Eyes Wide Shut

Kubrick’s Christmas story is a droll, furtive dream of sex and infidelity, probably the weirdest film in Tom Cruise’s filmography. Loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, it’s a film about a Manhattan doctor whose complacent beliefs about his marriage to Alice (Nicole Kidman) are shaken when she admits to having fantasized about another man.

Eyes Wide Shut and Die Fledermaus are linked through their shared themes of masquerade, hidden desires, and the exploration of dual identities within high society settings. Both works utilize masks and waltz music to symbolize the contrast between public personas and private inclinations, delving into the complexities of human relationships and societal facades.

Ashley Daniel Foot, Director of Engagement, Vancouver Opera

Presented in partnership with Vancouver Opera, whose production of Die Fledermaus begins October 26.

Kubrick’s great achievement in the film is to find and hold an odd, unsettling, sometimes erotic tone for the doctor’s strange encounters. Shooting in a grainy high-contrast style, using lots of back-lighting, underlighting and strong primary colors, setting the film at Christmas to take advantage of the holiday lights, he makes it all a little garish, like an urban sideshow. Dr. Bill is not really the protagonist but the acted-upon, careening from one situation to another, out of his depth. Kubrick pays special attention to each individual scene. He makes a deliberate choice, I think, not to roll them together into an ongoing story, but to make each one a destination—to give each encounter the intensity of a dream in which this moment is clear but it’s hard to remember where we’ve come from or guess what comes next.

Roger Ebert

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