EYES WIDE SHUT
Stanley Kubrick’s incisive criticism of man’s awkward position is still relevant today
I have been a film worm all my life. When I was just a child and I was somewhat regularly punished to stay in my room without TV; I got earplugs, and hidden from everyone else, I began to watch the TV in my room… mostly American movies. No, Spartacus and Paths of Glory were not my favorites then. It took film school to lead me to study this modern artist. Kubrick was a filmmaker, but primarily he was an inquisitive provocateur, and Eyes Wide Shut starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in 1999 was no exception. What is behind men and women’s relationships? EYES WIDE SHUT was incisive as were all his movies.
Kubrick would profoundly meditate on a subject and then use all the resources of film language and technology available; or if not, he would develop them, to convey his provocation in the most forceful and compelling form. He was an astute observer of the human dilemma and how it intertangled in life. He did not voice his ideas; he would make statement through a film… that many a time was misunderstood. A sample of those were 2001 a Space Odyssey, Clock Work Orange and Full Metal Jacket. His last film was a perfect example of this.
Eyes Wide Shut was a statement about man´s dilemma at the turn of the millennia and could not be more relevant nowadays. It was no accident that he chose the most famous couple in Hollywood at the time: Kidman was a goddess and Cruise was adored and revered worldwide; and to top it off, they were married back then.
The human predicament
Humans are in the constant situation of aspiring to safety and being thrown out into utter chaos. You can say an archetypal human reality is that we are standing on the ledge of a precipice looking into the abyss of the infinite, continuously being tapped from behind by circumstances and we are trying desperately to maintain the grip of our footing, while internally feeling the urge to jump and fly.
Jordan Peterson’s Harvard lectures on Personality Theory.
This brilliant film starts on how a safe and prosperous life can be thrown into a rabbit hole of chaos in a fraction of a second, just because we are naïve about the human predicament and constitution. How our beliefs and our perspectives are challenged and how we do not always learn the lesson… Kubrick’s pocking: “you better.”
At the beginning of the film the Harfords are introduced: Alice is the perfect and ideal woman and Bill can’t find his wallet. They are getting prepared to go to a party in Central Park South Manhattan, and off they go. They both will be sexually tempted at the party. Alice is tackled by a well-educated big-bad-wolf who will do everything to seduce her. For all intended purposes it seems he is succeeding. Bill is challenged by two beautiful models that are open to having a delightful sexual adventure upstairs with him. They both react very differently, Alice plays ball with the Steppenwolf, like a kitten with a ball of yarn. She has fun with him, but she is always in control. Bill, on the other hand, feels uncomfortable and is thankful when he is saved from “having” to say no to the two nymphs.
This scene portrays the frame for the movie, of course sexuality is a divisory-line that differentiates men and women, corporally, mentally and emotionally. And the director makes it clear who is at a loss and disconnected from reality.
Then… the plot thickens!
We see them in normal life doing their thing, he is a doctor and she is a modern housewife and mother. Bill would be considered a good catch for many women and, by now most men would consider Alice too hot to handle, but quite a catch too.
It is quite impossible to do justice to the bedroom scene that develops the plot, it is a masterpiece. The next night after putting their daughter to sleep they smoke a joint to unwind from the day. Like in so many bedroom stories, they have it out; the eternal man-woman debate on roles and who is what and why. Alice is high and becomes vexed, she lashes out at Bill because his reason for not having sex with the two models was in “consideration” for her.
The between-the-lines question here is: are you spineless? Don’t you know why you do what you do? His answer to her prodding is an attempt to defend himself and put the ball in her court
– You are trying to pick a fight with me. – says Bill
– So, you are not jealous of me? – she snaps back.
At which he says very confidently some conventional and out-of-the-can reasons for being sure of her faithfulness. After a good laugh, Alice slowly walks him through a fantasy she had with this naval officer she saw in Cape Cod during the family’s last summer vacation. She leaves out no details… and Bill is crushed. Then the phone rings. A hilarious detail of Kubrick to symbolize how all this was a wake-up call and the trigger to Bill’s hellish night.
Then the rest of the movie is Bill having to come to terms with the chaos Alice’s fantasy opened in his seven year otherwise seemingly safe relationship. This time it is not Alice that falls down the rabbit hole, but Bill. It is no coincidence that her name is Alice and that the whole story is a oneiric experience or should we say nightmare-like experience.
If we are lucky, at least once in a lifetime, we are thrown into the abyss. Usually for men, it is a woman or a female frame of circumstances that pushes them into the abyss. I suspect that for women it is the opposite. Regardless, it is evidence that internally or spiritually there is no sequence of time for the soul. At one moment everything seems to be in order, Bill knows who he is, where he is at, where he is going to, and where he has come from. Then in an instant, he is not sure of what he has been doing for the last seven plus years, nor who he is – a doctor, a husband, a father, a fool – nor where he is going. The past holds no certainty, and the future is unpredictable, nothing seems what it looked like a moment ago, like the floor that supported him has crumbled beneath his feet. This experience can challenge a person to the very core.
