Unshut Those Eyes

a cult movie by Stanley Kubrick with rainbows, masks, child trafficking and sex cults of the super elite

Unlike some Stanley Kubrick films like The Shinning, A Clockwork Orange and  Full Metal Jacket, that have withstood the test of time, his last picture Eyes Wide Shut is not a masterpiece.

So why do we even bother discussing it?

Because the subject matter and the symbols used in the picture are incredibly relevant in this present phase of the Great Awakening.

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Kubrick's last opus is closely adapted from the 1926 novel Traumnovelle (Dream Story) by Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler. The movie updates the story from early 20th-century Vienna to 1990s New York City.

Traumnovelle is an example of the Decadent movement, an European artistic and literary movement that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.

Kubrick said of the novel: "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."

'Eyes…' follows the misadventures of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) in the city, as his silly jealousy makes him delve into the sexual underworld of the society.

The doctor's wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), reveals that she had strongly contemplated having an affair a year earlier.

That propels Bill to a night-long adventure, in which he ultimately infiltrates a masked orgy of an unnamed secret society.

As the story begins, the couple goes to a party held by a super rich patient of Bill, Ziegler. There, both Bill and Alice are tempted to betray their spouses - Alice with an older Hungarian man, and Bill with two young 'models'.

As he walks arm-in-arm with the two beautiful girls, Bill asks the key question that will guide the film:

BILL - Ladies, where exactly are we going?
MODEL - Where the rainbow ends.

Now just remember everything that the 'rainbow' symbolizes in our LGBT-infested society, and just wait to see how it reflects here.

Back at the house, Alice eyes the mirror as she undresses, and she and Bill kiss and make out in front of it, as she discreetly examines their reflection with a suspicious and enigmatic look.

She is not the person her spouse thinks she is. None of us are. We wear masks.

After Alice reveals her sexual fantasies with a Naval officer, a shocked Doctor Bill has to get on to see a recently deceased patient. For the rest of the night he will involve himself in a series of unfulfilled sexually-charged situations.

A patients wife, and then a prostitute present real temptations, but it is when an old friend gives him the password to a secret orgy/masked ball that he really departs to see what's hidden where the rainbow ends.

To be able to crash the party Bill needs a costume from the Rainbow costume shop. There a Slavic man will provide him with a tuxedo, a cloak with a hood and a mask.

But before he can leave to his adventure he discovers that the shop owner's minor daughter was being sexually abused by two old Asian men. Later in the film it becomes clear that the father is sexually trafficking his very underage daughter, played by Lelee Sobieski.

So, what is there where the rainbow ends? Child sex trafficking - to begin with.

Arguably, the Venetian Carnival masks are the strongest, most fundamental symbol in Eyes Wide Shut.

Covering the face in public 'was a uniquely Venetian response to one of the most rigid class hierarchies in European history'. The uniformization and loss of identity caused by masks (and similarly an effect of the relentless pursuit for sexual epiphanies) is also a relevant theme for the late 20th century America.

It's just ironic that this happens on a film closely adapted from an Austrian author, because when Austria conquered Venice in 1798, they banned mask wearing by Venetian citizens.

Kubrick felt the Venetian masks fit in the orgy scene because of their dreamlike quality, and they end up creating a menacing impression that's not exaggerated.

Much has been written about the infamous secret society/orgy scene and its instances of explicit sex. To our purposes here that aspect is devoid of interest, other than to say that the sex scenes present a clear instance in which the producers altered Kubrick's work, and that allows us to imagine if there were other interferences.

After doctor Bill is shown to be an impostor and saved from humiliation or worse by a naked masked woman, he starts poking around the secret society, ignoring threats, until he is finally summoned by Ziegler (who was part of the secret society) to his fancy house.

He tries to warn Bill about the danger of messing with the society.

ZIEGLER - Bill, these were not just ordinary people. I don't think you have any idea how fortunate you are to have got out of that situation as easily as you did. Someday you can thank me for that.

In the movie, it isn't explained who these people in the orgy were. But Stanley Kubrick did inform us, because 'the infamous orgy sequence in Eyes Wide Shut, which was omitted from all promotional materials for the film, was shot in Mentmore Towers in the UK. The property is owned by the powerful and highly influential Rothschild family.'

There you have it. On the end of the rainbow you have child trafficking, sex orgies, secret societies and usual suspects of the super elites.

Kubrick passed away of a sudden heart attack four days after submitting his completed cut of Eyes Wide Shut to Warner Bros. That gave birth to claims that Kubrick had been murdered for exposing the rituals of the elite - while others claim Kubrick was simply extremely fatigued following the longest film shoot in history and years of post-production.

After Bill tells all his adventures to Alice, in a cathartic scene, she summarizes what was the progress they made in this small saga:

ALICE - The important thing is we're awake now, and hopefully, for a long time to come.

Sounds like a… Great Awakening.

There is a dimension in which Bill and Alice represent all of us who wandered through this world with our eyes wide shut. But now they are quite open.

Musical encore (from the soundtrack):

Dmitri Shostakovich: Jazz Suite, Waltz No. 2

July 20th, 2022
Paul Serran