The argument that Eyes Wide Shut is Kubrick's most underrated film requires accepting that it's not doing what it appears to be doing.

On its surface, Eyes Wide Shut appears to be a psychosexual thriller about jealousy and desire. It has those elements. But the pacing — the deliberate, almost sedative pacing — makes it clear that Kubrick is not interested in building tension in the conventional thriller sense.

What Kubrick is interested in is the phenomenology of a certain kind of male blindness. Bill Harford moves through a world that is constantly revealing its underside — desire, power, ritual, transgression — and he either doesn't see it or sees it and can't process it. The film is the story of someone trying to wake up.

The Christmas lights are in every exterior shot. The film takes place over a few days in December and ends on Christmas Eve. This is not incidental. Eyes Wide Shut is a Christmas film about a man who is shown the real world and responds by buying a mask.

Kubrick died five days after showing a cut of this film to Warner Bros. The version in release is very close to his intention but the additional context of his death has colored how the film is received in ways that we're still sorting out.