This is not an overview of the entire film, which was reviewed and analyzed on this site but a consideration of an aspect of the work.
But first, EYES WIDE SHUT has become a Christmas Movie of sorts among the ‘sophisticated’ crowd. Some years back, I attended a packed art-house Christmas screening. Christmas is, of course, still a big deal, but much of the innocence and magic has been lost over the years due to both mass vulgarity(the Black Friday mob rampages at Walmart) and elite decadence(the rise of Queertianity). But then, Christmas magic has long been inseparable from commercialism festooned with ornaments and lights in anticipation of the ritual of gift-giving. For sure, the last thing on Ralphie’s mind in A CHRISTMAS STORY is the birth of Christ, an afterthought as well for his father who dreams of turkey.
What has become of Christmas(and Christianity in general) is somewhat akin to what became of pagan mythology to the Greco-Roman elites who found renewed interest only through satirical takes, like Ovid’s METAMORPHOSIS. If Muhammad later reimagined and rewrote the Judeo-Christian Narrative with utmost seriousness, Ovid and the educated elites of his time reinterpreted pagan narratives & traditions with irony. The current educated classes in the West reached a similar juncture in regards to Christmas. They see themselves as too hip, sophisticated, knowledgeable, and/or progressive to remain mired in the Old Faith and traditions(made even more problematic with all the Covid restrictions and paranoia), even though they can be utterly earnest in their blind devotion of Awesome Jews, Noble Negroes, and Holy Homos. Too educated for Jesus but can’t light enough candles for George Floyd and Anthony Fauci.
In the current climate, something like EYES WIDE SHUT allows the educated classes to keep with the (di)spirit of Christmas with a twist of the sardonic — orgy porgy and deck-the-whores — , though Kubrick’s last film isn’t a work of cynicism. Granted, the hoi polloi’s idea of a Christmas Movie often has little to do with Christmas. I caught SCARFACE with Al Pacino on Christmas day in a packed theater. For the more square, there is always METROPOLITAN by Whit Stillman.
Anyway, the particular scene I have in mind may be the first conjuration of the film’s title, “Eyes Wide Shut”. It is at the party of the super-rich Ziegler(Sydney Pollack) when Bill Harford(Tom Cruise) is summoned to a room upstairs where he finds a naked woman(Mandy) unconscious on a recliner, not quite Freud’s analytic couch. Ziegler explains to Harford that the woman took some hard drugs. She could as easily fall into death as climb back to consciousness. Even for a rich and connected big shot like Ziegler, death in his house, especially of a high-priced model(or call girl) at a Christmas Party, could be most inconvenient. He relies on Harford not only to treat the woman but keep it confidential. He treats Harford like a friend, even a pal. Of course, he’s in the situation to pay premium and dole out favors. Many of his ‘friends’ are surely high-priced servants, not so different in kind from the dazed woman on the recliner. To put it bluntly, whores, the lot of them.
Anyway, a fuller significance of the scene may be overlooked because the woman seems lifeless and inert, a total non-participant in the scene centered on Ziegler’s anxieties and Harford’s expertise. She just seems zonked out, neutral towards life and death. Yet, contra Ziegler’s troubled state of mind, she seems placid, perhaps drifting in a blissful dream-state. Still, Ziegler and Harford fill the foreground with movement and dialogue, and the woman figures into the scene only because Ziegler, who wants her up and gone, fears he has a death on his hands. Besides, the sheer physicality of her nudity makes us focus on her body than on her mind.
For this reason, we don’t give much thought to what she may have been feeling and ‘seeing’ in her inner-realm. Though her eyes are shut, she could be in a dream-state or on the edge of consciousness. There’s a line in James Dickey’s novel DELIVERANCE: “I lay awake all night in brilliant sleep.” Eyes closed to the outside world, eyes open to the inner-world. Such sensation is especially strong when one falls asleep against all efforts to remain awake. When I used to attend movies regularly 20 yrs ago, I would almost always slip into slumber for about 15-20 minutes. It could be a slow-paced Art Film or fast-paced action flick, but there I was, nodding off but also doing my best to remain awake. The result would be a state of mind where I was clearly asleep but my eyes felt open. I wasn’t watching the movie but, on some level, aware of it sd stimuli. So, while to an onlooker, I would have appeared as just someone who nodded off, something dramatic was happening as my mind, in a struggle between staying awake and falling sleep, compromised on ‘brilliant sleep’ where my eyes were closed but felt open.
