Why does he do this? The easy answer is that his wife has made him jealous. Another possibility is that the story she tells inflames his rather torpid imagination. The film has the structure of a thriller, with the possibility that conspiracies and murders have taken place. It also resembles a nightmare; a series of strange characters drift in and out of focus, puzzling the hero with unexplained details of their lives.
The reconciliation at the end of the film is the one scene that doesn't work; a film that intrigues us because of its loose ends shouldn't try to tidy up. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star as Dr. Bill and Alice Harford, a married couple who move in rich Manhattan society. In a long, languorous opening sequence, they attend a society ball where a tall Hungarian, a parody of a suave seducer, tries to honey-talk Alice "Did you ever read the Latin poet Ovid on the art of love?
Meanwhile, Bill gets a come-on from two aggressive women, before being called to the upstairs bathroom, where Victor Sydney Pollack , the millionaire who is giving the party, has an overdosed hooker who needs a doctor's help. At the party, Bill meets an old friend from medical school, now a pianist. The next night, at home, Alice and Bill get stoned on pot apparently very good pot, considering how zonked they seem , and she describes a fantasy she had about a young naval officer she saw last summer while she and Bill were vacationing on Cape Cod: "At no time was he ever out of my mind.
And I thought if he wanted me, only for one night, I was ready to give up everything Bill leaves the house and wanders the streets, his mind inflamed by images of Alice making love with the officer. And now begins his long adventure, which has parallels with Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown and Scorsese's "After Hours,'' as one sexual situation after another swims into view. The film has two running jokes, both quiet ones: Almost everyone who sees Bill, both male and female, reacts to him sexually.
And he is forever identifying himself as a doctor, as if to reassure himself that he exists at all. Kubrick's great achievement in the film is to find and hold an odd, unsettling, sometimes erotic tone for the doctor's strange encounters. Shooting in a grainy high-contrast style, using lots of back-lighting, underlighting and strong primary colors, setting the film at Christmas to take advantage of the holiday lights, he makes it all a little garish, like an urban sideshow.
Bill is not really the protagonist but the acted-upon, careening from one situation to another, out of his depth. Kubrick pays special attention to each individual scene. He makes a deliberate choice, I think, not to roll them together into an ongoing story, but to make each one a destination--to give each encounter the intensity of a dream in which this moment is clear but it's hard to remember where we've come from or guess what comes next.
The film pays extraordinary attention to the supporting actors, even cheating camera angles to give them the emphasis on two-shots; in several scenes, Cruise is like the straight man.
Sydney Pollack is the key supporting player, as a confident, sinister man of the world, living in old-style luxury, deep-voiced, experienced, decadent.
Todd Field plays Nick, the society piano player who sets up Bill's visit to a secret orgy. And there is also a wonderful role for Vinessa Shaw as a hooker who picks up Dr. Again and again through the minutes, Kubrick went out of his way to paint him unflatteringly. In an early scene, Harford flirts with two models at a party. Kubrick has Cruise unleash his trademark boyishness.
But he frames it in such way as to make Cruise come across callow and charmless. Being chatted up by Tom Cruise, the film more or less says out loud, is the least seductive experience under the sun.
Navigating New York by night, Harford has a run-in with fratboys who taunt him with homophobic slurs. And yet, both Cruise and Kidman proclaimed themselves delighted with the finished movie. Kubrick was so anxious that details might leak that when he arranged a screening for them in Los Angeles the projectionist was ordered to look away from the screen. Here was an avant-grade film with a message everybody could understand: you can never fully know the person next to you in bed.
Cruise agreed. Kubrick had made a masterpiece of ambivalence. Twenty years on, Eyes Wide Shut is an acknowledged classic. But it is also notorious — largely on account of the masked orgy. It is in every sense the centre piece, and it was the sequence with which Kubrick struggled the most.
He was never a prudish director. The subject at hand far better suited his flashy style. Kubrick was struck by the dark, dissonant quality.
