Kubrick did something crazy
Eyes Wide Shut is a film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The movie is about... well... sexuality? Dreams? Is it a thriller? Honestly, I don't know. In my opinion, they should invent a specific genre just for this kind of movie. The closest category, however, is philosophical/intellectual cinema.
The film is about a couple who are constantly at odds in every situation. In the realm of reality, outside the dream axis, we have Dr. Bill Harford, played by the sexy Tom Cruise; inside the dream axis, we find his stay-at-home wife Alice, played by the sexy Nicole Kidman.
Eyes Wide Shut mainly highlights eroticism and the repressed desires of both characters, depicted in the crucial moments of every scene. It's almost as if the wife herself embodies the various female characters the doctor meets who try to make him cheat.
Later on, the film helps you understand the intersection between Alice's dream plane and Bill's reality, partly thanks to crucial moments that stitch the whole movie together, like the laughing scene.
The filming techniques and the old-school methodology typical of the 80s and early 90s (even though more advanced techniques existed in 1999) make it a cult classic. The camerawork is masterful and spectacular, as if the director wanted to focus heavily on technique and Kubrick's unmistakable signature. The musical choices are spot-on for each scene, even if they become noticeably flawed later on.
The plot (or at least what is present of it) is really uninteresting and makes the pacing quite sluggish. The writing is completely crazy: many scenes feel disconnected, inconsistent, and disjointed, focusing visually only on sexuality and naked bodies - strangely, almost exclusively female ones.
Another flaw is the incredibly drawn-out and slow pacing. You can barely notice the temporal and dreamlike connection between the scenes, partly due to the writing flaws I just mentioned. The part that feels the most disconnected is the one with the prostitute, which I didn't understand and found very confusing.
The film's complexity and length make it far too difficult to watch. Many people consider this movie a masterstroke by Kubrick, but honestly, I find it a stroke of madness (calling it a "snoozefest" would be an exaggeration and perhaps too harsh for this film).