EYES WIDE SHUT: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

An In-Depth Analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s Misunderstood Masterpiece

PROLOGUE: AUTHOR'S NOTES

Eyes Wide Shut, more than any other movie, gave rise to my interest in cinema as a compelling storytelling medium. I've been haunted by the film since I first saw it upon its 1999 release, and have studied it in an attempt to understand it. So, this article is my contribution to the ongoing Stanley Kubrick film analyses swirling around out there.

To avoid rehashing what's already been extensively discussed by others, I've focused primarily on my own observations and interpretations—although much research was required to understand the film's many facets. Written purely for my own interest and not for profit, I've excluded some ideas with the intention of maybe expanding it all into a book one day. But I wanted to put out what I have so far—which is still quite thorough—in time for Eyes Wide Shut's 20-year anniversary.

This analysis is for people who like to think deeply about works of art—movies, music, literature—and draw comparisons to our own real world so that we may evolve to navigate through it with greater wisdom and understanding. It's been an education working on this essay, because as you'll see, the movie's reach goes far and wide. Watching Eyes Wide Shut has opened my mind and eyes, but writing about it has opened them even more.

Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
July 16th, 2019

AUTHOR'S NOTES ON 2024 REVISIONS

It's been five years since I first published this article in 2019, when I had rushed to get it finished for the 20th anniversary of Eyes Wide Shut's release date. While I was largely satisfied with it at the time, there were still some things bothering me. So I've taken this opportunity of the film's 25th anniversary to add a few last thoughts.

Substantial new segments include a look at the film's links to visual art and artists (in the section CARLOTTA & GISELLE), a discussion about antisemitism and conspiracy theories (in STANLEY KUBRICK IS IN THE MOVIE), and more description of connections between objects, characters, and dialogue (in PERIPHERALITY & PARALLELISM). I also added a few citations, corrected some minor technical errors, and incorporated additional references to cinema, music, and literature, wherever relevant.

Some of my observations will no doubt go too far for some readers, and not far enough for others. But here they are. Now twenty-five years after it debuted, I can finally lay my obsession with Eyes Wide Shut to rest.

Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
July 16th, 2024

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION: A MISUNDERSTOOD MASTERPIECE
2. HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: YOU’RE NOT EVEN LOOKING AT IT
3. MISE-EN-SCÈNE / MISE-EN-ABYME
4. META-DIALOGUE: COMMUNICATION & UNDERSTANDING
5. SKULL & BONES, FREEMASONRY, & SCIENTOLOGY
6. EYES, STARS, & MIRRORS
7. CHRISTMAS TREES, LIGHTS, RAINBOWS, & MASKS
8. DREAMS & ALTERNATE REALITIES
9. DUALITY & DOPPELGÄNGERS
10. TWINSHIP & NAMES
11. PERIPHERALITY & PARALLELISM
12. ROSEMARY & ROMAN
13. HELENA, MARIE, & MARIE-HÉLÈNE
14. SABRINA & COMUS (A MASQUE)
15. CARLOTTA & GISELLE
16. SHADOWS, WINDOWS, & TELEVISION SCREENS
17. THE MUSIC: BABY DID A BAD BAD THING
18. STANLEY KUBRICK IS IN THE MOVIE
19. TOYS IN A TOYSHOP: PLAYTHINGS OF THE WEALTHY ELITE
20. A HAPPY ENDING?
21. CONCLUSION: THEATRE OF THE MYTHIC
22. WORKS CITED

INTRODUCTION: A MISUNDERSTOOD MASTERPIECE

Eyes Wide Shut is the last work of legendary movie director Stanley Kubrick, and like many of his films it contains layers of meaning not easily deciphered or understood on first viewing. Released in 1999 to mixed responses, Eyes Wide Shut has since garnered considerable interest and has come to be regarded as one of Kubrick's finest works. A few days after completing the final cut, Kubrick died of a heart attack at age seventy at his home near London, England.

Early reviews described Eyes Wide Shut as an "erotic thriller" and "sexual odyssey", using words like "Freudian", "dreams", "fantasy", and "guilt". Sex is indeed a major subject in the film, but just as significant are references to class, capitalism, the world's ruling elite, and powerful secret societies. And not always as immediately apparent are seemingly endless allusions that extend across the fields of literature, music, opera, ballet, theatre, mythology, religion, politics, history, etymology, cinema, visual art, and even Kubrick's own personal life. There's a very odd quality of transtextuality to this film wherein close examination of virtually any aspect is like entering a rabbit hole into a maze of cryptic symbolism, bizarre linkages, and cross-references to other elements within the film, other works of art, and real life. Countless details initially pass unnoticed, only for deeper contemplation to unveil profoundly resonant interconnectedness.

Many regard Kubrick as the greatest filmmaker of all time. Reputably obsessive and meticulous, he oversaw—with painstaking attention to detail—every aspect of his films. A perfectionist and workaholic, he commanded total control of his movies down to the selection of books on shelves appearing onscreen in the background. We're looking at the foreground, but there's lots on the outskirts that we don't know we're seeing because we don't understand it, unless we have tangential knowledge. Things in our peripheral vision are in fact—as I'll show in this essay—incredibly relevant to the themes presented in the forefront, functioning as meta-commentary on the film itself. Numerous details in Eyes Wide Shut connect to the real world in strange and surprising ways, as curious examples of how far Kubrick's vision reached, whether conscious or subconscious on his part.

Kubrick was often accused of favouring technical precision and lofty intellectualism to the detriment of emotional impact. Indeed, his films generally aren't for those who seek light entertainment or lack a cerebral temperament. Many of his movies have a cold, clinical quality and seem, at least on the surface, to espouse a thoroughly pessimistic view of humanity. His technical innovation in the world of cinema is unparalleled, as each of his works has an aural and visual sharpness, an exacting use of camerawork, framing, lighting, positioning, special effects, music, and so on. One thing is certain: Kubrick films always look and sound amazing. The stories, however, are often controversial, causing polarized reactions. The ways his narratives unfold subvert cinematic storytelling conventions, with bold, grandiose strokes that are sometimes so extreme as to leave audiences perplexed or infuriated. Kubrick films are challenging because he tells stories in ways we're unaccustomed to receiving them, to peculiar and often unsettling effect.

Although his movies sometimes have a brash and brassy quality, Kubrick was actually a master of narrative subtlety—methodically calculating the most minute detail. He was a creative genius when it came to carefully constructed ambiguity, which is why his films are so often subject to controversy; different viewers see different things in them. As a result, Kubrick films were often misunderstood, receiving mixed or outright negative critical reviews upon release. Over time, however—sometimes decades—many of his movies that initially received less than favourable reviews eventually end up on Best Films of All Time lists.

Stanley Kubrick was, among other things, a satirist. A harsh, unapologetic one. This is profoundly clear with his movies Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), and A Clockwork Orange (1971)—three of his most celebrated works, and all three black comedies (about pedophilia, nuclear war, and violent crime, respectively). It's generally agreed upon that 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is his number one—is it satire too, of science fiction? It definitely reinvented the genre in ambitious fashion. Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) are less obviously satire than they are antiwar films. But Paths of Glory is an ironic title given that the film condemns war's gross irrationality, courageously deglamorizing depictions of glorified war victory so common in American cinema. And a case could be made for The Shining (1980) as a sendup of slasher-horror films, a commentary on violence against women and the murderous madness of colonial patriarchy. Kubrick liked pushing the boundaries, and overamplification and exaggeration are elements of satire.

So, is Eyes Wide Shut satire? Of pornographic film, of sex and power in Hollywood? An ironic take on the Erotic Thriller genre, Murder Mystery, or Film Noir? It stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a married couple, who were a married couple in real life, both major Hollywood celebrities, and sex symbols—a case of brilliant metacinematic casting. And they were well-known Scientologists, which enhances the film's commentary on wealthy power organizations. In an interview at the time, Cruise said he didn't think he and Kidman would've been able to handle being in the movie if they were in the early part of their marriage because of the intense issues around sex and monogamy that the film addresses. But they broke up a year after Eyes Wide Shut debuted, and divorced shortly thereafter. So maybe they couldn't handle it anyway, and perhaps their time spent working on the film, and the marital issues it examines, was a factor in their separation. Kidman reportedly left Scientology after leaving Cruise, but he remains a loyal advocate. Looking through the lens of satire, some Kubrick films register more overtly so, some more subtly. And when more subtly, as in Eyes Wide Shut, viewers are perhaps less clear on the message or intent.

I myself have often finished watching a Kubrick film for the first time and felt confused or exploited as an audience member, an unknowing participant in an inside joke between Kubrick and himself. A few Kubrick films I liked immediately, but others confounded me. My knee-jerk response would be to want to write him off as heavy handed, pretentious, and self-important. But something about each movie was incredibly compelling. I've been increasingly baffled since I first saw Eyes Wide Shut in the theatre in 1999, initially liking it but also kind of bothered by it. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way, but I couldn't identify exactly what it was—and that was compelling in and of itself. So, over the last twenty years I've been drawn back to watch Eyes Wide Shut again and again, studying it in an attempt to figure it out. And each new trajectory of exploration reveals increasingly captivating details and unexpected layers of meaning…to mind-blowing degrees.

Stanley Kubrick was a lifelong chess player, reportedly playing the game virtually daily since childhood. Watching Eyes Wide Shut indeed feels like witnessing a series of strategic orchestrations within an Escheresque chessboard dream labyrinth. The film is extraordinary in the almost inconceivable interconnectivity within its broad scope of themes, subjects, symbols, and allusions. One thing I've concluded about Eyes Wide Shut is that I'm not sure we're supposed to fully understand it. The impossibility of the title says it. The overwhelming contradictions inherent in humankind. Among other things, it's a Dream Story. And how well do we really understand our dreams?

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: YOU'RE NOT EVEN LOOKING AT IT

Stanley Kubrick began his career behind the camera as a still photographer for Look, a photography magazine in New York City, which makes sense given the emphasis on image that comes through in his films. Viewing Kubrick movies with this in mind—Stanley as the photographer—reveals how he considered the medium a visual/sensory experience foremost, and why his movies, even if you're not sure about the story, always look so good.

Kubrick made numerous statements in interviews over the years that provide immeasurable insight into how we might regard his films. In 1968, when asked to comment on the metaphysical significance of 2001, he replied: "It's not a message I ever intended to convey in words...I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content" ("The Playboy Interview", 1968). When interviewed by biographer Michel Ciment in 1980 (printed in full in Ciment's book Kubrick), Kubrick made a statement that applies perfectly to Eyes Wide Shut: "Realism is probably the best way to dramatize argument and ideas. Fantasy may deal best with themes which lie primarily in the unconscious" (Ciment, 181).

In Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films, Paul Duncan discusses the interpretive quality of Kubrick's pictures, stating "he was very careful not to present his own views of the meaning of his films and to leave them open to interpretation" (Duncan, 10). Kubrick commented on this early in his career:

The phrase "hidden in plain sight" applies to Kubrick's filmmaking methodology in which everything onscreen is purposefully chosen, even if the audience doesn't notice or understand the relevance. The saying is almost a synonym for "eyes wide shut"—a contradiction in terms suggesting something about perception filters of the mind, denial vs. awareness, conscious vs. subconscious vs. unconscious processes. Kubrick doesn't tell you where to look or what to think, which makes you look and think. It's this unique quality of objectivity that makes for a wide range of interpretations. Is Eyes Wide Shut an indictment of capitalism? It certainly doesn't seem to be endorsing it. Is it misogynistic, chauvinistic, bourgeois, and pretentious? Or is it condemning misogyny, chauvinism, materialism, and pretentiousness?

Perhaps Eyes Wide Shut is many things at once; a disturbing satire, scathing indictment of the grotesquely wealthy and those with sleazy bourgeois values who seek to be like them, a fantasy story, and a sincere, thoughtful study of marriage, sex, and class, how these subjects relate to human perception and emotion, and the often unseen or imagined forces that drive us all. Eyes Wide Shut is not just a stylized marital drama, but also an alternative Love Story, as much as an alternative Christmas Movie, as much as a Dream Movie. And Stanley Kubrick was perhaps the world's most successful maker of mainstream art films. He found a way—like few before him or since—to make interpretive movies that are commercially successful in popular culture while simultaneously appealing to cult film audiences, intellectuals and academics, cinephiles, critics, artists, and fellow filmmakers.

Amidst an onslaught of negative early reviews, essayist Tim Kreider gave a favourable, detailed critique of Eyes Wide Shut with his article Introducing Sociology. Kreider wrote that the film's initially poor reception was "generally blamed on a miscalculated ad campaign". It was promoted as a movie about sex, featuring two of the era's biggest sex symbols and movie stars in the world—Tom Cruise as Bill Harford and Nicole Kidman as Alice Harford, a real-life married couple playing an onscreen married couple—and therefore people expected the movie to be sexy. But Kubrick mocks this preconception from the very first shot, showing Alice as she "shrugs off her dress and kicks it aside". Kubrick gives the audience a few seconds of what many came to see the film for, "a big-time movie star naked", as if to get it out of the way in order to move on to the serious stuff. Then the screen cuts to black and the paradoxical main title appears, "telling us that we're not really seeing what we're staring at. In other words, Eyes Wide Shut is not going to be about sex" (Kreider, Introducing).

But Eyes Wide Shut is very much about sex. So, what I take from Kreider's point is that it's just not only about sex—it's also about capitalism, psychology, communication, and so much more. Kubrick and co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael adapted Eyes Wide Shut from a 1926 novella by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler; the original German title of this source material is Traumnovelle, which translates as Dream Story. So, maybe Eyes Wide Shut is more about dreams.

The movie in fact touches on many works of art, genres, and subjects that span thousands of years, including: the ancient myths Helen of Troy and The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, Beethoven's opera Fidelio, the 19th-century ballet Giselle, John Milton's 17th-century masque Comus, and classic children's fantasy stories such as L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. There are also unexpected connections to Kubrick's own films, and to a diverse range of other movies, such as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979), Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love (1973), and Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947).

And there are stunning metacinematic elements wherein real-life details surrounding Stanley Kubrick, his family, and others associated with Eyes Wide Shut are riddled throughout the movie and interconnected in often uncanny ways. Which connections were consciously orchestrated by Kubrick versus which are coincidental is the subject of ongoing debate, but ultimately inconsequential. We see what we see. Some linkages are more obviously meaningful, and others more nuanced and supplemental. But because of Kubrick's well-documented obsessiveness about every aspect of his movies, it can be assumed that little to nothing that appears in Eyes Wide Shut is happenstance.

MISE-EN-SCÈNE / MISE-EN-ABYME

Mise-en-scène is a French cinematic term, meaning "placing on stage", and refers in film production to everything that appears before the camera; the selection and arrangement of every visible object within the frame, the placement and movement of the objects and actors, the set design, costumes, etc. Kubrick was an unparalleled master of mise-en-scène, with an acute sense of framing and positioning.

While some footage was shot in real locations in New York and England, much of what is supposed to be 1999 New York City was constructed on soundstages in London, UK. Examining the mise-en-scène in Eyes Wide Shut reaffirms Kubrick's understanding of the art of cinema as a visual storytelling form, not only with the placement of objects but the selection of them; book titles on shelves, signs on buildings, pictures on walls, and movies that play, within the movie, on television screens in the background—all prove to be profoundly relevant.

Conversely to mise-en-scène is the art term mise-en-abyme, meaning "placing into abyss". It refers to a technique of placing a copy of an image within itself and/or of inserting a story within a story­. An abyss is a deep or bottomless chasm that in mythology leads to an underworld—and the phrase mise-en-abyme is described as capturing the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, suggesting an infinitely recurring image or sequence. The term derived from heraldry and is also called the Droste Effect, in which a picture appears within itself. Mise-en-abyme can likewise occur in film, literature, and other media, resulting in a recursive, reflexive, and/or metafictional effect, involving details within the work mirroring each other and sometimes referring to the medium itself.

This mise-en-scène/mise-en-abyme, house-of-mirrors scheme reverberates throughout Eyes Wide Shut with its time structure in relation to story events, duality and mirroring themes, the contradiction in the title, metacinematic elements, and real-life Kubrick associations. The story involves the main character's descent into an "abyss" of sorts, with seemingly endlessly meaningful symbols, images, objects in every frame.

What results is a kind of artistic Rubik's Cube—a Kubrick's Cube—or more accurately, Kubrick's Parallelepiped or something. A many-sided, prismatic tesseract of multidimensional meaning; a phosphenic crossword puzzle, strange loop of interconnectivity that transcends across numerous frequencies in a complex narrative web. A work of art.

META-DIALOGUE: COMMUNICATION & UNDERSTANDING

The story starts in earnest with the first line of dialogue, spoken by protagonist Bill Harford: "Honey, have you seen my wallet?" This establishes what will become a recurring theme; Bill as the consumer. A comfortably wealthy medical doctor though not a member of the elite ultrawealthy class, Bill fancies himself capable of buying his way into anything. But as we discover throughout the film, he is a mere midlevel servant to this powerful upper class, who has himself already been bought. One of Eyes Wide Shut's primary themes is that the ultrarich treat everything, even people, as commodities. And 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. 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.

Eyes Wide Shut (hereafter, EWS) utilizes dialogue in unusual ways. Bill frequently parrots lines spoken by other characters; sometimes as a question, as if unsure of what he's hearing. Domino says, "Would you like to come inside with me?" and Bill repeats, "Come inside with you", as if reviewing what she's just said. At the end of their encounter Domino asks, "Do you have to go?" Bill replies, "Do I have to go?" Victor says, "It's heroin and coke", and Bill responds, "Heroin and coke". And Sally says, "She may not even be coming back", which Bill echoes word for word. This dialogue device continually reiterates Bill's uncertainty about what he's experiencing, and reinforces the film's mirroring qualities.