Is it Barry White? They wanted a sense of how far they should be prepared to push the material. And to settle on a line they would not cross. The orgy was shot at Mentmore Towers, a rural estate in Buckinghamshire built by the Rothschilds known to hold mysterious masked balls. Initially, Kubrick wanted the models participating in the sequence to simulate sex at length. They were even asked to peruse the Kama Sutra. So the sequence was instead reimagined as a choreographic piece suggestive of bacchanalia.
The imagination is left to do the heavy lifting. And A Clockwork Orange had sparked a full-on moral panic. The reaction to Eyes Wide Shut was somewhere between these two poles. Kubrick, though, was always about the slow burn. And so it is only with the decades that the true genius of Eyes Wide Shut has been revealed. Christopher Nolan, a self-confessed Kubrick acolyte, is among the many who have confessed to misunderstanding it on first viewing.
Only later, older and slightly wiser, did he begin to grasp what Kubrick was reaching for. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. One of Eyes Wide Shut 's primary themes is that the ultrarich treat everything—even people—as commodities.
Largely in denial or ignorant of this, those who aren't members of the wealthiest elite often strive, in whatever unconscious ways, to join this same ruling class that exerts power over them.
And so Bill speaking this line to Alice, who from the next room tells him exactly where his wallet is, also sets up her role in the film as "the wife as prostitute" Kreider, Introducing. Alice uses her appearance and sexuality to buy in, and Bill uses his money—but neither one of them can ever really join the club.
Some have criticized the dialogue in Eyes Wide Shut hereafter, EWS as being flat and unrealistic—but this is no doubt intentional on Kubrick's part. The measured manner in which the characters often speak—especially Bill and Alice—contributes to the dream atmosphere, giving us the time to observe the surroundings wherein symbolic meaning abounds, and the space to contemplate how virtually every line resonates on multiple levels.
A lot of the dialogue functions as not only character communication within the story but also as commentary on the film itself. Tom Cruise as Dr. In one respect this is simply her reaction to her husband's lack of attention when she asks him how her hair looks he's looking at himself in a mirror in that moment , but it also speaks to the characters' blindness to class and consumerist influence in their lives, and of many audience members' blindness to the deeper meanings of the film itself; as Eyes Wide Shut —arguably the greatest title in the history of cinema—also suggests.
Ziegler, in his final confrontation with Bill, says, "Suppose I said that all of that was staged". Within the film, the line refers to the events at the mansion's masquerade ball.
But it also applies as a comment on the film's multilayered fabric; how the very surface appearance is indeed meticulously staged to be the center of attention, as a sort of misdirection from the deeper issues of the film and thus mirroring the real life misdirection orchestrated over people by the ruling class, corporate superpowers, and governing agencies—and by Kubrick over his audience.
Another example of how dialogue is used in this way is when Bill says to the prostitute Domino Vinessa Shaw , "So…do you…do you suppose we should…talk about money? Throughout Bill's odyssey he spends large amounts of cash without scarcely batting an eye, offering up hundreds of dollars to a prostitute, a cab driver, and a costume store owner.
Then Bill asks Domino—again ostensibly about their sexual transaction—"What do you have in mind? These lines function as further commentary on the film itself, and how Kubrick thought movie-watching should be foremost a visual experience "that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious".
Kubrick is again telling us to try to think differently, to open ourselves to receiving this film and all his films in ways we are unaccustomed to. In this way the movie might be seen to be all about communication, between Bill and Alice, between Bill and himself, and between Kubrick and the audience.
As Bill says on the phone to Alice, from Domino's apartment, "It's a little difficult to talk right now". Then later, near the end of the story when he sees the mask on his pillow and Alice wakes up, he says to her, "I'll tell you everything".
But then it cuts to the next morning and we don't actually hear what he tells her. Bill receives a threatening letter from the folks at the mansion in Eyes Wide Shut There is in fact considerable attention given to different communication forms in EWS ; how the mediums by which we broadcast our messages function in relation to understanding.
When we understand something we say, "Oh, I see. A movie is a medium of communication, and the title Eyes Wide Shut applies as much to the protagonist Bill Harford as it does to us, the audience, and our limited ability to comprehend the vast, often contradictory complexities of the world as reflected in this film.
