Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Stanley Kubrick's final film was poorly received on its release in the summer of 1999. But 25 years on, it's been reappraised as a masterpiece and endlessly theorised over. "Those were not just ordinary people!" warns upper-class financier Victor Ziegler (a slimy Sydney Pollack) to a shaky Dr Bill Harford (Tom Cruise).
The latter, a doctor to the elite, is still processing a mansion's masked ball he snuck into the previous night, which descended into a possibly murderous orgy. Ziegler, a high-profile client of Bill's, continues in his trademark arrogant yet fatherly tone: "If I told you their names, Bill, you wouldn’t sleep so well". Released 25 years ago this week, director Stanley Kubrick's divisive swansong Eyes Wide Shut, with a story centring on – among other things – the twisted misdeeds of the rich, has arguably never felt more relevant.
Resonating strongly with recent real-life examples of elite degeneracy – notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was the "living embodiment of" the shadowy Ziegler, according to new biography Kubrick: An Odyssey – it has subsequently sparked fervent online conspiracy theories about the Hollywood sins the auteur was allegedly trying to expose. From YouTube deep dives to Reddit speculation, there has been a lot discussion about everything from its supposed prescience to its dense, symbol-filled visuals. "All of Kubrick's movies tend to grow with time and Eyes Wide Shut is structured in a .
