I’ve done my best to make the below narrative/ observations make sense if you haven’t seen the film,...
I’ve done my best to make the below narrative/ observations make sense if you haven’t seen the film, but I doubt they are all that interesting to read unless you have seen it. It’s not the way I would have liked to receive its awesome messages about life (2h45min runtime, prostitutes and Nicole Kidman? What??) but it is effective nonetheless :D
Eyes Wide Shut is a film about fantasy and reality and actions and consequences and life and death and lust and money. With symbols of games and toys and red and blue- also some Illuminati bullshit.
- Dr. Bill Harford goes to a party where a patient of his named Victor calls him up to a room, where a prostitute has OD’d. Bill brings this girl back to life.
- The inciting incident of the story takes place when Bill’s wife Alice confesses to him a sexual desire of hers that she had for another man, and did not act upon. Thereafter Bill considers her fantasy in blue light, indicating not a shred of lust in it for him. As a result of this confession of inaction, Bill heads off on a sexual Odyssey that evening. To what extent is Alice’s fantasy just a fantasy? It created Bill’s reality, the evening that follows. To what extent is Bill’s reality his reality?
- Bill goes to a prostitute’s flat. He is about to have sex with her, but by chance Alice calls him, and Bill decides not to go through with it. In a later scene, we learn that this prostitute had HIV. Why doesn’t Bill have HIV? Because Alice called him before he could complete the act with the prostitute- though it’s not even a guarantee he would catch it if he had gone through with the act anyway, but that will never be known. It is not Bill’s lack of desire but Alice’s chance interruption that stops him. Bill does not sleep with anyone on his Odyssey in fact: each opportunity is interrupted. In this case, do we applaud him for stopping after the interruption, the prostitute for making him think of his wife when she inquires about the call, his wife for interrupting the act? Does the prostitute deserve HIV more than Bill does? She does what she does for money- is this more or less innocuous than what her clients do?
- Bill meets up with a friend of his. He learns that this guy is to play the piano blindfolded at a classy orgy party, run by some Illuminati-esque society who are pretty hostile to outsiders, ie Bill, who goes to the party later that evening. The society catches Bill and is about to do something obliquely bad to him, when a masked girl says she will sacrifice herself for him, and is taken away.
- After the party, Bill goes to the hotel where the party’s piano player is staying. Alan Cumming’s character, the receptionist, is believable when he says that the piano player has left, and nothing bad happened to him. When pushed by Bill, Alan gives some account of “big guys” being in the hotel room with him the night before, and of a secret envelope. Does he say this because he is flirting with Bill, creating a miniature fantasy to gauge if Bill might go for him? There is a lingering shot where we see Alan considering Bill a little after Bill has left the hotel- it’s all deliberate… we cannot be sure that anything bad did happen to the piano player after all- nor can we be sure that it didn’t. Bill is pushed in the street afterwards and called a “faggot”, likely because of his accidental involvement in Alan’s fantasy, which enters reality.
- Later, Bill meets Victor, the patient of his from earlier who claims to have been at the party (everyone’s in masks, so who knows?) Victor says that when the girl said she would sacrifice herself for Bill, it was just an act to scare him away. But the prostitute that Victor was with, whom Bill met at a previous party, OD’d and died that same night. Victor reassures him that this is merely a coincidence, and also says that nothing bad happened to the piano player. We can’t be assured of either of these things. What does it matter which happened? Are we even sure that the girl that died really was the one from the party?
- What do we think of Victor? Before he appeared a second time, I thought worse of him than Bill. That is to say, Victor was a married man who saw prostitutes, and Bill was a non-judgmental doctor. After Bill and Victor meet again, they are about the same. Victor went through with his affair, the girl nearly died, Bill brought her back to life. Later, this same prostitute (we think) sacrifices herself for Bill and “dies” (we think) even although Bill didn’t go through with any of his fantasy. Then, who is worse? At first we judge Victor, and perhaps the prostitute. In the end we judge Bill, and laud Victor and the prostitute for the sacrifices they make to preserve Bill’s inherent “goodness”- though the fantasy of an affair and the reality of it are treated equally. Victor and the prostitute seem to perceive that Bill should be spared from the games they play, when actually Bill plays the same games. Victor might be lying about the whole thing, or maybe he doesn’t even know what happened. Since everyone wore masks, we don’t know if Victor was at the party. We don’t know if the prostitute was either. One thing is for sure: both men are out of their depth when it comes to sexual fantasies that they want to make a reality.