So, in addition to the dialogue, there are many other means of communication in EWS ; written notes on paper, paintings and signs on walls, movies playing on television screens, and telephone calls. During Bill's nighttime streetwalk, a man on a pay phone glances at him while saying, "Oh, I see , I'm taking care of it baby".
Alice calls Bill on his cellphone when he's at Domino's. Bill calls Marion from his office only to hang up when Carl answers. Bill receives a call from Ziegler's people when he's at the hospital. And immediately after Alice's revelation about her sexual fantasy with another man, Bill gets a phone call at home, ostensibly to inform him that a patient has just died.
He hangs up and says, "I think I have to go over there and show my face". Superficially, he's telling Alice what the call was about, but he's staring off into space as he utters the line, as if saying it to himself more than her. This begins Bill's odyssey, and later on that night he ends up at the mansion party where he's exposed as an impostor, threatened, told to remove his mask, and show his face. There are also numerous instances of written messages on paper being passed around: Nick writes the mansion password—"Fidelio"—on a paper napkin at the Sonata.
The mansion gateman hands Bill a threatening letter when he revisits the location. Bill flashes around his medical license card every chance he gets.
Bill buys a newspaper and sits in a coffee shop to read it, and later shows a torn-out article from it to Ziegler. And so on. Multifunctional dialogue, phone calls, notes…it all feels like a series of muffled, muted attempts at communication.
But it's hazy and isn't quite connecting, because it's all about Bill, and he's not being honest. Communication is, experts say, the number one requirement for a healthy relationship. Among Eyes Wide Shut 's many themes is an examination of ruling class decadence; capitalism's designation of all things, even people, as objects to be bought, used, and discarded by the world's wealthiest crooks.
This includes alternately conspicuous and obscure allusions to the Freemasons, Skull and Bones, Scientology, the CIA, and other related agencies and secret projects, as connected to history, literature, occultism, and mythology. Kubrick isn't just exploring the sexual psychology between a husband and wife, but also the powerful role that socioeconomic class and the culture of the ultrawealthy elite play in shaping aspects of society— including the sexual psychology of everyday people—in often unseen ways.
But the people can still overcome the powers, if they open their eyes. Mack observes that the opening shot shows Alice framed between Masonic pillars and in front of a window with the blinds drawn in the shape of a triangle—the pyramidal crest of the Freemasons. In this first few seconds, much is implied about the weighty concepts the movie explores; a naked woman's body with her back to us, so we can't see her face immediately objectified between visual symbols of one of the world's oldest and most powerful secret societies of men.
Later Bill is accosted on the street by a group of young men—some wearing "Yale" varsity jackets—who hurl homophobic slurs at him. Mack notes that Yale University is "the home of Skull and Bones, which is apparently bound by a circle of mutual, sexual blackmail. Those future Presidents like to nail each other in coffins, I hear" The Nerve , 20 —referring to the hazing and initiation rites of secret societies and fraternities.
Bush former US president , George H. Given the history of Skull and Bones—born out of Yale, a school of the elite, and parent organization to the CIA—and its membership of men in positions of extreme power, Kubrick's reference to Yale is surely no accident. Nor are visual references to the Freemasons, a secret society dating back centuries, with symbols and traditions that have infiltrated modern culture through art, architecture, literature, and politics. The Masonic pillars and pyramidal crest shape of the opening shot appear repeatedly in EWS ; the pillars are seen framing either side of the entranceway to the mansion, and the triangular or diamond-shaped crest is visible on buildings when Bill walks the streets.
Edgar Hoover, and Ronald Reagan, among others The book Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry describes aspects of their secret ceremonies: "The blindfold is common to almost all secret societies…in some societies the initiate is not blindfolded, but all members in the room are masked or hooded" In EWS , the mansion guests are masked and hooded, and Bill's piano-player friend Nick is blindfolded.
As such, EWS presents a disturbing commentary on misogyny, as women in the film, and in reality, and the concept of women as objects of pleasure are co-opted for commercialism—packaged, bought, used, and thrown out, by the men who run the world.
Another organization alluded to is the Church of Scientology. The most obvious connection is that Cruise and Kidman are Scientologists. The Church of Scientology actively courts wealthy participants in order to expand its financial power base, and many American celebrities prescribe to its teachings.