The story brilliantly used sex as the guiding theme, partly because sex is an unequivocal reality of who we are. You cannot pretend who you really are when you are naked having sex. For a straight man, he fantasizes about having the greatest sex ever with the most glorious goddess. But more importantly, here the artist proposes the difference between men and women is huge in respect of their sexual identity; the director suggests that on the whole, women have a better grip on their sex drive and when they are clear of what they want, they go for it. Men on the other hand, live inside of a fantasy that may push and pull their will to act on it, leaving them with little control over the circumstances.
I know no man that would say no to an invitation of sex with a beautiful woman, but I can tell you that I know many women that will not have sex with an attractive man, just because he is handsome, unless of course she wants to play.
The biggest part of the film stages Bill’s attempt to have sex and being immersed in a whirlpool of sexual fantasies that don’t resolve in him scratching that itch. First, he finds himself as the fantasy of the daughter of one of his patients. Then, he cannot have sex with a prostitute, nor can he have sex in an orgy, he is challenged by other men… he doesn’t measure up. It is a nightmare for Bill. But at the same time, it seems it is Alice’s dream, or women for that matter, that men are impotent to get what they desire until they truly know what they really want.
For men, women can push them down the rabbit hole! No wonder men have historically kept them in their place; controlled so they cannot push them off the cliff.
As if for women, men are only boys and not attractive until they truly know what they want… but isn’t that the ugly truth? We both, women and men, have both realities inside of us. Jung proposed we have the opposite of our gender embedded in our psyche; for men it is the Anima, and for women it is the Animus. We both project on the desired sexual gender the attributes of the embedded reality, pulling our attention and desire to have what we feel we lack inside. It is a beautiful dance that sometimes turns macabre.
The drama develops at the end with the incursion of Bill trying to live out his fantasy, and it threatens his safety and his family’s… at which point he tells Alice everything.
At the closing of the film, in the “store sequence”, first, there is a humorous wink of the director when the daughter in the store shows a Barbie calling her mother’s attention with – look mommy! – “the perfect and ideal woman”. In the conversation poor Bill has not understood what happened in his life, he still looks for conventional recipes and the fairytale of men and women’s relationship. It is not a forever unless today we look each other in the eye and are blunt about who we are and what we truly want. What Alice wanted was to know that William desired her above all and completely, symbolized in being “fucked”, not made love to.
In this scene, the director reveals the last nail in the coffin of Dr. Hartford; it is Kubrick’s critique of the awkward situation of men if they don’t grow out of the fantasy they have so willingly gotten themselves into. And yes, trying to be a “good husband” is more women’s fantasy for men, rather than their own. We men have to find our source or purpose to be the kind of intimate partner that can make the couple grow.
What is at the core of Kubrick’s criticism
When I was in film school, I was preparing a debate for the film screening of EYES WIDE SHUT for our class. That week I was also watching Gone With The Wind. It struck me how the 1939 classic was dealing with the same issue, the differences and dynamics between men and women… it was quite a contrast. Red and Bill are as far apart as can be. Red knew exactly what he wanted and was not thrown into any whirlpool by a woman’s whim, or fantasy for that matter. And Scarlet could not be further from Alice… two stories of a couple’s relationship that are centuries apart, yet really only separated by a couple of generations at best.
We men have lost our north. It is certainly a self-criticism, but generally I see that men have no grit and are lost, we lack backbone and purpose. Women resent that, and they are stepping up. Our society is paying a high price for the abundance and security it has provided with the emergence of peace, freedom and democracy.
About 200 years ago, 98% of the earth’s population lived in extreme poverty and today only 9.2% of the world population live as most lived back then[1]. Our opulence and free time are opening a wide range of distractions and we are so immersed in our rights that we forget that these rights stand on the shoulders, accountability, and blood of millions of people throughout our history. We are not free to decide if my gender is fluent or ambivalent, we are not free to be raised by our government economically or socially to the level we think we deserve; we are free so we can assume responsibility and make choices to develop ourselves and society, and be who we want to be without restrictions from society or anyone. We are free to live life to the fullest, on our own terms within the limits of the law.
Institutions and social groups are complacent with this lack of backbone. Education is not stepping up to build character in their alumni, and political and government institutions are so determined to give the politically-correct posture to not be blamed with the debacle we are facing, that everything seems to just be sliding to hell very rapidly.
There is no other possibility but for the individuals to step up, and for men to face their own painful circumstances and, assuming accountability for their lives, learn how they are complacent and act to get themselves and their families to safer ground, which can go a long way for all in society.
All need to be challenged, but very specifically we men need to take stock of where we are soft and how we can get our act together and be all we can be.
[2] About Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I will delve deeper in future articles; this is a passionate topic for me.
[1] World Bank estimation; https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
[2] It was considered by many intellectuals and political leaders that Aleksandr Solzhenitsym’s criticism of Russia’s political system single-handedly demolished the moral basis for communism and Communist Russia. One man’s accountability and his ability to put forward what he derived from it can go a long way to transform the world.
Te felicito Hector muy profundo y acertados tus comentarios. Lástima que la compañía de cine bloqueo los videos por derechos de autor