To Harford and Ziegler, the woman is just a limp body slumped across the furniture, indeed unawares that she’s totally nude in the presence of a stranger, Harford. She doesn’t fit into the equation of what their world is really about. As far as Harford is concerned, Ziegler and he are on the same page whereas the woman is a disreputable creature, mere diversion on the side. Though Ziegler is far richer, Harford has the prestige of being a doctor, one of the most respected professions. Also, for all his wealth, Ziegler was stuck in a helpless situation and relied on Harford as expert and confidante. The two men belong, the woman does not, at least in Harford’s preferred perspective.
However, from Ziegler’s viewpoint, both Harford and the woman could be seen in the same category. He buys their services, they keep his secrets. In a way, Ziegler may regard Harford the bigger fool because Harford is deluded enough to think himself different from the woman. (He has yet to realize what Rachel does in BLADE RUNNER: “I’m not IN the business. I AM the business.”) At the very least, the woman has no illusions about what she is to Ziegler. She is a whore(like Rebecca De Mornay in RISKY BUSINESS; one saving grace of prostitution is its honesty). In a way, Harford is also Ziegler’s whore but is blinded by the prestige of his profession from seeing the true nature of their relationship. (Later at the secret orgy, he pretends to be one of ‘them’, but ‘they’ see him as belonging with the ‘others’, the whores. It’s like the character of BARRY LYNDON never quite belongs in the high society he strives to enter. Just about the only figures in Kubrick’s films who attain quasi-orgasmic unity with the beyond-the-infinite are Major Kong who hits his target and ecstatically ‘becomes death, destroyer of worlds’ in DR. STRANGELOVE, David Bowman who is reborn of himself into Star Child in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and Alex who not only regains but ascends into his earlier self as Valhalla in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.)
Anyway, with the scene focused on Ziegler and Harford, the dazed woman outwardly remains a nonentity who hardly registers; even her nudity seems sterile, like part of the furniture itself; she might as well be a patient in the doctor’s office or a corpse in a morgue. Yet, what we overlook and miss of her state of mind comes to serve as a guiding apparition throughout the film. To Ziegler, the night was just a close call. Whew, she’s going to live after all. She’ll come to her senses and leave. For Harford, she’s either just another plaything of Ziegler or just another ‘patient’ he examined.
But what was going inside her mind? What was she ‘seeing’? Had she been fully awake when Harford arrived, she would likely have regarded him as just some good looker, one of Ziegler’s many associates. But in her druggy state of mind, perhaps a blend of blissful highs, sullen lows, mind-blowing ecstasy, and frightful anxiety — as certain drugs seem to have rollercoaster effect on users — , Bill Harford could have seemed more than a man, more than a doctor. Perhaps, her faint glimpses of him and his voice merged with her dream-state fantasies. He became like a hero, a white knight, a savior of her as damsel in distress. Of course, he has no way of knowing this, even truer of Ziegler. But from her perspective, the moment could been downright mythic. It’s sort of like the scene in A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, which began as Kubrick’s project before it was passed onto Steven Spielberg. When Monica activates the imprinting protocol on David the robot-boy, she can barely fathom the extent of the transformation about to take place in his ‘psyche’. She felt a growing affection towards David, but it could never compare with the ‘eternal’ love for her that’s been imprinted into David.
Likewise, what the woman feels about Bill Harford in that moment could be many times more potent than what he feels about her. For him a bit a sympathy, for her a full blown dream symphony. The moment may explain why she picked up on his identity right away at the secret ritual at the mansion. Perhaps, she remembered the scent of his cologne, made all the more alluring in her altered state. So, even though she is ultimately a hired whore and acted out her assigned part at the mansion, it might not have entirely been a put-on because of the possible ‘psychic’ connection with Harford in their first encounter.
Harford is happy to have resolved the issue for Ziegler who is relieved and expresses gratitude. But late in the evening the next day, Alice’s revelation fleshes out what the woman at Ziegler’s house may have been feeling in her drugged state. Alice too is under the influence of drugs, though far milder than whatever the woman was on. Still, the marijuana has lowered Alice’s inhibitions. A door to her subconscious or dream-state budges just a little, and strange emotions begin to emerge as she confesses her greatest love was for a naval officer whom she didn’t even know; she just caught a glimpse of him a few times. She felt something more than lust, an all-consuming passion for that man like he was god or something, indeed so much so that she was willing to give up everything, even Bill and her child, for a moment of bliss with him.