EWS includes a young naval officer as the subject of Alice's fantasy, and L. Ron Hubbard Mack expands on the significance that Scientology has in connection to other secret societies, stating that in the s Hubbard was a disciple of famed occultist Aleister Crowley who was a degree Mason. Although information about Project Monarch is obscure, it "refers to a mythical mind control experiment that allowed US intelligence agencies to create sex slaves" Mack, Mack proposes:.
Mack, EWS 's allusions to past and present power organizations, and to symbols from antiquity, seem endless.
Religion, mythology, the occult. The Rockefellers, The Rothschilds. The Royal Family of England. The Christian Church. The Church of Satan. One could, and several have, written whole books analyzing the motifs in Kubrick's films see this essay's Works Cited. Eyes are a prominent Kubrick motif, featured in virtually all his films. In Clockwork , Alex wears eyeball cufflinks, and has his eyes pinned open with the "treatment".
In EWS , Bill examines Mandy's eyes, eye exam posters are seen in his office, the word "eyes" appears on a taxicab, eyes are focused on within the masks of the mansion party guests, and so on. In one mystifying shot, the projected image of an eye flashes onto Bill's back as he enters his apartment upon returning home from the mansion. It's very brief, but occurs at — in the film—pause the movie in this spot to see that the image is undoubtedly a large eye.
The eye is another symbol used in Freemasonry, and appears on American money. The inner-mind's eye. The all-seeing eye. The surveillance aspect of the ruling elite, in which they seem to know Bill's every move—like at the mansion's gate when he looks up into the eye of the security camera—recalls George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , in which the totalitarian state "Big Brother", with its "Thought Police", watches everyone: "…the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall.
It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. In the source novella Dream Story , the protagonist is elbowed on the street by one of several "fraternity" youths who walk by—the equivalent of the Yale guys in EWS.
The one who bumps into him has a "bandage over his left eye" Schnitzler, Kubrick, however, left this out of his adaptation in this movie about eyes and seeing. In the late s, Kubrick had signed on to direct what would become One-Eyed Jacks starring Marlon Brando—only to abandon the project due mainly to disputes with Brando, who ended up directing it himself Stanley Kubrick: A Biography , At Ziegler's party, a woman Bill flirts with says she remembers him from when they previously met, when she had something caught in her eye at Rockefeller Plaza and he assisted her.
The mansion used in EWS is Mentmore Towers, a 19th-century English country house built for the Rothschild family, another of the world's biggest banking empires. Stars are another prominent symbol in EWS. Five-pointed stars—pentagrams—feature prominently in the background; as decorations at Ziegler's party, as Christmas ornaments in the diner, at the toy store, and so on. The pentagram has numerous historical uses, from mathematics—the symbol for the "golden ratio"—through Western, Eastern, religious, and occult symbology.
Inverted, it's used by the Church of Satan as its logo, and by Aleister Crowley who claimed it represents the descent of spirit into matter. The book Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia describes eight-pointed stars—which also appear in the background at Ziegler's—as an ancient symbol called the Star of Venus or the Star of Ishtar that originates from Assyrian, Babylonian, and Phoenician goddess-worship cultures as a representation of Venus In Roman mythology, Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, and fertility.
The Venus astronomical symbol is the same one used in biology to denote the female sex; a circle with a small cross underneath it, a representation of femininity, and is also the symbol for copper in alchemy.
Polished copper was used to make mirrors in ancient times, and so the symbol for Venus has also been interpreted as representing the mirror of the goddess. Copper is used today in intrauterine birth control devices; copper ions kill sperm or render them immobile. With all the mirrors around, no wonder Bill is so flaccid. Mirrors are all over the place in EWS ; at Ziegler's, Domino's, and the Harfords', with characters peering into them at the reflections of themselves—especially Alice.
Frequently told how "beautiful", "stunning", and "amazing" she looks, Alice's identity is validated by others according to her physical appearance. In the scene where she and Bill start to make love, his attention is focused solely on her, but she is looking at herself in the mirror, a moment "of clearest self-recognition, an uncomfortable glimpse of what she really is" Kreider, Introducing. The mirrors also invoke Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass , about a girl named Alice who climbs through a mirror into a fantasy world of inverted logic.
