Reflections on Eyes Wide Shut:
Altering a Master's Vision

Every time I get dragged into another conversation about this riveting film, I get asked the same damned question: "Do you have it on DVD?" I think it's time to end this discussion once and for all and tell all of you why I do not own Kubrick's final swan song. There are clear-cut reasons why I have chosen not to purchase the released version, the corrupted version of Kubrick's vision.

The main scene in question: Bill Harford, while making an unwelcome visit to a mysterious mansion, calmly walks throughout the house, silently watching as several people engage in sexual intercourse. The house is the location of a massive organized orgy, where people of substantial influence go to alleviate their sexual arousal. Bill has been sent on this "migration" through the dimly lit rooms of the house by the jealousy he has for his wife after she admitted to having sexually fantasized about a man she barely knew. She would have "thrown everything away" for that one night with the Naval Officer. This drives Bill on an escapade through the sexual underbelly of Manhattan, eventually leading to the eerie, pagan-like rituals that govern the happenings inside the mansion's dimly lit rooms.

Having seen both versions of the film, I can unblinkingly tell you that the unedited version of this scene is not as graphic as the censors would have you believe. There are specific takes that are more graphic than most mainstream films, however. Then again, who is to say what is graphic and what isn't? You decide. There are several couples engaging in writhing intercourse, the man thrusting his way towards climax. There are two lesbians in the "69" position. There are more lesbians caressing each other in a sort of orgiastic frenzy.

Believe me, every fifteen year-old has seen scenes that are unquestionably more graphic than this. With pornography so readily available to anybody who knows how to operate a mouse and keyboard, there is little chance of finding anybody with "virgin eyes." To assume that anybody interested in seeing this film would have a clear head when it comes to matters of sex would be pure ignorance.

Yet this is the assumption that has been made. It's been made countless times before. The MPAA is the kind of organization that makes the word "hypocrisy" such a valuable term. They claim to be an organization that does not hinder the artistic process. Eyes Wide Shut is only the most recent of countless examples in the history of the organization in which the vision of our finest living directors is altered to "protect" the public from things they've already seen.

This protection is exactly what caused Eyes Wide Shut to be released with an "R" rating. Add in the fact that Kubrick died before a final decision on the cutting was made and you have a controversial, and ultimately financial decision. If you do not believe that the decision made by studio executives to cut the film after the film's director had tragically died was inspired by the possibility of making a few extra million dollars, you need to just look at the unimaginable dreck that Hollywood has been turning out in recent years that, for some reason or another, makes a lot of money.

What film lovers need is a director or a studio to stand up to the MPAA and their artistic butchering. If nobody takes a stand, movements to hinder one of the world's finest art forms will etch themselves in the woodwork, impossible to pry out. Not only does a director and a studio need to do this, but audiences must also appear at the selected theaters in droves, showing the money-grubbing studios that films with a strict rating from the MPAA can earn money.

I realize that my not purchasing one of my favorite films is a double-edged sword. By not handing over my hard-earned twenty dollars to the nearest DVD dealer, films of Eyes Wide Shut's artistic integrity may not be made again. But, by not forking over my money, I'm also not supporting the actions of the studios, studios that altered a master's vision after he had passed away. I find it hard to believe that Kubrick would have let the studios control the film like they did. I feel that a director's vision is so important, and to be revered so much (especially a director who has such an esteemed history), that not purchasing the current DVD release of the film is the only possible decision.

Stanley Kubrick is one of the greatest directors of all time and his works deserve to be set alongside those of Hitchcock and Bergman, Fellini and Godard. While Eyes Wide Shut is not his best film, it deserves its place in the history of cinema, and deserves its place in pure, unaltered form.

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Editorial Written by Collin Thornber on 11/13/00