`EYES WIDE SHUT' SHOWS GREATNESS BUT NOT PERFECTION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

With so many expectations and varied anticipations attending ``Eyes Wide Shut,'' it's doubtful many people will go to it with anything like a sense of perspective. But that is precisely the attitude required to appreciate Stanley Kubrick's sometimes astounding, sometimes frustrating final work.

``Eyes'' is more like Kubrick's last three films (``Barry Lyndon,'' ``The Shining,'' ``Full Metal Jacket'') than the earlier, flawless masterpieces (``The Killing,'' ``Dr. Strangelove,'' ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' ``A Clockwork Orange'') that his genius reputation stands on.

It's a movie of brilliant individual elements and borderline ludicrous excesses not quite orchestrated into a satisfying whole. As in ``Lyndon,'' Kubrick's lighting here is exquisite enough to induce tears. The emotionally riveting opening act is as powerful as ``Metal's'' boot camp sequences. And there's a deeper, more profound understanding of how runaway imagination can warp one's personal relations than ``The Shining'' ever got to.

But enough comparisons. Just keep in mind that this is very much an imperfect, late Kubrick work - and, since it's his last, one with uncharacteristic undertones of summing up and taking stock. At heart, ``Eyes'' is a simple, moral ode to marriage as the ultimate source of adult satisfaction, no matter how difficult it may be for a man and a woman to love, trust and satisfy one other. It's not the most scintillating theme the often pessimistic, above-good-and-evil artist ever worked, but it seems like the most heartfelt.

Married actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play Dr. William and Alice Harford, a wealthy New York couple who think their eight-year marriage is very, very good until they start to believe otherwise.

At a Christmas party hosted by immensely rich friend Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), both Harfords encounter - and reject - serious romantic temptation. While this has the initial effect of inflaming their passions for one another (that eyebrow-raising nude scene in the ads, which as it turns out is the only Cruise-Kidman coupling in the 2-1/2-hour film), it soon leads to a bout of marijuana-fueled incriminations. In this, the best scene in the movie, Kidman masterfully delivers a blistering, heart-rending monologue, in which Alice reveals not an act of infidelity but a powerful urge to commit one.

At this point, the raw honesty of the dialogue, coupled with Kubrick's signature overglowing lamplight and his subtly yet relentlessly inquisitive moving camera, establishes a remarkable atmosphere of total exposure. One feels no thought can long remain hidden in this hyper-illuminated environment - not even from the person who doesn't want to think it.

But then the movie shifts into a more surreal, differently paranoid gear. Stunned by his wife's resentment and revelations, William runs out into the cold city night, where he'll both avidly and reluctantly encounter evermore bizarre erotic possibilities.

While it's not as mesmerizing as the husband-wife confrontation the film initially seemed to be going for, ``Eyes'' nonetheless does a good job of evoking the excitement and queasiness one feels when seriously contemplating infidelity. It's been said that Cruise gives a reactive performance here, but that's not entirely true. William is often as insistent as a man fired by jealousy and wayward passion can be; he just doesn't know what to make of some of the stranger choices (and their consequences) he encounters.

Which is an understandable response; frankly, the film is awash in head-scratching motifs.

The most elaborate one is a ritualized orgy inside a castlelike Long Island mansion, where the rich male guests wear black cloaks and Venetian masks and the hired female help wear masks, too, but nothing else. The long, lascivious, undeniably virtuosic sequence - it's the one where cheesy digital ``observers'' had to be inserted between American viewers and vigorous copulators in order to secure an R rating - is meant to evoke revulsion over decadent, voyeuristic and loveless sex.

It probably will for some, but others will, not wrongly, respond with derisive chuckling. And others would be equally justified in questioning why so much perfectly formed feminine flesh was needed to make so moralistic a point.

The scene would have fit more naturally in fin-de-siecle Vienna, where in fact Arthur Schnitzler's source story, ``Traumnovelle,'' was set, than in contemporary New York. On the other hand, it more than visualizes the half-waking unreality that engulfs William. The book's title translates into English as ``Dream Novel,'' and indeed Kubrick has good fun reflecting life, cinema and the unruly unconscious off of one another throughout the movie. Even Kidman's second indelible speech describes what Alice calls a nightmare but nonetheless seems to have thoroughly enjoyed.

In the end, ``Eyes Wide Shut'' is the feast of technique, Freudian inquiry and personal audacity many people might go to it expecting. It also could have used some judicious pruning, especially in the last act, that one suspects Kubrick might have done had he not died shortly after completing his first cut.

Most will probably find the film alternately exhilarating and inscrutable - like a vital relationship, or the body of work of a great artist who, like all of them, didn't always achieve greatness.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Eyes Wide Shut'' (R; nudity, sex, language, drug use).

The stars: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Vinessa Shaw.

Behind the scenes: Directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick. Written by Kubrick and Frederic Raphael, based on Arthur Schnitzler's ``Traumnovelle.'' Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: Two hours, 35 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars.