Eyes Wide Shut

Kubrick’s final film and a tribute to Freud.

Stanley Kubrick had long wanted to adapt Arthur Schnitzler’s erotic novella «Traumnovelle» for the screen, and in the 1970s, among other things, considered making an explicitly pornographic adaptation. It was not until the 1990s that he was able to bring his plans to fruition, though they had changed somewhat by then. Kubrick was never a particularly fast worker, so filming dragged on, and he just managed to finish editing the film before he died. The project was shrouded in secrecy, which did little to quell the usual flood of rumours about Kubrick’s eccentricities. There was also wild speculation about how far the film would go. In any case, Kubrick believed it was his very best film.

William and Alice are a beautiful, successful, monogamous couple. When she confides in him one winter evening about a sexual fantasy involving another man, William is thrown into an emotional, intellectual and sexual turmoil that threatens his old identity. He lets himself be guided by impulse and curiosity as he tries to define his own boundaries and needs. What does he really want sexually? And what does Alice mean to him?

Stanley Kubrick’s final film contains a thinly-veiled critique of the vulgar excess and materialism of Christmas.

Brianna Zigler, Little White Lies