The dialogue also includes unexpected links to other creative works. Sandor Szavost (Sky du Mont) says to Alice: "Don't you think one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?" Both parties applies not only to two spouses, but to the two parties in the film; Ziegler's and the masked ball. This line is taken from Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray: "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties." EWS also features dialogue lifted from James Cameron's True Lies (1994), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a spy who conceals his true identity from his wife. At the film's outset he dances with a woman—like Szavost and Alice dance—at a party not dissimilar to Ziegler's. Discussing 6th-century-B.C. sculptures, the woman asks, "You like the period?" to which Schwarzenegger replies, "Oh, I adore it." In EWS, Szavost asks Alice "Do you like the period?" referring to Ziegler's collection of Renaissance bronzes, and then says, "I adore it". The paradoxically titled True Lies and Eyes Wide Shut both involve marital dishonesty, but otherwise have little in common, so it's peculiar that Kubrick makes this connection.

Some have criticized EWS's dialogue as flat and unrealistic, but this is no doubt intentional on Kubrick's part. The slow, 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. Kubrick's characters themselves are very much a part of his mise-en-scène—mechanisms of his "visual experience"—in the deliberate way they move and talk; they're not just speaking to each other but to the audience directly, about the movie.

For example, one of the first lines spoken by Alice, as she and Bill are in their apartment getting ready to go to their "friend" Victor Ziegler's party, is "You’re not even looking at it." 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 capitalist influence in their lives, and some critical naysayers' 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 events at the mansion's masquerade party. But it also applies to 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 film's deeper issues 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?" Again, on the surface this line is about their impending sexual transaction, but it's also a prompt for what we, the audience, should be talking about as one of the film's main topics: money. Throughout Bill's misadventures 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. His name, after all, is "Doctor Bill"—a pun, like "dollar bill" as a form of currency, or a "bill" as a receipt of a financial transaction—as if he himself is just another instrument of the wealthy elite.

Then Bill asks Domino—again ostensibly about their sexual transaction—"What do you have in mind?" She answers, "I'd rather not put it into words." 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 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 regarded as being all about communication, between Bill and Alice, between Bill and himself, and between Kubrick and the audience. On the phone to Alice, Bill says, "It's a little difficult to talk right now." Then near the end of the story, when Bill sees the mask on the pillow and Alice wakes up, he says, "I'll tell you everything." But it cuts to the next morning and we don't actually hear what he tells her.

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." There's seeing with the eyes, and seeing with the mind. 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 viewers, and our limited ability to comprehend the world's vast, often contradictory complexities as reflected in this film. So, in addition to 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.

On Bill's nighttime streetwalk, he passes a man on a payphone who says, "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. Nick Nightingale receives a call from the mansion folk while he sits with Bill at the Sonata Café. 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." He's staring off into space as he utters the line, as if saying it to himself more than Alice. This begins Bill's odyssey, and later that night he ends up at the masquerade party where he's exposed as an impostor, told to remove his mask, and show his face. So, when he speaks the line to Alice, Bill has already entered his own internal dream reality, and is not just talking about paying a professional visit to his client, but rather about going to the dark side to show who he really is.

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. 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 when Bill revisits the mansion, the gateman hands him a threatening letter which in part reads, "Give up your inquiries, which are entirely useless." This plays as another metacinematic comment about EWS itself—as if Kubrick knew the film would result in countless obsessive analyses, and is telling the viewer to "give up trying to figure out or solve this movie" and just enjoy the ride.

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.

SKULL & BONES, FREEMASONRY, & SCIENTOLOGY

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.

In this regard, critic Adrian Mack offered insightful analysis of EWS upon its 2007 DVD rerelease (The Nerve magazine). 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. At one point 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.

In Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, Kris Millegan outlines the historic role of this organization. He describes the roots of Skull and Bones as beginning with Yale graduate Nathan Hale, a member of the Culper Ring, "one of America’s first intelligence operations" which was established by George Washington during the British occupation of New York City in the American Revolutionary War. The membership of The Order of Skull and Bones has included numerous powerbrokers and US Presidents since its official birth in 1832 (Millegan, 1-12). Three generations of Bush males were members of S&B: George W. Bush (former US president), George H.W. Bush (former US president, vice president, and CIA director), and Prescott Bush (a banker and later US Senator who helped fund Hitler's regime) (7-15, 676). Some allege S&B was connected with a secret program called Project Monarch, a "mind-control project…which started in Nazi Germany" (Millegan, 15). 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, 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 Somerton mansion, and the triangular or diamond-shaped crest is visible on buildings when Bill walks the streets. In Freemasons: Inside the World’s Oldest Secret Society, H. Paul Jeffers writes that detractors of Freemasonry have "denounced it as a seed of paganism and/or being anti-Christian, explorers of dark mysteries of the Occult, a web of Satanism" (158). Jeffers lists powerful historical figures who were Masons: Winston Churchill, John Diefenbaker, Benjamin Franklin, J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and Henry Ford, among others (213-219).

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" (235). In EWS, Nick is blindfolded, and the mansion guests are masked and hooded. Members of both S&B and Freemasons are exclusively men, although women are sometimes used in sex rituals, as in EWS. As such, the film presents a disturbing look at misogyny, as women in the film, and in reality, (and the concept of women as objects of pleasure) are co-opted and commercialized—packaged, bought, used, and thrown out, by the men who run the world.

Another organization alluded to is the Church of Scientology, a kind of pseudoreligious mega-cult that actively courts wealthy participants in order to expand its financial power base. The most obvious connection is that Tom Cruise is a dedicated Scientologist. EWS includes a young naval officer as the subject of Alice's fantasy, and L. Ron Hubbard—the founder of Scientology—was a naval intelligence officer, as biographer Russell Miller states in Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (97). Adrian Mack expands on the significance of Scientology in connection to other secret societies, stating that in the 1940s Hubbard was a disciple of famed occultist Aleister Crowley, who was a 33-degree Mason. Around this time, in the CIA's early days, Hubbard may have been involved in Project MKUltra and the related Project Monarch. Although information about Project Monarch is obscure, it "refers to a mythical mind control experiment that allowed US intelligence agencies to create sex slaves" (The Nerve, 20). Mack proposes that perhaps Eyes Wide Shut is actually about Tom Cruise, and Scientology itself:

EWS's allusions to past and present power organizations, and to symbols from antiquity, seem endless. Freemasonry, Skull and Bones, Scientology, the CIA. The Rockefellers, The Rothschilds, The Royal Family of England. Religion, mythology, occultism. The Christian Church. The Church of Satan. Nazism. One could, and several have, written whole books analyzing the motifs in Kubrick's films (see this essay's Works Cited).

EYES, STARS, & MIRRORS

Eyes are a prominent Kubrick motif, featured in virtually all his films. The "Kubrick Stare" refers to slow, zoom-in close-ups of the faces of Jack Torrance in The Shining, Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, the red eye of HAL in 2001, etc. 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 in his office, the word "eyes" appears on a taxicab, and so on. In a 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 could just be a reflection of light off the camera lens, and it's very brief—occurring at 1:30:17–1:30:19 in the film—but pause the movie in this spot to see that the image undoubtedly looks like a large eye.

The eye is another Freemasonry symbol, 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, known as "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. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption ran beneath it" (Orwell, 5).

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 students in EWS. The one who bumps into him has a "bandage over his left eye" (Schnitzler, 22). Kubrick, however, left this out of his adaptation of a story about eyes and seeing. In the late 1950s, Kubrick had signed on to direct One-Eyed Jacks (1961)—only to abandon the project due mainly to disputes with its star Marlon Brando, who ended up directing it himself (Vincent LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, 164). Leaving Dream Story's one-eyed, eyepatch-wearing guy out of Eyes Wide Shut parallels Kubrick leaving One-Eyed Jacks out of his film repertoire.

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. Site of the iconic giant Christmas tree—another of EWS's recurring symbols—New York City's Rockefeller Plaza was built by the Rockefellers, one the wealthiest families in history. The Somerton mansion in EWS is Mentmore Towers, a 19th-century English country house built for the Rothschild family, another of the world's biggest banking empires.

Considering Kubrick started out as a still photographer for Look magazine, it's fitting he ended his career with Eyes Wide Shut, which contains so many references to eyes, looking, and seeing. And The Shining is set in the Overlook Hotel, another Kubrick movie that has been analyzed to death and, like EWS, has had many details overlooked. When describing the naval officer, Alice says to Bill, "He glanced at me as he walked past. Just a glance." In Bill's medical examination room, he says "Looking forward to Christmas?" to his boy patient. And in Ziegler's bathroom, Bill attends to Mandy following her overdose. "Can you open your eyes for me?" he says, "Let me see you open your eyes." And then, "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me."

The Spanish film Open Your Eyes (Abre los Ojos, 1997), by writer-director Alejandro Amenábar, was remade as Vanilla Sky starring Tom Cruise, which registers as kind of a cinematic footnote to Eyes Wide Shut with themes also involving sex, dreams, duality, and masks. The first and last words spoken in both versions are "open your eyes", which is also a better title than Vanilla Sky—but perhaps Cruise (who also co-produced the film) didn't want to star in another movie with "eyes" in the title so soon after EWS. It was released in 2001, as was Amenábar's follow-up The Others, a ghost story starring Nicole Kidman. Todd Field (EWS's Nick Nightingale) wrote and directed In the Bedroom, also 2001—about affairs of the heart gone terribly wrong—and had reportedly consulted Kubrick about it while shooting EWS. The film stars William Mapother, the first cousin of Tom Cruise (born Thomas Cruise Mapother). 2001 was also the year Steven Spielberg's A.I. came out, which Kubrick spent years developing. And 2001 is, of course, the title of Kubrick's most celebrated work.

Stars are another prominent symbol in EWS. Five-pointed stars—pentagrams—appear in the background as Christmas decorations at Ziegler's party, in the diner, at the toy store, and as an emblem on the naval officer's uniform. 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 (169-170). In Roman mythology, Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, and fertility. A painting on the wall behind Bill as he sits in Sharkey's coffee shop is Astarte Syriaca (1877), by Dante Rossetti. Astarte is also a goddess of love and beauty and representation of femininity—the ancient Semitic and Syrian equivalent to Venus. The Venus astronomical symbol is the same one used in biology to denote the female sex—a circle with a small cross below it—and 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. The very first shot shows Alice undressing, with her back to us, in the Harfords' apartment dressing room. The light is on and a full-size mirror is visible beside her, but Alice's reflection in the mirror is not visible. The second shot is of Bill in the same room, fully clothed, with his back to us—seemingly peeking out the window through Venetian blinds. The light is off so Bill is in the dark, but his reflection is visible in the mirror beside him. The third shot shows Bill moving from the bedroom to the bathroom, where he looks at himself in the mirror.

Mirrors appear at Ziegler's, Domino's, and the Harfords', with characters peering into them at 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 Alice 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 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 160-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 the next day, he drives up to the gate from the opposite direction than the cab had approached from. Leading up to the mansion 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. 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 also 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.

CHRISTMAS TREES, LIGHTS, RAINBOWS, & MASKS

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. Most of Eyes Wide Shut was filmed at London's Pinewood Studios.

Some Freemason rituals derive from paganism, an element of which is nature and goddess worship. The Christmas custom of decorating trees originates 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, 155).

There are a whole lot of lights in the darkness in Eyes Wide Shut. Our protagonist, insecure about his sexuality, travels through a realm bursting with symbols of fertility worship; Christmas trees, decorations, lights. Near the end of the movie, 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 feelings of sexual inadequacy. 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—1920s Vienna—to 1999 New York City during the Christmas season; the high point of consumerist indulgence in North American society. The Carnival 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 alcohol consumption (and other substances), feasting, parades, and wearing of masks and costumes. Other 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 the couple are Jewish, as author Schnitzler was. Kubrick was also of Jewish descent, but 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, 29). The surname Harford is a portmanteau of HARrison FORD, an allusion to the actor. 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 at the masked orgy.

The masks Kubrick uses are Venetian, which broadens 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 Carnival mask. In the film's opening seconds, Bill peers out his apartment window through Venetian blinds, which also appear in his doctor's office and Domino's bedroom. It's like Bill looking out through the eyeholes of his Venetian mask, as if he's inside his own psyche, and recalls the saying "the eyes are the windows to the soul". 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 secrets we keep.

For many, Christmas represents indulgence, temptation, desire—for parties, food, liquor, chocolate, or bigger and better material possessions that often don't satisfy. 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, so it's an appropriate season in which to set this story that includes many ancient symbols and practices that have been co-opted and deformed by power structures throughout history. Christmas itself is a multifaceted holiday 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 (1946), 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 (1843) in that both protagonists are also shaken to the core when they're exposed to disturbing alternate plains of existence. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. 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.

Another popular Christmas story is the classic children's book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957) by Dr. Seuss, seen in EWS on the kitchen table when Alice and Helena (Madison Eginton) are having breakfast. Later at the mansion orgy, a naked party guest wearing a very Grinch-like mask is seen having sex with 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 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. On a side note, in real life Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were married on Christmas Eve; December 24th, 1990.

The Christmastime setting also provides Kubrick with an opportunity to create a sumptuous visual feast for the viewer. The 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. Kubrick almost exclusively used "practical" lighting in EWS (as he also did in Barry Lyndon)—lights that appear in the diegetic world of the film (lamps, streetlights, Christmas lights). But since these light levels are normally considered too low for a movie shoot, Kubrick "push-developed" the entire film, instructing the lab to leave the film stock in the developing bath longer than is usual—essentially overprocessing it in order to enhance the images and achieve a unique, slightly surreal look (The Stanley Kubrick Archives, 771). This lush multicoloring embellishes Eyes Wide Shut's multilayered narrative fabric, and connects it with another recurring symbol in the film: rainbows. The movie itself, both literally and figuratively, contains layers of different colours 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 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. Bill's reluctance to pursue the "pot of gold" in this instance, even though he's obviously flirting with the women, exemplifies his pursuit yet hesitancy at other times in the story, as he seeks out sexual opportunities without ever actually having sex—hence the character's 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. According to Adrian Mack, "The rainbow references are rooted in The Wizard of Oz, which is important to the mythology of Project Monarch...In the '70s, the codename for L. Ron Hubbard's top secret base…was 'Over the Rainbow'" (The Nerve, 20). One of the women is named Gayle, which connects to Bill's friend Nick Nightingale and to Dorothy Gale, the protagonist of The Wizard of Oz. 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."

DREAMS & ALTERNATE REALITIES

Dreams, as discussed by Martin Scorsese in his introduction to Michel Ciment's book Kubrick, are another of Eyes Wide Shut's main topics. Scorsese emphasizes that the English translation of Schnitzler's German-titled Traumnovelle is Dream Story. He attributes the film's initial widespread negative reaction to 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).

With a subtly antithetical design, EWS is a story conveyed in an unusual manner, leaving many viewers 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 nightmarish and grotesque.

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 makes sense from the perspective that what we see is 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.

Several times throughout Bill's adventure he shows his medical ID card to people he meets, as if to continually confirm his status, identity, and verify his existence—to himself perhaps more than to others. "ID" is of course the abbreviation for "identification", and also the spelling of the "id", which according to Sigmund Freud is the unconscious part of the mind that contains a person's primal, instinctive impulses, including the libido:

When Bill offers to show his ID (to Mr. Milich, to Sally, to the diner waitress), he's in effect saying—from a Freudian standpoint—"Let me show you my id". Freud says that in the id: "contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out.…There is nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time" (New Introductory Lectures, 106).

Time is a prominent thread throughout the story, which unfolds, preposterously, over the course of about two-and-a-half days. Bill's second line in the film is, "Listen, you know we're running a little late." He continually looks at his wristwatch; before entering the Nathanson residence, in front of the Sonata Café the day after the Somerton affair, and at Milich's where he says, "I've obviously left things a bit late tonight." Bill is like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland who laments his lateness while looking at his pocket watch. Outside Somerton the cab driver asks Bill, "How long you gonna be?" Bill replies, "I don't know, maybe an hour or more, but maybe only ten minutes." When Domino asks Bill for the time, he checks his watch and says "Ten past twelve." A moment later in her apartment, Domino says, "Don't worry, I don't keep track of the time." Then Alice calls Bill asking how much longer he will be. Bill: "It could be awhile." Alice: "Any idea how long?" Bill: "No, I don't really know." It's dreamtime.

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 cold and voyeuristic since we're seeing through the eyes of the protagonist who himself doesn't actually engage sexually. It might more fittingly be described as a slipstream fantasy; a subgenre of speculative fiction in which characters inexplicably "slip" in and out of alternate timelines, parallel dimensions, and/or streams of consciousness in which some similar qualities persist while others are skewed or inverted. Loops in time. Characters' traits transposed. Illogical scenarios.

On one hand the genre prescribed to a story doesn't matter much, and is merely a label to advertise the work. But on the other hand this label can be important, to frame the work in a certain context and prepare the audience for a particular mindset through which to receive it. 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 mislabelling it an erotic thriller, in retrospect it's actually fitting to have been billed as such; it strengthens its standing as 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. Kubrick even kind of parodies the "it was all a dream" cliché B-movie ending with the last bit of dialogue between Bill and Alice; she says they should be grateful that they've survived all of their adventures, "Whether they were real or only a dream," to which Bill replies, "And no dream is ever just a dream."

DUALITY & DOPPELGÄNGERS

Eyes Wide Shut is filled with doppelgängers, duality, doubling, repetition; multiple characters and symbols alluding to aspects of each other in a story that plays as a series of illusions.

