Eyes Wide Shuttered
Deer Couple through a window
I am not the jealous type
Says Tom Cruise
To Nicole Kidman
In Eyes Wide Shut
The 1999 Kubrick film
Now released in an astonishing 4K transfer
By Criterion
Which as a matter of fact
I am not either
Though film reviews should never be personal
Hollywood Reporter comments on Jeffery Epstein echoes
Resounding throughout the film
I once drove a feller off the road
Cuz he had my gf sitting next to him
How was I to know he was her boss at work
Giving her a lift home
And once though I was mostly deaf
I followed the echoes of her screaming
In a deserted parking lot
The guy tearing at her clothes
If he hadn’t ran off I would have killed him
Eyes Wide Shut based on
Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 “Traumnovelle”
Or “Dream Story”
About jealousy between husband and wife
The gates of Lady Diana’s residence
Are featured in the film
Though in doctored form
The corrupt world elite
Apparently don’t like Christmas
Because every scene not including them
Includes a Christmas tree
Hi Larisa, thank you for your comment and question. I have ordered a copy of the original novella in English and look forward to reading it. I am intrigued by what you say about the decadent style employed in that novel. I saw Eyes Wide Shut when it first came out, in a terrible DVD version. I wrote the movie off, which many did at the time, apparently. I was never a big fan of either of the two leads in any case. I watched the new 4K version over two nights, sometimes watching a certain scene over and over again. Apparently Kubrick had wanted to make a movie about Traumnovella by Schnitzler since the 1960s. He devoted the last five years of his life to the movie. Eyes Wide Shut always struck me as an anomaly -- against my own deep appreciation of all of Kubrick's earlier films (I showed The Shining and Full Metal Jacket in my sociology of film course). Movies are above all about film technique, which is many sided, involving lens colour sound perspective research and on and on. A bad transfer like the original DVD and maybe even the first release of the film in theatres, can ruin a movie. Apparently however Eyes Wide Shut was a big hit in the world market, failing only in North America and Europe. There is no doubt that the subtext of the film (a corrupt and dangerous ruling class in America) may ring a bell in our post Epstein world. Schnitzler in Vienna at the same time as Freud reflected the psychological zeitgeist that motivated the famed psychoanalyst. And no where other than America is psychoanalysis so popular or so profitable.
It’s actually my favorite Eyes Wide Shut; maybe because of the dream logic and the absence of any moral resolution. I’m not even sure how close it is to Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle... which I probably should know, being from Vienna, but it’s still sitting on my shelf, untouched.