Kubrick Made a Good Sexy Movie

Since my initial blog entry, the first two chapters of “Long Red Nails” have appeared on the Erotic Mind Control Story Archive. I even received my first piece of fan mail and a couple favorable posting on the mcforum message boards; all very exciting and encouraging. I am currently editing Chapter Three but am taking a quick break to catch up on my Netflix Queue with three quick reviews.

At least that was my plan. But Eyes Wide Shut just demands its own posting.

Eyes Wide Shit is the best NC-17 movie ever made, even if the film was technically rated R because after director Stanley Kubrick’s death additional figures were digitally added to the famous orgy scene to block out some of the juicy parts.

Most NC-17 films lack sex. Instead, they earn their rating with a few a nude scenes that are barely plot related. Eyes Wide Shut is a film where challenges to conventional sexuality morality appear out of every character and ever scene.

Eyes Wide Shut grabbed headlines from its inception because it stared then Hollywood golden couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They play Dr. William and Alice Harford, a married couple with a posh NYC apartment, a charming young daughter, and a healthy sex life. They movie begins as they prepare to attend a Christmas party hosted by Bill’s uber-rich patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) and his wife.

At the party, both of the Harfords face temptation. Alice flirts and dances with a Hungarian playboy played by a poor man’s Jeremy Irons. Bill also flirts with a pair of models who seem to offer every male’s fantasy in the film’s first 20 minutes. The Harfords confront these dalliances the next night in bed. Alice vacillates between being jealous of Bill’s flirting and accusing Bill of underestimating her own sexuality. Cruise plays Bill as full of false calm. He parries all of her attacks until she blows him away by confessing to having lusted after a naval officer the family encountered during their last vacation. The argument ends when Bill receives a call that an elderly patient of his has passed away.

Part of what makes the film dream like is that there’s always a phone call or other coincidence to interrupt when things get to heavy. The call about the patient takes Bill out of his bedroom and his boxer shorts and puts him in a suit on the dark nighttime streets of New York City. Along the way, he has visions of Alice making love to a man in full navy whites. These images continue throughout the film and by the end both Alice and the imaginary sailor are fully nude and intertwined.

Kubrick loves ambiguity and I love that Bill’s reaction doesn’t have to be all about jealousy. I like to think he’s even a little excited. His reactions during the rest of the film are not simply revenge at Alice’s revelation but instead an attempt to do what no man can really do: compete equally with a fully sexualized woman.

Bill walks the streets of New York City and sex seeps every ounce of celluloid in a series of bizarre encounters. Eventually, Bill wanders passes the jazz club where his old medical school buddy, Nick Nightingale, is playing piano. Nightingale is played devilishly by director Todd Field. In character, Field actually challenges Hugh Jackman to the title of “the one threat to my heterosexuality”. Nick lets Bill pull out the details of Nick’s after-hours gig: playing piano blindfold at an orgy.

Bill is ridiculous through a lot of these scenes. He keeps passing around his medical license like a badge, bribing people for the tiniest favors and ordering beverages he doesn’t really want.

Finally, Bill arrives at the Long Island mansion hosting the party and the movie’s famous orgy scene begins. A group of Ventian mask wearing clocked figures observe a ceremony featuring about a dozen servant women in masks, g-strings, and tasteful black heels. And sure enough, Nick is in the corner playing a keyboard blindfolded. Even in the edited version, Bill’s wondering through the house is well, an orgy. Participants are grouped in twos and threes while more people watch. There is probably one example of each sex position, both intercourse and oral, and plenty of women with other women.

Most Kubrick defenders champion this film as being devoid of sexuality. That always makes me ask, which orgy were they watching? I think Kubrick did deliver an art-house porn film. It also interesting to note as a mind-control fetishist, how much of the film portrays a mind control fantasy. The servant women at the orgy move very much like hypnotized sex slaves.

I think the critics expected a supposedly steamy but ultimately safe scene over a ceramics wheel or a grand piano. But true fantasies are scarier because they are about freedom, control and power, and not some celluloid cliché. Eyes Wide Shut exposes the truth that we can never share our true sexual fantasies with our lovers because what makes them fantasies is that they involve other people. Of course, Bill does eventually share everything with Alice in the end and her reaction is probably the film’s most ambiguous moment.

The final third of the film is Bill trying to figure out how sinister the cult was and who paid the price for his crashing the party. The film never reaches the full heights of the orgy again, but there are plenty of sexual set pieces, including Bill’s various trips to a costume shop where his rents his orgy disguise. Eventually, Bill is summoned back to Ziegler’s house. Harvey Keitel was originally supposed to play Ziegler but this is the perfect Sydney Pollack part. He makes his explanation that what Bill saw was merely a mock sex cult for rich people’s role playing enjoyment and not an actual sinister, murderous sex cult sound like a discussion on shady business ethics. Personally, I want to believe Ziegler, but then I always want to believe the best of sex cults.

Ask most men who see Eyes Wide Shut if they found the movie sexy and they will answer a resounding yes. Given the chance, they would crash that orgy as quickly as Bill did. And that’s Kubrick’s point. Like Bill, most of us live with our fantasies just out of reach and with the fear they are occurring behind closed doors in opulent mansions.

To me, that provides some hope because it means the affordable, accessible middle class orgy is still available to be invented.