Power & Desire in Eyes Wide Shut
Like many of Kubrick’s films, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was initially dismissed by critics. Some claimed that the film was weak in character and was lacking the usual Kubrickian visual energy. Others simply claimed that the film was not “sexy” enough. Claims that are now blamed on a miscalculated ad campaign with the likes of Entertainment Weekly hyping the film up as “the sexiest movie ever”.
However, like most of Kubrick’s films, Eyes Wide Shut’s critical reception has risen steadily over the years as audiences and filmmakers have rediscovered it without expectations or bias.
With its open narrative and richly ambiguous structure, Eyes Wide Shut asks viewers a lot of questions, whether during the film’s course or after its conclusion. In this article, we examine the aspects commonly prevalent in psychological and sociological discussions, through two essays focusing on each: Where The Rainbow Ends by Karen D. Hoffman and Introducing Sociology by Tim Kreider
(Warning: The following review contains spoilers)
Synopsis
Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman), an art gallery owner, are heading to a Christmas party hosted by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), a rather affluent member of Manhattan’s elite society.
Shortly after their arrival, Bill and Alice are separated. Bill encounters a couple of familiar faces. First, his old friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), a medical school dropout who has been hired to play the piano at the party. He then runs into two flirtatious models who offer to take Bill “where the rainbow ends”. Before he has a chance to reply, the conversation is interrupted by a request that Bill comes to the aid of Ziegler in reviving Mandy, a model who has overdosed in Victor’s bathroom. At that moment he’s called away, Bill turns to the models and says, “to be continued?” and is met with a perplexing look.
In the meantime, Alice is approached by Sandor Szavost (Sky du Mont), a sly Hungarian who also propositions her. Alice is initially hesitant, but her subsequent rejection of his advances doesn’t require external interruption as with her husband.
A few scenes later, fueled by the marijuana they are sharing back at their apartment, Alice and Bill share stories about the party’s events. The mood seems to be jovial until Bill tells Alice that it’s “understandable” that Sandor desired her, as she’s a beautiful woman. Alice argues that this passive acceptance indicates that men are expected to desire physically attractive women, and following that logic Bill would’ve wanted to accept the models’ tempting offer. Bill retorts that he would’ve desired the physical interaction with the models if it weren’t for his love for Alice, which angers her even more because it affirms his desire for other women. She challenges these assumptions by recalling her lust for a naval officer who was staying at their hotel during a trip last summer.
Kubrick tactfully withholds from turning this into a classic story of betrayal. Nothing really happened between Alice and the officer. Instead, he asks us a more profound question: How can spouses express such desires, even if they’re only in the confines of the mind, while maintaining the structure and bond of marriage intact?
Rattled and confused by how little he knew about his wife’s thoughts, Bill embarks on a nocturnal journey where his attempts to explore his own desires lead him closer to death than the materializing of his fantasies (or perhaps death is the ultimate fantasy).
We witness him navigate the following venues in a matter of hours: the lavish apartment of a dying patient and his daughter; the less lavish apartment of a sex worker he comes across; the Sonata Café where his friend Nick Nightingale is playing piano; a rental shop called Rainbow Fashions; and finally, the Moorish palace at Somerton where a secret sex party is taking place.
Even though Bill acquired the costume and mask necessary to conceal his identity, he’s compromised when he arrives in a taxi and a rental card with his real name on it is found in the coat’s pocket. Exposed and facing real danger, Bill is “redeemed” by one of the women present in a sacrificial manner laden with religious imagery. When Bill enquires as to what her fate might be, he is met with the response that “when a promise has been made here, there is no turning back”.
When Bill returns home, he encounters Alice laughing in her sleep. She wakes up disturbed by her own dreams of infidelity, somewhat paralleling Bill’s evening. Her desires and confessions may have been foolish in nature, but they’ve also given her the last laugh. The real events Bill witnessed were dreamlike, the dreams Alice dreamt felt very real. Kubrick creates this dynamic brilliantly and asks the viewers to compare the two mental landscapes of the main characters.
The following day, Bill begins to retrace his steps from the night before, only to find perilous destruction in his path. Nick has been forced to leave town under threatening circumstances. The mask Bill wore to the party is missing and we find him being trailed by a dark figure for a while. Finally, he reads the headline “EX-BEAUTY QUEEN IN HOTEL DRUGS OVERDOSE” in a newspaper, immediately wondering whether she was the woman from the previous night’s party.
Bill is then invited by Victor Ziegler, who offers a hastily packaged explanation of the events, alternating between justification and warning. He knew about Bill’s presence at the orgy and about his actions since then. He was at the orgy and saw everything. He was also the one who had Bill followed. Victor indicates that Bill’s concerns are misplaced and that the woman’s warnings and her “whole play-acted ‘take me’ phony sacrifice” were designed to scare Bill into silence. Victor argues that Bill should not trouble himself over the death of one drug addict. “Nobody killed anybody” Ziegler remarks. “Someone died. It happens all the time. Life goes on. It always does, until it doesn’t. But you know that, don’t you?”
