scenes, depicted nude lesbian kissing, depicted nude heterosexual kissing & fondling (marital & extramarital), homosexual nude dancing during orgy, briefly depicted female masturbation during orgy, hint of desired necrophilia during scene with nude corpse, man solicits prostitutes, & minor character decides to use teenage daughter as prostitute frequent total female & upper female nudity (especially during orgy meeting) but brief upper & rear male nudity, even during orgy scenes alcohol use & drunkenness smoking & marijuana use depicted & implied drug abuse and, strong miscellaneous immorality, including adulterous fantasies confessed & followed, jealousy, man deliberately & often looks for adulterous sex, voyeurism of protagonist with many depictions of female nudity to arouse audience members & attack biblical values (like something from Playboy magazine or Marxist diatribes against "traditional" morality), & threats of violence to keep man quiet about secret demonic cabal.
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