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 set pieces in the lobby. Bill enters a room full of paired objects; there are two elevator doors, two glass doors, and two windows. Positioned on opposite ends of the screen are two potted plants, two stools, two lamps, two side tables, and two framed pictures, each item apparently identical to its duplicate. Bill proceeds into the interior of the house through this picture of duality as if entering into a mirror. He walks down a hallway into a room where his recently deceased patient lies, whose daughter Marion (Marie Richardson) sits by the side of the bed. Bill sits next to her in a chair identical to the one she sits in, with a pair of identical windows behind them.

Marion suddenly kisses Bill and tells him she's in love with him. She's engaged to be married, she says, but would gladly leave her fiancé for the chance to be with Bill, or at the very least to live near him. Harford declines her offer, and soon after the fiancé, Carl, arrives. 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. Carl is played by another actor named Tom: Thomas Gibson, who was born on the exact same day, month, and year, as Thomas Cruise—July 3rd, 1962. The two actors bear a moderate resemblance, with similar physiques, hair colour, and hairstyle—and in the film Carl's hair is parted on the opposite side of his head than Bill's hair is parted. When the Nathansons' housekeeper Rosa opens the door for Carl, the camera's point of view is from the opposite angle than when she opened the door for Bill minutes before. 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.T., the reverse of Tom Cruise's initials T.C.

And it gets even more interesting when looking at the name etymology. Thomas is the Anglicized form of the Italian Tomasso, from the Aramaic toma (t'om'a), which means "twin" (Dictionary of First Names, 260). 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 also 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 name Carl is the shortened form of Charles, meaning "free man" (Dictionary of First Names, 52). So the character's full name then essentially translates as "Free Mason". And Saint Thomas, one of the Twelve Apostles, was known as "Doubting Thomas", which fits Bill's character. Rosa refers to Carl as "Mr. Thomas"—that is, "Mr. Twin".

I'd always wondered how Thomas Gibson, known primarily as a television actor, got this bit part in a Kubrick film. In addition to playing a doppelgänger (German for "double-goer") of sorts to EWS's Bill, Gibson previously starred in another movie with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman; Far and Away (1992), in which he played the rival of Cruise's character vying for the affections of Kidman's character. Far and Away was the second film Cruise and Kidman starred in together, the third and last was Eyes Wide Shut. The sitcom Gibson starred in at the time was set in kind of a parallel universe to EWS; Dharma & Greg, in which he played a lawyer (rather than a doctor) who is also in a yuppie marriage with a thin blonde woman.

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. It's fitting then that Kidman's character is named Alice, calling to mind Lewis Carroll's heroine in Through the Looking-Glass. But here it's Bill who goes through the mirror—in another slipstream, dreamlike quality of gender reversal. Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) are considered among the best examples of "literary nonsense". As defined in An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense (1988), it's a fiction subgenre 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" (47). 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 tilted way this scene mirrors Alice's fantasy serves the film's enigmatic quality, giving us something to decipher and contemplate. 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 mild 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 are fucking many women, though Bill himself doesn't engage sexually—so here, in a way, Alice has become a character in Bill's fantasy, filtered through her own dream, just as he becomes a character in her fantasy, filtered through his dream.

Another noteworthy element of 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 an institution of the wealthy.

The name Nathan also links to the Rothschild family; there were several Nathan Rothschilds over several generations, including Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, and Nathan Mayer Rothschild—who was once the wealthiest man on earth. It was this latter Nathan's son, Mayer Amschel de Rothschild, who commissioned the building of Mentmore Towers, which serves as the exterior of the Somerton mansion in EWS. 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 eagle, or possibly a two-headed snake—it's not entirely clear, but both have relevance. The double-headed eagle is an ancient iconographic symbol dating back some 5,000 years, spanning a variety of cultures throughout the world; from Mesopotamia to the Byzantine Empire, and beyond. It has also been used as an emblem by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, a system of degrees employed by Freemasons, signifying the title "Grand Inspector".

In Egyptian mythology, the double-headed serpent is a creature named Neheb Ka who binds parts of the soul—the ka and ba—together after death. Ancient Egyptians believed the ka—meaning "double"—and ba—"personality"—exist alongside 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 in EWS. 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, 181). The surname of the actor who plays Red Cloak, Leon Vitali, means "life" in Latin (Latin and English Dictionary, 452). Vitali played a role in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon before becoming his personal assistant and/or casting director on all his following films. In another case of meta-duality, Leon Vitali has the same birthday as Stanley Kubrick: July 26th—1948 and 1928, respectively.

Stanley Kubrick had a kind of real-life doppelgänger of his own. Alan Conway was a British conman who impersonated Kubrick for years throughout the 1990s, claiming to be the famous director in London's wealthy socialite circles in order to gain favours, free hotel rooms, dinners, drinks, etc. By this time the real Kubrick had long withdrawn from media attention, so Conway succeeded in fooling many—including some film critics who contacted Warner Brothers to set up an interview with this "Kubrick". Warner Bros already knew of the scam but had been unable to identify the impostor, and Stanley Kubrick himself was then apprised of the situation by his lawyer. Kubrick was said to have been fascinated by the idea. His wife Christiane was less impressed, as she reflected in a 2005 interview with The Guardian: "It was an absolute nightmare. This strange doppelgänger who was pretending to be Stanley. Can you imagine the horror?"

Conway was tracked down by an assistant to Kubrick, Anthony Frewin, who then detailed the whole affair in a screenplay for what became the movie Color Me Kubrick (2005), wherein John Malkovich plays Conway posing as Kubrick. The movie was directed by Brian W. Cook, who had worked as assistant director on Barry Lyndon and The Shining, and as a producer and assistant director on Eyes Wide Shut—and appears in it as Somerton's "Tall Butler". Alan Conway died of a heart attack three months before Stanley Kubrick died, also of a heart attack.

TWINSHIP & NAMES

Kubrick's interest in twinship has been evident since his directorial debut, the documentary short Day of the Fight (1951). The 12-minute film follows a middleweight boxer on the day of a match, accompanied by his identical twin brother. Kubrick's Lolita features Peter Sellers playing two different characters in "twin" roles of a sort—and the film's protagonist has a twinned name, Humbert Humbert. The Shining also famously features the ghosts of twin girls. And Eyes Wide Shut has countless instances of duality and twinning.

At Ziegler's party, Bill flirts with two women, one of whom is introduced as Nuala Windsor. The name Nuala means "beautiful", a fairy queen in Irish mythology (Celtic Names, 117). And Windsor identifies with the Royal Family of the United Kingdom, the House of Windsor, where bloodlines of the elite still hold power to this day. The other woman says her name is Gayle. But Nuala sounds American while Gayle has a British accent, in another example of slipstream characteristic-swapping and US/New York–UK/London couplings. Gayle is a variant of Gail, shortened from the English Abigail, with Hebrew origins; an Old Testament character whose wealthy husband dies, and she remarries a king (Dictionary of First Names, 1)—so, a woman of high status. The actress who plays "Mysterious Woman" (voiced by an uncredited Cate Blanchett) at the mansion/Mandy's double is named Abigail Good. Kubrick's daughter Vivian, a filmmaker and composer, has been credited under the pseudonym Abigail Mead. Gayle/Gail etymology also attributes the meaning as "jovial" or "merry", the same origin as the word "gay" which meant just that, before meaning homosexual. Kubrick chose to spell the character's name as Gayle and not Gail.

Gayle refers to previously meeting Bill "on a very windy day". A gale is a "very strong wind", in connection with Windsor. It is a very strong wind—a tornado—that whisks Dorothy Gale away to the fantasyland Oz. Gayle and Nuala attempt to lead Bill away from the party to "where the rainbow ends", and Dorothy Gale sings "Over the Rainbow" in the 1939 movie, where "dreams that you dare to dream really do come true." Bill doesn't go with Gayle and Nuala, but he does go upstairs a moment later when summoned by Ziegler to tend to his dirty work. And he later goes to Rainbow Costume Rental, which is situated over a store called Under the Rainbow. Remember that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard reportedly had a secret base in California codenamed Over the Rainbow? And Tom Cruise is a Scientologist. The connections continue.

Further intriguing examples of twinning, duality—and plurality—revolve around the character Marion. She only appears in that one scene; when Bill tries to reach her later, she's disappeared. This is a pattern, of people vanishing when Bill looks for them again on his second day out; Marion, Domino, Nick. Bill rebuffs Marion's advances just before her fiancé Carl arrives, and when Bill calls Marion's the next day, Carl answers the phone. And Bill hangs up. Carl is an alternate Bill and Marion an alternate Alice, so it's like Bill tries to call an alternate version of his wife, but she doesn't answer, and he hears himself pick up on the other side, but he doesn't want to talk to himself. Then maybe after Bill hangs up the phone, offscreen in the looking-glass world Carl says to Marion, "I think I have to go over there and show my face," after she just finished confessing her fantasy to Carl, of running away with Doctor Bill. As if it's a dreamtime loop, and it was Carl who called Bill at home that night just as Bill now calls Carl. And it carries on, mise-en-abyme, into the abyss…

The character's name is Marion Nathanson, the actress's name is Marie Richardson; Marion is in fact a portmanteau of MARIe richardsON, as Harford is of HARrison FORD. The character's name in Traumnovelle is "Marianne". Tom Cruise's sister is also named Marian (with the variant spelling), and his mother is Mary. Nicole Kidman's middle name is Mary. Stanley Kubrick's sister was named Barbara Mary Kubrick. Marie Richardson acted in several Ingmar Bergman films—who Kubrick greatly admired—including her credit immediately prior to EWS, In the Presence of a Clown (1997), opposite a character also named Carl. And—curiously, in relation to female character names in EWS—among Marie Richardson's pre-EWS roles she played characters named Marianne (Marion), Elise (Alice), and Helena Hansson (Helena Harford).

One of the Yale punks slams into Bill as he walks by, and says, "Merry Christmas, Mary!"—mary being a homophobic slur, and sharing common etymology with merry. This of course connects to Christmas, Christianity, the biblical characters of the Virgin Mary mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene, and also evokes the Catholic Church's longstanding antigay stance. Amanda (Mandy) means "lovable" from the Latin amāre, "to love"—linking to the English merry and mary which some derivations also define as "beloved, delightful", from Hebrew, Syro-Aramaic, and Egyptian (Miriam, Miryam, Maryam), with variations in Celtic, French, Greek, Slavic (Meara, Marie, Maria). Other diminutive forms are: Mira, Miri, Mariah, Molly, and Polly (Dictionary of First Names, 13, and Celtic Names, 84). The name of the cat painting at the Harfords' is Polly (by Kubrick's daughter Katharina), which calls to mind a tiger stuffie on Domino's bed, the Pink Pussycat Boutique Bill passes on his walk, and the term "sex kitten". Polly becomes a nickname of Mary from Molly, and is also considered a nickname of Dorothy from Dolly. As in Dorothy Gale from Oz, which connects to Nick Nightingale, Gayle the model, Gay meaning "merry", Gayle rhymes with Yale, and the Yale punks accuse Bill of being gay.

EWS's central female characters are all portrayed in sexual contexts. There are numerous clues to Alice's place in society as a toy, like her husband, both of whom are paid for in full by the real owners of the world, those like Ziegler and his mansion buddies. Kubrick wanted all the women at the masked orgy to have bodies resembling Nicole Kidman's, as if mirror representations. Marion, Domino, and the masked women all wear chokers—a necklace or band of fabric that fits closely around the neck—as if a collar or restraint, a symbol of captivity and servitude.

There are multiple parallels between Alice, Domino, Mandy (Julienne Davis), and Sally (Fay Masterson). The names Amanda (Mandy) and Domino have the same number of letters, with identical consonants. Alice and Domino are associated by the colour purple of Alice's sheets and Domino's dress. And Domino and Sally mirror Nuala and Gayle; Domino and Nuala are both brownhaired and wear purplish clothing, and Sally and Gayle are both redhaired and wear light bluish clothing. Three women character names are near-exact aural anagrams: Alice, Sally, and Lisa (Bill's secretary). Lisa is played by the same-named Lisa Leone, and Ziegler's wife Illona is played by Leslie Lowe, as if the two actresses' and characters' first and last names are aural anagrammatic composites of both their own and the other's (Leone/Illona also connects to Leon Vitali). And Illona is a linguistic variant of Helena, the Harfords' daughter, which is from the Greek myth Helen of Troy, who had a twin sister.

Alice became a popular girls' name due to Alice in Wonderland, from Old French and Germanic for "noble" (Dictionary of First Names, 3, 9). And Bill is shortened from William, with etymology rooted in the German Wilhelm; from wil meaning "will, desire" and helm meaning "conceal, protect", as in helmet (Dictionary, 276). So, Bill's full name William translates as "conceal desire". The name Victor Ziegler also has revelatory etymology. Victor is from the Latin for "winner" (Dictionary, 271). As a super-rich guy who has his way with everything, he's clearly a victor in this society. And Ziegler is from the German ziegelbrenner which means "brick maker" (German-English Dictionary, 291), connecting to freemasons and to "Kubrick". A mason is a builder or layer of stone, and Freemasonry as a secret society evolved out of organized bodies of stonemasons thousands of years ago. And the "free" part indicates that the mason is not enslaved. So, Victor Ziegler's name and character reflect a person at the top of the pyramid, a member of an ancient secret society of wealth and power-seekers. And Stanley itself also means "stone" ("stan"), plus "wood" ("leigh"; woods or a meadow) from Old English (Dictionary of First Names, 252).

The etymology of mason—"one who works with stone"—shares the same origins as the name Tom: from the Italian maso, shortened from Tomasso, which itself is from the Aramaic toma, which means "twin". The Anglicized form of Tomasso is Thomas; Tom Cruise, Tom Gibson, who have the exact same birthday, and play alternate reality versions of each other—their name means "twin", which shares the same root as the word "mason", which refers to freemasons, and means "brick maker", which translates from Ziegler. There is also a line of highly-sought-after Japanese-made collectible toy figurines called "Kubrick Toys", named after the director and launched in 2000, shortly after his death. Ku translates from Japanese as "nine", and each Kubrick figure (which resemble Lego figures), is made up of nine body parts that toy collectors call "bricks".

Ziegler was also the surname of the Nazi official in charge of confiscating anti-Nazi, Jewish, and/or protest art; Adolf Ziegler, said to be Hitler's favourite painter, was tasked by the Nazi Party to oversee the purging of what they termed "degenerate art"—and artists or museum/gallery owners who created or promoted it. Another Nazi official, Hans Severus Ziegler, was in charge of purging "degenerate music" and musicians. In EWS, Szavost mentions Victor Ziegler's wonderful art collection. Ziegler is played by Sydney Pollack, who was Jewish. And Ziegler is also the surname of EWS's Steadicam operator—Elizabeth Ziegler—who worked with Cruise again on his next film Magnolia (1999) in which he portrays a misogynistic motivational speaker instructing men on how to pick up women. Elizabeth Ziegler's camera "eye" following Bill around is like Victor Ziegler's henchmen following Bill around, watching him.

Also note the aural and visual similarities in the names Stanley Kubrick and Sydney Pollack. Both first names start with "S" and end with "–ey". Both last names are seven letters, with the identical number of consonants and vowels in the exact same positions, ending with "–ck". And this is really weird: the last two letters of the first word spoken in EWS are also "–ey"—"Honey"—and the last two letters of the last word spoken are "–ck"—"Fuck". The name resemblance of Stanley Kubrick and Sydney Pollack is one thing, but "–ey" and "–ck" being the last two letters of the first and last words spoken in the movie and the last two letters of the first and last names of the director Stanl–ey Kubri–ck seems an unbelievable coincidence.

But given Kubrick's infamous—some have said tyrannical—control of all his filmic details, surely much of this is no accident. Nathanson, Nathan Hale, Nathan Rothschild. Tom, Thomas, "twin". Alice Harford, Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Illona, Helena. Harrison Ford, Harford, and Hertfordshire—the county outside of London, UK, where Stanley lived (and died)—meaning "the land of people named Hertford".

PERIPHERALITY & PARALLELISM

A multitude of details in the background, and foreground, continually reinforce the film's intersecting thematic elements. When Gayle reminds Bill they'd met before, he recalls, "You had something in your eye". She responds jokingly, "about half of 5th Avenue". The next night, Bill traverses what looks like an imagined rendering of New York City's Greenwich Village. Some establishing shots are of real locations in New York and England, but most of the street sets were constructed on Pinewood Studio soundstages in London, designed to resemble an alternate universe version of 1999 NYC. Various buildings and storefronts appear to change location throughout the movie, as do other objects. Outside the costume store the Gillespie's diner neon sign is visible behind Bill, which in the previous scene neighboured the Sonata Café. But Bill arrives at the costume store in a cab. It's like he's going in circles, wandering the same four- or five-block radius over and over, with elements repositioned upon each pass-through of Dreamcity. Maybe Bill's travelling across "half of 5th Avenue" over and over, because he now has "half of 5th Avenue" in his "eye"—that is, in his mind's eye.

The redressing of facades and reuse of set decoration in EWS was at least in part the result of an error in booking a lot that was smaller than Kubrick wanted at Pinewood Studios. How much Kubrick made conscious use of this due to budget and space economy, to enhance Bill's dreamlike, circular odyssey—as a creative improvisation—or how much was preplanned, or accidental, is up for debate. But the effect is nonetheless enchanting and fits with the film's mirroring and dream themes.

