Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I enjoy Kubrick's films, but I'm not a rabid fan. I understand the imagery in most of his movies, as well as the underlying themes. However, Eyes Wide Shut remains an enigma to me. I just can't grasp what the film is saying. Is it suggesting that even the most upscale, white bread, pompous citizens can be sexual deviants? Is it saying something about sex in our society in general? Am I missing the mark, and it actually is just a story of a man who realises that his relationship with his wife is worth saving?


Also, what is the significance of the ritualistic party?

What's even stranger than this is the fact that I like the movie as much as I do. Nicole Kidman naked does have a hand in that, but mainly I like the atmosphere and the chilling score. I repeat, the score on this film is one of the best I have ever heard. But other than those two factors, I honestly don't know why I like it so much. Maybe that is the mark of a great movie?

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

i love certain movies that are enigmatic in their meaning - Sex & Lucia, Being John Malkovich, the Three Colors trilogy...so ther's nothing odd about loving a movie you don't understand. I think one of the motivations for these kind of filmmakers is to get the audience to ponder its meanings.

As far as EWS...I think of it as treatise on marriage and how you never fully know the person your with...thoughts on the road not taken...sexual intensity and base desire vs. security, love and companionship...that kind of stuff.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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As far as EWS...I think of it as treatise on marriage and how you never fully know the person your with...thoughts on the road not taken...sexual intensity and base desire vs. security, love and companionship...that kind of stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]I interpeted EWS as saying the world of relationships we create for ourselves in completely contrived and that we are still driven by core desires that all the love and marriage cannot supplant. For example, all the love, security, family, child, etc. would not have stopped the Nicole Kidman from the one night stand with the soldier even if it cost her everything.

I thought he was saying that it is not deviancy but normalcy.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Good post Utah

The score is brilliant. The fact that it was Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as the stars....I think it led people to kind of bash the film even if they didn't know why they were bashing it.

I still think its one of the best films of that decade.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Have you read The Odyssey?

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Watch the movie again and pay attention to RED/BLUE.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I love the movie, like most of SK's work. I rented it and watched it like 5 days in a row a few years back. I really haven't seen it in a while so I cannot talk about the deep meaning of the film. But it seemed more sensible to me than say the Shining or 2001.

The orgy scene is awesome. Those chicks all have phenomenal bodies. And leelee sobieski looks good in underwear.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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As far as EWS...I think of it as treatise on marriage and how you never fully know the person your with...thoughts on the road not taken...sexual intensity and base desire vs. security, love and companionship...that kind of stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]I interpeted EWS as saying the world of relationships we create for ourselves in completely contrived and that we are still driven by core desires that all the love and marriage cannot supplant. For example, all the love, security, family, child, etc. would not have stopped the Nicole Kidman from the one night stand with the soldier even if it cost her everything.

I thought he was saying that it is not deviancy but normalcy.

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nice

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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And leelee sobieski looks good in underwear.

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You realize she was twelve when that was filmed, right?

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Quoting Kubrick, pre-shooting the film:
"There is also a novel by Arthur Schnitzler, Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, which I intend to do but on which I have not yet started to work. It's a difficult book to describe -- what good book isn't? It explores the sexual ambivalence of a happy marriage, and tries to equate the importance of sexual dreams and might-have-beens with reality. All of Schnitzler's work is psychologically brilliant, and he was greatly admired by Freud, who once wrote to him, apologizing for having always avoided a personal meeting. Making a joke (a joke?), Freud said this was because he was afraid of the popular superstition that if you meet your Doppelgänger (double) you would die."
link

Note that Kubrick was also "happily married" to actress Susanne Christian since 1957.

The title of the book is, I think, the key. This is a dream film. Not in the sense that we are asked to stop trying to understand but in the sense that the film follows the strict laws of dreaming. In our dreams almost all the persons and the happenings are about us, the person dreaming. The protagonist of Eyes Wide Shut, a happily married, successful doctor, walks the landscape of his fears and fantasies; stumbles on a elaborate network of orgiasts and chases after them, wants to be part of it (only he is lost as to what he must do, once he's there); befriends a "golden-hearted" whore, the "sexually available woman"; meets by happenstance an old female acquaintance who unbeknownst to him was deeply in love with him; is followed by mysterious, guilt-inducing strangers in the dark streets; is given mysterious, non-helping directions in writing; a two-some frolic proposed by sexy young things; etc. Female fantasies are not differentiated from the male ones: A woman lying naked (and helpless) under the male gaze; a marriedd woman's violent and intense one-night stand with a total stranger; etc.

And Kubrick tells his tale with devilish, saving humor! The costume vendor, who also pimps his underage daughter on the side (Leelee Sobieski was actually 16 when the film was shot), is a bumbling, comic, exuberant character. The orgy itself comes on as a gothic affair but could be straight out of a Roger Corman quickie. The suave, white-haired womanizer at the ball is played tiwh perfect seriousness, yet is also a walking cliché. Reality intrudes only sporadically, as for example in the flirting of Cruise by the gay receptionist.

