They’re both lost. The world seems cruel in a dull way, and ambivalent to their desires. Desires that have yet to materialize, and that they do not have words for. They’re looking for something in the way that we’re all looking for something. The funny thing about romance is that it doesn’t really fix that problem, but it does make it seem like less of a burden from time to time.
Maria (Adrienne Shelly) has a fight with her father…
Watched the original US cut from 1983, which is around 45 minutes shorter and structured like Kramer vs Kramer meets The Omen. It's completely bereft of the intellectual avenues which Zulawski was interrogating, but not uninteresting, because the new cut strips it of everything except primal, guttural, screeching harpooning body language. The famous miscarriage scene happens like 15 minutes into the US cut. That should give you an idea of the extent to which the structure is fucked up.
The opening frame of Eyes Wide Shut, where Alice (Nicole Kidman) is seen wriggling out of a backless, black cocktail dress, revealing that she is wearing nothing underneath, seems inconsequential on the surface. If you don’t know what you’re getting into, it seems like a teasing image that foreshadows the eroticism to come. Perhaps this is one reason why critics and audiences were so harsh on Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. Eyes Wide Shut isn’t particularly erotic, or interested in…