Linkages between objects, characters, and dialogue occur throughout EWS from start to end. The very first shot shows Alice undressing in her apartment, and in the corner are two tennis rackets. A couple screentime minutes later, Bill and Alice are greeted by Victor Ziegler and his wife Illona at their house party, and Victor thanks Bill for recommending a medical specialist who fixed his tennis injury: "That osteopath you sent me to, the guy that worked on my arm? You ought to see my serve now." On Ziegler's bathroom wall, above a naked Mandy lying down, is a painting of a naked woman lying down in a similar position, almost like a mirror. The woman in the painting appears to be pregnant, evoking the sex and fertility themes and pagan associations with Christmas. When Domino shows up selling sex, an XXX video store selling sex movies is visible behind her. And the Sonata Café's interior sphere lamps appear again in Sharkey's Café, but in reverse; Bill goes downstairs to enter the Sonata where the lamps are down low on the tables and facing upwards, and Bill goes upstairs to enter Sharkey's where the lamps are up high on the ceiling and facing downwards.

Call-outs to Kubrick's life and work often come in the form of signs on buildings. The word BOWMAN is visible on one sign, as in Dave Bowman, the protagonist of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Another reads VITALI, as in Leon Vitali, Kubrick's longtime assistant and Red Cloak actor. And yet another sign reads Caffe da Emilio, as in Emilio D'Alessandro, Kubrick's chauffeur. And when Bill enters the hospital through glass doors, behind him the building address across the street is 238—one digit away from The Shining's famous hotel room 237.

At Milich's costume store, his teenaged daughter (Leelee Sobieski) whispers into Bill's ear: "You should have a cloak lined with ermine". Ermine fur was traditionally used for lining cloaks and crowns in coronation ceremonies, so is associated with high-ranking officials and royalty. If the Milich girl is Bill's fantasy character, then her whispers show his desire to be seen as a man of high status. In other words, Bill wants women to regard him as a king. In heraldry, a "fur" is an official pattern and colour palette used in the design of crests. An ermine's fur changes colour seasonally, turning all white with black tail tips during winter, so the ermine heraldic fur has a white background with various black shapes, to represent the animal's winter coat. Domino wears a fake fur coat of white with black stripes, and "domino" game tiles are black and white. Ironically, for such a colourful film Eyes Wide Shut has many references to "black and white".

Black-and-white title sequences begin and end the film; EYES WIDE SHUT appears in white text on black background at the start, and THE END in white text on black background at the end, bookending the lushly coloured story within. In their bedroom, Bill says to Alice, "I don't think it's quite that black and white"—while he's wearing only black underwear and she's wearing only white underwear. On his night walk, Bill passes the lingerie store Pink Pussycat Boutique which has two headless mannequin torsos—a male in black underwear and a female in white underwear— in the display window. Bill's imaginings of Alice having sex with the naval officer are in black and white. Nick Nightingale plays a piano with black-and-white keys. Nick wears a white suit jacket and Bill wears a black one. Two mannequins in the Rainbow Costumes display window wear the same suits that Bill and Nick do. The Nathansons' housekeeper Rosa wears a black dress with a white collar, and Bill wears a black suit with a white collar—both servants to the rich. For most of the movie Bill is dressed in black; on his late night outings he wears a black suit and tie and white shirt, a black overcoat, black boots, and black gloves. A skewed film noir antihero (film noir meaning "black film"), the man in black, descending into the shadow realm.

Scenes of Bill in taxicabs at night have cut-out, rear-projected backgrounds whizzing by outside, like in old movies—as if he's driving through his own imagined dreamworld. There's the shot of Bill walking down the street facing the camera, when he smacks his hands together, in which he appears to be superimposed in front of the nighttime cityscape background—which is indeed the case, as behind-the-scenes photos show Cruise walking on a treadmill in front of a screen. He looks like a cutout, and he is, his surroundings visibly manufactured, as if he's not really even there. Shots like this remind us we're watching a movie, as if announcing that it's the Hollywood celebrity Tom Cruise playing a role. So again, is this film about the sexualization of movie stars, about using sex to sell movies?

In addition to Yale's relevance to Skull and Bones and the CIA, the Yale students who accost Bill are reminiscent of the Clockwork Orange hoodlums. They also represent a younger Bill and Nick when they attended medical school together. Remember how thrilled they are to run into each other at Ziegler's party after ten years? They enthusiastically hand-shake and back-slap and man-hug with an immediate college frat bro-like camaraderie and good ol' boy intimacy, as if recalling those debaucherous days back in college. Bill running into the Yale students is like running into a younger version of himself, the memory of he and Nick as college students projected onto his environment.

What we hear the Yale guys say before they direct their attention to Bill: "…my face! She had a red rose in her mouth. She was doing a Mexican lap dance right in my face. I'm serious. I've got scars on the back of my neck!" This reflects things that appear onscreen moments before as Bill walks the streets: he passes a Mexican Restaurant "Conchita's", which links as well to the cartoon playing on TV at Bill and Alice's; The Fright Before Christmas featuring the Mexican mouse Speedy Gonzalez. The college kid sees Bill and says, "Hey, hey, hey, what team's this switch hitter playing for? Looks like the pink team. Faggot!" Bill had just walked past the "Pink Pussycat Boutique"—and also past a flower shop named "Nipped in the Bud" with a rose logo on its door sign, and twin red rose neon lights, one in each window on either side of the door.

There are several instances of flower-related imagery in EWS. Szavost wears a five-petaled dark blue flower pin on his lapel, and Sally's skirt has a five-petaled flower pattern. Nathanson's bedroom wallpaper and the Harfords' bedroom curtains have the same fleur-de-lis pattern ("flower of the lily"). There are potted plants with red flowers in Nathanson's lobby, and red flowers in the bedroom. Red flowers in vases are visible in the Harfords' apartment, as is a painting of red flowers, and roses are painted on their bed's headboard. The rose is a yonic symbol, and Bill's sexual attempts are repeatedly "nipped in the bud". The Latin version of the name Marion means "rose petal". Actress Mariana Hewitt plays the Nathansons' housekeeper Rosa (from Spanish, Italian), who links to the Harfords' babysitter Roz (from Polish). Both Rosa and Roz are in servant roles with names derived from the same meaning: rose.

Inside the flower shop are bouquets of red flowers, Christmas lights, and a Santa Claus statuette looking out at Bill. Outside, a man and woman are leaning against the store kissing; the man is all in black, like Bill, and the woman wears a plush white coat and red pants—Santa Claus/Christmas colours. The Saint Nick statuette overlooking the scene connects with Nick Nightingale, and also with Nicole Kidman, who Cruise would often refer to as "Nic" in interviews at the time.

After taunting Bill with a few more demeaning remarks and mocking his sexuality, the punks' last discernible line is "Go back to San Francisco where you belong, man!" Besides the obvious connection of San Fran's reputation as an epicenter of gay rights, it also evokes Saint Francis, after whom the city is named. Francis was, among other things, associated with birds, and Bill speaks with at least one "bird", Mr. Nightingale, who whispers a secret in his ear… The homophobic slurs reflect Bill's insecurity about his manhood and sexuality, and also refer to Tom Cruise himself and the real-life rumours popular at the time that he was secretly gay. Alan Cumming's scene as the hotel clerk, with his overt homosexual flirtations with Bill, further invoke the "Tom Cruise is gay" gossip. Kubrick riddles EWS with in-jokes, blurring boundaries between reality and fiction.

There's lots of interesting stuff about that newspaper Bill reads. The article about Amanda Curran states she had modelled for, and was rumoured to have had an affair with, "London fashion designer Leon Vitali". The real name of the actor who plays Red Cloak is in the fake prop newspaper in the movie. The diner's name Gillespie's means "bishop's servant" (Celtic Names, 231). Is Red Cloak the bishop and Mandy the servant? Or is Bill the servant? The newspaper article linking Mandy to Vitali implies she had a relationship with Red Cloak—and we know she had one with Ziegler—hinting that Red Cloak and Ziegler are conjoined psychological archetypes. The two men are also linked by Red Cloak's red carpet and Ziegler's red pool table. And the masked Mysterious Woman is played by a different actress than Mandy, even though it's said to be her. Doubling everywhere.

Fidelio is Beethoven's only opera, and the masquerade ball's password in EWS. It's an Italian male name meaning "fidelity, faithfulness"—especially sexual faithfulness to a spouse. The opera's original title was The Triumph of Married Love, featuring the female protagonist Leonore (in connection with Leon Vitali, Lisa Leone) who disguises herself as a man named Fidelio in order to rescue her husband from a political prison. The name Leonore is French for "shining light", appropriate to EWS's lights motif. The mansion's Mysterious Woman who sacrifices herself to save Bill—supposedly Mandy in a mask—is like Leonore risking her life to save her husband by masquerading as Fidelio. Mysterious Woman and Leonore also identify with Alice who, in her own dream as she recounts it to Bill, is in an orgy scenario "fucking all these men". But Alice laughs at Bill in her dream, while in his—if the mansion scene is indeed Bill's dream—she sacrifices herself to save him.

ROSEMARY & ROMAN

There is so much in Eyes Wide Shut that I didn't initially notice, whether in the etymology of character names and the actors playing them, the mise-en-scène, colour correspondence, or other visual and aural cues. But deeper examination opens up a world of parallels that now seem too obvious too ignore, to the point I wonder how I ever could've missed them in the first place. One such example is what may be a Kubrickian reference to the film Rosemary's Baby, with the conspicuous appearance of a baby buggy in EWS's toy store scene. The antique-looking stroller indeed closely resembles the iconic Rosemary's Baby carriage from the 1968 movie’s posters.

Rosemary's Baby is a psychological horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, starring Mia Farrow. It was adapted from a novel by Ira Levin, who also wrote The Stepford Wives (1972), about brainwashed housewives, which was likewise adapted into a movie (1975) and later remade (2004) starring none other than Nicole Kidman. Rosemary's Baby features a bourgeois American couple living on Central Park West in Manhattan's Upper West Side—like Bill and Alice—who literally conceive the devil's offspring for a satanic cult in order to secure higher social status. On a cinematic side note to EWS, the 1993 thriller The Firm—directed by Sydney Pollack—also stars a paranoid Tom Cruise who is in over his head with a seemingly all-powerful cult of sorts.

Like EWS, Rosemary's Baby involves perception and paranoia and there are times in both films when it feels as if much of what we're seeing is allegorical, projections from the minds of each protagonist, Bill and Rosemary. And both movies explore themes of misogyny, sexual abuse, and the sexual autonomy of women. Given the similarities—including with the names Rose and Mary as described earlier—it’s quite possible that EWS's baby carriage is Kubrick's intentional nod to Rosemary's Baby. In the 1980 Michel Ciment interview about The Shining, he asked Kubrick, "What kind of horror films do you like? Did you see Rosemary's Baby?" To which Kubrick replied, "It was one of the best of the genre."

A year after Rosemary's Baby debuted, Polanski's actress wife Sharon Tate was murdered by a group of mostly female Charles Manson cult followers who reportedly practised satanic worship. In 1977, Polanski was scandalized and fled the US to Europe (where he remains in exile to this day) following his arrest at age 43 for the rape of a 13-year-old model at Jack Nicholson's house, though Nicholson wasn't there at the time. Polanski's first film following the incident was Tess (1979), adapted from Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), about a young peasant girl raped by a wealthy nobleman. Soon after, Jack Nicholson starred in Kubrick's The Shining, and was previously in Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is also about, among other things, a rich old man raping his daughter.

Themes common in Roman Polanski's life and works parallel those in EWS. Rape. Murder. Cults. Rich old men preying on very young women. Polanski's later wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, was 22 when she married the 55-year-old Polanski. Mia Farrow was married to Frank Sinatra at the time she was in Rosemary's Baby; she was 21 and he was 50 when they wed, and divorced within two years. Farrow later married filmmaker Woody Allen, only to also divorce him and accuse him of molesting her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, who Allen later married—when she was 26 and he was 61. Another adopted daughter of both Farrow and Allen, Dylan Farrow, accused him of molesting her when she was 7. Allen was never convicted or sentenced, but was legally denied custody rights. Then in 2013, another of their adopted children, Moses Farrow, announced that he'd been physically assaulted by Mia, and defended Allen. Soon-Yi Previn also publicly defended Allen in 2018. One of Farrow and Allen's biological children, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, published articles in The New Yorker in 2017-2018 that exposed sexual assault allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, CBS executive Les Moonves, and the United States president Donald Trump.

Kubrick was a big fan of Allen's work, particularly Husbands and Wives (costarring Sydney Pollack, 1992), Annie Hall (1977), and Manhattan (1979)—a black-and-white comedy about a 42-year-old man dating a 17-year-old girl. On a strange side note in connection to EWS, Allen's best friend in the movie is the character "Yale Pollack". At one point Kubrick considered casting Allen in the lead role of EWS, which is also set in Manhattan and features young women with older men. According to Stanley's brother-in-law Jan Harlan (who executive-produced Kubrick's last four films, as well as A.I., and directed the 2001 documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures) in a 2014 Sight & Sound interview:

There are numerous instances in EWS of old men with young women/girls: Sandor Szavost and Alice—he's some 25 years older than her. Ziegler and Mandy—he's almost 40 years older than her. Milich's associates with his daughter—she's 15 and they're in their fifties. And Kubrick directed Lolita, about a man in his fifties who is obsessed with a 14-year-old girl. A lot surrounding Rosemary's Baby very readily relates to common Kubrick themes of power and misogyny.

This all gets into EWS's darkest aspects; sexual abuse of women. Remember how the shirtless Ziegler is still zipping up his pants in front of a passed-out Mandy when Bill enters the room? And how inconvenienced and irritated he is when Bill says she should stay there for another hour to recover from her overdose when Ziegler wants to shuffle her out the backdoor right away? And darker still; pedophilia and the sexualization of children. The costume store owner Mr. Milich prostituting his daughter is the most blatant example. With the Lewis Carroll linkages, it's also mentionable there have been allegations he was a pedophile, having painted nude portraits of female children. And with the Catholic Church's systemic child sexual abuse, religious allusions in EWS are also disturbingly relevant. It all invokes conspiracy theories about child trafficking and prostitution rings run by powerful elites, the world's wealthiest criminals. Accounts of the CIA's MKUltra mind control program describe experiments that involved psychological, physical, and sexual abuse—but whether children were used is disputed and controversial.

Eyes Wide Shut is now twenty-years-old, but the serious themes it explores remain relevant to our time, with the MeToo and Time'sUp movements exposing sexual assault and predation by men in high positions of authority. The newspaper article about Mandy states "her agent" notified hotel security when she didn't answer the phone; is Ziegler her agent, à la Harvey Weinstein? Bill refers to the two women at the party as "models"… This all brings me to another key female character in EWS who I haven't discussed yet: Bill and Alice's daughter Helena Harford.

HELENA, MARIE, & MARIE-HÉLÈNE

Helena is a form of Helen, of Greek origin, meaning "light" or "shining bright" in fitting with the lights motif in EWS—and like Fidelio's protagonist Leonore, from French meaning "shining light". The name Helena is most famously from the character Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. Considered the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy is said to have "launched a thousand ships", as men started wars for her affections. As the story goes, Helen was a queen who left her monarch husband for a Trojan man named Paris. Some accounts describe it as an elopement, as Helen being equally in love with Paris as he was with her, while other versions describe it as an abduction wherein Paris took Helen against her will (Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 119, 193).

Some etymologists link Helen of Troy to "sun goddess" legends, and the story of her elopement or abduction by Paris as relating to "marriage drama" myths of ancient Indo-European cultures. The Old Greek spelling of her name has a "v" to possibly represent Venus—the goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, seduction, fertility—suggesting Helen and Venus share common mythological origins and they both represent aspects of femininity. This connects again to the eight-pointed Star of Venus, and the Astarte painting—the Semitic goddess equivalent to Venus—that appear in EWS.

Venus is very much involved in Helen of Troy's story; she granted Paris the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth, Helen, if he would proclaim that she, Venus, was the most beautiful goddess in all the universe. Paris did so and then ran off with Helen, which started the Trojan War. Duality is displayed again in this story of Helen and Venus—a human woman and a goddess, one the most beautiful on Earth, the other the most beautiful in the Heavens. Themes of twinning and pairing prominent in EWS are reflected throughout many tales of twinship in Greek mythology. Helen had a twin sister Clytemnestra, and they had another pair of half-brother twins named Gemini. So, Helen of Troy is a pair of pairs, linking to the duality embodied through the character Helena Harford; she has double-H initials, her father is played by an actor whose name means "twin", and there's another character named Illona—the Hungarian version of Helena—the same name.

Helen of Troy relates to another Greek myth, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, which many modern fairy tales are rooted in. It's been portrayed in various media, from poetry to paintings to popular culture, with Cupid imagery on everything from wallpaper to greeting cards. Cupid is commonly depicted today as a winged cherub equipped with a bow and arrows—anyone struck by his arrow will fall in love. In EWS, a statue of Cupid and Psyche can be seen at the bottom of the staircase in Ziegler's house, a Cupid card hangs in Domino's apartment, another Cupid card is visible in Bill's office, and Helena Harford wears a winged fairy costume at the film's opening.

Cupid, meaning "desire", was the Roman god of love, desire, and eroticism. His Greek counterpart is Eros, which is also a word on a sign behind Bill outside the costume store, and the origin of "erotic". Cupid was the son of Venus (Aphrodite, in Greek)—goddess of love, passion, sex—and Mars (Ares), god of war; an analogy, perhaps, for the extremes of human behaviour; love and war, creation and destruction. Psyche is from the Greek for "life" or "breath", with derivative meanings "soul", "spirit", and "self". In psychology the psyche is the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious. Psyche was a princess of stunning beauty, herself said to be the second coming of Venus. She became Cupid's wife, and mother of their daughter Hedone (meaning "pleasure", in Greek), also known as Voluptas ("pleasure", in Latin) who was herself the goddess of sensual pleasure. The English word "hedonism" is derived from Hedone, and "voluptuous" from Voluptas. The themes of The Tale of Cupid and Psyche center on love, lust, sex, and death.

