Are there many critics who believe this film is actually all a dream? or at least Dr. Bill's?
I got the feeling it was a dream the first time I saw it...
Possible spoilers...
First off, something that seemed to give it away was how Cruise and Kidman phrased things to each other, especially in the end dialogue. Kidman talked about not cheating in real life, and Cruise said not in dreams. As far as the audience knows, neither has cheated on the other.
So, with that in mind, we know for sure Cruise has always attempted to cheat on Kidman, through two girls at the party, through a Hooker, and through the chick at the party. He tried, almost as a revenge, to get Kidman back for admitting a dream about cheating. I don't think that would drive a man to cheat on his wife -- cheating because of a dream? Although the film centers on plastic rich people, I don't think it was meant to be that plastic. Anyway, Cruise kept trying to cheat on her felt guilty and gave up. Most married men, or at least those that I've talked to, have fantasies about sex with all sorts of women other than their wife, sure, but sex dreams are much rarer. In most cases they've programmed their mind to their wife, since they've been married for so long, they kind of think of sex only with the one they're so familiar with.
In Cruise's dream, he tries to sleep around, but the programmed internal guilt sets in. He can't allow himself, even in the dream world to cheat on his wife. Like having a job, and having a dream working at the job. Your mind treats it like a default.
I've never been too sure exactly when the dream would start in EWS, it's possible it starts right at the beginning of the film. The whole orgy party itself gives liscence to the idea of a dream. It seems so dramatic. An elaborate sex party with women sex slaves, a man's life in danger, a woman sacrificing herself, the whole thing being a secret that you can't tell anyone about. Perhaps that itself is the focal point of the dream. He tried to have sex with other women, and they ended up dead somehow.
The ending has always had multiple meanings to me...
He can't take the guilt, he confesses the extremely detailed dream where he countlessly tried to cheat, and they talked it out, and realized the main problem, in the end, was the lack of sex led him to develop a strange desire, that he couldn't allow himself to fulfill, even in his own mind.
The other apparent conclusion was the whole movie was Cruise's preoccupation with sex. Every situation started with sex, and boiled down to a horrible conclusion... overdose, AIDS, being whored by your father...
Sex seemed to cause every problem, but in the end we learned nothing, as we see from Kidman's closing line.