EYES WIDE SHUT
The most unknowingly foolish scene
Spoilers for Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Have you ever been in a situation where you were the only one who didn’t understand? Have you ever thought that sometimes you have been too trusting and blinded towards reality?
Dr William ‘Bill’ Harford (Tom Cruise) is in total shock when his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), tells him that she’s been dreaming about having sex with another man. A man she met just once. She was ready to give up on everything she had to be with that man.
He thought he knew her. He thought he knew how women think. She destroys his ideals and his confidence. He leaves home. Leaves the nest in search of a new puzzle to solve.
Eyes Wide Shut is a matryoshka doll of a movie. Its layers start to come away during Alice’s confession. The phone rings, interrupting the scene, and Bill is called away to the home of a patient who has just died.
While he is there, the daughter of the patient kisses him and tells him she loves him, but they are interrupted by the phone. Her boyfriend will be arriving soon.
He then visits a prostitute but before they can have sex, he gets a call from his wife. Feeling guilty he heads out again. He goes to a jazz club where an old friend, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field, who would use his experience on set to kickstart his own successful directing career), is playing. Nick tells him about another gig that night, in a secret place.
Guess what? Nick gets a phone call about the gig and writes down the password to enter. Bill sees this, and it drives him forward. This matryoshka is made up of many phone calls!
Tired of his own guilty conscious, Bill decides to join the party. He heads to a costume rental shop and then hails a taxi getting him very far away from the city.
As he sits in the taxi, there’s a feeling that he is cutting away from his old life; leaving the city to do something alone and for himself.
This is his rebellion. He couldn’t make it with the daughter of the patient – they were interrupted, he couldn’t make it with the prostitute – they were interrupted, and he couldn’t make it with his wife – she had too many secrets of her own.
Now it’s time to feel alive again, rebel, revolt and shed the naivety he has shown so far. Bill wants to be part of the game. To be one of the naughty ones.
The party is crazy. One of the most powerful scenes in the history of cinema; one bursting with rhythm and nudity that has become iconic.
Bill thinks he has made it now. He’s joining an exclusive orgy. He is desperate to have his own secret, something against his wife, so desperate that he overlooks the reality of the situation. He was not welcome to the party.
It is a scene of secrets. The partygoers all wear masks. It is another matryoshka; layers hidden under layers.
The organizers find out they have an unwanted guest and ask Bill to step into the middle of a circle. All the attendees are around him. He is asked to take off his mask and becomes recognisable to everybody. He has been fooled. Again.
Everybody knows what the party represents; he is the only one who doesn’t.
Everybody wears a mask; he is the only one who doesn’t.
Even his wife wore a mask. She is a different person than he thought she was, and he didn’t understand it. That is why he found the mask on his pillow at the end of the movie.
Despite his best efforts, he cannot deceive those around him. He literally forgets his mask, but in reality, he never had one. It’s fascinating to see his curiosity and naivety.
The contrast between the masks we wear and our genuine selves is just one of many in this magnificent movie, designed to fool not only the characters but the viewer as well.
Think about the nudity: feminine nudes in this movie are a constant, every few minutes, whereas men are rarely showing their skin. They cover up, to protect their reputations. The women in this film are emotionally and physically bare.
Then there is the colour red: the contrast of the cosy Christmas decorations that are everywhere to the red of the master of the orgy, the red of sin, the red of perversion.
Eyes Wide Shut is a cold film. There is little affection. Almost no kisses. Families are weird in this world.
The daughter of the patient is due to be married but does not want to.
The daughter of the owner of the costume rental shop likes older men and gets discovered in a middle of a threesome by her father.
Bill’s friend, Victor Zieger (Sydney Pollack), has sex with a prostitute in the middle of a Christmas party, held at his home, with his wife a few metres away.
Above all, Alice is the biggest mystery: a devoted mother but willing to abandon her family for a sexual encounter, playful yet distant, sleeping but maybe not sleeping. Who knows?
Everybody can wear a mask. Or maybe it’s just a dream of ours. And we have been fooled, by others or by our own dreams.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael, inspired by the novella Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler
Starring: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Todd Field, Sydney Pollack
 | A guest post by
|