Written in the 2nd century (circa 158-170 A.D.) by Platonist philosopher Lucius Apuleius, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche is an episode in his most famous work Metamorphoses. The protagonist and narrator is named Lucius, establishing the story's framework through the eyes of a fictional version of the writer Lucius Apuleius himself, which is a little like Bill/Cruise—an actor playing a character that mocks his real-life image. Most remarkably, just as the mansion scene occurs in the exact middle of EWS, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche occurs in the midpoint of the novel Metamorphoses. As a structural mirror of the overarching plot, it's an example of mise-en-abyme, a complex narrative frame of a story within a story, like EWS and its mirror structure endlessly reflecting aspects of itself.

The Cupid and Psyche story alludes to "mystery religions" which were a kind of early cult involving "initiates" called mystai (mystics). At the end of Metamorphoses, the character Lucius finds salvation by joining the mystery cult of Isis. Lucius Apuleius was himself an initiate of several cults and mystery religions, and was once accused of using magic to seduce a wealthy widow. Mystery has origins in the French mistere ("secret, hidden meaning"—and in a theological sense, "hidden spiritual significance, religious truth"), Latin mysterium ("secret rite, secret worship"), and Greek mystērion ("secret doctrine, secret ceremony"). In etymological relation, mystic comes from the Greek "to shut the eyes and mouth, in secrecy", to be initiated into the "mystery revelation" (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 307). It all sounds similar to what Bill experiences at the secret mansion party; before going there he asks Nick, "What's the big mystery?" In this context of the ancient initiatory rites of the pagan mysteries, EWS is about mysteries. And the movie itself might qualify as an anti-mystery, because nothing is answered with certainty.

Dated about 150 years before Apuleius' Metamorphoses is another classic Latin literary work also entitled Metamorphoses (8 A.D.) by Roman poet Ovid. Considered his masterwork, it's an epic narrative poem of 250 myths. At Ziegler's party, Sandor Szavost attempts to seduce Alice by citing Ovid's The Art of Love. When she tells him she's married, he replies that in ancient times women got married because it was the only way to be free to sleep with other men. Really? I thought legal marriage evolved as a property contract for men to secure their wealth succession and lineage by having women bear them offspring. The word "woman" in fact comes from the Old English wifman, from wife of man (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 544). Two ancient books connected to EWS—a movie with mirroring and duality themes—have identical titles: Metamorphoses and Metamorphoses. Coincidentally, the famous story The Metamorphosis was written by Franz Kafka, whose work Kubrick adored. A contemporary of Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, Kafka (born 1883) shares a birthday with Tom Cruise—July 3rd (1962). Bill undergoes a metamorphosis of sorts, doesn't he?

Helena plays with the baby buggy in the toyshop, and a baby stroller is visible on the landing of Domino's building, seemingly abandoned in the corner outside of her apartment—which links Helena and Domino. Also in the toy store, tiger stuffies fill a shelf behind Alice—of the same sort as one seen on Domino's bed, linking the two of them. This all invokes the possibility that not only is Domino some kind of alternate version of Bill's wife Alice, but also of his daughter Helena; the same characters transposed in alternate, imagined timelines. And Domino's roommate Sally resembles what Helena might look like in twenty years or so, with their freckles and red hair. Is this perhaps part of Bill's sexual hesitancy with Domino, and Sally? Maybe they represent a future Helena, a possible fate that Bill has been complicit in by his unconscious contribution to capitalism and misogyny. Milich prostituting his young daughter is another version. And Ziegler's wife is named Illona, an alternate Helena. Domino is a prostitute, and Illona is the wife of a super-rich guy who routinely has sex with prostitutes. And Helena is the daughter of Bill, a somewhat rich guy who thinks he wants to have sex with prostitutes, but doesn't.

In further connection to Helen/Helena, and to Marie/Marion: Marie-Hélène de Rothschild was a wealthy socialite and member of the Rothschild family, who died in 1996 around the time EWS was in early stages of production. Her paternal grandmother was Baroness Hélène de Rothschild. The most notable Rothschild reference in EWS is that the UK's Mentmore Towers, which serves as the Somerton mansion, was built in the 1850s by the son of Nathan Rothschild. Bill's patient is Nathanson. The Rothschilds' extravagant parties have been documented, including a masquerade ball that Marie-Hélène held at another Rothschild mansion called Château de Ferrières, in France. It was built just after Mentmore for another family member—Baron James de Rothschild—who, upon seeing his cousin's impressive mansion told the architect, "Build me a Mentmore, but twice the size" (The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune). Marie-Hélène took over the mansion in 1959, refurbished it, and it soon became the epicenter for European high society, with visitors including everyone from royalty to Hollywood celebrities.

Marie-Hélène's party was called the "Surrealist Ball", and while it wasn't a massive sex orgy (at least not as popularly reported), it does have numerous eerie parallels to EWS too similar to be ignored. It was held on December 12th, 1972—the Christmas season. The invitations were printed backwards, only legible if held up to a mirror; backwards text and inversion of traditional symbols are common occult practises. When Bill enters the mansion, the music composition heard is "Backwards Priests", a Romanian Orthodox liturgy played in reverse. Marie-Hélène's party guests were required to attend in costumes and masks with a surrealist theme—one of the EWS party attendees wears a Cubist mask. The ball also had food served on the body of a life-sized mannequin lying down—perhaps inspired by the nude mannequin tables in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, which had come out a year earlier?

Among the notable celebrities in attendance were Surrealist artist Salvador Dali, movie star Audrey Hepburn, and model-turned-actress Marisa Berenson, who a few years later starred in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975)—another movie about wealthy elites. In a 1974 New York Times interview Berenson said "I was once one of the highest paid models in the world" ("About New York", with John Corry). Her attendance at the ball resonates as an ominous foreshadowing of EWS. By 1972 Kubrick had acquired the rights to Traumnovelle and was already researching for it, so perhaps he talked to Berenson about Marie-Hélène's ball. At that time Kubrick was among the world's most famous filmmakers, so maybe he'd even attended such similar parties.

Another peripheral link to the name Helen is that actress Helen Mirren starred in 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)—the sequel to 2001. Her character is Tanya Kirbuk, an obvious homage to Stanley Kubrick as an aural anagram and near-exact reversal in spelling of his surname. 2010 was adapted by writer-director Peter Hyams from 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke's 1982 sequel novel. Kubrick wasn't involved, but Hyams got his and Clarke's blessing to make the film. In addition to the Mirren character's name (which is different in Clarke's book), Hyams pays tribute to 2001 by featuring Clarke in a cameo sitting on a park bench. And a fake Time magazine about US-Soviet tensions appears in the film, with a cover picture of Clarke as the US President and Kubrick as the Soviet Premier. Helen Mirren was born on July 26th (1945)—the same birthday as Stanley Kubrick (1928), which is the same birthday as Leon Vitali as Red Cloak (1948), and also the same birthday as Peter Hyams (1943). EWS's Mr. Milich is played by Rade Šerbedžija, whose birthday is July 27th (1946)—one day after Kubrick et al. These birthday coincidences are another example of the seemingly infinite expanse of the EWS multiverse.

The Hélène part of Marie-Hélène relates to: Helena Harford, Illona, Helen of Troy, Helen Mirren, the Rothschild family, Mentmore Towers, the Surrealist Ball, Marisa Berenson, Barry Lyndon. And the Marie part of Marie-Hélène relates to: Marie Richardson as Marion, Tom Cruise's sister's name Marian, his mother's name Mary, Nicole Kidman's middle name Mary, the Yale punks taunting "Merry Christmas, Mary", and actress Mariana Hewitt as the housekeeper Rosa, which connects to the babysitter Roz, which means rose, which all connect to the name Rose-Mary through the Rosemary's Baby carriage appearance. Such cross-connections between names and associated substories further exemplify the scope of Kubrick's artistic vision.

SABRINA & COMUS (A MASQUE)

In the toy store, Helena says to her parents, "I can put Sabrina in here" as she gestures to the antique-looking Rosemary's Baby carriage—ostensibly referring to a doll of hers. Alice replies, "It's old-fashioned." Did Kubrick have a reason for using that particular name, and if so then what might Sabrina signify in this context?

Sabrina is a water nymph character with origins in English and Greek mythology. Her story links to Helen of Troy's, as Sabrina is said to descend from Brutus of Troy and the Trojan War hero Aeneas who is also a son of Venus and cousin of Paris. In English legend, Sabrina was a girl born to the mistress of King Locrine. He acknowledged Sabrina and her mother and rejected his wife Gwendolen, who then waged war against him and won—killing Locrine in battle and ordering Sabrina and her mother be drowned in the Welsh-English River Severn. Severn comes from the Old Welsh Habren, which the Romans translated as Sabrina (Dictionary of First Names, 239). Various versions of the story conclude with Sabrina being saved by the river nymphs and becoming one herself. Nymphs, or Naiads, are beautiful female spirits who preside over rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water.

Sabrina is a key character in a masque by English poet John Milton, entitled Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634), announced as a masque to honour chastity. Masques were an ancient form of live, theatrical entertainment and pageantry, a popular court celebration with singing, dancing and mask-wearing—with the main parts often played by nobles and royals themselves. The etymology of the French word masque is directly linked to mask and masquerade, from the Italian mascara and the Latin masca meaning "witch" and "specter", and the Arabic maskara meaning "buffoon" (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 283). Note the thematic relevance of the word masque to EWS and the word masquerade as commonly used today; mascara is makeup for the eyes, with supernatural connotations (as in Halloween makeup), clownish purposes, or sexual implications—disguising oneself to attract, shock, or entertain.

Comus is the Greek god of excess, festivity, indulgence, and nocturnal dalliances (Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 68). The story of Comus concerns a woman, The Lady, who Comus captures and brings to his pleasure palace where he attempts to coerce her into sexual debauchery. He accosts her, tries to drug her, and put spells on her with his necromancy—reminiscent of Ziegler and the overdosed Mandy. But The Lady holds strong against Comus until she is eventually saved and freed by the nymph Sabrina. Comus concludes with an allusion to The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, drawing further interconnections between EWS and other stories, with elements of each corresponding with the others.

The moment Helena mentions Sabrina, a woman passes behind her and glances over. Looking not unlike a witch, she wears pointed black boots and a long dark fur overcoat with its hood up, like the cloaked masked ball attendees. Sabrina comes to mind as the name of the teenage witch from the Archie comic book series (by George Gladir and Dan DeCarlo), linking, however loosely, to EWS's Wiccan and witchcraft-related imagery. Immediately prior to EWS, Nicole Kidman starred in the fantasy-comedy Practical Magic (1998), playing sister to costar Sandra Bullock's character as two magic-slinging modern-day witches (Bullock's birthday is also July 26th, 1964; the same as Kubrick's, 1928).

Helena plays with the Rosemary's Baby carriage as a witchlike woman walks by—further augmenting EWS associations with the supernatural, fairy tales, and horror/thriller cinema, as Roman Polanski directed a number of other features in the genre, particularly psychological horror. Repulsion (1965) stars Catherine Deneuve as a woman whose increasing repulsion to men and their sexual advances drives her to murder. And The Tenant (1976) stars Polanski himself as a man tormented by his cultlike group of neighbours. Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969 by female cultists; she had starred in his 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers, the supernatural horror Eye of the Devil (1966) as a witch, and Valley of the Dolls (1967)—a critically reviled melodrama about the misfortunes of three women in the entertainment industry. Polanski's first film after Tate's death was a graphically violent adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth (1971), which famously features The Three Witches characters.

Sabrina is also the title character of a 1954 film starring Audrey Hepburn—who would attend the Rothschild Surrealist Ball—and directed by Billy Wilder, whom Kubrick admired. Sabrina was remade in 1995 starring Harrison Ford (Harford) and directed by Sydney Pollack (Ziegler).

CARLOTTA & GISELLE

A stack of boxes in the toyshop bear a picture of a girl doll pushing a miniature toy baby carriage, and the name "Carlotta Junior". This parallels what happens a moment earlier in the same scene; a girl, Helena, with her hands on the push handle of a baby carriage, reflected in the picture on the box. What does the name Carlotta signify here? Etymologically, Carlotta is the Italian feminine form of "freeman" (i.e. "freewoman") or "free peasant"; Helena is Carlotta Junior, daughter of a free woman? Carlotta and Charlotte are the female variants of Carl and Charles (Dictionary of First Names, 52)—and yes we do have a Carl in Eyes Wide Shut. The etymology of his name "Carl Thomas" translates to "Free Mason". So who is Carl(otta) Junior? The future unborn child of Carl and Marion? Perhaps she's a duplicate, dream-toy-doll version of Helena, reproduced and sold in a store in boxes upon boxes, like a house of mirrors.

When exploring peripheral Carlotta links, deeper meaning emerges. Carlotta Grisi was a famous 19th-century Italian ballerina most known for the romantic ballet Giselle, in her "greatest role" as the title character. Giselle tells the story of a young peasant girl who dies of heartbreak when a deceitful, disguised nobleman betrays her love. She's summoned back to life by supernatural female beings, spirits of virgin girls who exact revenge on abusive men by dancing them to death. Giselle recalls the tale of Sabrina and Comus, which also has female spirits assisting women who are wronged by men, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, about a peasant girl abused by a wealthy nobleman, and Fidelio, about a woman in disguise.

The name Giselle is from the German gisil, meaning "to owe, a pledge". In the Middle Ages it was customary for rival factions to offer a person, often a child, to each other as a pledge of peace (Dictionary of First Names, 111)—as in Rosemary's Baby, and also like Mysterious Woman in EWS, who offers to sacrifice herself to save Bill. Is she then like Giselle, and Bill the disguised nobleman? Or is Ziegler the deceitful nobleman, and Giselle is Mandy, the peasant girl? Carlotta Grisi had two daughters (Marie and Léontine), one by her dancing partner and one by Prince Leon Radziwell. So, Helena is alternately Carlotta Junior, a princess—or Giselle Junior, the daughter of a heartbroken woman turned spirit avenger.

Kubrick knew about things like ballet, Carlotta Grisi, and Giselle. His second wife Ruth Sobotka was a ballerina, dancer, choreographer, art director, and actress. She appeared as the ballerina character Iris in Kubrick's first official feature film Killer's Kiss (1955), as well as serving as art director (which she did again on Kubrick's next movie The Killing, 1956). Iris is the Greek goddess of the rainbow. Sobotka was the Austrian-born daughter of immigrants; her mother was a Viennese actress named Gisella, and Kubrick scholars speculate that it was likely Ruth who introduced Stanley to Austrian literature, including Schnitzler's Traumnovelle.

Among numerous credits to her name, Ruth Sobotka appeared in The Nutcracker (in 1954, while she and Stanley were together) which Helena mentions at the beginning of EWS, and as the character "Charlotta" in a 1962 production of Anton Chekhov's last play The Cherry Orchard (1904). The work dramatizes socioeconomic forces in Russia at the turn of the century, including the abolition of serfdom, rise of the middle class, and decline of the aristocracy, and has been described as having a dual nature with alternately tragic and comedic elements. The character Charlotta is a governess, like Helena's babysitter Roz, and like Carlotta the girl doll is governess to the baby doll Carlotta Junior in the toyshop.

Ruth Sobotka's first appearance as a movie actress was in the experimental Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), widely recognized as the first feature-length avant-garde art film—with a title that applies to Eyes Wide Shut's storyline. Hans Richter is credited as the movie's producer, co-director, and co-writer, which is comprised of seven surreal, dream sequence shorts. Each segment was written and directed by a prominent Dadaist or Surrealist artist of the day, including Man Ray, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Richter. Dadaism was an early-20th-century art movement that employed collage, sound-poetry, cut-up writing, and found object art, with links to Cubism, abstract art, and anti-art movements. Dadaists believed in anti-bourgeois protest through art; rejecting capitalist aestheticism, mocking social conventions, and emphasizing the illogical and absurd.

Dreams That Money Can Buy tells the story of a man who can see his own dreams while looking into his eyes in the mirror, then sets up a business selling actual dreams—the contents of which bear similarities to EWS; there's a young couple, a blind man, a mask, mirrors, mannequins, toy figurines that come to life, and many close-up shots of eyes. Ruth Sobotka appears as "The Girl" in Man Ray's segment "Ruth, Roses and Revolvers". Note the Roses in the title in relation to EWS imagery, and the metacinematic use of Ruth the actress and character's name (like Jack Nicholson as "Jack" and Danny Lloyd as "Danny" in The Shining).

Knowing Kubrick's reputation as a completist and that his second wife acted in Dreams That Money Can Buy, one would assume he saw the movie and its conceptual parallels to EWS are no accident. But it goes even further; Stanley Kubrick himself is actually in the film. An uncredited nineteen-year-old Stanley appears briefly as an extra, visible a few times in an intermittent series of shots from around 34:55–37:35 of Dreams That Money Can Buy. He's sitting next to his then-girlfriend and soon-to-be first wife Toba Metz, both of them audience members at a screening of an avant-garde film within the film, in the very scene featuring his future second wife Ruth Sobotka. Stanley and Ruth married in 1955 and divorced in 1957, and she died ten years later at age 41, on June 17th, 1967—three days before Nicole Kidman was born on June 20th, 1967.

