Opening Eyes

FIRST THERE was the silence. And the silence was deafening. Summer 99, with only weeks to go before what was widely regarded as the last great cinema event of the decade the release of Stanley Kubrick s 13th and final film, Eyes Wide Shut. And not a word from the Kubrick camp. Warner Brothers remained silent. Mouths Wide Shut, indeed.
The spurned media had a field-day, splashing all kinds of rumours, half-truths and hearsay across their pages as gospel. Warner Brothers (and apparently Kubrick himself) had backed the strategy to release as few details as possible. Apart from Time magazine, who were granted an exclusive preview, the majority of critics were not allowed to see the film until two days before its release. Nothing like this has ever happened before, said one prominent LA critic, obviously forgetting that Kubrick had employed an identical release tactic on Full Metal Jacket in 1987.
When the press finally did get to see Eyes Wide Shut, they actually saw two versions Kubrick s original and the digitally modified edit. It was the, by now, notorious orgy scene which caused the film s problems with the MPAA Classification and Rating Administration, who gave the film an R rating only after judicious revisions were made to copulation from full view during 65 seconds of the orgy sequence.
For some time, rumours had been circulating that Semel and Daly were chasing high profile directors like Spielberg, Pollack and Cronenberg to re-edit the film. Is it possible that someone did the unthinkable and tampered with Kubrick s sacrosanct final cut to protect Warner s investment? Or was the great man himself a willing accomplice?
Tom Cruise rushed to the defence of the cut, saying that Kubrick was committed to an R rating from the start. Cruise went on to say that Kubrick wanted an R for the movie and he felt that the changes would affect the form but not the content. Not a frame is touched on this except just in form. I think when audiences see this movie that won t be an issue for them. Stanley worked very hard on that sequence. What s really important in this scene is the people in the masks watching. His composition is stunning. I would not have supported anything that Stanley hadn t approved or didn t want. Stanley did everything. Only Stanley.
As usual with a Kubrick film, critical responses were diverse and heated; gushing exhalations combined with virulent trashing. Kubrick s strategy of keeping critics at bay until the last minute may have backfired in some quarters, as demanding a coherent opinion from someone within hours of seeing so complex a film was plainly absurd.
Eyes Wide Shut is, even by Kubrick s standards, an idiosyncratic difficult film, not easy to digest on one viewing. The New York Post slammed it with a headline declaring Eyes Glaze Over and went on to say it s quite good in parts and always dazzling to the eye, but a let-down all the same. Kubrick, so far gone inside his own head, has abstracted this potentially combustible material into chilly inertness.
Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times declared it, A lugubrious, strangely static work , and an unfortunate misstep at the end of a dazzling career.
J. Hoberman in The Village Voice expressed serious doubts that Kubrick had indeed finished his work, stating that the film even in this forlorn state, has enough stuff to suggest a Kubrick film. He continued: it feels like the rough draft at best . . . the best thing about it may be its title.
The Daily News said that the film has a haunting quality and at least one performance from Kidman that s as good as we re likely to see this year, but concluded that Eyes Wide Shut doesn t rank among Kubrick s best work.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times called the film A strong and important work, a worthy final chapter to a great director s career.
Janet Maslin, in a beautifully written piece in The New York Times described the movie as Quietly devastating, the riskiest film of Kubrick s career. This astonishing last film is a spellbinding addition to the Kubrick canon. Mr Kubrick has left one more brilliantly provocative tour de force as his epitaph.
Eyes Wide Shut opened on Friday 16th July, a blistering New York dog day with temperatures reaching the high 900s. In its opening weekend it topped the box office charts, taking in an estimated three day total of $22,800,000. A highly respectable opener but hardly Star Wars. Still, it was Kubrick s highest ever opener his last film, Full Metal Jacket opened on 26th June 1987 to strong reviews and a box office of $5,655,225 in its first ten days (though FMJ did, at $17,000,00 cost only a fraction of the current film).
Kubrick s highly unconventional work doesn t look like troubling the big hitters at the box office. Indeed, there were fears that it would repeat the financial nosedives of Barry Lyndon, Once Upon A Time In America or Heaven s Gate, (i.e. films so gloriously idiosyncratic they were doomed to fail). But into its third week, Eyes Wide Shut, with a taking of almost $47 million, seems well on its way to recouping its $65 million outlay.
Eyes Wide Shut opens in Ireland on 10th September hopefully free of computer-generated interference. See it more than once. Your eyes will be opened.