Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Desire, jealousy and the secrets we keep can send even a seemingly perfect marriage spinning into a strange, dreamlike night. It was almost inevitable that Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" would become the most misunderstood film of 1999. Kubrick died four months before its release, sparking endless speculation about how much more he might have tinkered with it, changed it or "fixed" it. We'll never know. But even without the haunting mystery of his death - eerily echoed in a scene where Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) visits a patient's deathbed - the film would have puzzled and divided audiences and critics. As you settle into this long, deliberately slow and hypnotic film, consider how challenging and ambiguous its storytelling is. Co-written by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael, it's based on Arthur Schnitzler's novella "Traumnovelle," or "Dream Story," and it's an open question how much of what we see is itself a dream, from the blue shadows washing over the Harfords' bedroom to the replica of New York's Greenwich Village that Kubrick built on a soundstage in England. The story follows a nightlong odyssey - even its daylight scenes feel like part of it - taken by a man shaken when his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), provocatively confesses that she once fantasized about another man. His wanderings lead him to a mysterious masked gathering at a country mansion, a world of secrets that may be more dangerous than he realizes. Sydney Pollack co-stars as a wealthy friend who knows more than he lets on. Near the end, the couple seem to awaken to reality and perhaps a new, humbled maturity, yet every scene shimmers with a sense of unreality - visually, psychologically and logically. Is it all a dream? And if so, who is dreaming it at any given moment, and why? Don't settle for easy answers. Kubrick's final odyssey invites you in, and now the dream is yours.