Eyes Wide Shut is about the laws of nature conflicting with social laws in marriage, a film about a husband and wife being sexual beings in a seemingly conservative, binding agreement. It’s absolutely beautifully shot, acted and directed, this film being Stanley Kubrick’s last masterpiece in a long line of ground breaking, challenging pieces, before his untimely, mysterious death.
The film starts with an exposed woman,
Alice, getting ready for a Christmas party. Her husband Bill looks for
his wallet and enters the bathroom where Alice, exposed yet again, is sitting
on the toilet peeing. They go to Bill’s friend Victor’s party where they
drink champagne and proceed to enjoy this illusion of sophistication,
separated. Alice dances with an older man aggressively flirting with her
while Bill is with two young pretty girls who are throwing themselves at him.
These desires are both thinly veiled behind laughter, art and dance, not to
mention lots of alcohol. Bill is then pulled away from his potential
ménage a trois to deal with a pressing medical matter upstairs. A naked
woman in a bathroom was on the verge of overdosing. Bill lent his
expertise and smoothed over the situation. Alice reminds the groping
older man that she is married. At home Bill and Alice are naked and
kissing, Alice looking at the both of them in the mirror, Alice’s looking
glass.
It is important to note that both
husband and wife deflected the advancements of their respective flirty
strangers. They both played by society’s rules and didn’t give in, thus
breaking the social bond they both agreed to. We then see them the next
day fulfilling all their domestic requirements, Bill goes to work as a Doctor
performing routine medical checkups while Alice looks after their little girl,
both strolling through the banality of modern daily life.
At Victor’s party it was alcohol that
allowed them to teeter on the edge of promiscuity and now a day later its
marijuana. Like most people these days, they require a mind altering
substance to express themselves in a society that demands control and obedience
of its populace. Alice and Bill are in their bed smoking a joint asking
each other about the strangers trying to pick them up at the party. They
argue about the reasons behind their potential infidelity. This form of
jealousy is certainly common among couples that wish to police the actions and
the thoughts of their partner to avoid disloyalty. That’s the seed of
their argument, no matter how much Bill says he wants to be faithful because he
loves Alice and is married to her, she isn’t convinced and she’s right not be,
because we can’t know what’s really going on in the minds of our partner, but
through our own deductive reasoning, we can assume that if I am thinking it,
it’s likely that he/she is as well.
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Alice proceeded to tell Bill about a
sailor she saw a year ago, that turned her on so much, that she would have
given up her marriage and their little girl to spend one night with him.
As she told the story, this emasculated Bill to the point of tears, she did
this as part of a defense mechanism, to combat against her lack of control over
his thoughts as she can’t access his thoughts she might as well contaminate
them.
A thoughts war begins between husband
and wife, and therein lies the problem with society and marriage. We
can’t control the thoughts of our partners; all we can do is try not to think
about it at all. But in the case of Bill and Alice, these last few days
events has shed new light on old memories and our sometimes lack of free will.
The handsome sailor making love with
Alice is all that is populating Bill’s mind. Men often feel inadequate
around their women because the pressure of sexual performance that is so
prevalent in society. A man has to be the best at everything and Bill is
now thinking that the sailor is what turns Alice on.
Women are generally more introverted
where men are more extroverted and the film breaks in two at this point where
Bill acts out in the world and Alice plays within the mind in the form of
fantasy dreams.
This film explores bottled up sexuality
and the failing roles we try so hard to keep up. In order to build and
then live in society we have all given up a form of freedom that hasn’t let us
go. That freedom wants out of all the social cages that have been built
to restrain it and express itself fully. This of course cannot be aloud
because that would be the end of civilization. So our real freedoms must
be restricted and suppressed with laws, rules and regulations, with medication
and religions, in prison terms our true freedom has been condemned to a life,
incarcerate without the possibility of parole.
After Bill is taking a walk with
thoughts of Alice is bed with the sailor invading his mind, a group of thugs
push him down and yell homosexual, derogatory insults at him furthering his already
declining masculinity. Bill then meets up with a prostitute that offers
him a good time. These are all manifestations of his inner thoughts
realized. What is it to be a real man in modern day society? How
much mucho does a man need to be, to feel satisfied with his self-image and his
self-worth?
