To start off the new year, I want to review one of the best film I saw over the Christmas holiday. This might become the definitive Christmas movie for me, because I have never seen this many interior Christmas lights in a movie before. Currently, I don’t have a locked Kubrick ranking – I want to rewatch 2001 and Dr. Strangelove to obtain a better judgement- but Eyes Wide Shut is definitely in the top three, perhaps contending for the top spot. Many parts of the films echo previous works from Kubrick. The hazily lit initial dinner party feels like it takes place within that picture at the end of The Shining. The image of the old man lying in bed during Bill’s his visit to a seductive patient revokes the old man from 2001; and the interior of the costume shop has a strong Clockwork Orange vibe to it. The structure of the film is chaptered by encounters between Cruise and a series of people and spaces that try to simultaneously seduce and emasculate him, with immediate sequence of him wandering through a staged New York City and meditating on the image of his wife having sex with a navel officer. This is somehow Kubrick’s most anthropogenic film as it’s interested the outward manifestation of our own innate desire and the failure to understand others’. The dramaturgy feels a lot less mechanical than his films with more satirical nature like Barry Lyndon. Given the premise and a lot of the settings, the film is still kind of funny, but I never felt like it was played for laughs. The domestic drama between the couple is twisted and thickened by two wonderfully weird performances from Cruise and Kidman (Kidman was always the standout and Cruise grew on me given just by being how removed and held back he is) and reflected onto the lighting in their lavish apartment bedroom, segmented by either a warm orange or a cold blue.
The movie works better than almost all other “it happened one night” movies because there is a reverent effort of reserve from Kubrick that refuses to underline the greater mystery, thus creating a much more comfortable and luring sequence of actions and sounds that sucks you right in. Like many had observed, the fact it was filmed on a set in Londons emphasizes foreignness which inextricably leads to a dream-like stasis that clouds the entire film. But it’s not only the sets, instead how the rhythm and control of each scene opens door to many other suggestions but never shuts in front of any. At the end of the day it depicts a world of a man who had a shocking revelation that his wife might be multi-dimensional just as he is. The diurnal half reciprocates the nocturnal half but never answers to any of it. The truth is a lie that you choose to live on with. Every image manifests itself in the eyes of the beholder.
Never a bad idea to end your filmography with Nicole Kidman whispering “fuck”.
Cinema Travelogue 
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