Eyes Wide Shut - A Requisite Cinema 25th Anniversary Screening

EYES WIDE SHUT (a Requisite Cinema 25th anniversary screening) / USA/ 1999 / Dir: Stanley Kubrick/ 159 Min
In what would prove to be the coda to Stanley Kubrick’s masterful career, Eyes Wide Shut demanded an immersive level of commitment and trust from the director’s stars – Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman – during the film’s grueling 15-month shoot. The two stars moved beyond their big screen charisma in order to inhabit their characters, peeling away at the psychological layers of trust and loyalty that protects the heart of a marriage. Dr. Bill Harford feels betrayed after his wife Alice confesses that she fantasized about having sex with another man, sending Bill into a dream-like excursion of sexual enticement and mystery, including masquerading into a secret society where sex is treated with a cult like indulgence – putting himself and his marriage in danger. A film that Martin Scorsese called “misunderstood,” Eyes Wide Shut creates a slow burn of discomfort that plays foil to the eroticism, sexual tension, and temptation that Kubrick explores.

“Eyes Wide Shut is above all a masterpiece of sustained tone, a tightrope act that pays off in rich and unexpected ways.” – Nathan Rabin, AV Club

“Mr. Kubrick left one more brilliantly provocative tour de force as his epitaph.” – Janet Maslin, The New York Times