EYES WIDE OPEN

I love Jason Bourne movies. Even the bad Jason Bourne movies are better than 99% of the crap that people commit to celluloid these days.

The action is gripping. And I love the fight scenes. Though I must say, I took two and half years of Karate and in all that time have never seen fighting of the same choreographed nature. Sparring/fighting was always a mad slapdash affair, that devolved to kicking and wild punching, like something you'd see in the hallways of America's high schools.

The Jason Bourne stories are always complex, though not too complex for my pea sized brain. There's an air of plausibility to every plot twist. And everything about the Jason Bourne movies is tight.

For all that to happen on film, it has to be even tighter on the written page. Having tried my hand at screenwriting, I can tell you that is not an easy task.

But this post is not about the well-oiled machine that is the Jason Bourne franchise. I only bring that up as a stark comparison to the movies of Stanley Kubrick. More specifically, a film you might have seen, Eyes Wide Shut.

I suggest you might have seen it because during these pandemic times when we're all looking for ways to distract ourselves and hence plunked in front of our TVs, Eyes Wide Shut seems to be airing 24 hours a day on every one of the overpriced cable channels.

You just can't escape the thing.

Unlike the Bourne movies, Eyes Wide Shut is loose, disjointed, a little fat, and not at all simplistic. Nor, it turns out, is it easy for me to turn my eyes away every time it pops up during my channel surfing. If I watch one scene, I end up watching all the way to the end for Nicole Kidman's perfectly delivered last word in the movie, "FUCK."

Of particular fascination, is the one scene, about 90 minutes into a movie that goes nearly three hours.  I'm referring to the masked party scene, which if my calculations are correct, was intended to be located in Westchester County or deep into the well-monied suburbs of Connecticut.

It is dark. And haunting. And one of the most riveting scenes ever put on film. Not to mention that is populated by a cast of the most beautiful naked women that you will ever see. That lone explains the repeated drooling viewings.

I love Stanley Kubrick and believe he was wildly original. A one of a kind film maker that comes around once in a lifetime. And just as I dug into the backstory of 2001: A Space Odyssey (the monoliths are time machines left by aliens), I indulged myself with some research about Eyes Wide Shut.

And without giving too much away it turns out the movie was intentionally shot to resemble a dream, a late night dream of Dr. Bill Hartford (Tom Cruise) who must come to terms with his wife's recently revealed imagined infidelity. Viewed through that lens, and the fact that the screenplay is an adaptation of a book called DREAM STORY, the dead end plot turns, the paranoia, the hallucinatory non-sequiter scenes, all begin to make sense.

Even the quizzical title, Eyes Wide Shut, feels appropriate. Because you view and participate and experience your dreams with your eyes wide shut.

If you get chance, watch, or rewatch, the movie. I just checked and it's on right now.