All these years with her, Billy never suspected such feelings could exist within her. But then, neither he, Ziegler, nor we the audience surmised anything about the drugged-out woman at the Christmas Party. Alice is a respectable wife, not a whore like the naked woman in Ziegler’s room, but the psyches of the two women are joined in myth. All these years, Alice seemed perfectly content with Bill, but her truest and deepest love has been for some man she doesn’t even know. (The camera’s caressing of Kidman’s nudity hints at the ‘whore’ in every woman. In the very first scene, she drops her dress and stands totally naked, even more so than the women at the orgy who at least have thongs upon de-robing. Kubrick insisted on a married couple for the two leads, and the logic is consistent with the film’s theme. The wife whose privacy belongs to one man is made the voyeuristic object for all the world. Wife is made a screen whore. Just like Harford was willing to do anything to enter the mansion, Cruise was willing to do anything to enter Kubrick’s realm.)
In a similar vein, even though the whore at Ziegler’s place may avail herself to any man who can meet her price, her dream-world is only for the one she loves. Even though the wife and the whore are socio-moral opposites, they have one thing in common. Both have accepted a compromised position in life. It’s rare that a woman(or a man) marries the person of one’s utmost desires. Most marriages are about finding some suitable mate. It’s like the Crosby, Stills, & Nash song that goes, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” While people would like to believe marriage is about love and fidelity whereas prostitution is about impersonal sex-for-money, most marriages are about settling for what is within one’s ‘market value’ as buyer and seller. It is partly about ‘business’, or deal-making. (Still, one might argue that the golden age of marriage was when society shifted from arranged marriages to free-choice marriage. In this period, pre-marital and extra-marital sex were still frowned upon or even severely punished. Love had nothing to do with arranged marriage, though couples in arranged marriages could come to love one another, and even though free-choice marriage rarely guaranteed a match with one’s dream beau, love still played an important role in one’s choice of partner. Love and Marriage went together in this period because sex outside marriage was disapproved of. Thus, love was ideally contained within the culture of marriage. But then, sexual liberation/disconnection happened, and it not only tolerated sexual licentiousness but encouraged libido gone wild and frowned upon sexual morality that was mocked as ‘abstinence’ or ‘repression’. Thereby, marriage was no longer the domain in which love was sought and explored. Rather, sex and pleasure were sought freely, and marriage became more of an aftermath, something to settle into only after one’s sexual market value was past its prime. In its golden age, marriage was about the marketing of fresh meat. After the sexual liberation/disconnection, marriage was about the marketing of stale meat past expiration date.)
Alice loves her husband Bill, but he is the man of her life, not of her dreams. It is love, not LOVE. In a way, she almost loves him like a child, even with an element of pity. She settled down with him because she thought he was the best she could do. Obviously, he’s quite a catch(as a handsome doctor), but maybe she always thought she could do better as she’s an attractive woman herself, and taller than him.
At any rate, she married him not just out of love but other considerations, and it’s the latter that makes marriage somewhat like prostitution where sexual services are rarely about love. It’s a living. The naked woman was with Ziegler because it’s a living. Alice is with Bill because it’s a living. Ziegler pays the woman, and Bill offers stability and security to Alice’s life. For sure, the woman can tell the difference between Ziegler and Bill. Ziegler is no looker. She offers sexual services to him only for money. If Ziegler were poor, she wouldn’t even have noticed him. She obviously notices that Bill Harford is much more attractive. Especially in her dazed dream-state, his presence may have been all the more irresistible, indeed akin to what the naval officer was for Alice.
Of course, Harford had no such inkling while hovering over the naked woman. Her dream remained her own. But upon listening to Alice’s pot-induced confession, Bill finds himself shrouded in the mist of female dream-psyche, not least because he too is under the influence of marijuana. And even though Alice’s unlocked secret doesn’t immediately make him think of the woman at Ziegler’s place, it sets off a series of happenstance that finally leads him to her and the mythic implications of what may have transpired between them at Ziegler’s place.
What was merely a medical routine on his part could have been like a fairytale for her, one where the prince revives the dying princess with a kiss. So, in a way, even though Bill’s nighttime journey is triggered by Alice’s confession, without which he would have remained his somewhat smug self, it was anticipated by what happened between him and the woman. In a way, that room in Ziegler’s house is comparable to Room 237 in THE SHINING. The source from which the haunting began.
