This Tom Cruise classic continues to perplex 25 years after its release
Stanley Kubrick ended his storied career with Eyes Wide Shut, which received polarized reviews at the time of release but is now considered as one of the celebrated auteur’s masterpieces.
25 years after its release, the conclusion of the movie still leaves audiences perplexed, perhaps due to the sheer number of layers of emotions Kubrick touches upon. A psychological drama, Eyes Wide Shut has one of the more complicated endings in movie history, so let’s talk about it.
Spoilers for Eyes Wide Shut follow.
Towards the end of the movie, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) gets deeply interested in the activities of a cult, one of whose orgies he attends earlier in the film. He finds out through a newspaper article that Mandy (Julienne Davis), the woman who saved him at the orgy, is dead. He is also perturbed by Nick Nightingale’s (Todd Field) disappearance, who is allegedly taken away by two men, whom Bill suspects have ties to the cult, as it was Nick who invited him to the orgy.
However, his doubts are later erased by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), who reveals that he was a guest at the orgy, too. He assures Bill that Nick is safe with his family back in Seattle, and Mandy passed away due to a drug overdose due to her addiction problems, not due to getting on the bad side of the cult. Satisfied, Bill heads home to find the orgy mask he had rented on his pillow, and goes on to explain the chaos-filled last few days to Alice (Nicole Kidman), his wife.
At the very end, the family goes Christmas shopping, where Bill apologizes to Alice in a toy store. The pair reconcile, with Alice suggesting they reignite their sexual chemistry.
Based on the 1926 novella The Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler, Eyes Wide Shut explores themes of adultery and repressed sexual feelings, looking at them from the lenses of a fragile masculine ego. Bill’s reaction to Alice’s sailor fantasy is a testament to that, as he shrugs it off completely, blaming it on her being under the spell of marijuana.
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