It's not an enigmatic film, but an elliptic film, a film of suggestiveness: it narrates truths, even when what we see is not real, but it doesn't try to tell us any kinfd of "whole truth", because it is impossible -- and when do we ever get to know everything? Only in feel-good Hollywoodiana. (Final dialogue in script: "The reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, is not the whole truth. And no dream is entirely a dream.")

Mickey Brausch

The above is only a high-falutin' elaboration of what was already put forth, in this thread, by Utah. It would be nice to have Mrs Utah's perspective as well.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Yes, good, dream film. If there was anything I got out of the film, it was a sense of surreality (or unreality?)

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I didn't understand it nor do I still. Like Waking Life, this is another film that's dreamlike... prolly this is more like Mulholland Dr. BTW, the puzzle and symbolism in that film is really crazy. I didn't see it, but a friend pointed out to me that basically the first 2/3s was a dream where as the last 1/3 after the locked box is opened was "reality". Very interesting.

I like puzzles.

W/ EWS, a film teacher told me something. He said that the film was an antihero's descent into hell. It makes sense. Also, another poster in this forum said that the title of the book and the film was the best clue. Eyes Wide Shut suggests eyes are closed and this could possibly be a dream, not just someone going through life w/ their eyes closed.

After all, wouldn't it be a nightmare if you lived a few days like that. The masks, dying hooker, etc.

As for the sex scene w/ the masked group, it's derived from a group in Da Vinci Code. If you haven't read that cultural phenomenon by now, please do so. Of course, the book is better than the film.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

hmm comparison to mulholland dr. I don't think they're close. ews I think has a concrete plot. m dr doesn't even have that. I'm a huge lynch fan but I think m dr is much more of a wtf is this puzzle than ews. ews the debate is about the meaning of the plot. m dr the debate is about wtf the plot even is. and m dr is the most accessible lynch movie except for maybe blue velvet ("heiniken? heiniken is sh1t!")

there is no comparison between the two.

[censored]. I need to own m dr. such a great conversation piece. if it weren't 5am and I were sober I'd go buy it right now along with blue velvet and lost highway. lynch is right there with miike in terms of movies that make no sense but provide great conversation. but m dr doesn't compare to ews in any way shae or form.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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if it weren't 5am and I were sober I'd go buy it right now along with blue velvet and lost highway. lynch is right there with miike in terms of movies that make no sense but provide great conversation.

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You work long hours! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

PS diebitter, I hope one liners are ok sometimes! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

The movie was indeed enigmatic. It was also beyond horrible. Poorly paced and amateurishly acted. Boring beyond toleration. The "music" was particularly annoying. Had . . . Nicole . . . .Kidman . . . . not . . . . spoken . . . . like . . . . this . . . . it . . . . could . . . . have . . . . . been . . . . a . . .. half . . . . . hour . . . . . shorter. Speaking slowly does not denote gravitas.

People booed in the theater when it ended. Had a less famous name than Kubrick made it, it would have been long forgotten. I'm a fan of movies that are not necessarily coherent and leave a lot up to the viewer; The Third Man, for example, has long been a favorite of mine. But this was just a piece of vulgar and insipid trash, fueled by the massive egos and off-kilter minds of Kubrick and Cruise. I remember the publicity stressed that Nicole Kidman has picked out books for their aprarmtent libary from her own books collection. Whoop-dee-do.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

"a difficult book to describe -- what good book isn't?"

No good book. This is a good summary of why the movie stinks.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I think that's what particularly disgusted me about the film, that Kubrick obviously felt that such things are normalcy and that our everyday world is completely contrived. What hogwash. He had Sidney Pollack, in a particularly poorly acted scene with the pool table (I think Pollack had to come in when the originally signed actor pulled out), "explain" things to Cruise.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

"The score is brilliant."

"Score"? I can play "E" and "F" on the piano and change the octave. I used to do it when I was three years old.

My apologies to all in this thread if I'm coming across as condescending. I'm not attacking you, just the movie.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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Boring beyond toleration

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That's my only recollection of it.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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"The score is brilliant."

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"Score"? I can play "E" and "F" on the piano and change the octave. I used to do it when I was three years old.

[/ QUOTE ] Come on, that's what they have been saying about abstract painting for almost a century!

Can you play John Cage's 3'33" ? Bet you can't. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Mickey Brausch

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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Kubrick obviously felt that such things are normalcy and that our everyday world is completely contrived. What hogwash.

[/ QUOTE ] There are strong undercurrents running beneath "our world", our world as individual human beings, even when we are settled and happy (as in "happily married"). We know from psychoanalysis that we indeed "contrive" daily routine to keep neurosis at bay.

The insights of quantum physics allow some scientists to state half-jokingly that they cannot define reality any more. Well, I don't know what normalcy is, either. The natural state of Man is neurosis. (What is that saying about most people leading lives of quite desperation?)

Mickey Brausch

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I can. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] And it's far more brilliant than the "score" of Eyes Wide Shut.

Sometimes, there's just no there there.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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I think that's what particularly disgusted me about the film, that Kubrick obviously felt that such things are normalcy and that our everyday world is completely contrived.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've always been a fan of Thoreau. What do you think of the beginning of Walden, particularly "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation?"