There are further references to avant-garde art/artists in EWS, and to visual art in general. A poster on a bulletin board outside Domino's apartment reads FOR SALE: KEITH HARING PAINTING. Haring was a New York graffiti artist who died of AIDS, and when Bill returns to Domino's her roommate Sally tells him Domino is HIV positive. On a related note, when Bill is looking for Nick, the Gillespie's waitress tells him Nick's hotel name—implying she slept with him—but only after Bill lies about having important blood test results, suggesting a sexually transmitted disease. Also on the bulletin board is an ad for "Body Oriented Psychotherapy", in fitting with the film's psychosexual themes.

Bill leaves the hospital morgue and walks down a hallway bizarrely adorned with abstract paintings, as if a Surrealist art gallery—recalling his apartment hallway likewise filled with colourful paintings (by Stanley's wife Christiane). Alice is a former art gallerist, who we see wrapping a Vincent Van Gogh art book as a Christmas gift for Bill. At the Nathansons', as the housekeeper Rosa moves from one room to the next, a Mark Rothko painting is panned over quickly. Rothko was a Jewish, New York-based abstract artist who, like Van Gogh, died by suicide. Also appearing briefly, on the wall of the elevator to Bill's medical office, is the painting "Counter Weights" (1926) by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. A pioneer of abstract art and Expressionism, Kandinsky cofounded the artist network Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), which included German painter August Macke, whose painting "View into a Lane" (1914) hangs in Bill's medical office waiting room.

Victor Ziegler is mentioned as having a valuable art collection, and Adolf Ziegler was the real-life Nazi official in charge of confiscating "degenerate art". Among the thousands of Nazi-looted art works were numerous paintings by Kandinsky and Van Gogh. Other EWS art references include old portraits of nobles in Victor's billiard room, a Cupid and Psyche statue in his foyer, numerous statues at Somerton, Rossetti's Astarte Syriaca in Sharkey's, and perhaps most subtly, a small poster with the words "I ❤️ ART" on the Harfords' fridge.

The classic Gothic novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) by Gaston Leroux (1910), and subsequent adaptations, features a character named Carlotta. She's the prima donna of the Paris Opera House, in another story that bears noteworthy similarities to EWS; The Phantom character would've fit right in unnoticed at the mansion costume party, for starters. The narrative also includes a masquerade ball, a mirrored room, and again recalls Giselle's deceitful nobleman, Comus' villainous title character, and Fidelio's disguised protagonist. The Phantom of the Opera is a creepy tale about a masked, cloaked figure who is out of place in high society, like Bill, and also identifies with Red Cloak, as The Phantom is usually depicted wearing a red cloak or cape.

Kubrick liked ghost stories—phantoms—as in The Shining. The word "phantom" links etymologically to "fantasy" and "phantasy" (fantasie, phantasia, phantasma, from Old French, Latin, Greek), meaning "sensuous perception", "delusive imagination", and/or "illusion" (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 196, 349). The word "fantasy" today refers to either a make-believe magical world, as in a fairy tale, or an imagined, desired sexual encounter. Eyes Wide Shut is both; Helena is the mythic Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Sabrina is a water nymph, Giselle a spirit fairy being, Venus is the Roman Goddess of Love/Sex/Desire, Astarte her Semitic counterpart, her fairy son Cupid/Eros is the God of Romantic Love, his wife Psyche the Goddess of the Soul, with butterfly wings. And so on. Like the various EWS characters; Bill's phantoms, haunting him.

But perhaps the most most notable connection to "Carlotta Junior" is that Charlotte is the name of Lolita's mother in Nabakov's book Lolita (1955) and, as played by Shelley Winters, in Kubrick's film adaptation. So, Carlotta Junior is, then, Lolita. And Lolita is a diminutive of Dolores, which means "sorrowful, suffering" in Spanish (Random House Spanish-English Dictionary, 26). A sad girl, contrasted by Carlotta, a free woman.

SHADOWS, WINDOWS, & TELEVISION SCREENS

When Bill is in Domino's bedroom, his cellphone rings. He puts his finger to his lips motioning for her to be quiet, walks to the side of the room, and answers his phone. Cut to Alice sitting alone at the kitchen table in their apartment, beside a television. She asks Bill how much longer he will be, and he lies to her, saying he's still at the Nathansons'. The movie playing on the TV is Blume in Love, particularly relevant as it is about a divorce lawyer whose wife divorces him after catching him cheating. The movie's tagline A Love Story for Guys Who Cheat On Their Wives could function as a subtitle for Eyes Wide Shut, too. Although Bill doesn't fully cheat, so his tagline would more accurately be A Love Story for Guys Who ALMOST Cheat On Their Wives.

Blume in Love (1973) is written and directed by Paul Mazursky, an early Kubrick collaborator. Before becoming a writer-director himself, Mazursky appeared as an actor in Kubrick's first feature film Fear and Desire (1953)—a title that also applies to Bill Harford. An antiwar film, Fear and Desire displays early warning signs of what later become common themes throughout Kubrick's filmography; Mazursky plays Sidney, a soldier who kills a local peasant girl while stranded in enemy territory. The movie disappeared after limited distribution because Kubrick was unhappy with it and discouraged its rerelease, so Killer's Kiss was long considered Kubrick's first official feature-length film—until Fear and Desire was finally released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2012.

The scene cuts back and forth between Bill at Domino's and Alice at home. Bill stands in Domino's bedroom beside a mirror on the right side of the screen. A fragment of his reflection is visible in the mirror, as is half of a mask that hangs on Domino's opposite wall. Behind him is a window with partially drawn Venetian blinds. Seen a moment earlier but now out of frame was Domino's television, turned off. We also just saw another mirror on Domino's wall opposite the one Bill is standing beside. Alice sits at the table with the television on the right side of the screen, and behind her are glass cupboard doors, like a window. Alice's reflection flickers faintly on the TV screen, which is reflected on the cupboard window behind her. A reflection of a reflection of a shadow on a screen. Back to Bill, where visible directly under the mirror is a book entitled Shadows on the Mirror. The television screen and mirror function as windows between the characters' environments, gateways positioned in the same place in relation to Bill and Alice in their respective surroundings.

A husband, attempting to cheat on his wife, talks to her on the telephone while he's positioned beside a mirror. The wife talks to her husband on the telephone while she's positioned beside a television, which is playing a movie about a man trying to win his wife back after cheating on her. And that movie is made by Kubrick collaborator Paul Mazursky, and features another actor Kubrick worked with—Lolita's Shelley Winters. Blume in Love alludes to Lolita, which is perhaps at least in part why Mazursky cast Winters, and is yet another example of how mediums of expression and communication in EWS (telephones, notes, television screens, paintings) function as messages for the audience, right there for all of us to see even if at first we don't. Eyes wide shut.

Blume in Love has mirroring and duality themes of its own. Parts of the story take place in Venice, Italy, and parts in Venice, California. EWS links to Venice, Italy—a historic merchant hub—in using traditional Venetian masks. Thomas Mann's novel Death in Venice (1912) is about a man in his fifties who travels to Venice and becomes increasingly obsessed with a fourteen-year-old boy he meets there. So, while originally published over forty years earlier, Death in Venice has obvious similarities to Lolita. Thomas Mann was, like his contemporary Arthur Schnitzler, influenced by Sigmund Freud and his views on dreams; Schnitzler was indeed regarded by Freud as his literary doppelgänger.

The particular Blume in Love scene that's shown in EWS is relevant too, as Juli Kearns observes in her shot-by-shot analysis: "The camera pans right over a young blond man who had been eyed earlier…by a much older man…and had spurned his glance, the scene an obvious reference to Death in Venice in which a composer goes to Venice and falls in love with a preteen boy…Unlike Lolita, however, nothing happens between the pair in Death in Venice"—like nothing happens between Bill and any of his sexual prospects. Kubrick provides commentary about EWS within the film itself, through the Blume in Love scene showing characters alluding to Death in Venice, which connects to Lolita, and back to Kubrick. With all its links to other creative works, EWS resonates on a metatextual level. Movies within movies, stories within stories. The Death in Venice protagonist visits a part of the city called "the Lido"; the same area that hosts the Venice Film Festival—the oldest, and one of the biggest (next to Cannes and Berlin) film festivals in the world—where Eyes Wide Shut made its European debut.

Mazursky himself plays a role in Blume in Love, as a character named Hellman, recalling EWS's Red Cloak. Alice sits at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette, with a glass of milk and a box of "SnackWell's Devil's Food Cookie Cakes" laid out in front of her. Earlier, Alice and Helena sit in front of the TV that plays a cartoon; The Fright Before Christmas—a segment from 1979's Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales—featuring the Tasmanian Devil drinking milk and eating devil's food cake (like Alice), masquerading in costume (like Bill), and much Christmas imagery.

One visible book title in Domino's apartment is Introducing Sociology (1996), a real introductory textbook for university sociology students. Sociology is the study of human behaviour, and how human spheres of activity are affected by intersecting influences of economic class stratification, political systems, laws, religion, sexuality, gender, etc. Film analyst Tim Kreider borrowed the title Introducing Sociology for his EWS essay, wherein he makes more compelling observations. The other book on Domino's shelf, Shadows on the Mirror, is below a mirror. Kearns describes it as "a kind of thriller about a female lawyer whose husband was unfaithful, then when widowed she goes about having brief affairs with men, restoring their confidence…But one 'vicious misogynist' of a client stalks her, and 'keeps her under surveillance as a possible replacement for his missing wife'."

Kearns also notes that Chris Isaak's "Baby did a Bad Bad Thing"—a song featured in EWS—is from "the album Forever Blue which also has the song 'Shadows in a Mirror'. The lyrics have two lovers who have split up, one hoping that they will get together again, but the shadows in a mirror tell the person they're wrong and that they are instead finished" (Kearns). The shadow motif also connects to Helena through the movie adaptation of the Greek myth, Helen of Troy (1956), in which Paris at first mistakes Helen for her beautiful slave, so she poses as such and "speaks of herself as Helen's 'shadow'. The movie continues with the idea of dual personas for both Paris and Helen" (Kearns). Helen of Troy is played by actress Rossanna Podestà, who has the same birthday as Nicole Kidman (June 20th, 1934 and 1967, respectively).

The shadow theme also links to the book Helena reads at bedtime: "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head, and I see him jump before me when I jump into my bed". Eerily this poem excerpt has vaguely sexual connotations in this context, as Alice is reading along and encouraging Helena, getting particularly gleeful when Helena reads the end, as Bill looks on silently. It might play differently if the poem's pronoun was she/her. But here it's as if Alice is coaching her daughter to be what her own idea of a woman is; a counterpart to a man, as in another scene where Alice helps Helena with math homework calculating how much money boys have. The poem is "My Shadow" by Robert Louis Stevenson, whose most famous work is the Gothic novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—another tale that explores the dual nature, the light and dark sides, of man.

In Full Metal Jacket, when a colonel asks Private Joker why he wears a peace sign on his body armor yet has "Born to Kill" written on his combat helmet, Joker replies, "I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man. The Jungian thing." Carl Jung was a one-time Freud collaborator, a psychoanalyst whose shadow theory relates to Freud's ideas about the id. In Jungian psychology, the "shadow" is a person's unknown dark side, personifying "everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself" (Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 284). Instinctive, irrational, and prone to psychological projections, the shadow embodies unconscious, sexual, animal impulses that often appear in dreams and visions. Jung says that when "an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself…such things as egotism…unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions" (Jung, Man and his Symbols, 174-175).

In relation to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jung says "it must be Jekyll, the conscious personality, who integrates the shadow…and not vice versa. Otherwise the conscious becomes the slave of the autonomous shadow" (Archetypes, 123). As the process of integration continues, "the libido leaves the bright upper world…sinks back into its own depths…below, in the shadows of the unconscious" (Psychology of the Unconscious, 181-182) and emerging to the forefront is "what was hidden under the mask…the shadow" (Psychology, 238-239). There's been a lot of talk about EWS as Freudian, but Jung's descriptions of the "shadow" apply stunningly well to EWS. Note the character Carl…another of Bill's shadow projections, pointing us to Carl Jung? Coincidentally, Carl Jung shares a birthday with Stanley Kubrick, July 26th (1875 and 1928, respectively).

THE MUSIC: BABY DID A BAD BAD THING

Among Stanley Kubrick's contributions to the cinematic arts, he was noted for his effective use of music—most famously for the 1896 composition "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss, in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Eyes Wide Shut's soundtrack is comprised almost exclusively of orchestral instrumental music. Contemporary composer Jocelyn Pook recorded four pieces for the score, mostly based on her previous compositions; the masked ball features a reworked version of Pook's "Backwards Priests" which contains a Romanian Orthodox divine liturgy played backwards (retitled as "Masked Ball"), and Pook's "Migrations"—a haunting piece based on a Tamil song—plays during the orgy.

The movie's opening and closing theme is "Waltz No. 2" from "Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra", by Dmitri Shostakovich, which also recurs throughout. The waltz carries the start of the film through its opening credits and into the action, where Bill then goes to the stereo and turns the music off. This breaks the line between nondiegetic and diegetic worlds, as the music existing outside of the story, before it even begins, enters the fictional universe and is controlled by the character within it. Other classical music compositions include a section from Mozart's Requiem, "Rex Tremendae", which plays in Sharkey's as Bill reads of Mandy's overdose. Soon after, he discovers she's died; a requiem is a religious musical composition to lay the souls of the dead to rest. And "Grey Clouds", by 19th-century Hungarian composer Franz Lizst, plays during the morgue scene.

The soundtrack's one vocal number is Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing". To help Kidman relax during nude scene rehearsals Kubrick encouraged her to play her own choice of music, which included Isaak's 1995 album Forever Blue (appropriate given all the blue light in EWS) with this song on it—and Kubrick decided to use it. Not on the official soundtrack but featured in the movie, in Gillespie's diner, is The Dell-Vetts' "I Want a Boy for Christmas". The Oscar Peterson Trio's jazz instrumental "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" plays while Bill is in Domino's bedroom, and—in another instance of breaking diegesis—he walks over to her stereo and turns the music off. Other songs are used in ironic ways; "When I Fall in Love" and "It Had to be You" are played by the band at Ziegler's party while Bill and Alice flirt with other people. And an instrumental arrangement of "Strangers in the Night" plays at the mansion's ballroom dance scene; vocal versions of the song feature lyrics satirically relevant to EWS, such as "something in your eyes was so inviting".

One of the most prominent pieces of music in EWS is a recurring, haunting four-note piano motif from "Musica Recircata (2nd movement)" by György Ligeti (written circa 1950). Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer, born in Transylvania, Romania—like where Dracula lived. At Ziegler's party, the mysterious older man who Alice dances with introduces himself as Sandor Szavost. At first I thought this might be a reference to Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder and High Priest of The Church of Satan. Szavost's presence as a sleazy older European man who hits on Alice serves as a reminder that she and Bill are partying with people tied to an upper-echelon satanic cult. Evoking Dracula-esque qualities with his creepy attempts at seducing Alice, Szavost says "I'm Hungarian"—because Romanian would be too on-the-nose of a comparison, and Kubrick rarely gives it to you straight. But Szavost is certainly reminiscent of the bloodsucking count and his seductive powers.

But more interconnected details surface with the discovery that György Ligeti's parents were Dr. Sándor Ligeti and Dr. Ilona Ligeti, like the EWS characters Sandor and Illona (spelled with the extra "L"), which of course translates to Helena. And György Ligeti himself also has the middle name Sándor, after his father.

Kubrick used Ligeti's music in three of his films: 2001 has excerpts of four Ligeti pieces, The Shining uses portions of one Ligeti piece, and EWS repeats that one segment from Ligeti's "Musica Recircata" at key moments. The composition has been associated with freedom of expression, written as a protest against fascism; most of Ligeti's family was killed by the Nazis in World War II. At the German premier of EWS, Ligeti accompanied Kubrick's widow Christiane, whose uncle was a Nazi propagandist.

STANLEY KUBRICK IS IN THE MOVIE

Stanley Kubrick died within a week of showing the finished version of his last ever film to a small group of people in his inner circle. There are those of his detractors who say Eyes Wide Shut is not truly a Kubrick film because he didn't live to fully complete it. But those closest to him say this is the movie he wanted to make, and that he died—of a heart attack, in his sleep, at his home—because he finally relaxed after finishing the final cut of this exhaustive, years-long project. His final masterpiece. At Kubrick's request, EWS was released on July 16th, 1999—the day he had calculated as having the highest viewership probability for a summer movie release. It was also thirty years to the day of the Apollo 11 Moon mission launch—a funny coincidence given his celebrated outerspace epic 2001 features a Moon scene—and a nod to conspiracy theorists who say Kubrick secretly filmed a fake Moon landing for NASA and the CIA so that America could claim a Cold War victory in the Space Race with Russia.

To honour Stanley Kubrick's contribution to science fiction cinema, the largest mountain range on Pluto's moon Charon was named "Kubrick Mons", in 2018. The mountains rise out of craters, referred to by astronomers as "Moat Mountains"—a contradiction in terms like "Eyes Wide Shut", and so a suitable tribute to Kubrick's enigmatic genius. Charon is from Greek mythology, the name of the ferryman from Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divide the world of the living from the world of the dead (Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 58-59). The etymology of Charon is from Greek meaning "keen gaze" and "fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes" (Greek-English Lexicon, 202-203). A coin is paid to Charon as a crossing fee, like Bill pays the cabbie who drives him to the mansion. Bill rips a $100 "bill" in two and gives half to the driver, saying he'll get the other half if he waits for him. A torn bill from a torn Bill.

Eyes Wide Shut is in many ways Kubrick's most personal film. Stanley was born in New York City to Jewish parents, and grew up in the Bronx. His mother was an auto-didact; self-taught, like Stanley, and his father was a successful medical doctor. So, Bill and Alice, a New York doctor and housewife, are based at least in part on Kubrick's own parents, a New York doctor and housewife. And Kubrick indeed modeled the Harford home after his own Manhattan apartment prior to moving to England.