And there are layers of secrecy and mystery, not because the room itself is anything special but because of what remained unsaid or unrealized. Harford didn’t tell Alice the details as to why he went missing at the party. Alice even surmised that Bill might have gone upstairs to a room to frolic in bed with the two sirens she saw him with. One side of Alice trusts her husband, but another side of her isn’t really sure. She also projects her own temptations onto him. At any rate, Alice almost surely never went anywhere near the room where Harford treated the naked woman. She doesn’t know such a room even exists.
But there’s another layer of mystery because even though Bill did enter the room, a private sanctum of Ziegler, he had no idea as to what may have been unfolding in the dream state of the woman. The mind/soul is the ultimate castle, the deepest source of power. Even the poorest and weakest man has something within him that cannot be pried open by the richest and most powerful forces in the world. The religious believe only God has the power to peer into the souls of men. That said, powerless people’s inner safes are of no consequence to the world. People are fascinated by what lies hidden in the hearts of powerful men.
Because rich and powerful men tend to house themselves in ostentatious mansions and work in elaborate buildings, one can fall under the illusion that the secret of power emanates from those very walls. It accounts for Harford’s tantalizing entry into the forbidden zone of the super-rich and their secret ways. And yet, that is merely a mirage. It’s Alex Jones’ idea of power, a bunch of super-rich guys getting together in some hidden cove and having orgies or playing at ritual sacrifice with goat blood. But, it’s all just a game, a kind of play.
The real castle of power is in the mind, something that is either locked or incomprehensible even when opened(as genius goes over the head of most people). Mansions and buildings are physical manifestations of mind power; they themselves are not the source of power. And yet, because people have come to associate power and wealth with physical objects, they fall into the fallacy of power resting within the walls. It’s like mistaking the church as the house of God when it is but a physical expression of one’s devotion to God.
This is where Judaism gained a huge advantage over paganism that affixed physical attributes to the gods who were believed to reside in some specific place. In contrast, the Jewish God is formless and cannot be visualized or ‘materialized’ into an entity. Thus, it can never take idolatrous form and be destroyed as such. When pagan temples were destroyed, the gods died within the ruins, just like National Socialism was really over with the destruction of its monuments. But the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple hardly made a dent in the Jewish God. (Likewise, the construction of Camelot, however impressive it may be, cannot be the solution to mankind’s problems. And there is no actual Grail to cure Arthur’s sickness. Rather, the real secret lies in the hearts and minds. For all of Camelot’s grandeur, it becomes a hollow place once the knights within lose their ways. And the Round Table becomes just a table for feasting by errant warriors given to pleasure and vanity. Perceval realizes the Grail isn’t an object to be found on the outside but a truth, tragically forgotten, to be recovered from within, something which Arthur forgot: “You and the Land are one.”)
Thus, the notion of entering into the secret chamber of power is ultimately a tease in EYES WIDE SHUT. We do enter the realm of privilege(and fancy decadence) of the super-rich, but that’s not what and where the power is. Indeed, unbeknownst to Harford, the closest he comes to entering the Room of Power is near the end when he goes to visit Ziegler in the recreation/billiard room. There are no masks, tuxedos, weird music, naked models, strange rituals & orgies, and all that whacky stuff. There is just Ziegler putting the cards on the table and telling him how it is. Of course, Ziegler isn’t going to name the names or discuss the tricks of his wealth creation. That secret remains within his mind, locked safely away. But in the room, Harford realizes that power is at once more hidden and more mundane than anyone may realize. Some people got the power for whatever reason, but most people don’t. The ones with the power hold the cue sticks, and everyone else is a billiard ball. Still, for all the frightening things power can do, it is also ‘forgiving’ and amenable to compromise with those it can ‘reason’ with. Flexing the muscle is also flexible. In other words, it’s not the end of the world for the Power that some doe-eyed doctor crept into their secret lair and watched some silly put-on ritual, which was just a game for them. As long as Bill pretends nothing happened and just plays ball, everything’s cool and back to normal. Bill will likely go along but feels a bit queasy because there is within him something like a conscience. It’s like Tommy(Joe Pesci) and Jimmy(Robert DeNiro) in GOODFELLAS can pull off whatever they need to without batting an eye, but Henry, having a bit of softness and hesitation, can still be shocked by some of the violence. Jimmy takes the killing of Tommy especially hard not only because the latter was one of the few people he cared about but he Jimmy, of all people, let his guard down and didn’t see it coming. The ambusher got ambushed.
