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

acoustix · #1 08-11-2006, 04:12 PM

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?

Dominic · #2 08-11-2006, 06:15 PM

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.

Utah · #3 08-11-2006, 06:39 PM

[ QUOTE ]
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.

CharlieDontSurf · #4 08-11-2006, 07:40 PM

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.

andyfox · #5 08-12-2006, 10:30 AM

"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.

Mickey Brausch · #6 08-12-2006, 05:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"The score is brilliant."

[/ QUOTE ]

"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

CharlieDontSurf · #7 08-12-2006, 09:22 PM

[ 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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

Dominic · #8 08-11-2006, 10:09 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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 ]

nice

andyfox · #9 08-12-2006, 10:27 AM

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.

Mickey Brausch · #10 08-12-2006, 05:53 PM

[ QUOTE ]
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