ANDYES WIDE SHUT
Type: moralistic-analytical reflection
Direction: Stanley Kubrick. With Tom C ruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Marie Richardson, Rade Šerbedžija, Todd Field, Vinessa Shaw, Alan Cumming
In the meantime, my advice is: read (or reread) Double dream by Schnitzlerthe short story that inspired Kubrick for his last film (released posthumously, but approved by the author and which is now returning to the cinema).
It chronicles a doctor’s exploration of his sexual fantasies after his wife tells him she dreamed she was cheating on himto. The ambiguous morbidity of the literary text (published in 1926) becomes in the film a pressing reflection on the morality of human behaviour.
Tom Cruise in “Eyes Wide Shut” (© Webphoto)
If the wife’s “confession” seems to justify the husband’s abandonment of his principles and descent into a forbidden world (the orgiastic party), Kubrick immediately shifts his gaze from the object of temptation to reflection on the limits of our actions and the consequences of our actions.
Hence the choice of a cold and objective point of view (the spoliation of women at the Sabbath is the least erotic there is) which overturns Schnitzler: not the search for ambiguity within bourgeois morality but a reflection as rational as possible on human behaviour. The latest, unmissable film by a moralist who has never stopped questioning the limits of all morality.
For those who want to “open your eyes wide open” as the title says.
Kubrick’s masterpiece will be in theaters until May 6, 2026.
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