Bill Harford was deeply unsettled upon being subjected to his wife’s recollection of a man whom she still regards as the ideal hero/god of her dreams. So, no matter how intimate and passionate they were in bed making love, the ghostly figure of the naval officer was always there between them. He wasn’t aware, but his wife was. What his eyes were shut to, his wife’s eyes were open to. (It’s like Danny in THE SHINING can see things that his parents cannot.) And, very likely, the prostitute had other men in mind when having sex with men like Ziegler. To any such rich ‘dirty old man’, the act involves only himself and the woman. But the woman feels no attraction and may even feel revulsion about the man though she pretends to get into the act. It’s like Joe Buck thinking of his old girlfriend while some homosexual Jewish teenager sucks his dong in a movie theater in MIDNIGHT COWBOY.
Bill Harford is understandably unnerved by Alice’s confession. Obviously, he feels jealousy, but it’s not just about the man, who may be even better-looking than he is(and probably taller and more dashing, which he isn’t). But it’s also a psychological envy. Why hasn’t he ever felt that way about another woman, the woman of his hidden dreams? Whatever temptations he may have felt over the years, he never lost his mind over any of them. He’s been happily married to Alice and always assumed she felt the same way about him and their marriage. But it turns out she has a far richer dream life than he does. It’s like what a Catholic who never saw a miracle feels about a Catholic who has. “How come it happened to him but not to me?”
But there’s another layer to the envy. Not only does something in Bill hanker emotionally for what Alice has been secretly feeling all these years but he wants to be the kind of object of desire that the naval officer has become for Alice. There’s too much to process, and he finds himself in a confused state of mind. He was made privy to a secret/truth that usually remains locked and hidden from daily life. It’s something Alice should never have shared with Bill. But through her confession, he was allowed into a forbidden space where he discovered things that he wasn’t supposed to. In her normal state of mind, Alice never would have bared such secrets for their destabilizing effect on any relationship. Besides, Bill wasn’t looking to peer into her mind, rather confident of how she felt about love & marriage, and emotionally unprepared to react to the otherwise.
Perhaps, despite all their years of intimacy in love-making and conversation, it is the first time he really entered into her hidden space, her soul-mansion with its secret rituals of memory and myth-making. It could be that, on some subconscious level, his eagerness to sneak into the sex ritual of the super-rich is* as a surrogate of Alice’s deeper secrets. It’s like dream objectified. He might feel the questions raised by Alice’s reverie might be answered there. (He need not have bothered as she spills everything about her fantasies when he returns home and wakes her from a sexually charged dream that makes the orgy at the mansion look like kid-stuff.)
Of course, he’s foolish to think he could get away with it and is found out soon enough and humiliated by people at the mansion, much like he was earlier by Alice whose words made him feel like a little mouse. And yet, in an odd way, he does stumble upon what his subconscious was yearning for on that night. The night culminates with a woman who offers herself as sacrifice for Bill’s safe passage from there. Incredibly, there is this beautiful woman who feels such powerful attraction/love for Bill that she’s willing to give up everything, possibly even her life, for his sake… which recalls what Alice said about the naval officer, i.e. she was willing to give up everything for one night with him.
Later, when Bill connects the dots and suspects the dead woman in a news story is the very one who came to his rescue, he is deeply shaken, saddened but also moved and touched. Did a woman really love him that much?
Later, Ziegler pricks his bubble and tells him it was all just an act, and that she died of drug overdose(like what really happened with George Floyd), a mere accident. Indeed, she was none other than the whore Ziegler was screwing at the Christmas Party, the one Bill examined to see if she’d pull through. In a way, Bill’s bubble is indeed popped. And yet, that detail(of her being a junkie) makes the mythic connection between Bill and the woman even stronger because she was in a world of dreams when Bill spoke gently into her ears and slightly budged her eyes open. Her first encounter with Bill was as him as savior and dream-hero.
Power is both like the biggest reality and the biggest dream. Nothing changes the course of the real world like Power does. Consider how the world was turned upside down with this Covid Hysteria pushed by the Power. Even those who ignore power and just want to mind their own business eventually find themselves intruded upon by the Power. Power is all too real.
