. . . a rant by Dmetri Kakmi

I am not a Kubrick fan. I never bought the caca about his reclusive genius; about how he obsessed for years to churn out one cinematic masterpiece after another. To me, his films have all the finesse and subtlety of a Mexican soap opera, or "South Park", and they're nowhere near as much fun. All his supposed masterpieces reveal a film-maker with a singularly middle-brow intellect, a try-hard sensibility, desperately searching for intellectual kudos. And all we ended up with is one heavy-handed film after another, with the occasional memorable image thrown in. Despite all the publicity proclaiming his final bonk-fest yet another (sigh) masterpiece, "Eyes Wide Shut" is no exception to the rule.

Stanley Kubrick did us all a favour by dying. At least now we can rest assured that we will see no more of his lugubrious films. When I first heard about the subject-matter of this Kidman/Cruise high-concept vehicle, I joked that it should have been called "Legs Wide Open", but really this film is too tame, too inert for that appellation. It should have been called "Legs Firmly Closed", or "Nightmare of a Sexual Tourist".

But I hear you say maybe eroticism wasn't the point of this film; the stuff of sexual fantasies, the depths and lows of human relationships, and the world of dreams is what Kubrick was trying to uncover. To which I reply, 'Yeah, well, you'll have to be pretty out of touch to think this jaw-fest has anything profound or mature to say about human sexuality.' I've heard better sex talk in the "Emmanuel" films.

Cruise and Kidman's characters might be living the high-life in Manhattan's Central Park West, but their brains are stuck in some far-flung middle-class suburb, where the raunchiest thing a man can do is dress up in his wife's frillies and have her spank him with a hair brush -- and even that is wilder than anything that happens in "Eyes Wide Shut".

The story, such as it is, concerns a rolling-in-dough doctor and his wife, living in the lap of luxury in an apartment straight out of "Architectural Digest". These people want for nothing. They are cosseted elites living in their ivory tower high above all the riff-raff that wander the scungy, supposedly dangerous and decadent, streets of Manhattan. While sharing a joint (how outre), the wife tells her good doctor husband that she harboured secret sexual fantasies about a naval officer she once saw in a hotel. And here's the first crunch: this Manhattan doctor, this man who has been married for nine years, is shattered by this revelation. He can't believe that his wife, the mother of his daughter, could entertain such thoughts about another man; how she could be unfaithful to him in thought, mind you, not in the act. Hello! What planet are these people living on? His eyes have obviously been firmly shut to the realities of life. This man has, by some miracle, managed to remain an innocent in Manhattan. Medical school obviously does not deal in real life.

So, anyway, he is so upset by his wife's confession that he goes on this midnight sexual odyssey, which resembles Martin Scorsese's satiric "After Hours" (1985) -- the nighttime city full of weirdos and perverts out to diddle you. But Kubrick is too stitched-up to crack a joke. Everything is laboured and sign-posted a mile off, and just in case you miss the serious bits, they are underscored by a nerve-jangling piano riff, which had me guffawing through most of the film.

The centrepiece of this midnight run is a hilariously kitsch orgy held in a mansion in the country. And get this, the password to get in is: Fidelio. Now, that's subtle. Gee whiz, the film must be about fidelity. I don't know what sorts of orgies Kubrick and his co-writer, Frederick Raphael, attended for research purposes, but, by the looks of this place, I would say they had mistakenly wandered on to one of Kenneth Anger's pagan shindigs in the woods instead.

Honestly, this orgy is such a prim, grim and joyless affair, I was amazed any of the punters even managed to crack a fat for the masked and caped voyeurs, who, we are portentously told, belong to the highest echelons of power in American society. No wonder the country's in the doldrums. (By the way, I was informed by a friend living in Texas, that the American version of the film pixilated this sequence!) This is ritualised sex as Catholic guilt and Satanic ceremony, a sex-phobic nightmare for prudes and those who would deny the pleasures of the flesh. It's everything your mama warned you about and less. There were no plastic sheets laid out inside these imposing chambers because the sleek and svelte pneumatic babes, with Mohican haircuts down below, robotically bonking on pianos and precious Louise XIV antiques wouldn't know an orgasm if it ran down their legs and ruined the French polishing. But all that pussy and not a prick in sight! (Someone does wander about wearing a Venetian mask with a very long nose. Ah, thank heaven for those subtle Kubrick allusions.) It would seem the male organ is still sacrosanct, even for geniuses, and must be kept well shrouded behind the folds of its sartorial crypt.

All this appalling degeneracy is, of course, too much for our intrepid sexual tourist. Though he resists the fleshly goods on offer, he barely escapes with his life, and is left shattered and questioning his sanity. (Oh, my God, people actually have sex on furniture!) He has looked under the skin of humanity and seen depravity beyond belief. Suddenly, his slick, text-bookish yuppie home life doesn't look so bad, after all. So what if the wife wants to take on the entire American navy? With a bit of counselling and a good dose of Ritalin we shall overcome all adversity. Only Dionysus knows what his reaction would have been if he'd ended up at a raunchy gay sex club on the waterfront. Now, those boys really know how to throw a sweaty orgy!

By daylight (note the cliched day/night, light/dark dichotomy) he's back at home and crying for his innocence lost. He is a grown man now, wise to the contingencies of the world. His eyes are wide open. No, Tom, the Penthouse pets aren't real, even though your wife looks and behaves like she's living inside a glossy centrefold directed by Guccione. But note how she puts on little round glasses when she wants to appear intellectual. (Yet, more subtle symbolism from the elephantine Kubrick.)

Even before the cock has crowed, the maternal one is yanked out of sweet dreams of being ravished by hunky naval officers, and Doctor Cruise confesses all to his adored one. Between tears and sniffles, she tells him they should be grateful to have survived this hellish night of self-discovery. And you want to scream out: 'What did you survive you precious yuppies? Nothing happened, but for the fact that you've just rediscovered your genitals. But that seems to be enough to send these babes in the woods scurrying back to their little hut in Kansas, away from the bright and oh-so-seductive lights of Oz. You can almost hear Kubrick muttering, 'There's no place like home. There's no place like home.'

My feeling is that "Eyes Wide Shut" is Kubrick's final joke on one of Hollywood's most manufactured couples, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Apart from the scene where she tells Cruise about her desire for another man, where she really does excel, Kidman acts like a hoochy-kooch girl who's taken a giant dose of Viagra to perfect the impression of sliding up and down a greasy pole for two and a half hours. As for Tom Cruise, well, the poor thing, as usual he covers the gamut of emotions from A to A.

One of Australia's leading film critics, Adrian Martin, places this stinker above Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line". Adrian, take your hand off it, mate. Not once does Kubrick's bargain-basement psychology rise to the dark, incandescent poetic highs of Malick's gem of a film. In point of fact, Malick deserves the praise that for too long has been unjustly heaped on Kubrick. His epitaph tells me that, like most pseudo-intellectuals, Kubrick just didn't go out enough. The film's final coda has Kidman tell Cruise they need to go home and have a good fuck. Perhaps Kubrick would have benefited from such sound advice.

Look, just go out and rent Vincente Aranda's "Lovers" (1991), or Bunuel's "Belle de Jour" (1967) on home video. If you thought "Eyes Wide Shut" was a profound experience, you might actually learn something about the haunting power of cinema. Now, go away and leave me alone!