- During the Bill-Victor scene where they discuss the orgy, Victor mucks about with the balls on the red (no accident) pool table, and Bill says he doesn’t feel like playing. But are we fit to judge anyone in this film at all, based on what they do, what they don’t do, what they fantasise about, what they don’t fantasise about? There’s no way they can predict the consequences of their actions OR fantasies one way or another, regardless of the intent of them, or their perceived badness or goodness. But, maybe we see that the acts of sacrifice, the acts of forgiveness are each and every time more noble. Each time thought turns to action converts to consequence, we have no idea of the outcome of any of it, or what would happen if we stop it at any step.
- At one point in the film Bill wakes up Alice because she is laughing. When Bill sees his mask from the orgy on the pillow beside Alice, he wakes her up because he is crying. Alice confessed to him her fantasy, out of spite, and it started Bill’s weird sexual saga. Bill confesses about the prostitute and the orgy to Alice- out of guilt? Fear? Obligation?- and it ends all the problems. Alice confesses freely and with conviction; Bill confesses only because he sees his mask from the orgy, placed on the bed, perhaps because he is afraid and not because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Does he think that the confession will cure things? It has no effect on whether or not the bad guys will stop chasing him. Does he confess because he thinks the bad guys placed the mask there, or because she found the mask? We don’t know that it was left at the party or not! Which option was it, and does one of these make his confession better?
Things I did not figure out:
- What role does money play in this film? Bill racks up quite a bit of spent cash in his evening. The costume shop owner wants to send some guys to jail for sleeping with his daughter, but in the morning he has a monetary agreement with them, one he is so satisfied with that he is willing to offer his daughter to Bill in future if he so desires.
- What role does death play in the film? One woman’s dad is dead, and she kisses Bill and proclaims that she loves him. Is this to say that inaction and hoping for tomorrow brings about stasis, but the realisation once again that we are going to die brings about urgency and change? Love is often portrayed as a distraction from death.
- Bill asks Alice to tell him what she dreamed: it seemed to reflect his evening at the party. She was there only in fantasy. What is the significance of her dreaming his evening: is it nothing more than a reflection of their dualities: him, reality; her, fantasy?
This film I believe is of the opinion that people might think they want their fantasies to be a reality, but that’s not what they want at all. What they want is what they have. Alice doesn’t like that she and Bill will be together “forever”, and we can see this film as a complete cycle. We create a fantasy world, we try it out and expect a different outcome in spite of our experience. We then learn again the true nature of life and that it cannot match our fantasies, once again. The cycle in the film begins with a sexual act between Bill and Alice. In the final scene, they make amends in a toy shop, again not deliberate (on their part, not Kubrick’s), because they are children to the true chaos of their acts. He is sure they won’t repeat the cycle and she isn’t. Whether they will or won’t, it has no bearing on what happened. How they even reached the truth to each other was very much out of their hands. And whether or not they will “book-end” the story’s cycle is not revealed before the film ends.
One thing we can say for sure about Eyes Wide Shut (lol the title) is that it deliberately blends reality and fantasy alike: neither is a separate divide. Mere intention can cause consequence and action doesn’t necessarily incur consequence: in what proportions this occurs or doesn’t occur, we don’t know. We are children playing games we don’t know how to play when it comes to the universe’s indifference to us and how it plays dice with our fate, giving us what we deserve and what we don’t deserve, or nothing, at random. Kubrick is not didactic about anything: the film has no moral high- or low-ground, just a plateau. He does not even suggest there is a way out or a way to act- as if we could really control our fate with our actions anyway.
