Eyes Wide Shut: No dream is ever just a dream

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later. – Stanley Kubrick

What is more frightening, having to wear a mask or what is indeed under that mask? Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s final and most haunting film is a journey into the mind of a Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise, who after hearing his wife’s fantasy of being with another man sends him into a journey to cheat on her. He roams the streets to escape from his fear being undesirable to his wife and along his path is offered sex by a prostitute whom Bill considers in order to get even. There are masks on the wall of her apartment – maybe to show she is more honest about her sexual exploits than the affairs of married couples. She is shown in full view. Most striking is Tom Cruise’s transformation into the classic character Dante as he journeys into hell with the aid of Virgil (Sydney Pollack). Kubrick’s use of lighting and cinematography is impeccable as many of the shots are done with a dolly which is one of the hardest to perfect.

What separates this film from so many others is its realistic characters. None are overpoweringly heroic or clear protagonists or antagonists. One might view Cruise’s Bill Harford as a protagonist and Sydney Pollack’s character Victor Ziegler who represents Virgil as the antagonist but that would deny their developed and rounded characters. No one is particularly virtuous or morally deficient. It is more of a difference of levels of morality than simple on and off switches between who is virtuous and who is immoral. The dialogue is pleasantly restrained from pretension and theatrics. No snappy one-liners or eloquent speeches are used here. Instead we get real people who talk like we all do. There problems are much deeper and, painful, though they stem from moral decay.

Bill Harford, although a successful doctor is bored with routine, his wife and lifestyle. Anything different would open his life up. Alice Harford played by Nicole Kidman goes through this tormentous affair as well; she takes care of the kid, cooks dinner and fixes the house. They are comatose in an existence where they both are successful and suppose to be happy. After meeting an old friend from medical school who is now a pianist Bill sees him write a password for a gig he will play at. Intrigued, Bill gets where the location is being played from his weak friend.

The next scene has Bill enter a mansion that holds a secret ritualistic orgy to initiate new women and entertain the onlookers. Everyone is masked including the sexual participants. The sex scenes in the film are detached, impersonal, cold and clinical. The famous orgy sequence features all masked guests at their party to protect their identities. These men are powerful including politicians, doctors and elite aristocrats. The guests arrive in limos and gain entry to the giant mansion, the password – “Fidelio.”

This scene can be seen as the second layer of hell designated for the lustful according to Dante’s Inferno. Virgil (Sydney Pollack) sees him and a woman escorts him and tries to get him to leave because he is in danger. After leaving the mansion by being discovered as an uninvited guest he is called by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) mysteriously. He tells Bill that he saw him at the party and the whole thing was a charade.

Eyes Wide Shut has Christmas trees in almost every scene. This may be since the Illuminati use a symbol similar to it as seen in the dinner party. It is an eight pointed star with a triangle and circle in the middle that is suppose to be an “eye.” Christmas is hardly mentioned in the film and it really serves no purpose as a plot point so the Christmas tree is most likely occult symbolism.

The main conflict that arises in the film is that of intent and action. Harford intends to cheat on his wife and goes as far as entering a prostitute’s room to get even but chance strikes as he suddenly gets a phone call from his wife. Does he not have sex with the prostitute because he genuinely loves his wife or because fear shakes him in this awkward situation? Alice Harford intended to cheat on the marine at the dinner where she and her husband were but didn’t. Are they both repulsive for wanting something but not going through with it? That is up to one’s own moral compass. The film is about morality and the sex, power and trust are just tests of how strong one’s morality is.

The ending shows that after Bill confesses to Alice of where he went and what were his intentions that there relationship was reduced being just sexual after the trust was gone. This is Kubrick’s most haunting film that is expertly crafted and deeply layered. It is one of his best films along with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

10/10

Works Cited

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtZLPwWt_IM

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0096.html