‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Reveals Vivid New Layers As The Film, And The Viewer, Age
By Bryan Young/Sept. 19, 2019 7:00 am EST
July 16, 1999.That was the last day of my eighteenth year and the first day Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was released into the world. As an eighteen-year-old kid obsessed with film still devastated by the loss of Kubrick just a few months prior, I was dying to see this film. I’d hardly seen anything in the theatre but The Phantom Menace since its release in May, so this was going to be a refreshing change of pace. Naturally, Eyes Wide Shut deals with themes that an eighteen-year-old kid ought to have very little frame of reference for. Jealousy was an abstract that I understood, but the intimate moments in a relationship recreated in the film were as much film fantasy as Star Wars was to me. I’d never been in a serious relationship to that point and the art of Eyes Wide Shut would help inform my understanding more than I would be able to decode anything from it.
Coda
Perhaps the thing I love most about Kubrick movies is that they can be watched at different stages of life and one can come to different understandings of them. 2001: A Space Odyssey means something different to me now than it did when I first saw it in my teenage years. Eyes Wide Shut is no different. Like a fine whiskey, the age adds to the experience, adding layers and depth to the flavor of the picture. The film itself is a masterpiece worth revisiting every so often. It might even be Kubrick’s crowning achievement, though only time will tell. It’s definitely his most mature film. It may be his most layered and complex, too. But that’s what we love about an artist making art, being able to peel back those layers.Eyes Wide Shut is a perfect onion, and I hope I never find the last layer.
‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Reveals Vivid New Layers As The Film, And The Viewer, Age
By Bryan Young/Sept. 19, 2019 7:00 am EST
July 16, 1999.That was the last day of my eighteenth year and the first day Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was released into the world. As an eighteen-year-old kid obsessed with film still devastated by the loss of Kubrick just a few months prior, I was dying to see this film. I’d hardly seen anything in the theatre but The Phantom Menace since its release in May, so this was going to be a refreshing change of pace. Naturally, Eyes Wide Shut deals with themes that an eighteen-year-old kid ought to have very little frame of reference for. Jealousy was an abstract that I understood, but the intimate moments in a relationship recreated in the film were as much film fantasy as Star Wars was to me. I’d never been in a serious relationship to that point and the art of Eyes Wide Shut would help inform my understanding more than I would be able to decode anything from it.
The Filmmaking and Structure
Evolving Life, Evolves Understanding
Coda
Perhaps the thing I love most about Kubrick movies is that they can be watched at different stages of life and one can come to different understandings of them. 2001: A Space Odyssey means something different to me now than it did when I first saw it in my teenage years. Eyes Wide Shut is no different. Like a fine whiskey, the age adds to the experience, adding layers and depth to the flavor of the picture. The film itself is a masterpiece worth revisiting every so often. It might even be Kubrick’s crowning achievement, though only time will tell. It’s definitely his most mature film. It may be his most layered and complex, too. But that’s what we love about an artist making art, being able to peel back those layers.Eyes Wide Shut is a perfect onion, and I hope I never find the last layer.