EWS was coproduced by the US and UK—the two places where Kubrick primarily lived; first in New York, then at about the halfway point of his life (age 35—he died at 70), he moved to England. The first six of Kubrick's twelve official feature films were made while he lived in America, and the last six while he lived in England. Fitting with EWS themes, it's another example of meta-duality—set in New York City but filmed in London; the US and UK, two of the biggest capitalist, colonial empires in history.

Other personal touches Kubrick puts in EWS are appearances by his two main assistants: longtime production assistant and casting director Leon Vitali as Red Cloak, and personal assistant and chauffeur Emilio D'Alessandro in a cameo as a newspaper vendor. D'Alessandro's wife and daughter also appear as extras in the toy store. The name "Leon Vitali" is in the newspaper, and the names of both men are on signs: one reads "VITALI", and another "Caffe da Emilio"—which was the name of a real restaurant near Kubrick's parents' Los Angeles apartment. D'Alessandro's involvement with Kubrick is detailed in the documentary S is for Stanley – 30 Years Behind the Wheel for Stanley Kubrick (2016), as Vitali's is in Filmworker (2017). Kubrick's wife Christiane appears in EWS as a café patron, and his daughter Katharina as the mother of Bill's patient, who is played by Katharina's real son—Stanley's grandson—Alex (Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film, 69).

It's been rumoured that Kubrick himself has a cameo; sitting at a table in the Sonata Café is ­a man who looks like Stanley Kubrick did at the time (appearing at 55:55–56:07 and 56:57–57:09), but it's dark and hard to say for sure. The man in question glances at Bill and looks briefly at the camera—something you are never to do unless of course the script calls for it, and surely Kubrick would notice this and never allow it from an extra? But as much as I wish it was him, I don't actually think it is Kubrick here; a lookalike at best, a stand-in that Kubrick perhaps planted to give a doppelgänger's final farewell to his audience.

Stanley Kubrick's three children—Katharina, Anya, and Vivian—were all involved in his film shoots, especially Vivian; she had cameos in his movies, filmed the behind-the-scenes documentary The Making of The Shining, and composed the Full Metal Jacket score. Stanley also wanted Vivian to compose the music for EWS, but by the time it began production in the mid-'90s, she'd become increasingly entangled with Scientology and had started disconnecting from her family. As Christiane told The Guardian in 2010, Stanley was unsurprisingly upset by this: "They had a huge fight. He was very unhappy. He wrote her a 40-page letter trying to win her back. He begged her endlessly to come home…I'm glad he didn’t live to see what happened." Katharina told the Daily Beast that her sister had cut off communication with the family, recounting the time Vivian showed up to her father's funeral accompanied by a Scientology handler: "The person sat on a bed, saying nothing, while Vivian complained of back pain that she said had been caused 10,000 years ago."

Considering Eyes Wide Shut refers to Scientology in ways it would be hard to argue are flattering, is the film in some respects about Stanley Kubrick himself? His relationship with his wife and his daughter Vivian, and losing her to a cult? Helena Harford, with the double initials, is quite possibly an embodiment of Vivian Vanessa Kubrick. It's inevitable that elements of an artist's real life will be reflected in their work, but which elements are deliberate, and which stem from the subconscious?

Alice mentions having formerly managed an art gallery, but is now unemployed. Christiane Kubrick is an accomplished artist, and many of her paintings—and some by her daughter Katharina (from her previous marriage, Stanley's adopted daughter)—appear in EWS. Stanley met the young actress Christiane Harlan not long before casting her (in a memorable role) in his Paths of Glory, and they remained married for forty years, until his death. The parents of Christiane and her brother Jan Harlan were both opera singers, in relation to Fidelio. And their uncle Veit Harlan was a German director of Nazi propaganda movies, including one of the most antisemitic films of all time, 1940’s Jud Süß ("Süss, the Jew"). Christiane Susanne Harlan was ashamed to come from "a family of murderers" and so used the name "Susanne Christian" when she acted in Paths of Glory—but she was relieved when Kubrick's Jewish family accepted her despite her Nazi ties (Christiane Kubrick interview in Haaretz, 2005).

Stanley Kubrick was ethnically Jewish, and arguably culturally, if not religiously, and his wife descended from Nazis—so Jewishness, or omission of Jewishness, and/or antisemitism in his films is a topic worthy of discussion—perhaps in Eyes Wide Shut more than any other. 1940 saw the release of another Nazi propaganda film, Die Rothschilds ("The Rothschilds"), which negatively depicts the Rothschild family during the Napoleonic wars. It features characters based on the real-life figures Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his son Nathan, who was father to another Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who built Mentmore Towers, which serves as the Somerton mansion in EWS. After Bill's patient Lou Nathanson dies, he goes to a mansion built by Nathan's son. The Rothschild family's portrayal as a corrupt Jewish banking empire is a common antisemitic trope and feature of countless racist conspiracy theories. So, was Kubrick's selection of Mentmore purely practical, because it fit what he envisioned for EWS, or is it deliberate commentary on antisemitic propaganda?

One of Kubrick's abandoned film projects was based on the life of Napoleon, which he reportedly researched exhaustively, so he was likely aware of the Nazi film Die Rothschilds and its characterization of the Rothschilds as villains in Napoleon's story. Another of Kubrick's unrealized projects was to be about the Holocaust, which he also tirelessly researched. Given all this, and his wife's family history, antisemitism was certainly a subject Kubrick thought a lot about. Then why cast Jewish actor Sydney Pollack—who replaced the originally cast Harvey Keitel, also Jewish—as Ziegler, EWS's central villain? In many ways Ziegler embodies racist "sinister Jew" stereotypes; decadent, vulgar, duplicitous, and ultrawealthy. There are very few explicit Jewish references in EWS, although notably visible is "Josef Kreibich's Knishery" outside Domino's apartment. Is this perhaps based on a real knishery Kubrick recalled from his youth in New York City? And why include it in his meticulously designed set, when he had ordered co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael to erase Jewish references from their screenplay adaptation of Schnitzler's Traumnovelle?

Arthur Schnitzler was Jewish, as are Traumnovelle's couple whom Bill and Alice are based on. And there's a subtext of antisemitism in the novella. But Kubrick wanted this out of the movie. Or did he? In connection with the EWS character Lou Nathanson; there was another Rothschild family member named Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild who was Austrian, like Schnitzler, lived in Vienna in the time the novella was set (1920s), and owned a large and exquisite art collection. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938 and was only released after negotiating a multimillion dollar bail payment. He survived the Holocaust, but the Rothschild possessions were plundered and subsequently "Aryanised", including many valuable art works. Aryanization was the Nazi practice of seizing Jewish property and transferring it into non-Jewish hands—kind of like what Kubrick did in EWS with the Anglicization/Americanization of Traumnovelle's European Jewish characters. Adolf Ziegler was the Nazi official in charge of confiscating "degenerate art", and in EWS it's mentioned that Victor Ziegler has a great art collection in his private gallery.

These could all be clues to Kubrick's consciously orchestrated—albeit subtle and enigmatic—meta-commentary on antisemitic conspiracy theories, or it could be purely coincidental. But is it coincidence that a Kubrick actress, Marisa Berenson, attended a Rothschild masquerade ball that bears significant parallels to the masked ball at a Rothschild mansion in EWS? This party was called the "Surrealist Ball", Surrealism was among the art movements that Nazis deemed degenerate, and several Surrealist paintings are visible in EWS. So what's Kubrick trying to say with all this?

It seems he's indicting patriarchical, hierarchical power structures of all cultures, and the ultrawealthy class of any race or religion. Besides Ziegler, other villainous characters include the Hungarian Szavost, the Slavic Milich (the actor is Croatian), his two Japanese associates, and the English-accented Red Cloak. EWS refers to the (American) Rockefeller family and the (British) Royal Family of Windsor, and less subtly than the Rothschild family, as both the names "Rockefeller" and "Windsor" are spoken in the film, while "Rothschild" is not. If the story is a series of projections from Bill's unconscious mind, then he is perhaps unconscious of his own antisemitic worldview, as he is unconscious of his wife's and his own sexual fantasies, and of his desire to be ultrawealthy. So Kubrick is in fact satirizing conspiracism, emphasizing that antisemitism, racism, classism, sexism—any form of discrimination—results from ignorance, insecurity, and unacknowledged fears. And so Eyes Wide Shut is not just a movie that has generated countless conspiracy theories, but is actually about conspiracy theories.

TOYS IN A TOYSHOP: PLAYTHINGS OF THE WEALTHY ELITE

Eyes Wide Shut touches on a variety of sexual manifestations: heterosexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality, group sex, marital sex, adultery, voyeurism, prostitution, pedophilia, necrophilia. But equally persistent are themes surrounding class, capitalism, wealth, and power. Just as the first line of dialogue ("Honey, have you seen my wallet?") is a direct supposition of the association between sex and class, so is the final scene. It occurs, of all places, in a shopping center, where Bill and Alice are discussing the future of their relationship following his confession of all that's happened in the previous couple days. They've taken their young daughter Helena shopping for Christmas gifts at a toy store. She runs around excitedly examining different items, already an enthusiastic consumer herself.

In this setting the Harfords are surrounded by a kind of decadence perhaps just as pornographic as any of the film's sexual depictions; racks and shelves bursting with toys, dolls, and teddy bears, mass-produced for consumption by the greedy people buzzing eagerly about. The scene is saturated with pagan, occult, and mythical imagery, with objects that have appeared elsewhere in the film: stars, wreaths, Christmas trees, and so on. Objects that appear onscreen throughout the movie are visual symbols summarized at the end as products for sale, as if much of what we see existing outside of the characters' physical beings may actually be reflections of their interior psychological landscapes.

Many toyshop items appear earlier in the film. The same stuffed toy tiger on Domino's bed is seen in multiple on a rack behind Alice. The antique baby buggy that Helena plays with recalls a stroller in Domino's apartment building. "Carlotta Junior" boxes are visible with a picture of a girl doll and a mini baby carriage, mirroring Helena with the baby carriage in the same scene. A stack of board games called "Magic Circle" refers to a protective circle used in ritual magic and like the one we see at the orgy ceremony, and also evokes fairy rings. At the film's opening, Helena mentions The Nutcracker while dressed in a tutu and fairy wings, and in the store she looks at a Nutcracker-themed Sugar Plum Fairy Barbie doll that's wearing a similar costume—which also resembles the angel ornament atop the Harfords' Christmas tree, and recalls Cupid, Sabrina, and Giselle.

Helena holds up the Barbie doll, happily exclaiming, "Look, Mommy!" Like her parents, she has bought into the corporate lie, the ignorant acceptance of themselves as little more than expendable playthings of the rich. This fabrication is perpetrated by corrupt superpowers whose only interest is to continually undermine the personal self-image of people who are not of their class, for their own use, by any and all means—including manipulation, murder, and selling manufactured reproductions of plastic women in shiny boxes. Alice responds with a meek smile, seemingly resigned to Helena's materialism. Superficially, her reaction is due to exhaustion from staying up all night in light of Bill's confession, and she's distracted by their current conversation. But on a deeper level Alice is perhaps exhausted by the misogyny perpetuated throughout society, including by herself and Bill; as they stand in a toy store, realizing for the first time that they themselves are toys…or maybe still not realizing it, depending on one's interpretation.

The inclusion of the Magic Circle game applies as a kind of description of Bill's journey, like a trip through the concentric circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno. "The Magic Circle" is also the informal name of the five most prestigious London-based multinational corporate law firms—lawyers of the ultrawealthy elite. And in gaming and digital media, "the magic circle" describes the space that surrounds a virtual or synthetic world; a kind of shield between the fantasy world of a game and the outside world in which the gamer lives. The term "magic circle" in this context was inspired by Dutch cultural theorist Johan Huizinga in his 1938 work A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, in which he included the stage and the screen as arenas equivalent to other gaming platforms—whether card tables or tennis courts—where temporary worlds are created within the real-life, ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act.

In the toy store Alice wears black shoes, black pants, and a black turtleneck sweater under a long tan overcoat—an identical outfit to what the bald man stalking Bill wears. Alice has her hands in the coat's front pockets, just as the stalker does, implying he actually represents her. As if Alice is the one following Bill, in his own guilty, paranoid mind. When Bill revisits the costume store he sees the two Japanese businessmen from the night before; one wears a long black overcoat like Bill, and the other wears a long tan overcoat like Alice and the stalker.

The immediate cut to the toyshop scene is a medium shot of Helena walking towards the camera wearing a black hat and long black coat, as a woman wearing an identical—albeit of course adult-sized—black hat and black coat crosses past Helena with her back to us. We then see a man in a black overcoat with a red shirt underneath, just like Bill is wearing. Then a second woman wearing Helena's same black hat and coat walks by, past the Magic Circle boxes, as does another man wearing Bill's same black coat and Alice's black turtleneck. And then a third man wearing Bill's coat appears; this guy has the collar popped like Bill did during his night walks, and bumps into Bill as he passes him in the bustling store. Bill turns to look at the man as he walks by. Following behind this popped-collar guy is yet a fourth Bill-in-black-overcoat replica, and as he passes we see a man in the background wearing a long tan overcoat and black turtleneck like Alice. And then a third Helena-in-black-hat-and-coat woman walks by. Doppelgängers everywhere; and always they're moving in the opposite direction than the Harfords are—away from the camera so we can't see their faces. Copies of copies. Multiple universes intertwining. Endless reproductions, like the teddy bears, the dolls, the figurines surrounding.

Kubrick films have a pattern of featuring objects that falsify human body parts in some way; masks, mannequins, dolls, costumes—synthetic, artificial people. In A Clockwork Orange: eyeball cufflinks, nude women body-tables, a penis sculpture, masks that Alex and his cohorts wear, and his one eye done up with doll-like false eyelashes. Killer's Kiss has a memorable climactic fight scene in a mannequin warehouse, where two characters hurl plaster body parts at each other. In The Killing, thieves wear clown masks during a robbery. Barry Lyndon extensively employs elaborate costumes and wigs. Masks hang on the hotel walls in The Shining. 2001 features HAL, an artificial intelligence. And Eyes Wide Shut has the masks, cloaks, mannequins, and the dolls in the toyshop.

The Kubrick-developed, Spielberg-directed film A.I. Artificial Intelligence also involves the "synthetic person" theme, with a Pinnochio-like story about an android child who wants to be human. Loosely adapted from Brian Aldiss's short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long", Kubrick spent years developing the concept and story outline after buying the rights in the early 1970s. At one time intending it to be his next movie after EWS, Kubrick had envisioned A.I. to be the most spectacular special effects film ever made. It was rumoured he'd been waiting for technology to progress to the stage that he could construct an actual robot to play the lead part of the android boy. But he ultimately concluded he'd be too old by the time this was the case, and in 1995 handed the project to Steven Spielberg to complete as he saw fit. The sequel to the original story, also by Aldiss, is "Supertoys When Winter Comes".

We first see Helena wearing a fairy princess costume, and she asks her parents if she can stay up to watch The Nutcracker—an 1892 ballet with a fantasy narrative about toys that come to life, and includes the character "Sugar Plum Fairy". This links to Kubrick's second wife Ruth Sobotka, a ballerina and actress who had starred in a production of The Nutcracker, and also as the character Charlotta in a Chekhov play, which links back to the Carlotta doll. Considered a Christmas classic, The Nutcracker has been adapted numerous times throughout various media—as has the 1903 fantasy operetta Babes in Toyland, by the same guys who first adapted The Wizard of Oz book into a stage musical.

A fairy tale involving nursery rhyme characters and Christmas themes, the original stage version of Babes in Toyland involves some rather dark plot elements. A pair of orphan siblings escape being killed by their wicked uncle and end up in the magical fantasy world of Toyland where they encounter the Master Toymaker, an evil genius who creates toys that kill. But the demon toys turn on the toymaker and kill him. And there are more deaths. But also lots of dolls and marionettes. Over the years, subsequent stage and screen versions of Babes in Toyland toned down the darker elements, dialed up the family-friendly Christmas elements, and the Master Toymaker evolved into a kindly old man. It includes the songs "Toyland" and "Go to Sleep, Slumber Deep", and the characters Contrary Mary, Tom Tom, The Spirit of the Pine, and yes, The Master Toymaker—who "designs all the toys of the world". The ending scene of Eyes Wide Shut was filmed at London's centuries-old toyshop Hamleys—which rhymes with Stanley's, as if he is the toymaker, the puppetmaster pulling all the strings. Mary…Tom Tom…Spirit…Pine; Marie/Marion, double "Toms", spirits—remember EWS was filmed in London's Pinewood Studios (Christmas Trees)?

The final toyshop scene—at Christmastime—­ties together images that appear throughout Eyes Wide Shut by way of the Kubrickian motif of synthetic beings. As if everything in the movie is a toy, everyone a doll, a dummy playing a role, a piece in a game, inside a snow globe, a product sold in a store—like the movie itself, a story about stories, from the world of Wonderland, a fairy tale... coming soon to a theatre near you.

A HAPPY ENDING?

In a Saturday Review interview published on Christmas day, 1971, Kubrick said, "I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories, supernatural stories, ghost stories, surrealistic and allegorical stories" ("Kubrick Country", with Penelope Houston). This interest of Kubrick's is evident in Eyes Wide Shut perhaps more than any of his other films, with its multitude of mythical allusions.