Like the masks that also appear in numerous places throughout EWS , the mirror symbolizes the characters' exploration of self, their image, and their secret identities in contrast to how they appear to the outside world. Fascinatingly, the film itself is also a kind of mirror, structurally. The climactic mansion scene falls in the exact middle; it commences at 70 minutes in, lasts for 20 minutes, and ends with 70 minutes remaining in the minute-long movie.
When Bill's cab pulls up to the mansion, the "Somerton" sign is to right of the driveway, but a few seconds later the sign is on the left. When he returns to Somerton the next day, he drives up to the gate from the opposite direction than the cab approached from. Leading up to the mansion orgy scene, Bill engages in a number of scenarios—at Ziegler's, his office, his patient's house, Domino's apartment, the jazz club, the costume store, etc.
And following the mansion scene, he revisits each location. This near-perfect mirror structure of the Eyes Wide Shut narrative arc reinforces the mirror as a symbol, of duality and alternate dimensions, as reflected through the shape and time of the film itself; mise-en-abyme. It shows Kubrick's tendency for unorthodox story structure, as conventional films follow a narrative trajectory in which the climax occurs in the last third before a brief conclusion.
Yet he was always one to reinvent, transcending the usual storytelling constraints of traditional cinema to create something thoroughly unique. Another example of meaningful visual symbolism in EWS is the inclusion of a Christmas tree in every single scene, except one—the masquerade ball.
In this scene, however, although there is no Christmas tree adorned with ornaments and lights as in every other setting, an evergreen forest surrounds the mansion itself, and unadorned Christmas tree-sized pines frame the entranceway in front of Masonic pillars.
Some Freemason rituals derive from paganism, an element of which is nature and goddess worship. Many Christmas practices, such as decorating trees, originate from pagan associations with nature, femininity, and fertility; the evergreen tree was regarded as a phallic symbol of fertility worship, representing an erect penis—like to build a highrise building, or put up a Christmas tree, is to "erect" it.
Decorative balls and tinsel represent testicles and semen, and the wreath is a yonic symbol, representing a woman's vaginal opening with the red bow symbolizing childbirth blood. This was adopted by Christianity from the pagan winter festival named after the Roman sun god "Sol Invictus" "Unconquered Sun" which celebrated the lengthening of the sun's rays at winter solstice, the victory of light over darkness Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries , Christmas trees—a pagan symbol of fertility worship—appear in every scene except one, in Eyes Wide Shut There are a whole lot of lights in the darkness in Eyes Wide Shut.
Our protagonist, insecure about his sexual inadequacy, travels through a realm bursting with symbols of fertility worship—Christmas trees, decorations, lights. Near the end of the movie, after his second visit to Ziegler's, Bill returns home and switches off the Christmas tree lights. What does this mean? That Bill is impotent, can't climax?
Psychologically, at least. Or perhaps he's finally come to terms with his sexual insecurities. Manhattan's Rockefeller Center is the site of a massive Christmas tree that is erected and lit in public ceremony annually. So if it's a phallic symbol, when that woman at Ziegler's mentions the location to Bill, it's sexual innuendo—as if they're talking about a giant phallus. In Traumnovelle , the time setting is "just before the close of the Carnival season" 4.
Kubrick transplants the source novella's time and place—s Vienna—to New York City during the Christmas season; the high point of indulgence and consumerist decadence in North American society. The Carnival tradition developed as an end-of-winter celebration before the Christian season of Lent—a time of fasting and abstaining from various luxuries.
In contrast, the Carnival typically involves celebratory practices that include consumption of alcohol and other substances , feasting, parades, and wearing of masks and costumes. Other common carnival features include theatrical displays of social satire, mockery of authorities, grotesquely exaggerated sexual behaviours, and generally debaucherous and degrading acts.
