Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

She was completely nude; he was dressed like a pirate. Can this marriage be saved?

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael; inspired by the novella by Arthur Schnitzler

Even before the title, Nicole Kidman has slipped out of her clothes. This is so people who just rented the movie to see her naked don’t have to waste their time watching the next 158 minutes (but it only seems like 18 months). But for those of you intrepid enough to venture onward, Kubrick will reward you with a meticulously detailed film exploring important themes. Oh, and an orgy.

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise are a happily married Manhattan couple who live in a fabulous apartment with a Christmas tree and a daughter. But this is all put to the test when they attend director Sydney Pollack’s lavish party at Versailles, and it turns into “Euro Temptation Island.” Nicole gets hit on by a lascivious Yugo salesmen, while a Bulgarian supermodel propositions Dr. Tom—he removes a cinder from her eye, and she claims it’s like pulling a thorn from a lion’s paw, in that the lion must later sleep with you.

But before anything happens, Tom is called to assist Sydney with a medical emergency: a nude woman with large, economy-sized implants has passed out on his bathroom floor. Tom cures her by showing her his dimples, and Sydney Pollack promises him the lead in The Firm if he will keep his mouth shut about the whole thing.

Tom and Nicole go home and discuss the party. Nicole gets mad because Tom says the oily guy only wanted to have sex with her, but insists he wasn’t jealous because he knows that she would never cheat on him. Oh Tom… Tom, Tom, Tom—obviously Scientology doesn’t increase intelligence as claimed. (“Why am I a clueless lunkhead? Page 213.”)

Nicole sweetly retaliates by recounting how last summer she fantasized about a handsome naval officer she’d met. “If he wanted me, even if only for one night, I was ready to give up everything,” she murmurs. Oh, and his name was “Iceman” Kazanski! Take that, Top Gun!

This confession does not sit well with Tom, who wanders around town having lurid daydreams of Nicole in bed with Iceman, and himself in bed with Viper Metcalf. Tom eventually finds himself in the club where old pal Nick Nightingale plays piano. But Nick can’t stay and chat, since he’s got a gig at the Trilateral Commission’s office Christmas party. Tom wants to go too, but Nick says that everyone will be costumed and masked, and where is Tom going to get a costume at this time of night?

Tom runs to a costume shop, wakes the owner, and informs him that he’s a doctor who has a medical emergency requiring a Captain Hook outfit. Now properly attired, Tom enters the party to find that a crowd of scary figures in robes and masks are chanting in Latin. It’s the Vatican’s production of The Omega Man! Then a circle of worshippers drop their gowns to reveal they are beautiful women attired in nothing more than g-strings, high heels, and perky chapeaux. Ah, so it’s actually Vegas night at the First Satanist Church.

A nude woman in a feathered headdress (and enough silicone in her chest to meet Intel’s production needs for the next fiscal year) warns Tom that he is grave danger. And it is true that orgy participants are at high risk for strokes, heart attacks, and jock itch.

But before Tom can learn to orgy sensibly, he is revealed as a trespasser and forced to remove his mask.

“Now get undressed,” the head guy demands.

“Undressed?” Tom responds. (He apparently didn’t have time to learn his lines, and so throughout the movie repeats everybody else’s.)

The woman in the headdress interrupts to say that she will take Tom’s place, since she’s already undressed and stuff. Tom is free to go—but if he ever tells anybody what he saw, he will suffer the direst consequences. Presumably, the same penalties that one incurs for early withdrawal from a money market account. Meanwhile, somebody keeps playing one piano note over and over, very loudly; it’s either meant to create tension, or to drum up Excedrin sales.

Tom can’t leave the mystery alone and becomes the Joe Friday of the AMA, flashing his doctor’s ID and questioning people right and left. Eventually, he reads a newspaper account about a dead ex-beauty queen, and rushes to the hospital morgue, reasoning that since it’s the only newspaper story he’s ever read, it has to be significant. We see that the nude body on the slab has breast implants so large that they had to cut holes in the top of her storage drawer. Yes, it’s the woman from Sydney Pollack’s party and the woman from the orgy, the one who said it could cost her her life! And it did! Tom now regrets his unyielding stand on nudity, and wishes he had at least offered to strip to his briefs and lip-synch “That Old-Time Rock and Roll” for the group.

Sydney calls, and Tom finally realizes he may be more than just the sinister director of Tootsie. But Syd tells Tom that he has it all wrong—the secret conspiracy is actually a service organization that runs bake sales and walkathons. Everything that happened at the party—the threats, the warning, the woman’s intervention—was all fake.

“Fake?” replies Tom.

“Yes, fake,” repeats Sydney impatiently; as a director, he has no sympathy for actors who don’t learn their lines. He explains that it was all just to scare Tom. Basically, the whole movie’s a Scooby-Do episode. And they got away with it too, despite the meddling kid.

Tom goes home to find his Captain Hook mask on his pillow. This causes Tom to break down and sob to Nicole, “I’ll tell you everything.” Immediately, police departments all over the country start putting Captain Hook masks on the pillows of suspects.

So! What did this movie teach us about marriage maintenance?

The first lesson is obvious to even the most dimwitted of guys: do not tell your wife that she would never cheat on you with a sleazy old gigolo she met at Sydney Pollack’s house. Because then she will be forced to do it, since it’s in the script, which you would have known if you’d bothered to learn your lines.

Next, we learn that while sexual fantasies are fine, and are good for enlivening your regular Saturday night thing (whatever that may be), there are some dreams you should never share with your partner because they might hurt him or make him run around town in a pirate costume. In our movie, Nicole told Tom that she had fantasized joining the mile-high club with Iceman. This really got to Tom, and caused him to do stupid things, like reading a newspaper and barging into a rich folks’ version of a sci-fi con.

A final lesson we can take from this movie is that if you suspect that your husband may be cheating on you, put the mask from his Captain Hook costume on a pillow, and he will break down and confess all. And then, once you know all about him and Tinkerbell, you can either forgive him and move on, or feed another part of him to the crocodile.