When Stanley Kubrick died on March 7, 1999, he left behind a dozen films, many of them truly groundbreaking, and one yet to open, Eyes Wide Shut. Thirteen films over a span of forty-six years, each the product of an ever-curious, pessimistic, and meticulous mind. The Killing, Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey,A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining: no genre eluded him, no technical challenge went unmet. And binding it all together: a fundamental distrust of life’s worth, of the futility of filling the void with meaning. On the bright side, Kubrick was an auteur in the truest sense, writing his own scripts, pushing aside noted cinematographers, investigating technical innovations to advance his filmic vision, and demanding countless takes from his actors. Eyes Wide is a complete retrospective—beginning with his first feature, Fear and Desire, we follow Kubrick’s restive mind as it grappled with cinematic space: rising through the dark earthiness of The Killing and Paths of Glory and the epicSpartacus, to the lascivious but literate Lolita and Dr. Strangelove’s debunked militarism, and then to a literal ascension with the adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. The later years were fading to black: the fascistic falderol of A Clockwork Orange; the dimly lit, picaresque pageant Barry Lyndon; the jovially gothic The Shining; the combatively cynical Full Metal Jacket; and the free-fall through desire that is Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick once said regarding his patent fatalism, “However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” Thankfully, Kubrick’s “light” was in great supply.