And yet, power is also like a dream because its ultimate manifestation is beyond the reach of most people(and even those within the domain of power struggle for it ceaselessly, like NFL teams for the Super Bowl). Most people never get their fingers on power, and even those who do gain possession find it most slippery and elusive. For all the monuments built to house or honor power, power itself is mercurial, ever flowing and shifting. In its fluid state, it can easily slip from one entity to another, like how it went from Anglos to Jews in the modern world. Those who try to keep the power by solidifying and locking it away may grow rigid and stagnant, like the Byzantine Empire and the Spanish Monarchy; power dynamics must flow freely to evolve and mutate into new possibilities.
For most people, power is a dream to be fantasized through superhero movies or the STAR WARS franchise with its theory of the Force. As they can never hold power themselves, they prefer power in the form of symbols, metaphors, or magic. Anyone can understand the significance of the Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories.
Furthermore, even as the powerless are fascinated with power and its fantasies, they embrace the pat conclusion that power is ultimately dangerous and shouldn’t be concentrated in any form. Thus, the Ring must be forsaken by all in THE LORD OF THE RINGS in order for harmony to be restored. But such moralism may be a rationalization, a coping mechanism to reassure the self that one, being conscientious, would reject great power even if it were offered to him. It feels better to be powerless by choice than by chance or mediocrity. It’s like the scene in SAY ANYTHING where a bunch of guys without girlfriends say it is really ‘by choice’.
‘By choice’. So, people tell themselves that they are happy with what(little) they have because they’re proud to be one of the ordinary people, the common man, and etc. It’s like a middling team is content to win just enough games for the season. But if possible, doesn’t every team want to win the championship? And if it were really within their grasp, don’t a lot of people really want the power, lots of it? Why else would superhero movies be so popular… and not just for children but for full-grown adults?
And there’s more than one kind of power. There is of course political and military power. There’s money power. Agenda-driven, such forms of power seek to gain control over others. But there is also the power of beauty. The nymphet in LOLITA has no desire to rule or control others. In many ways, she’s just another American teenager and has no agenda beyond youthful infatuations. And yet, something about her casts a powerful spell over Humbert Humbert. Likewise, the naval officer hardly did anything to gain Alice’s attention. But one look at him, and she was transfixed for life. Beauty is thus a passive kind of power. It attracts those who want to win and own it, like a trophy, even if it wishes for no such attraction, desire, reverence, and worship from others. Ginger(Sharon Stone) uses her sexual wiles in CASINO to get what she wants, but she has no desire to marry Ace Rothstein(Robert DeNiro). He is the one who wants to win and control her. But then, he couldn’t control his desire for her. He risks everything on her even though 99% of his waking hours is about the rational business of running casinos. The man who always goes for the surest bets makes the worst bet because of the power of beauty.
Beauty is something gazed at and admired, something that others desire to access and own. But the dynamics is seductive than transgressive. It tempts others to aggress towards it. Indeed, Bill Harford, a looker himself, can’t help casting spells on those who come in contact with him. His presence is seductive regardless of his intentions, like when the daughter of the dead man smothers him with kisses he didn’t expect or want. Beauty is like a drug. Drugs are mere chemicals, but consider their power over the junkies who gotta have their fix.
Whereas men like Ziegler possess willed power that is gained and used consciously, there is another kind of power that has hold over people on the mere basis of their attributes: beauty and enticement. Therefore, even as the super-rich in EYES WIDE SHUT buy, own, and exploit the objects of beauty, such as the naked women with exquisite bodies, they are also slaves to their desires. For all their smarts, drive, cunning, and ruthlessness, a big motivating factor in their competition is to gain access to beauty in arts, housing, and sex. Ziegler seems to be the kind of guy who, when not making money, lives for sexual pleasure.
It makes good pragmatic sense to be content with the limits of one’s abilities and the access they bring. Few people have the means to gain access to the best of everything. If everyone was always fixated on MORE and BETTER, he’d go crazy, like James Woods’ character in the cocaine movie THE BOOST. Still, there’s a difference between being realistic and convincing oneself that the less is the ideal. More often than not, it is self-deception. Consider this near-invariable truth. Some guy is married to some okay-looking woman. She ain’t ugly but no beauty queen either. The man tells himself that he met the love of his life and loves her forever, and there’s no way he would ditch her. But suppose he gets a lucky break in the movie or music industry and all these hot-looking babes flock around him. Chances are he will divorce the wife and go with the babes. It’s like the guy in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET dumping his okay-looking wife for a hot blonde upon attaining wealth that affords him just about whatever he wants.
