Eyes Wide Shut: Music From The Motion Picture [Soundtrack]

Jocelyn Pook | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 13, 1999)
• Original Release Date: July 13, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Label: Reprise / Wea
• ASIN: B00000JG3P
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,298 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The late director Stanley Kubrick's masterful pairing of image, song, and symphony has forever imbued an impossibly eclectic body of music with indelible psychic connotations that range from cosmic grandeur (2001's Also Sprach Zarathustra and "The Blue Danube") to cynical irony (A Clockwork Orange's use of Beethoven, Rossini, and Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain"; Vera Lynn's warbling "We'll Meet Again" over Dr. Strangelove's climactic vision of apocalypse) and outright left-field loopiness (the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" from Full Metal Jacket); he may not have written a note of it, but it would somehow always be his. Judged against that history, Kubrick's final soundtrack, Eyes Wide Shut, may well be his most subtle and consistently surprising. Typically disparate, yet utterly evocative of the film's complexity of mood and psychosexual undercurrent, it initially glides effortlessly from old Kubrick favorite Ligeti (an excerpt and reprise of "Musica Ricercata II" rendered as a stark, minimalist dirge by pianist Dominic Harlan), through a Shostakovich waltz and Chris Isaak's edgy "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" to the schmaltzy ballroom sop of "When I Fall in Love." Crucially, Kubrick also commissioned original music (a rarity in his work since Strangelove) by English composer Jocelyn Pook, and her handful of compelling tracks range from Elgar-autumnal to hauntingly avant-garde, all of it becoming a piece of the director's strange, satisfying stew of classical, rock, jazz, and ostensibly banal pop. A soundtrack that evokes Kubrick's very essence: complex, satisfying, yet wholly enigmatic. --Jerry McCulley

Product Description

SOUNDTRACK EYES WIDE SHUT

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When is a soundtrack not just a soudtrack?, March 14, 2000

By 

J. Lucas (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eyes Wide Shut: Music From The Motion Picture (Audio CD)

When it's from a Stanley Kubrick film, that's when. Though it's not for everyone, the soundtrack to Kubrick's beautifully twisted final film, "Eyes Wide Shut", is a musical journey unlike any you've ever taken. Like the film itself, the "Eyes Wide Shut" soundtrack is a dreamlike experience, taking us from heaven to hell and back again. It is Dominic Harlan's riveting piano music that haunts much of the film, and, of course, every nightmarish note is here. We are quickly catapulted into that blurred reality that Tom Cruise's celluloid character spends his two evenings roaming the streets of New York in. Harlan's piano work has the same feel as Kubrick's film -- easily alternating between beautiful and frightening, real and surreal. Featured alongside Dominic Harlan's music on "Eyes Wide Shut" is the brilliant original score of Jocelyn Pook. Pook perfectly captures the film's beauty and menace in such themes as "The Dream", "Migrations" and especially (and most importantly), in the chilling theme, "Masked Ball". The masked ball scene appears midway through the movie and serves as the film's visual centerpiece and turning point. It is the moment where dreams and reality converge once and for all, setting the harrowing second act into motion. Jocelyn Pook's music in this scene -- hypnotic, frightening, and gorgeous -- does wonders for the effectiveness and power of this moment in the film, and is especially glorious when listened to through your headphones. All in all, the "Eyes Wide Shut" soundtrack is not merely a collection of recordings from an extraordinary film. It is a companion to that film, in which we trace Tom Cruise's footsteps through his two nights of dreams and reality, curiosity and jealousy, paranoia and revenge, and finally -- hopefully - truth and redemption. If you're up for the experience, it's a trip well worth taking.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jocelyn Pook has a cd!, November 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Eyes Wide Shut: Music From The Motion Picture (Audio CD)

I loved Jocelyn Pook's music for Eyes Wide Shut. It's really the only reason I would buy this soundtrack. However most people don't know that Jocelyn Pook released her own cd, Flood, a month ago. It's at amazon. You just have to go under classical search to find it. It's got the complete six minute masked ball song as well as migrations. I can't believe amazon doesn't list it as a recommendation for this album. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that the cd is out there and easily available. However, it doesn't have all of Ms. Pook's compositions for this movie which makes the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack worth owning as well. If you are like me and loved her music and would like more of the same, check out her new cd Flood. It's truly magical!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing!, December 3, 1999

By 

_starchild_ - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eyes Wide Shut: Music From The Motion Picture (Audio CD)

After listening to the soundtrack of "2001:A Space Odyssey" i never thought i would find another album with such haunting tunes. I'm so glad that i'm wrong. Kubrick, once more, blends "his" vision of the world with "others'" sounds. The incredible diversity this soundtrack provides leaves me speechless. It's jazz, it's classical, it's pure rock, all wrapped up in one, shining just like a gem. They're the tunes, for sure, Kubrick had in mind. To perfect the film, to make it dream-like, to have it palpable. This is one of the rare soundtracks that won't disappoint you, but enrich your musical world just as Kubrick enriches your visual one.