Stanley Kubrick died in March 1999, and his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, was released posthumously four months later. Questions have always surrounded the film’s post-production, as Kubrick was known for making alterations to his films right up to—and sometimes even after—their theatrical releases. Kubrick screened Eyes Wide Shut for its stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in the days before he died, but this was not the final cut, and subsequent changes were made by the studio after his death. (Full disclosure: having seen a rough cut of Eyes Wide Shut that was significantly different to the later theatrical version, this is not mere speculation on my part.)
In their book on Eyes Wide Shut, Nathan Abrams and Robert Kolker dismiss rumours about the film’s state of completion as “ultimately irrelevant and certainly counterproductive to our understanding of the film and the pleasure we take from it”, though in their Kubrick biography they call it “the most serious controversy of Kubrick’s career”. Tony Zierra clearly agrees with the latter position, and his new documentary SK13: Kubrick’s Endgame attempts to clear up some of the questions regarding Eyes Wide Shut’s post-production.
In a voiceover narration, Zierra describes the reaction to Eyes Wide Shut when the film was screened for Cruise, Kidman, and the Warner Bros. studio heads: “It was widely reported that the private screening in New York was a success, that what was shown that night was Kubrick’s final cut, and the studio executives were happy. But after years of research, I discovered that what happened after the screening contradicted what was publicly reported. Although the two stars were enthusiastic, the film everybody was waiting to see for years was viewed by the studio executives as shockingly bad”.
While Zierra doesn’t provide any evidence to back up that bold claim, his film does feature revealing new interviews with former Warner Bros. executive Julian Senior and Eyes Wide Shut cinematographer Larry Smith, who hint at the unease surrounding the film’s post-production. Like Abrams and Kolker, Zierra found production documents in the Kubrick Archive listing the changes required to the film. It has been previously reported, for instance, that the voice of the character played by Abigail Good was later redubbed by Cate Blanchett, and SK13 includes a rare recording of Good’s original audio track.
The documentary also contains other exclusive material, including a brief appearance by Kubrick in actress Marie Richardson’s audition video. Extracts from Michel Ciment’s interviews with Kubrick are played at several points in the film. Some of these Ciment clips were also featured in Grégory Monro’s earlier documentary Kubrick by Kubrick (Kubrick par Kubrick). At one point, SK13 uses artifical intelligence to recreate Kubrick’s voice, though the disclaimer that the recording is AI-generated is buried among the end credits.
Although it raises important issues about the release of Eyes Wide Shut, SK13’s analysis of Kubrick’s thirteenth feature film is hard to take seriously. It points out continuity errors as if they had some special significance—they don’t—and identifies unconvincing hidden symbols in the film’s props. Bizarrely, Zierra seems to believe that an accidental split-second reflection of a crew member was a deliberate artistic choice of Kubrick’s, and he presents this as a major revelation (which it certainly isn’t). SK13 ultimately has too many echoes of the implausible conspiracy theories in Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237.
In their book on Eyes Wide Shut, Nathan Abrams and Robert Kolker dismiss rumours about the film’s state of completion as “ultimately irrelevant and certainly counterproductive to our understanding of the film and the pleasure we take from it”, though in their Kubrick biography they call it “the most serious controversy of Kubrick’s career”. Tony Zierra clearly agrees with the latter position, and his new documentary SK13: Kubrick’s Endgame attempts to clear up some of the questions regarding Eyes Wide Shut’s post-production.
In a voiceover narration, Zierra describes the reaction to Eyes Wide Shut when the film was screened for Cruise, Kidman, and the Warner Bros. studio heads: “It was widely reported that the private screening in New York was a success, that what was shown that night was Kubrick’s final cut, and the studio executives were happy. But after years of research, I discovered that what happened after the screening contradicted what was publicly reported. Although the two stars were enthusiastic, the film everybody was waiting to see for years was viewed by the studio executives as shockingly bad”.
While Zierra doesn’t provide any evidence to back up that bold claim, his film does feature revealing new interviews with former Warner Bros. executive Julian Senior and Eyes Wide Shut cinematographer Larry Smith, who hint at the unease surrounding the film’s post-production. Like Abrams and Kolker, Zierra found production documents in the Kubrick Archive listing the changes required to the film. It has been previously reported, for instance, that the voice of the character played by Abigail Good was later redubbed by Cate Blanchett, and SK13 includes a rare recording of Good’s original audio track.
The documentary also contains other exclusive material, including a brief appearance by Kubrick in actress Marie Richardson’s audition video. Extracts from Michel Ciment’s interviews with Kubrick are played at several points in the film. Some of these Ciment clips were also featured in Grégory Monro’s earlier documentary Kubrick by Kubrick (Kubrick par Kubrick). At one point, SK13 uses artifical intelligence to recreate Kubrick’s voice, though the disclaimer that the recording is AI-generated is buried among the end credits.
Although it raises important issues about the release of Eyes Wide Shut, SK13’s analysis of Kubrick’s thirteenth feature film is hard to take seriously. It points out continuity errors as if they had some special significance—they don’t—and identifies unconvincing hidden symbols in the film’s props. Bizarrely, Zierra seems to believe that an accidental split-second reflection of a crew member was a deliberate artistic choice of Kubrick’s, and he presents this as a major revelation (which it certainly isn’t). SK13 ultimately has too many echoes of the implausible conspiracy theories in Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237.