After a tearful confession to Alice regarding his journey, the couple take their daughter Christmas shopping. In the final scene, Bill and Alice conclude that they should be “grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream.”
Desire and Fidelity
In the opening shot, Alice gracefully removes her dress with her back turned to the camera. Before she turns around, the camera lens closes, the screen goes black, and the title of the film appears. The opening shot sets the tone for the three-hour film: Seeing without perceiving, the psychological unmasking of the characters becoming distorted by the physical unmasking.
Alice’s conversation with Sandor is interesting because of its insights on marriage and the role of desire in it. Sandor begins his conversation with Alice by making a reference to Ovid’s Art of Love. Alice highlights the possibility of romantic love destroying true intimacy rather than creating it. After all, Ovid died painfully alone. Sandor replies that Ovid might have died alone, but he “had a good time first … a very good time”.
The film already establishes a contrast between romantic love and marital love. Sandor believes that the only value in marriage is that it adds excitement to adultery by making deception a necessity. “Why does a beautiful woman, who could have any man in the room,” asks Sandor, “want to be married?” and challenges viewers to contemplate whether marriage requires external justifications or not.
During his argument with Alice, Bill makes a Kantian appeal: since we cannot be morally responsible for that which lies outside our control, German philosopher Immanuel Kant requires individuals to act according to rational moral principles and from the motive of duty. Troubled by her desire for the naval officer in juxtaposition with her genuine love for her husband, Alice calls into question the Kantian contention that one’s moral obligations can be followed no matter what conflicting inclinations exist.
In Bill’s attempts to lose his identity, he is tied back to it and eventually to his journey, which in Hoffman’s words is “a quixotic one. His attempt to experience inexorable desire will almost certainly fail … a truly erotic desire cannot be voluntarily constructed but must be passively discovered.”
At Somerton, the participants appear to be actors, imitating eroticism rather than experiencing it. Even the audience for whom they perform seems artificial and unmoved. The bystanders, posing like mannequins, are unnaturally still and do not appear to be aroused.
For all of its deviance, the party at Somerton interestingly echoes marriage: “Fidelio” was the password required for entry. The sexual encounters are publicly accepted. Redemption through personal sacrifices is present, and extra emphasis is put on the importance of promises.
It is thought-provoking that the struggles Bill and Alice went through seem to have been beneficial for their relationship. Alice concludes that it is not the presence of strong sexual desires for other people that threatens her marriage, but rather the masking of those desires. Over time, these challenges will weave a marital history that connects present moments to the past, making both more meaningful. As Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard puts it, marriage has “its enemy in time, its victory in time, its eternity in time”.
Among Kubrick’s filmography, Alice establishes herself as the most psychologically complete character found in any of his films, and Eyes Wide Shut probably establishes itself as the most optimistic, at least in comparison.
Wealth, Power, and Perversion
With that being said, there is a credible case to be made that Eyes Wide Shut isn’t about sex at all. As Tim Kreider puts it, it’s about sex as “an all-consuming distraction from the ugly realities of wealth and power all around us; about audiences who strain their eyes for a glimpse of skin while the skull is staring them in the face.”
Kreider argues that it’s a form of perversion to consider the petty psychologies of the Harfords and their sexual desires while there are more pressing issues at hand. The most obvious one being the central murder mystery, which is thoughtlessly neglected by the wealthy elites in the film.
The exhibitionistic display of wealth is an indicting theme. The Harfords’ apartment, the patient’s apartment, and Victor Ziegler’s house are all stacked with extravagant works of art — art as conspicuous consumption.
Kreider highlights the film’s “antique appointments, its opening waltz, and its cast full of European characters all blurring the distinction between Millennial Manhattan and fin-de-siecle Vienna — another corrupt and decadent high culture dancing at the brink of an abyss.”
In a similar vein, Christmas decorations are omnipresent (except at Somerton). Serving as a symbol of Bill’s fantasy (before his final confession to Alice, he turns off the Christmas lights), they also provide a social commentary on Christmas as “less a religious observance than an annual orgy of consumerism, the ecstatic climax of the retail year.”
Interest in modern society’s commodification of the female is also evident. The women at the Somerton party wear masks that render them anonymous, identical and expendable by the wealthy, powerful guests.
Visual and narrative parallels can be drawn between Alice and all the other female characters in the film. Perhaps they serve as different incarnations of Bill’s wife, the one woman he’s really seeking all along. But, in a more provocative view, it could be discerned that Alice is just another, higher-class copy of all these women for men of Bill’s class.
If you look hard enough, you will certainly find the archetypal Kubrick film. A film about the brutality of man, the callousness and depravity of elites, and the cyclical self-destruction of human history. “The vision of the world [Kubrick] tried to show us in his last work,” concludes Kreider, “is one in which the wealthy, powerful, and privileged use the rest of us like throwaway products, covering up their crimes with pretty pictures, shiny surfaces, and murder, condemning their own children to lives of servitude and whoredom”.