My Life in Anamorphic Widescreen: Eyes Wide Shut

OR: WELL, IT'S STILL THURSDAY IN MOST PARTS OF THE COUNTRY.

That's not the DVD cover art, but I love that image so much - it sums it all up.

I was about to say there isn’t an inch of this film that’s realistic, but that’s not quite true. But first let’s see why it is.

Eyes Wide Shut is a dream. I don’t mean literally; Tom Cruise can only jump off so many rooftops to wake up in his life. But in some ways more than Vanilla Sky, Eyes Wide Shut feels very true to a dream. The characters drift from one place to another, in situations that get weirder and weirder (only Kubrick could produce a scene as simple as an Eastern European man trying to seduce Nicole Kidman and have it come out that way). And while, plot-wise, there’s almost nothing that works realistically, you're willing to believe in it.


The truth is that…it feels idiotic saying this now, but when I first saw the film, man, I WAS Bill Harford in that great scene where he and Alice are stoned (not so much in the being stoned...or with some hot chick...but mentally). Bill, as a DOCTOR, is telling Alice that women just won’t think about sex like men do, and Alice gives him that unbelievable stare and says, “If you men only knew…”

And look, I’ve been close friends with girls as long as I’ve had close friends, but that line just punched me right in the face. And yeah, now I know better, but then? It was one of those sudden realizations that really makes you go “how much do I really know?”



And I’ll ALWAYS be close to films like that. When Will Hunting talked about the honor and reward of physical labor. When Sam Elliot told The Dude to take it easy, and he just said, “The Dude abides.” Sure, it helped that I saw these films very within a very specific time, a very formative time, when school was telling me to go to University and make as much money as possible, having Tyler Durden tell me, “You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank.” Man, that just about saved me. Or ruined me, depending on your world perspective.

And Eyes Wide Shut is kinda like that. I appreciate it for so much other stuff, but this was the first forum that was presented to me that said, “Hey, sex happens, and there’s a lot of screwed-up shit that goes along with it that’s fascinating. Let’s talk.” Health class? Forget about it. Maybe some class somewhere, but not at Jesuit High School, man. Religion classes didn’t talk about it either. Knights, the support group for us young men, was as close as it got, but it was still a Church thing and you can only talk so much. Eyes Wide Shut just opened up and laid everything bare.

I have to mention really fast how absolutely unbelievably great Nicole Kidman is in this film. “Realistic is good, interesting is better.”



I mean, look at THAT.

I said up top that I was inclined to say the film was almost entirely unrealistic, but it’s not really true. The plot is pretty far-out, and there are whole groups of people who will point out the geometric and architectural inaccuracies of the New York sets (everything, even the street scenes, were constructed and shot in a studio), but the film gets real where it counts – between Bill and Alice. The film’s flaws come largely from a ridiculous thriller subplot that eventually is literally explained point by point, but that’s just a hook to get people in their seats. The film is as great as it is because of everything going on between Bill and Alice, and how Bill deals with (and doesn’t deal with) a story Alice tells him of her sexual desire. The thriller stuff was interesting the first few times, but watching it again it just felt overdone. I could write a whole essay about just that, but it’s for another time.

I should mention that this new DVD release contains, for the first time in North America, the uncensored cut. Basically, there’s an orgy scene (hang with me here), and after Stanley Kubrick died, WB realized they had an NC-17 film on their hands. Rather than cut around it (which is probably what Kubrick would’ve done, but who am I to say), they used computers and stuck in people to block out all the raunchier stuff. It amounts to like a minute of footage, and honestly, there’s not a huge difference in how it plays. It’s still very surreal, perhaps even more so in its new, original form, but you’re still getting a great scene either way.

VIDEO

Get ready to learn!

Eyes Wide Shut is presented, for the first time on DVD, in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1, its original theatrical ratio). Now’s as good a time as any to explain this…there’s a lot about it, but this shortest version imaginable is that when a film is mastered in anamorphic widescreen, it’s set to fill the entirety of a widescreen TV. It also is a MUCH higher picture quality, but honestly (and tech nuts will slay me for this) the average consumer can’t tell the difference. It’s only when you watch these damn things over and over again.

Anyway, the other controversy with this release is that the original DVD came out in full frame (1.33:1, or roughly what broadcast television is formatted for). This is because for everything Stanley Kubrick made after 2001: A Space Odyssey, he shot for widescreen but protected for full frame*, so it wouldn’t get screwed when it hit VHS (this was before it was expected for films to be released in their correct, theatrical aspect ratios). First, this makes Stanley Kubrick a genius, since he basically composed his frame two ways, and second, it lead to years of speculation regarding which one was actually intended.

For my part, I prefer the full frame (especially in the case of The Shining). There’s a certain way the sets move by as the camera floats behind the characters, along with some extra room around the actors’ heads that just seizes me, and for my money this widescreen transfer isn’t miles above the old one.

*A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon were actually shot in 1.66:1, but his last three films (The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut) followed that aforementioned process

8 out of 10

SOUND

Still no surround sound. Call back later.

EXTRAS

Damn you WB!

When this DVD was first announced, it was to have a commentary with Sydney Pollack (who acts in this film, but is also a director and an all-around smart guy) and Peter Loewenberg, a historian and psychologist who’s published some articles dealing with Eyes Wide Shut. More than maybe any of the other commentaries, this was the one I was looking forward to the most. It’s one of Kubrick’s films that’s most open to interpretation, and since there was never any plans to really explore 2001: A Space Odyssey on its DVD, I figured I’d hit the jackpot with this commentary.

Then two months back they pulled it, but nobody updated their articles to reflect this and I didn’t find out until a day or so it was released. No reason given so far, of course. I cannot express how disappointed I am.

But that wouldn’t matter if they had something worthwhile here. Well, I should partially take that back…

“The Lost Films of Stanley Kubrick” is a great mini-documentary exploring the work he left unfinished, especially his planned Napoleon project (coolest bit of trivia – Kubrick had a filing cabinet that had a file for every day of Napoleon’s life).

Kubrick received the Director’s Guild DW Griffith award, named after the director maybe the most responsible for establishing many of the rules now taken for granted (we’re talking about simple stuff, just the most basic ways of telling a story on film). This disc has his speech, one of the few video recordings of Kubrick.

But did WB include anything dealing with Eyes Wide Shut? In short, not really. There’s an interview gallery with Cruise, Kidman, and Steven Spielberg carted over from the last DVD release. Each tell fantastic stories, especially one in which Kubrick told Spielberg he wants to one day expand the possibilities of cinema. Spielberg says, didn’t you already do that with 2001? Kubrick says, “almost.”

There’s a documentary called “The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut,” but it’s mostly a lot of fond farewells from a few years after Kubrick died, with some stuff from the interview gallery mixed in. Not that there's not good stuff in there, but there's almost nothing really dealing with Eyes Wide Shut.

Nothing on the making of the film, no critical analysis, no interpretation. This is a fine example of having a lot but giving us nothing.

Any other film, this score would be a lot higher, but given that they ripped us off with the commentary track and put no effort into exploring this film at all, I’m docking it.

6 out of 10 (purely for “The Lost Films” and Kubrick’s acceptance speech)

CONCLUSION

Eyes Wide Shut is my fourth or fifth favorite Kubrick film (constantly going between this and 2001), but its the one I have the most personal connection with. It's not without its flaws, especially in its more conventional thriller elements, but those are spare enough to keep us consistently engaged where it matters - Bill and Alice Harford. It also contains one of the best endings in cinematic history (Kubrick had a touch for endings unlike any other director).