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

So Andy, did you like the film? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Interesting you mention the off kilter minds of Kubrick and Cruise. It has been a while since I saw the film and don't remember it all that well. At the time I thought it had something to do with Kubrick's view of consciousness which was influenced by his connection to Scientology. So it sort of doesn't surprise me something strange came from Kubrick at that stage of his life and Cruise. IIRC the movie had a bunch of religious symbolism as well. Maybe I should watch it again so I could see if I recall it right or am just FOS. At least I would get to see Nicole, which isn't too bad.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

[ QUOTE ]
"The score is brilliant."

"Score"? I can play "E" and "F" on the piano and change the octave. I used to do it when I was three years old.

My apologies to all in this thread if I'm coming across as condescending. I'm not attacking you, just the movie.

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No problem...just don't have good taste in film.
It happens sometimes.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Andy- I can appreciate that you didn't like the film. I will defend the score to a degree however. Yes, it is basic, dissonant, and any talentless hack can play it. But, what I don't think you're seeing is that it is not complexity, but atmosphere. The score for Jaws is one of the most widely acclaimed in the business and it is not of particular difficulty to play. EWS's score is embedded beautifully within the happenings on screen and adds a great deal to the tension and mystery of the themes. That is what makes it outstanding.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Its one thing to not get or like a film...this is the case with me for many great films. But its another thing to claim a film is horrible when even a semi-retarded person can tell it is a very good if not great work of art..but is simply not their cup of tea.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Certainly the mass of men who are as successful as Tom Cruise's character was in the movie do not.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Even great artists create terrible works of art. The finale of Beethoven's 8th symphony, for example, is a travesty. I'm a Kubrick fan; I thought A Clockwork Orange, when I first saw it, was the best movie I'd ever seen. I think Nicole Kidman is far and away the best actress in cinema today. I had ran to see Eyes Wide Shut in eager and excited anticipation. This movie and Kidman's performance in it were horribly disappointing, not because they weren't my cup of tea, but because they were forced, slow-paced, stilted, and irrelevant.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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Certainly the mass of men who are as successful as Tom Cruise's character was in the movie do not.

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The group of people who are as successful as Tom Cruise's character do not constitute the masses of men that Thoreau was talking about.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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As far as EWS...I think of it as treatise on marriage and how you never fully know the person your with...thoughts on the road not taken...sexual intensity and base desire vs. security, love and companionship...that kind of stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]I interpeted EWS as saying the world of relationships we create for ourselves in completely contrived and that we are still driven by core desires that all the love and marriage cannot supplant. For example, all the love, security, family, child, etc. would not have stopped the Nicole Kidman from the one night stand with the soldier even if it cost her everything.

I thought he was saying that it is not deviancy but normalcy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bingo.

As evidenced by what they had to do at the end of the film.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

You bring up some valid points.

I would love if the movie hadn't been filmed with a real-life married couple as the 2 lead characters. There is no way this didn't negatively impact Kubrick's goal.

But I think you are being too harsh. Attacking a score because it is basic? Huh? Complexity does not equal quality. Take Eddie Van Halen's solos. Very complex, yet every one of them is out of context. Bad.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I can, too. In fact, I could play it when I was two years old. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

[ QUOTE ]
Take Eddie Van Halen's solos. Very complex, yet every one of them is out of context. Bad.

[/ QUOTE ]Say whaaaaa??????? I would have to rate this the most incorrect statement ever on 2+2 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Then a comparison of Eyes Wide Shut's subject matter to Thoreau's comment is not apt. Even when Sydney Pollack was explaining things to Cruise it was in a gorgeous room over a sumptuous pool table and brandies. That these men lead contrived lives, or lives of quiet desperation, is simply not believable.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

Yes, you're right about the score. Kurbick's use of music thoughout his career was wonderful; 2001, of course, comes immediately to mind. And the songs of Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney, to name two prominent examples, are simple and unsophisticated, yet they certainly speak to us and have withstood the test of time.

It was just that those single piano notes endlessly repeated drove me nuts. Perhaps that was the point.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

I think Thoreau's comments apply more, if anything, to people like Cruise's character.

His life was about as artificial as could be. And his desperation is as evident as his anxiety.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

if its good enough for scorsese its good enough for me.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Take Eddie Van Halen's solos. Very complex, yet every one of them is out of context. Bad.

[/ QUOTE ]Say whaaaaa??????? I would have to rate this the most incorrect statement ever on 2+2 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Eddie's solos are totally arbitrary. You could mix and match them and nobody would know the difference. This is why Halen will never be amongst the top eschelon of 6-stringers.

Re: Eyes Wide Shut.......What Does It All Mean???
 

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This is why Halen will never be amongst the top eschelon of 6-stringers.

[/ QUOTE ]My god, he defined a whole new style of playing. Nobody was playing pieces like Spanish Fly or Cathedral before him. Even today, I bet there are very few guitar players that can play Spanish Fly with both the same speed and grace.

I don't think I have ever heard anyone bash Eddie before.