Eyes Wide Shut

Kubrick’s final film and a tribute to Freud.

Stanley Kubrick had long wanted to adapt Arthur Schnitzler’s erotic novel “Traumnovelle” for the screen. In the 1970s, among other ideas, he considered making an explicitly pornographic adaptation. It was not until the 1990s that he brought his film plans to fruition, although 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 surrounded by secrecy, which did little to stem the usual flood of rumors 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. One winter evening, when she confides a sexual fantasy involving another man, William is plunged into emotional, intellectual and sexual turmoil that threatens his old sense of identity. Guided by impulse and curiosity, he sets out 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