In the novella it's implied that the couple are Jewish, as author Schnitzler was. Kubrick was also of Jewish descent, but reportedly said he wanted the couple to be "vanilla" and that Bill should be a "Harrison Ford-ish goy", although Ford's mother was Jewish The Wolf at the Door , Kubrick's transposition of the novella's European-Jewish protagonist to an all-American, upper-middle class WASP fits with the parallel substitution of Carnival with Christmas, magnifying the commentary on American capitalism.
But many aspects of the Carnival are still present, particularly in the masked orgy scene. The masks Kubrick uses are Venetian, which furthers the themes of commerce and consumption, as Venice was long a center of mercantilism and eroticism. Masks hang on the walls of Domino's apartment, and "domino" is indeed a style of Venetian mask. Masks serve throughout the film as a prime symbol of identity; our own self-perception versus the perception of others.
Disguises we wear in different scenarios. The roles we play. The stories we tell. Masks used in Eyes Wide Shut are of traditional Venetian design Just as Bill Harford is continually sexually tempted throughout the film, without ever actually engaging or achieving satisfaction.
The consumption aspect of Christmas has, for many, supplanted religious practices associated with it, and as such it's an appropriate season in which to set this story that contains so many ancient symbols and practices that have been co-opted and deformed by power structures throughout history. Christmas itself is a multifaceted subject encompassing elements of cultural anthropology, mythology, capitalism, religion, nature worship, and paganism.
The "Christmas Movie" mixes in with other aspects of Americana, contributing to the holiday atmosphere for many who seek not only celebration of materialism and sensual decadence, but also comfort and a sense of wonder. Christmas has been marketed to children as a fairy story full of magic. But Kubrick projects it through a dark, twisted lens, invoking a sense of satire and qualifying EWS as an unconventional Christmas Movie in its own right. In the holiday favourite It's a Wonderful Life , an angel descends from heaven at Christmastime to help a depressed man appreciate his life by showing him a terrifying alternate reality in which he had never existed.
As an alternative Christmas Movie, EWS parallels It's a Wonderful Life in that both stories depict a man who undergoes a frightening journey through a dystopian nightmare world, during the Christmas season.
EWS draws parallels as well to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in that both protagonists are also shaken to the core when they're exposed to disturbing alternate plains of existence.
Kubrick described The Shining as "a ghost story", and while EWS is not clearly in the same category, there are plenty of clues indicating that many of the events and characters we witness are not real , leaving a haunting effect of its own.
Later at the mansion orgy, a naked party guest wearing a very Grinch-like mask is seen banging a masked woman. It's another example of parallels between different aspects of Bill's life; his home life and his fantasy life, his external and internal worlds—and further implies that much of what we see unfolding is in fact in Bill's mind. But where fantasy and reality start and end isn't concrete, it's all swirling together concurrently, enigmatically, paradoxically.
The Christmastime setting also provides Kubrick with an opportunity to create a sumptuous visual feast for the viewer. The entire movie is saturated with a dreamlike array of colours and lights; sometimes to an almost obnoxious degree, in echoing the theme of Christmas season excess.
This lush multicoloring reflects the multilayered narrative fabric of EWS , and connects it with another recurring symbol in the film: rainbows.
The movie itself, both literally and figuratively, contains layers of different colours, connected and forming one greater whole, a thing of wonder. Rainbows are first referenced at Ziegler's party when Bill flirts with the two women who seem to be leading him away. When he stops them to inquire where they are going, the women reply, "Where the rainbow ends".
At this point Bill hesitates, unsure if he wants to go where the rainbow ends. In popular mythology, what's at the end of the rainbow?
A pot of gold. This once again symbolizes money, wealth, desire, and the illusion of an unattainable goal. The reluctance of Bill to pursue the "pot of gold" in this instance, even though he's obviously flirting with the women, parallels his pursuit yet hesitancy at later times in his adventure, as he seeks out sexual opportunities without ever actually having sex—hence the character's blindness and confusion over his self-identity, and the paradox the title suggests.
The rainbow reference returns with the store Rainbow Costume Rental , which also happens to be situated over another store named Under the Rainbow. And The Wizard of Oz 's theme song "Over the Rainbow" includes such lyrics as "the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. He attributes the film's initial widespread negative reaction to, among other things, the fact that "audiences really had no preparation for a dream movie that didn't announce itself as such, without the usual signals—hovering mists, people appearing and disappearing at will or floating off the ground" vii.
