Eyes Wide Shut

In IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey, at the height of his suicidal despair and panic, imagines a world in which he doesn't exist. Stanley Kubrick goes one step further in sending Tom Cruise down an odyssey of sexual confusion and paranoia to learn the true meaning of Christmas.

Adapted from the Austrian short story Traumnovelle, Kubrick's final film peeks into the privileged world of Dr. Bill Hartford and his wife Alice (Cruise and Nicole Kidman), two well-to-do attractive socialites who, by all accounts, have it made. In a marijuana-fueled argument, Alice reveals thoughts of infidelity that send Bill into an existential panic, leading to an absurdist walkabout through New York that involves – you guessed it – a mysterious sex cult run by a shrouded aristocracy.

Did Kubrick make this to break up Cruise and Kidman's marriage? How much did he know about mysterious sex trafficking rings? Did Sydney Pollack originate the shirtless-in-suspenders look? Clearly, the film poses more questions than it answers. For certain, EYES WIDE SHUT is a brutally funny sexscapade that puts an ellipsis at the end of Kubrick's storied career – and, most importantly – stands as a crucial text for our modern world. Fidelio!