AA.VV.
Eyes Wide Shut (Soundtrack)

The final act of Stanley Kubrick's filmography, "Eyes Wide Shut" presents itself as a film inadvertently embodying the complex thoughts of the American director, a cinematic product that, unlike "Artificial Intelligence" later crafted by Spielberg, stands as the unaware spiritual testament of Kubrick's summation.
It is also the culmination of the American's musical explorations, now accustomed to the most diverse classical and non-classical musical experiences (think of "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the score by Richard and John Strauss Jr., or the now famous Ninth of Beethoven in "Clockwork Orange"), creating a musical structure suspended between blues, ambient, and classical, in a collage filled with melodic syncretisms that often escape precise definitions.

The edition in circulation, distributed by Wea, consists of fourteen tracks, complex pieces that lead the listener into an a-spatial and a-temporal dimension, where it is presumed that the musical discourse survives beyond the film to which it is indissolubly linked, a "concept album" composed of studies on acoustic and semantic dialectics. Exemplary in this regard are the compositions of Hungarian György Ligeti: his "Musica Ricercata," performed almost exclusively with one hand on the piano, introduces the audience to an ultrasensitive reality that, detached from traditional melodic contexts, entrusts the musical message to the dilated sensations of stasis between each beat: cold and intangible, his execution disorients the listener, placing them in a condition of physical and intellectual aporia. The sensation of a-temporality passes seamlessly through the splendid performances of Jocelyn Pook, a Belgian composer already known to film enthusiasts for many of her previous musical collaborations, here the author of three rearranged pieces on demand and an original, the dark "Masked Ball," the paranormal "Migrations," the orchestral "Naval Officer," and "The Dream."

"Auov uad auon acnurop ias iicinecu ertac iulunmod asiz", thus reads the leitmotif of "Masked Ball," when, in reference to the film, an embarrassed Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) watches the initiation scene of naked masked girls: a profane and desecrating scene, considering the orgiastic rites that will ensue, magnificently captured by Kubrick, who entrusted Pook with the task of revisiting her previous composition from '97, "Backward Priests"; through it, the Belgian artist translates the effect of juxtaposing obscene sexual pragmatism with the sacredness of a religious chant: if we read from end to start the verbal excerpt, we capture the Byzantine text of a sacred hymn performed by Romanian priests: "Zisa Domnului catre ucenicii sai... Porunca Noua dau voua", a traditional invitation to prayer, if we were to translate it, but in fact, in the context of the scene and beyond it, recited in reverse, it takes on an execrating and diabolical tone.
Renewed in the bridge with another excerpt from the same Byzantine Canon, this time interpreted by a clearer voice, the track finds continuity in the subsequent "Migrations," accompanying the orgy consumption scenario: after a series of censorship issues due to the insertion of extracts from the sacred text of the Bhagavad Gita, considered offensive by respective Hindu communities worldwide, it presents itself, albeit sanitized, in an oriental and vaguely blasphemous form: with the original sacred verses replaced, it still clashes markedly with the sexual exuberance of the scene.
The jazzy blues performances of "Blame it on my Mouth" and "If I had you" are beautifully executed, as is the instrumental version of "Strangers in the Night" by the Peter Hughes Orchestra; even more impactful is the pop-rock execution by Chris Isaak, who with "Baby Did a Bad Thing" accompanies the sensual mirror love scene between Mr. and Mrs. Harford (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman): to be listened to without any apprehension. Finally, of course, the famous "Waltz n.2 from Jazz Suite" by Shostakovich, which both begins and closes the film, satisfactorily concludes a musical discourse that can never do without, in the entire Kubrick production, the classical element.
A truly beautiful package, the last one, it's worth remembering.