Eyes Wide Shut at 25: why Stanley Kubrick’s final film was also his greatest

By Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University

Legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick spent a lifetime trying to make his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, a reality. He had been struggling to make it from the moment he began making feature films, some 75 years ago. When he finally did, 25 years ago in 1999, it killed him.

The plot centres on a physician (Tom Cruise) whose wife (Nicole Kidman) reveals that she had contemplated having an affair a year earlier. He becomes obsessed with having his own sexual encounter. When he discovers an underground sex group, he attends one of their masked orgies.

Having not made a film in 12…

Read complete article

~	Cambodia: Scamming crisis survivors must be protected amid police crackdown

~	How the ‘big, beautiful bill’ will deepen the racial wealth gap – a law scholar explains how it reduces poor families’ ability to afford food and health care

~	‘People who spent years saving lives are now struggling to survive’ – how we witnessed Trump’s USAID cuts devastate health programmes in Kenya

~	Cynthia Erivo will be the most talked about Jesus of 2025 – but women have long retold the gospel

~	A brief art history of adultery

~	It doesn’t have to be welfare versus warfare. Changes that make tax fairer could fund both

~	Exercise could ease symptoms for people with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) – new study

~	Testosterone gel: what happens if it rubs off on other people

~	Cognitive warfare: why wars without bombs or bullets are a legal blind spot

~	Decoding hints that Xi Jinping may be under pressure to relinquish some of his power