Kubrick’s search

Rarely does blatant commercial hypocrisy sit so close to artistic excellence as was the case at the Hollywood screening of Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut. Critics were invited to see two versions of a 65-second segment of an orgy sequence, one as originally shot by Kubrick, and another with some of the explicit material blocked by computer images so as to remove the film from the dreaded NC-17 (adults only) category. As Warner Bros., the film's distributors, must have known would happen, many of the more influential critics—Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times and Janet Maslin of the New York Times, most notably—dutifully informed readers that they were being deprived of art and that the First Amendment had suffered a blow. Balderdash.

Kubrick was under contractual obligation to deliver an R-rated film (open to children under 17 if accompanied by parents or adult guardians), not an NC-17 film. But he also wanted to make his orgy as frightening and disgusting as he possibly could, which is, no doubt, why he hits the audience with so much nonerotic groping and sexual exertions. The orgy scene—which takes the form of a satanic ritual—is designed not to titillate, but to display the emptiness of hedonism. Kubrick was willing to cover up the explicit portions of the orgy because he knew full well that his point was just as easily made in the revised version. I suspect he actually enjoyed preparing the digital additions, a final joke on all those critics who have trashed his films when they were first released.

Eyes Wide Shut is an adult film not just because it is filled with implied and explicit sexuality, but because its theme is jealousy and fear in the lives of a married couple. The film involves fantasies, depicted in ways appropriate only for adults. There is a place for such films in commercial theaters, which is why the adults-only rating exists. Warner Bros. should have accepted an NC-17 rating, which would have avoided the need for any changes by Kubrick, but it didn't want to lose a single under-17 ticket sale. So it put on its charade of screening two versions for the critics, and then pretending to protest the rating, even as it embraced the more commercially viable R rating.