EWS has a subtly antithetical design, conveying a story in a way that people are unaccustomed to receiving stories, leaving many audience members scratching their heads.
But, Scorsese says, Kubrick was a visionary: "like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face" vii. One of the supreme truths in this film being that not only is extreme wealth not sexy, but in fact grotesque and nightmarish. Scorsese's note about EWS being a dream movie that isn't presented with the usual markings of such is an important point in understanding how to regard it, and perhaps why many find it so confusing or an outright failure.
But when approaching the movie with this in mind, a lot of things make sense from the perspective that the actions we see are not actually happening , except in Bill Harford's imagination. The illogical seems more logical then. Although it might not be readily apparent, much of what we're witnessing may in fact be a dream. Alice wakes from a dream in Eyes Wide Shut Several times throughout the film Bill shows his medical ID card to people he meets on his adventure, as if to continually confirm his status, identity, and verify his existence—to himself perhaps more than to others.
It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dreamwork and of course the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego…It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.
When Bill offers to show his ID to Mr. Milich, to Sally, to the diner waitress, etc. Freud says that in the id: "contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out. She asks him for the time and he says it's "Ten past twelve. Then Alice calls Bill asking how much longer he will be.
Bill: "It could be awhile. Labelling EWS an erotic thriller isn't really an accurate description except as the most basic, superficial categorization of such a complex film. Yes, sex is a subject in the movie, and yes it's suspenseful at times, but the only sex we're shown is in a situationally gratuitous context at the mansion scene, and it's less erotic than it is detached and voyeuristic since we're seeing through the eyes of the protagonist who doesn't actually engage sexually himself.
Loops in time. Characters' traits transposed. Illogical scenarios. On one hand the genre prescribed to a story doesn't matter much, and is merely an attached label by which the work can be advertised.
But on the other hand this label can be important, as it is in EWS , because it can frame the work in a certain context and thus prepare the audience for a particular mindset through which to receive the story.
But whatever the genre, EWS is certainly a visually and aurally dazzling, thought-provoking work with seemingly infinite, intertwining layers, symbols, and allusions—worthy of considerable debate. Kubrick was always very involved in his films' promotional campaigns. But since he died four months before EWS was released, who knows how much say he had in it in this case.
Although it's now largely agreed upon that EWS marketing was flawed in portraying it as an erotic thriller, in retrospect it's actually fitting for the film to be billed as such; it feeds into the aspect of it being a satire in that it's more cold and creepy than hot and steamy, and so perhaps appropriately misunderstood.
A sex movie where the protagonist never has sex. A dream movie that isn't obviously one. Masks are a recurring symbol in Eyes Wide Shut Following his wife's revelation of her sexual fantasy about another man, Dr. Bill Harford begins his odyssey by going to his patient Lou Nathanson's residence.
In this scene there are visual cues that he has passed into a fantasy of his own, starting with the arrangement of objects in the lobby; he enters a room full of paired objects, framed on opposite ends of the screen potted plants, stools, etc. Bill then walks down a hallway into the room where his recently deceased patient lies, whose daughter Marion Marie Richardson sits by the side of the bed.
She suddenly kisses Bill and tells him that she's in love with him. Marion offering herself to Bill mirrors his own wife's fantasy, who described herself as having been willing to give up their life together for a chance to have sex with a man she didn't know. And here's where another fascinating metacinematic element is presented.
The two actors bear a resemblance, with similar heights and build, same hair colour, and same hairstyle—and in the film, Thomas Gibson's hair is parted on the opposite side of his head than Tom Cruise's hair is parted. Carl is a "math professor", meaning he has a PhD and is therefore a "doctor", and Bill is a doctor of medicine.
In real life, they have the same birthday, the same first name, and a similar boyish all-American look. Gibson's character's name is Carl Thomas ; initials C.
