It is really very difficult to review Eyes Wide Shut, as a film in isolation, in the light of Stanley Kubrick's death. Because of Kubrick's death, Eyes Wide Shut, is not just his latest film, or his first film for 12 years, but it's his Last Film. It seems likely Kubrick knew that it would be his last film, and made the film as a Last Film. So I think it is appropriate to take that into account in a review.

Make the effort! This is a wonderful film, and worth making a day of it. There's an intermission after the first two hours or so, and you get the chance to stretch your legs, and return refreshed for the second half. It does not feel like 4 hours at all.

Every year at Oscar time there are two Academy Awards for sound in film: sound editing and sound mixing. And there are two awards for music: original score and original song. Yet quite often people say that they do not notice music in film, and, apart from the dialogue, they don’t really notice the sound design either.

Nearly 20 years ago, the ABC and the BBC co-produced a TV movie called The Leaving of Liverpool (Michael Jenkins, 1992). It told the story of two children who were sent by the British Government to live in Australia after World War II. It was a powerful film that introduced many of us for the first time to the plight of the “child migrants”.

Many Australians know it as the “Burma Railway” or the “Thai-Burma Railway”. Some people call it the “Death Railway”. It was built by the Empire of Japan in 1943, the year after the Fall of Singapore, using a captive labour force of about 60,000 Allied prisoners of war and 200,000 “romusha”, or Asian labourers. This new Australian/ UK co-production is based on a best-selling memoir, also called The Railway Man, by Eric Lomax (re-released now by Random House). He was a young British Signals Engineer (and, in a supreme irony, a railway enthusiast) taken prisoner when Singapore fell, forced with his fellow Prisoners to work on the railway.