Bill goes inside the prostitute’s
apartment, I’m sure to discreetly restore his manhood after Alice challenged
it. Unfortunately the restoring of his manhood requires caveman style,
naked man with naked woman action and instead he’s stuck in a shady apartment
negotiating the terms of a natural act between a man and woman, through a
capitalistic monetary system. I suppose on a biological innate level it
defeats the purpose of the hunt. Regardless, Alice calls Bill before
anything happens with the prostitute and Bill is reminded of his binding marital
rules and leaves without incident.
Bill goes to a bar to watch a medical
school friend play in a jazz band. Nick sits with Bill after his set and
tells Bill of a party he will be attending later on that night, where he’ll be
required to wear a blindfold while playing piano. Nick says there are
lots of beautiful woman there. Bill, on his journey further down the
rabbit hole talks Nick into telling him the location of the costumed
party. Bill goes to get a costume and is yet again derailed momentarily
while rules and functions of society’s suppression prevent him from naturally
exploring his sexual desires.
After using his symbolic authority as a
doctor, Bill acquires his costume and goes to a mansion where inside there is a
cult like, secret society of people all masked and cloaked performing some sort
of choosing ceremony that leads to an orgy of sorts. Bill, for some
reason is immediately suspected for not belonging, or is that just paranoia, actually
it isn’t, they are on to him. The women are disrobed and choose their
partners; they leave their masks on because it’s the body that’s required and
not the personality of the face thus the individual.
People want to express their sexuality
without restraint; the function of society forbids this form of expression in
order to control its population. So using the strict rules that govern
society, groups of elite people form a secret society so they can express their
sexuality without restraint but are still subject to the rule of law, their law
thus negating the desired natural flow of human sexuality. This is where
Bill comes in, he is society’s sexual oppression infected their little
theatrical sex orgy. There’s even an interesting point when Bill is
upstairs watching naked people performing sex when a masked man clearly higher
up, is with a naked masked woman, they both look at Bill. When the film
cuts to a different angle the naked woman with the same mask on, holding onto
the higher up man, is clearly a different woman. I think this is
expressing the objects we often see women as. This elite group is very
clear how they see women and the director was testing his audience to see if
they are subject to the same objectification.
Bill is caught and brought before the
grandmaster in a sort of tribunal to answer for what he has done. With
all the faceless onlookers, Bill removes his mask thus re-entering his symbolic
identity and the baggage that comes with a name. After a young naked
woman asks the council to take her as some sort of sacrifice, Bill is set free
but is ordered to keep quiet about what he has seen there. It is also
important to note that the whole sequence at the masked party could have been a
dream Bill had after smoking pot with Alice.
Bill gets home to hear about another
dream Alice has had about the sailor, which led to an orgy where Alice had sex
with many men, and poor Bill listens to this dream as his masculinity takes
another hit. It appears as if he’s yet again, not good enough for a woman
like Alice.
Bill uses his symbolic authority as a
doctor a few more times to find out that his friend Nick has left town and possibly by
force. He then drives back to the mansion only to be given a note to
cease his curiosity. Ultimately he’s being forced back to the role of a
doctor with a wife and a happy life cover story, and to leave this desire for
sexual express and life fulfillment behind him.
After having more thoughts of Alice
with the sailor, Bill goes back to the prostitute’s apartment. I’m
thinking at this point he wants to symbolically punish Alice for cheating on
him in her mind, for putting him through the reruns of her naked body under the
sexually electrified sailor. The prostitute isn’t home so Bill flirts
with her roommate only to find out that the prostitute was tested positive for
HIV, signaling the severity of Bill’s own actions. Bill then finds out
that the woman at the masked party who stood up for him, was found dead.
Bill goes to Victor’s house to talk,
where it is revealed that Victor knew about the masked party because he was
there and that the girl who died was a druggy hooker. Bill was told the
whole thing at the masked party was staged to scare him because they knew he
shouldn’t have been there. Bill then goes home and finds the mask he wore
at the party on his pillow beside a sleeping Alice. She knows. Bill
becomes overwhelmed with what he did and breaks down crying, Alice wakes up
looking at her crying, guilt-ridden husband.
At the toy store the next day they
reconcile and decide to stay together forever. Alice says they are awake
now and they should go immediately home and…fuck. This to me is not fully
awake; this is recognizing they can’t do anything about their thoughts and
desires. The marriage and the rules in society can only go so far until
true desire needs expression. So if they are awake, they are awake to
knowing they are trapped.
Fidelio….
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