And it gets even more interesting when looking at the the etymology of the name Thomas ; the Anglicized form of the Italian Tomasso which itself is from the Aramaic toma t'om'a which means "twin" Dictionary of First Names , The first name of the actors Thomas Cruise and Thomas Gibson, who in real life have the exact same birthdate, and play alternate reality versions of each other in EWS —their name means "twin".
And the name Thomas is etymologically linked to the word mason —as in the Freemasons —meaning "one who works with stone"; mason is from maso , which is also shortened from Tomasso. The Nathansons' housekeeper refers to Carl as "Mr. Thomas"—that is, "Mr. I'd always wondered how Thomas Gibson, known primarily as a television actor, got this bit part in a Kubrick film.
Bill has slipped into a slanted version of his wife's fantasy, reflected through his own mind, wherein he has taken the role of the stranger his wife desired, Carl is him, and Marion is his wife Alice.
But here it's Bill who goes through the mirror—in another slipstream, dreamlike quality of gender role reversal. As defined in An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense , it's a genre of fiction that combines the logical with the illogical, balancing "a multiplicity of meaning with a simultaneous absence of meaning". Elements of literary nonsense "are primarily those of negativity or mirroring, imprecision or mixture, infinite repetition, simultaneity, and arbitrariness" These descriptions apply incredibly well to EWS.
In this segment, Bill steps through the looking-glass, and from then on much if not all of the story takes place in a nonsensical dreamworld. Inside the mirror of his wife's disclosed fantasy, Bill's internal landscape, his emotional state of jealousy and sexual guilt, are reflected externally.
The clues are there, but Kubrick skews elements just enough so that it isn't all obvious at first glance. Only close inspection reveals that Nathanson's bedroom wallpaper and the Harfords' bedroom curtains have the same fleur-de-lis pattern.
Richardson is eight years older than Kidman, has a Swedish accent, and other than both having blonde hair they share only a moderate resemblance. Likewise Gibson resembles Cruise somewhat but not enormously.
Near-exact parallels abound throughout the film, but exact parallels aren't immediately apparent. After Bill returns home from the mansion, Alice describes herself as having a dream in which many men are "fucking" her. At the mansion, many men were fucking many women, though Bill himself didn't engage sexually—so here, in a way, Alice has entered and become a character in Bill's fantasy, filtered through her own dream, just as he became a character in her fantasy, filtered through his.
Another noteworthy thing about the Nathanson scene is the presence of the recently deceased old man lying on the bed throughout. The character's last name is a possible allusion to the aforementioned Nathan Hale, a Yale graduate and spy recruited by George Washington during the American Revolution for independence from the British.
Hale was hanged after being caught undercover across enemy lines in New York City; the same city where EWS 's Bill likewise becomes kind of a spy who goes undercover into hostile territory when he sneaks into the mansion in disguise. Naming Bill's wealthy patient Nathanson is another connection to power hierarchies—in this case to historical colonial conflicts, and Yale, the birthplace of Skull and Bones and a school of the wealthy elite.
The name Nathan also links to the Rothschild family; there were several Nathan Rothschilds over several generations, including Nathaniel de Rothschild, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, and Nathan Mayer Rothschild—who was once the wealthiest man on earth.
Bill's patient Lou Nathanson has just died, and later that night he goes to a mansion built by Nathan's son —the son of the wealthiest man on earth. At the mansion Bill is confronted by a masked master of ceremonies credited as "Red Cloak", who sits on a throne ornamented with what appears to be a two-headed snake. In Egyptian mythology this is a creature named Neheb Ka who binds aspects of the soul—the ka and ba —together after death.
Ancient Egyptians believed the ka—meaning "double"—and ba—meaning "personality"—exist along with the physical human body. Neheb Ka guards the entrance to the underworld Duat , depicted in ancient Egyptian artworks as a "doubleworld" represented by the hieroglyph of a five-pointed star inside a circle—like the decorative stars at Ziegler's. The glyphs in the name Neheb Ka resemble a double-headed snake, so it was portrayed as such, referring to the spiritual double of a person that leaves their body upon death—the vital essence which distinguishes a living body from a dead one The Ancient Gods Speak , In another case of meta-duality, Leon Vitali has the same birthday as Stanley Kubrick: July 26th— and , respectively.
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