This conflict between middling contentment and megalomania was also explored in THE SHINING where Jack Torrance is introduced as a modest family man but revealed to house a supersized ego within his soul. As a writer who creates his own universe in a place designed for the rich and famous(‘the very best’), his hidden ambition begins to emerge. Increasingly, the presence of his wife becomes a reminder of the inferiority he settled for. And he becomes resentful of his son who seems to possess superior innate abilities — it’s like Titan Cronus tried to devour his son Zeus, who was saved by his mother. Contempt for the wife, envy of the son.
Still, there’s a ‘schizomatic’ quality in Jack’s character throughout the movie. He seems to inhabit multiple planes of reality or emotionality. At times, he seems back to being the same old Jack, someone his wife can relate to. It’s as if he’s shifting between his reality as a modest man and his dream as the master deserving of the best, its unattainableness scapegoated onto his wife who, to him, is at times as irritating as Bill can be to Alice who sees and feels a bit deeper about the hidden dimensions of desire.
This is where Alice is somewhat savvier than Bill in her ‘wisdom’ about human nature. Bill tends to be square, eager to believe in the compromises of life as preferred ideals. Alice is like a high school senior listening to a pubescent boy scout reciting from a rulebook.
Alice’s first reaction is that of ridicule and derision as she falls to the floor in a fit of giggles when Bill says he has absolute trust in her as a good wife. Her second reaction, in the final scene, is more of resigned irritation, appreciative of his efforts to come to terms with her but still disdainful of platitudes as heartfelt truths.
The way Alice instinctively sees it, Bill and she became a pair because they were well-matched on in key areas: looks, educational attainment, and social status. They weren’t meant to be the perfect couple, he wasn’t meant just for her, and she wasn’t meant just for him. Things just turned out that way out of many other possibilities. In other words, their partnership was rolled of dice, not written in the stars. Also, even though both got better-than-most(as most people would love to have a spouse like Bill or Alice), neither got the very best, and thus, even their fancy marriage is a compromise, the acceptance of less than of the ultimate ideal. The difference is Alice senses this, especially after her eyes met those of a dashing naval officer, whereas Bill, in earnest boy-scout manner, happily convinced himself that he couldn’t ask for a better wife and surely his wife feels the same way about him.
First platitude:
Bill: “Well, I don’t know, Alice. Maybe because you’re my wife. Maybe because you’re the mother of my child…and I know you would never be unfaithful to me.”
Alice: “You are very, very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
Bill: “No. I’m sure of you.”
Second platitude:
Bill: “Are you sure of that?”
Alice: “Am I sure? Only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth.”
Bill: “And no dream is ever just a dream.”
Alice: “The important thing is we’re awake now and hopefully for a long time to come.”
Alice: “Forever?”
Bill: “Forever.”
Alice: “Let’s not use that word. You know? It frightens me.”
It’s been noted that the couple in the Arthur Schnitzler novel is Jewish, whereas the couple in Kubrick’s adaptation are seemingly Anglo-American or Wasp. Perhaps, Kubrick felt uncomfortable about putting Jewish characters in the forefront. Or, maybe it was a reflection of how times had changed. When Schnitzler wrote the novel, Jews were still social climbers, and vestiges of the old gentile aristocratic order were still around. But by the time of EYES WIDE SHUT, Jews were clearly on top, and if anything, Wasps were aspiring to gain entry into the Jewish-dominated world or eager to marry their children into Jewish families.
It’s like Kafka’s THE TRIAL and THE CASTLE, which once read like allegories of obstacles placed in front of Jews, now read like the manuals of how Jewish Power can drive the goyim crazy. Some speculated that THE SHINING is about the ‘genocide’ of the American Indians as the Overlook Hotel was built on Indian Burial Ground. Perhaps, but it could be Kubrick was also implying that the Wasps were facing extinction as a power. Thus, Overlook is a burial ground not only for the Indians but the Anglos. The hotel’s glory days were in the past, and it’s haunted by ghosts of Wasps who were once on top. And maybe these ghosts are working on Jack Torrance to bring out some Hitlerian juice in him. Maybe not.
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