dal sito di Variety:

Eyes Wide Shut
By TODD MCCARTHY, July 12, 1999
A Warner Bros. release of a Pole Star production
made by Hobby Films Ltd. Produced by Stanley
Kubrick. Executive producer, Jan Harlan.
Co-producer, Brian W. Cook. Directed by Stanley
Kubrick. Screenplay, Kubrick, Frederic Raphael,
inspired by the novella "Traumnovelle" (Dream
Story) by Arthur Schnitzler.
Dr. William Harford - Tom Cruise
Alice Harford - Nicole Kidman
Victor Ziegler - Sydney Pollack
Marion - Marie Richardson
Milich - Rade Sherbedgia
Nick Nightingale - Todd Field
Domino - Vinessa Shaw
Desk Clerk - Alan Cumming
Sandor Szavost - Sky Dumont
Sally - Fay Masterson
Milich's Daughter - Leelee Sobieski
Carl - Thomas Gibson
Helena Harford - Madison Eginton
Gayle - Louise Taylor
Nuala - Stewart Thorndike
Mandy - Julienne Davis
Waitress at Gillespie's - Carmela Marner


Unquestionably one of the most highly
anticipated films of modern times due to its
high-powered talent combo, protracted and
secrecy-enshrouded shoot, rumored racy
content, the 12-year interval since the last
Stanley Kubrick picture and the fact that it
is being released posthumously, "Eyes
Wide Shut" may have trouble living up to
all the extreme and diverse expectations
viewers may have for it, as almost any
picture would under the circumstances. But
after all the curiosity and attendant hype
wash away, what one is left with is a
riveting, thematically probing, richly
atmospheric and just occasionally
troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive
consideration of the extent of trust and
mutual knowledge possible between a man
and a woman. Meticulous, deliberate and
precise picture casts a particular sort of
spell, one that will likely captivate older
and thoughtful audiences more than it will
mainstream Tom Cruise die-hards and
those with short attention spans. A fast
commercial start is assured in the wake of
the media blitz that basically commenced
with Kubrick's death in March, but
measured pace and questionable appeal for
under-25s spell hit rather than smash. As
usual with the director, Warner Bros. can
look to even bigger returns overseas.
Less acerbic and, in its own tentative way,
more optimistic about the human condition than
any of the director's previous films, this
intimately focused updating by Kubrick and
Frederic Raphael of Arthur Schnitzler's
beautifully observed 1926 novella "Dream
Story" remains remarkably faithful to its source
while also trading in familiar Kubrick concerns
such as paranoia, deception, the literal and
figurative masks people wear, and the difficulty
for even intelligent human beings to transcend
the base and self-destructive impulses that drive
the species. Aside from its succession of
delectable individual scenes, pic's outstanding
feature is its subtle and unstressed expression of
a dreamlike state, a stylistic fusion of the gritty
and the fanciful that allows for "reality" and the
imaginary to merge to such an extent that it is of
no concern which is which, if indeed they are
distinct.
Kubrick first considered adapting Schnitzler's
Freudian, Vienna-set tale in the late '60s, and in
its sense of intellectual adventurousness and
daring, as well as for its vaguely disembodied,
out-of-real-space-and-time feel, pic seems
rather more like a part of that era than of
today's cinema. Longtime Kubrick fans will
therefore no doubt pick up on many nuances
and meanings that could easily elude the masses
of contempo viewers who are too young to
have seen a Kubrick picture first-run in a
theater.
Film bridges its source's early-20th-century
Euro setting with the modern New York locale
via a lilting waltz to which the beautiful William
and Alice Harford (Cruise and Nicole Kidman)
dress in their opulent Central Park West
apartment as they prepare for an elegant
pre-Christmas party thrown by the
extravagantly wealthy Victor Ziegler (Sydney
Pollack). The virtuoso 18-minute party
sequence, which is bathed in a warm amber
glow and instantly rings with stylistic echoes of
the bar scene in "The Shining," serves to
establish the couple's bond of fidelity in the face
of ready opportunities for sexual escapades
provided Bill by two flirtatious models, and
Alice by a persistently seductive Hungarian (the
excellent Sky Dumont).
While the intoxicated Alice barely fends off her
charming pursuer, Bill, a medical doctor, is
summoned to get Ziegler out of a jam by
reviving a nude young woman who has o.d.'d in
his private quarters. This is just the first of
several instances in the picture of women
indulging in mind-altering substances, with
direct and sometimes dire consequences.
The very next example serves as the trigger for
the film's main trajectory and also occasions
perhaps its most extraordinary scene. Under
the influence of marijuana the next evening,
Alice initiates a discussion of what happened at
the party and becomes angry at Bill's lack of
insight and honesty about sexual impulses. She
then goes deeper, confessing to him the
convulsive physical effect a handsome naval
officer had on her during their Cape Cod
vacation that summer. Nothing happened, she
says, but she admits that, at the mere sight of
the officer, "I could hardly move," and that at
the slightest suggestion from him she would
have been willing to give up everything - her
husband, their young daughter, her future. This
virtual soliloquy reps a dream scene for an
actor, and Kidman makes the most of it,
reaching a career high-water mark with this
remarkable unveiling of a woman's innermost
feelings.
The revelation has a chilling effect on Bill,
however, who heads out into the night to
respond to a call that one of his patients has