Modern-day, Disney-like versions of fairy tales usually have happy endings…"and they lived happily ever after". But many of these stories originate from macabre ancient tales. In context of Bill's psychosexual issues, the very phrase "happy ending" has certain connotations; a slang term for a prostitute bringing a male client to climax following a massage in a "massage parlour". The end of EWS evokes this, and Bill's sexual frustration; just as he goes through the story without ever actually having sex, many thought the ending overly ambiguous and inconclusive. Some, like Martin Scorsese, saw it as an uplifting conclusion, a story about a husband and wife growing closer through emotional intimacy. And others thought it a cynical, even tragic tale of characters who begin with their "eyes wide shut" and end with their eyes still closed, having learned nothing.

The final dialogue exchange between Bill and Alice:
BILL:     No dream is ever just a dream.
ALICE:  The important thing is that we're awake now, and hopefully for a long time to come.
BILL:     Forever.
ALICE:  Forever?
BILL:     Forever.
ALICE:  Let's not use that word. It frightens me.
This resonates as a sort of mockery of the and-they-lived-happily-ever-after cliché. And then Eyes Wide Shut ends, with one of the best last movie lines of all time:
ALICE:  And you know, there is something very important that we need to do as soon as possible.
BILL:    What's that?
ALICE:  Fuck.
Kubrick's last word.

Returning to the article Introducing Sociology, Tim Kreider describes EWS as a savage critique of yuppie marriage, stating that Alice and Bill "casually pimp their own little angel out to the world of commerce" with an ending intimating that "the Harfords' daughter is, just as they've resigned themselves to being, fucked." So, while fitting the prescription of a slipstream dream story, EWS might also appropriately be characterized as satire—a sardonic look at an upper-middle class couple's misguided attempts to become members of the freakish ruling class. However, years after his initial review, Kreider added an afterword describing EWS as espousing a more positive perspective of humanity than he first thought: "a film about intimate, domestic life, about a blindly complacent but basically happy marriage, testing its fault lines of temptation, jealousy and resentment and leaving it stronger and more truthful."

One particular detail in the ending has emerged as the focus of extensive debate. Two men at Ziegler's party—sitting at a table below a Cupid and Psyche statue, by the staircase that Bill ascends with Ziegler's butler—are seen again in the toyshop. We never see them very clearly or for very long in either scene, but it appears to be the same guys. They wear black suits, one wears glasses, both are bald, with grey hair—Rich Old White Men. They're inconspicuously browsing behind where Bill and Alice are talking, when Helena seemingly follows them behind a rack. It happens very quickly amidst the hustle-bustle of the store, but it looks like the same two men from Ziegler's are leading Helena away.

Helena disappears right after Bill and Alice pat her on the back, as if encouraging her to follow the men. She looks up at her father, and he and Alice both nonchalantly rub her back in mid-conversation and look down at her. Then she walks towards the two men, Bill looks back at Alice, and Alice turns her head towards Helena as if for "one last look" at her. Helena looks questioningly back at Alice, then follows the men. It's as if Helena is checking in with her parents, asking them, "Are you sure I should go this way?" And Bill and Alice say, "Yes, honey, go with those capitalist men. Capitalism is the best way." And they watch her go. But it cuts back to face close-ups of Bill and Alice before we see if Helena actually follows the men all the way around the corner, leaving her fate ambiguous. At this moment, a shelf full of stuffed tiger dolls lines the right side of the screen behind Alice—the same tiger stuffy seen earlier on Domino's bed. The tiger/leopard print pattern has remained popular in female fashion for decades, sexualizing women as exotic wild creatures.

Are Bill and Alice so blind to the horrific sex abuse powers of the rich that they don't notice their daughter's abduction? Or they willingly sell her to the cult, linking to the Rosemary's Baby theme of sacrificing one's child, to secure entry. They seem oblivious or surrendered or even supportive of Helena going with the men—the same two seen at Ziegler's? Henchmen of the ultrawealthy? What are the implications of this in relation to systemic pedophilia in the Catholic Church, conspiracy theories of wealthy elites running child-trafficking sex rings, satanic ritual sacrifice, etc.? That is to say, a very dark and unsettling ending. After all they've just experienced, Bill and Alice give up their child to the upper-echelon sex cult to buy their way in, and just want to "fuck". Is this a horror story? A brazen condemnation of capitalism? A scathing satire of the immorality of the ultrarich?

I'm struggling with this idea, but it does apply to what was happening with Kubrick and his daughter Vivian at the time EWS was going into production; she'd become estranged from the family, seduced by Scientology. Perhaps Kubrick is saying that he and his wife, like Bill and Alice, were so preoccupied with their own lives that they barely noticed their daughter being led dangerously astray, or surrendered to their own powerlessness in preventing it.

If the names Helena, Sabrina, and Carlotta are intentional references, what does it mean? If Helena's comment "I can put Sabrina in here" refers to putting Comus's Sabrina into the Rosemary's Baby buggy, is Helena recognizing herself and her parents as inevitable victims of rich powerful men? In effect saying, "I can sacrifice the female spirit who protects feminine virtue from abuse by predatory men by putting her into this demon carriage—and by doing so I will gain access to, buy myself into, an elite status." And she does it unconsciously, repeating the patterns of cultural energy that swirl around her, the demons that infect her; the Barbie dolls, the tiger stuffies, the Disney fairy tales, the Savior Prince. Bill and Alice teach her these things because it's what they were taught. Alice, the Beautiful Bored Housewife with the Rich Doctor Husband, who flirts with creepy older men at lavish parties. Bill with his Old Boys' Club desires, the scotch, the hookers, his ol' college buddy. They're all trying to live out some version of themselves that advertisers made up to sell stuff. They themselves are the toys in the toyshop. It's a dark examination of the worst side of human nature, and The Capitalist Manifesto.

But on the other hand, little to nothing we see happen in this movie is real. With this in mind I tend toward the interpretation that it's a genuine happy ending—to an alternately ironic and satirical, sincere and dramatic, adult Christmas Movie. An unlikely fairy tale. Bill and Alice pat Helena on the back as if to tell her that everything's okay, that those two men don't really exist except in their own minds, that Helena is safe, because they now know evil is an illusion that only exists within themselves, which they are now facing up to and so it no longer holds power over them.

There's no film credit for the actors who play the two mysterious men…no evidence, not a trace they ever existed. They sat by a winged statue, and Helena wore fairy wings. Are they all spirits? What if the two men aren't sinister agents at all, but rather kindly guardian angels in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life? The story of an angel, at Christmastime, helping a man appreciate his life by showing him a dark alternate reality. Maybe the doubled old guys are like Clarence the Angel from It's a Wonderful Life, or The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future from A Christmas Carol. And it's Helena's turn to be shown the mirror realities, the possible alternate timeline versions of herself as Illona, Domino, or Milich’s daughter, to forewarn her so that she might avoid the fate of succumbing to misogyny and "wake up" as her parents finally have. Maybe the twin old guys are there to watch over Helena at the end, as they were there to watch over Bill and Alice at Ziegler's party to make sure neither of them actually cheated—and Bill and Alice now realize the secret society isn't real, so is no longer a danger to them.

And there's Alice's dream—a dream within a dream? And Through the Looking-Glass, and The Wizard of Oz..."the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true". There's a lot that implies narrative events are not actually happening as we're shown, but are largely figments of Bill's imagination. Projections from the unconscious…the Freudian id, the Jungian shadow. But when do the dream segments start and end? There is no clear delineation between fantasy and reality in EWS, which is partly why it's so puzzling.

As far as we know, the Harfords are all okay in the end, no? Better off than when they started? It's just a toy baby buggy. It's just a doll. A dream. Bill and Alice share a kind of intimacy that they haven't in years, if ever. They tell the truth to each other. Neither of them actually cheated. They're still alive, and rich. The threat is over, if even there ever really was one. Maybe the twin old men represent both good and bad qualities of patriarchy; how men can concurrently care for and oppress women, embodying the worst evil of corruption and abuse and the protective, comforting strength of fatherly or husbandly guidance. How can we be sure about the ending, and what is "real" or not? We can't be sure, and this is why Kubrick films are both exasperating and enlightening, but ultimately transformative; he made works of art that challenge us to penetrate the deepest recesses of our own hearts and minds to draw out meaningful reflections about life.

Some Kubrick scholars assert that the recurrence of the two men is simply an instance of reusing crowd extras to reduce production costs, and their double appearance has no narrative importance. But these same scholars also emphasize Kubrick's painstaking attention to detail, stating that nothing in a Kubrick film is there by chance, the composition of every frame filled with meaning. So how do we reconcile this? After all, there's the Cupid greeting card and the Eros sign, the two men sit near a winged Cupid statue, Helena wears fairy wings, and the three of them appear together at the end. If we accept all this as mere oversight on Kubrick's part, then what other symbolic, metaphorical elements should we regard as being in the film for purely economical reasons? And then Kubrick was not the thorough, calculating filmmaker that everyone says. Or he used to be, but by EWS he was old, tired, and sloppy. But no one wants to admit this and would rather uphold the idea of individuals throughout history as geniuses, as if such people reflect the greatest potential of humankind and somehow give us hope in a dark world. So, we look for meaning.

The movie begins and ends with Alice. Although Bill is the protagonist, Alice is the catalyst for his voyage to self-discovery and awareness, signalling an unstable masculinity and ascent of femininity within a male-dominated society. The film's opening shot is Alice naked, undressing, with her back to the camera in a medium-shot—objectified. And the closing shot is a close-up of her face, teary-eyed, with a blank expression, no makeup, and wearing glasses—humanized. This epitomizes Bill's journey—and ours as the audience—moving from viewing Woman as an object to viewing Her as a person. It's progress.

Bill starts out in denial, naïve about his wife's sexual desires, and his own. But as Alice says, now that they're "awake" they can finally, in a more intimate way than ever before, "fuck". That is, acknowledging fantasies can allow for more meaningful connection with sexual partners in reality, rather than remaining fantasy which only briefly, superficially fulfills, if at all—or can be dangerous and destructive if pursued blindly. The quest for wealth is a terrible lie manifested from our own unacknowledged insecurities. But to explore one's dark side, the shadow, through the mirror of a spouse, and as such face oneself, can result in overcoming fear and temptation to live more honestly and fully. So, maybe it is a hopeful ending, saying that evil is an illusion. That seeking material wealth and power over others is what is evil, and recognizing this liberates us from the demon spirit forces dancing around, inside and outside of us. Is there a difference between what's inside and outside of us?

Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's science fiction epic Solaris (1972), adapted from Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, has often been compared to Kubrick's 2001. But it also draws connections to EWS. The story is set in a space station orbiting Solaris, a planet covered entirely by ocean, which scientists believe is an intelligent, sentient being. One day the cosmonaut protagonist finds his wife, who has been dead for ten years, alive in his quarters. She's not a hallucination, but rather an embodiment of his memory of her; as if Solaris has probed his consciousness and confronted him with a physical replica of his most deeply embedded psychic imprint, in an attempt at communication. Just as Eyes Wide Shut shows Bill facing characters from his dream consciousness, Solaris explores the idea that everyone a person encounters is a reflection of their Self. An art model I know claims each painting she models for looks like an amalgamation of her and the artist themself.

Eyes Wide Shut is really all about perception. Kubrick is talking about conquering the biggest weapon wielded by the ruling class—fear. The things you fear most don't actually exist—unless you fear them. This is the paradox in the title, describing the movie's thesis; it can't be explained in words. As we know, Kubrick understood a movie as an experience that "directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content". EWS is a Dream Movie. An old-fashioned Fairy Tale. An alternative Christmas Movie. A satirical Love Story. And with its displays of sexual abuses of power and capitalist decadence, it's simultaneously a kind of horror and antihorror film—in the sense that there actually is a lot to fear, but only if you fear it. Only if you seek it—that is, only if you enter the darkness unknowingly, in denial, blind. There's nothing to be scared of, except yourself. This is both comforting and frightening. Like that saying "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are". Or that other one, "We see what we want to see."

CONCLUSION: THEATRE OF THE MYTHIC

Kubrick wanted to make a film about sex since the early 1960s. Biographer John Baxter says Stanley had an interest in directing a pornographic film based on Blue Movie—a satirical novel by Dr. Strangelove co-screenwriter Terry Southern—about a director who makes Hollywood's first big-budget studio porn film. But while Kubrick liked the idea, he concluded he didn't have the temperament to research the pornography industry, and Southern described him as "too ultra-conservative" to have gone ahead with it (Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, 195, 248). Kubrick's works span a wide range of genres; science fiction, crime film, historical epic, horror, comedy, political satire, and war film. It was even rumoured that at one time he conceived A.I. as a kids' movie. So as a filmmaker interested in all aspects of the medium, the idea of Kubrick wanting to make a big-budget porn film under studio conditions makes sense. And EWS might be just that—but more so a satire of pornographic films, as Cruise's character repeatedly faces sexual propositions in increasingly illogical contexts, as in porn, but without actually having sex.

Every Kubrick film features at least one killing, and sexual abuse of women/girls is prominent in several. As such, he's been accused of glorifying violence and misogyny. He was into exploring the dark hollows of humankind—often with a cynical tone—but for positive intellectual stimulation and reflection, not out of some kind of sadistic revelry as his disparagers claim. Satire requires exaggeration of lies to emphasize the truth. What Kubrick detractors miss is that he was an artist—in contrast to an entertainer—who investigated existential extremes so that we may all learn something about ourselves. It might not be something we want to face, but there it is. As I see it, Eyes Wide Shut espouses a thoroughly feminist, anticapitalist ideology in exposing the abuse of women as directly linked to the abuse of economic wealth.

In addition to being celebrated as a brilliant artist, Kubrick was an innovative promoter of his films. His attention to detail and obsessive work ethic is solidified as cinema legend, and this extended to all aspects of his films including advertising. Kubrick devised formulas whereby he could guarantee to major studio funders that his pictures would make money. His marketing scheme involved approving the posters to be produced and locations where they were to be displayed, and mathematical equations about the number and location of theatres his movies were to be shown at. And so Kubrick flicks always made a profit despite usually unfavourable early reviews—only to end up years later on many favourite films lists.

A tireless researcher, Kubrick's holistic oversight of all aspects of his movies has rarely, if ever, been matched by any filmmaker in history. He took all the time he wanted on any given project, especially with his last few films. Kubrick secured the rights to Traumnovelle in 1968, but his friends and collaborators have said he read the novella about fifteen years prior to that—which means he'd been thinking about the film and working on it in some capacity for nearly fifty years. As such, it's his richest, most deeply layered work. Kubrick spent decades developing the Eyes Wide Shut screenplay, and approximately five years on pre- through post-production; it holds the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous film shoot, at 400 days. While many directors might do twenty-something takes of a scene at most before they feel they've gotten it right, Kubrick would sometimes do over a hundred. It's a practice that notoriously drove his actors crazy. But because of this his films reach a strange plain of discovery, operating on a nonliteral frequency.

Eyes Wide Shut, like most Kubrick films, necessitates repeated viewings. And what results is so complex and interpretive that it's like a different movie every time you see it. In some respects, Tim Kreider's initial conclusion of Bill and Alice and their daughter being "fucked" by the ruling superpowers who control them and all aspects of life seems insightful and accurate—making it a thoroughly cynical ending. They're total slaves to the wealthy elite, playthings that, while they may aspire to be owners, will always be midlevel servants, trapped in the image of themselves and each other that's sold to them, about their sexuality, through the system of capitalism.

But recurrent viewings unveil an ultimately positive and uplifting message overall. While it may be true that the characters have been unwittingly manipulated by the ultrawealthy, treated as servants and sexual objects—despite all the psychological, political, biological influences—a couple can still work it out. Even with the dangerous emotions the characters face throughout the story, and the dark path that Bill in particular embarks on, he is ultimately honest with his wife in the end, initiated by her being honest with him. Through open emotional expression, together they overcome the scariest, most powerful forces of evil lying within the darkness of humankind, and within themselves. Maybe that's what marriage, intimacy, and love is really about.

As Alice says at the end, "We're awake now". And so while they may be metaphorically "fucked" as a man and woman living within the capitalist system, they can still metaphorically unfuck themselves by, literally, fucking—in a deeper and truer way than ever before. And so Eyes Wide Shut encapsulates paradoxes of humanity in its multilayered visual and narrative fabric, in context of one of the most challenging yet essential aspects of human existence—relationships. We're all characters in each other's dream consciousnesses; "It's not you, it's me."

What is real, and what is a dream? Eyes Wide Shut. The title really is the thesis, a description of the film and us, the audience; we're watching, but not seeing. We're seeing with our eyes, but we're not understanding. Or—because so much of Kubrick's visual detail registers subliminally—we're seeing, but not with our eyes. It's like that old joke: "'I see,' said the blind man. 'I hear ya,' said the deaf man. And the mute man said nothing at all." Just kidding. But seriously though. That's why this movie is insane. It's like a Möbius strip, an M.C. Escher picture, a Rube Goldberg machine. A fractal jigsaw puzzle of infinite, interconnected, intertextual dimensions. Stanley Kubrick's best movies are like labyrinthine maps plotting human absurdity, exploring the boundaries of existence; war, violence, sex, time, space. You know, the small stuff.

Eyes Wide Shut is a film of vast scope and depth, unrelenting in its exploration of the effects that human evolution, history, politics, and art have on dreams, perception, sex, and relationships. Kubrick presents us with the theatre of the mythic, where fabulist inventions reflect our own darkest potential. Penetrating our psyches through the art of illusion, ancient artifacts are brought to light in the mundanity of the present. Kubrick made works of art to be dissected and discussed, not mere crowd-pleasing entertainment to be simply consumed and agreed upon. As such, Eyes Wide Shut endures, as Stanley Kubrick himself proclaimed before his death upon completion of the film, as his greatest work.

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