died. This marks just the beginning of a long,
brooding nocturnal journey that sees Bill,
among other things, become the object of a
declaration of love by the dead man's
distraught daughter (Marie Richardson), go
home with a hooker (Vinessa Shaw) with the
evident intention of betraying his wife, and learn
of an exclusive costume party from a musician
friend (Todd Field) who happens to be playing
at the event; every encounter Bill has is cut
short by an interruption that's both frustrating
and somehow welcome.
Intent upon an illicit adventure, an excited Bill
awakens a costumier (Rade Sherbedgia) in
order to acquire the necessary cape and mask
for the masquerade, then proceeds out of town
to a lavish mansion where he gains entree to an
anonymous, rigorously ritualized orgy that
eventually places at risk his own life as well as
that of a statuesque woman who steps in to
save him.
By this time, the film has built up an almost
exalted sense of bizarre unreality in which the
viewer, like Bill, cannot begin to imagine where
this odyssey is leading. But the elaborate orgy
set piece representing consummate decadence,
which also runs 18 minutes and is set to
haunting musical accompaniment devised by
composer Jocelyn Pook, represents the
picture's climax and is followed by a protracted
stretch of gradually lessening tension, as Bill
obsessively tries to determine what happened
to the woman who rescued him at the mansion.
While this final hour is far from uncompelling -
Alice awakens upon Bill's return to pour out
the lurid details of an intensely sexual dream
she's just had, and Bill revisits the prostitute's
apartment only to receive sobering news - its
form is more conventional than what has come
before. It's also saddled with an unnecessary
stalking interlude and an overlong dialogue
sequence between Bill and Ziegler that is, for
Kubrick, uncustomarily direct in the way it
explains much of what's come before. Kubrick
trimmed at least two of his pictures ("2001"
and "The Shining") after they opened, and,
were he still around to do so, it would not have
been surprising for him to cut a bit of this
final-act material.
Even though "Eyes Wide Shut," like its source
story, is seen from the male p.o.v. and largely
concerns the obsessions, fears and limitations of
its protagonist, pic is unique in the late
director's oeuvre in that it's the women who far
outshine the men. Kidman is sensational and
luminous as she inhabits her character, who
reps a convincing argument for the view that
women are far more cognizant and expressive
of their emotions than are men. When absent
from the story during her husband's
wanderings, numerous other actresses willingly
take up the slack in a succession of brief but
indelible turns, most notably the intense
Richardson as the bereaved neurotic daughter,
the insinuating Shaw as the inviting prostie and
Fay Masterson as the latter's upfront
roommate.
Where this leaves Cruise is the film's most
debatable issue. At face value, the star gives a
limited, emotionally constrained,
eyebrow-crinkling and grimacing performance,
nor is he entirely convincing as an established
favorite doctor to Gotham's elite. No doubt the
same complaints that were voiced about the
ineffectuality of Ryan O'Neal in "Barry
Lyndon" will be heard here about Cruise. On
the other hand, it can be argued that the actor,
who has none of the big thesping demands
placed upon him that the women do, despite
being onscreen nearly continuously, generously
hands the picture over to his several outstanding
female partners by allowing them to shine.
While the role could have used an actor whose
casual authority cloaked inner turmoil and
desire, Kubrick found a way to use Cruise
shrewdly, and thesp in no way impedes the
picture from the full expression of its intentions
and meanings.
Stylistically, the film represents an arresting
mixture of imposing stateliness with a
sometimes breathtaking intimacy. Kubrick's
trademark tracks and Steadicam shots and
magisterial use of music - 22 minutes of it by
Pook, the rest resourcefully selected - coexist
with deliberately (and beautifully) grainy images,
often backed by flared source lights, that
sometimes recall the Dogma 95 look of a film
such as "The Celebration." The opulent decor
of Les Tomkins and Roy Walker's production
design is geared to summon up an unconscious
impression of the drama's Middle European
source while still reflecting the habitats of
Manhattan's upper class. Street footage reps a
combination of large-scale outdoor Greenwich
Village sets and effective second unit material.
As for the titillation factor, some of the dialogue
is far more explicit than what's on view.
Kidman has much more action with her dream
officer in her husband's mind via
black-and-white fantasy footage than she ever
does with her mate. Orgy sequence features
plenty of stunning nude women striding around
as well as pretty standard soft-core simulations.
And so the career of a great filmmaker comes
to a close with a work that, while not his most
startling or innovative or subversive,
nonetheless sees him striking out in exciting and
sometimes new directions with his stylistic
confidence and boldness intact. Given that the
endings to his previous films have been
variously absurdist, despairing, apocalyptic,
mystical, corrosive, murderous and nihilistic,
perhaps the fact that the conclusion here is at
least guardedly hopeful suggests that, at the
end, Kubrick believed in some sort of human
progress after all.


Alberto :-)
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La strategia e' l'arte di continuare a sparare
per far credere al nemico d'aver ancora munizioni