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Eyes Wide Shut Explained: Part 2

This is Part 2 of my analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. For Part 1, go here.

I’m aware that my analysis in Part 1 only explained the movie’s symbolism and didn’t fill any of its frustrating plot holes. This is because only through an understanding of the symbolism can we piece together the disjointed plot. Now we have the tools to finish the job.

First, we’ll focus on the mystery of Mandy the prostitute, otherwise known as Amanda Curran. Mandy has three appearances: she overdoses in Ziegler’s bathroom; she “redeems” Bill at the orgy; she turns up dead in the morgue. Ziegler denies foul play in her death, but extremely unconvincingly; he merely discredits her as a “hooker” and even exclaims at one point, “her door was locked from the inside, police are happy, end of story!” It’s pretty clear to Bill—and us—that Mandy was killed.

But the question is: why would Mandy’s act of redemption at the orgy lead to her murder? What does “redeem” even mean?

This line of questioning is actually misguided, because it assumes that the events of the orgy scene are their own unique events—whereas, as we’ve established, the orgy is Bill’s dreamlike reflection of the party at Victor Ziegler’s house. Thus, what we should be asking is: what does Mandy do at the Ziegler party that would cause her to be murdered, and how is that projected by Bill into the orgy scene?

Once we ask this, the answer is only too obvious: Mandy was killed to protect Ziegler’s reputation following the incident in his bathroom.

This is not a farfetched speculation. Although Kubrick films the bathroom scene in a low-key, casual tone, the situation is horrific. Ziegler, a married man of tremendous wealth, has a drugged, naked prostitute unconscious in his own bathroom while he throws a house party.

I doubt anyone would argue that Ziegler is above ordering someone’s death, especially someone as low on the socioeconomic ladder as Mandy. Remember that later he demonstrates ugly contempt for her: “She was a hooker. That’s what she was.”

Plus, by examining Bill’s dreamlike reimagining of Ziegler’s party—the orgy sequence—we can see that Bill feared for Mandy’s safety even before she was killed. The man in the red cloak, who, as we’ve determined, represents Ziegler, tells Bill: “Nothing can change her fate now.” This represents Bill at the end of the bathroom scene worrying that Ziegler will have Mandy killed to keep her from telling anyone what occurred.

It also seems, given the words of the man in the red cloak during the orgy, that Bill feared for his own safety, as well. Recall that at the end of the bathroom scene, Ziegler gently requests that Bill keep what he has seen “just between us.” But in the orgy sequence, this is translated as a fearsome threat from the red-cloaked man: “If you tell anyone about what you have seen, there will be the most dire consequences for you and your family!”

An interesting observation: during Ziegler and Bill’s final conversation in Ziegler’s billiards room, they’re supposedly discussing the events at the orgy, but most of their dialogue actually sounds like they’re talking about Ziegler’s bathroom. For example, Bill asks Ziegler, “Is this the woman at the party?”—but how does Ziegler know that Bill is talking about the orgy and not Ziegler’s own party, when it was the same woman at both events? And a “party” isn’t quite what I’d call the ritual-like event at the mansion, yet Ziegler somehow doesn’t get confused.

Consider also Ziegler’s insistence: “When they took her home she was just fine.” He’s talking about the end of the orgy, but his words evoke Bill’s advice to Ziegler at his own party: “Then, I’d have someone take her home.” The conversation is written this way to indicate that, while the characters are discussing the orgy as a literal event, we should focus instead on what transpired at Ziegler’s house, viewing the orgy as its dreamlike double.

Mandy’s “redemption” at the orgy, therefore, is a representation of how Mandy justified and validated Bill’s presence at the Ziegler party by requiring his assistance. Early in the Ziegler party, Bill feels insecure and out of his league. Mandy’s overdose, though, allows him to prove his worth—hence the “redemption.” In the dreamlike reflection, he projects her medical distress as a melodramatic intervention on her part. (Ziegler: “You saved my ass.” Bill: “Glad I was here.”)

Moving on. You may still be wondering about perhaps the movie’s most explicit mystery: the identity of the man in the grey mask at the orgy. He first appears in a slow zoom shot standing on the upstairs balcony, during which he and Bill appear to recognize one another. A few minutes later, he appears again, silently escorting a woman to Bill’s side.

If we were to view the orgy as its own independent event, we would conclude that the man must be Ziegler, since Ziegler later claims to have been there and is the only person we know who could’ve recognized Bill. But even if we were to view the orgy this way, the man’s actions don’t fit Ziegler at all. For example, we first see the man in the grey mask, as previously stated, nodding cordially to Bill; we next see him calmly escorting a woman over to Bill, apparently encouraging her to have sex with him. Contrastingly, Ziegler later reveals that he is furious with Bill for attending the event. The two characters are simply not compatible.

And we know by now that we shouldn’t be asking who the man in the grey mask is literally. It wouldn’t make sense anyway: how could a masked Bill recognize and single out another man in a mask, and the man recognize him in return? We should be asking: whom does the man represent from the Ziegler party? Ziegler is already represented by the man in the red cloak (flanked by two men in blue, symbolizing his wealth). It can’t be him.

There is, however, a character that Bill recognizes at the Ziegler party and exchanges cordial greetings with: the piano player, Nick Nightingale.

Nick is technically already at the orgy, but don’t get hung up on that. It’s absolutely clear that the man on the balcony represents Nick from the Ziegler party. Consider that Bill sees the man in the grey mask elevated on the balcony, just as he sees Nick elevated onstage playing the piano. And the reciprocal nod between Bill and the man at the orgy is reminiscent of Bill’s catchup with Nick, not of any other exchange at the Ziegler party.

But now the plot hole: we also see the man in the mask escort a woman to Bill at the orgy, while Nick does no such thing at the party.

Or, to be more precise, we don’t see him do any such thing.

Recall that when Nick and Bill talk during the party, Nick makes a strange remark. Bill says, “I see you’ve become a pianist,” and Nick replies, “Yes, well, my friends call me that.” It’s not clear what Nick is referencing here. What do his non-friends call him?

Soon after this, an anonymous man appears and demands: “Nick, I need you a minute.” This is similar to how Bill is later summoned to Ziegler’s bathroom. But if Nick is only playing piano at the event, why would his presence be needed elsewhere? It’s never explained.

Fortunately, what Kubrick hides in the party sequence, he reveals in the orgy ritual. Nick is responsible for procuring the prostitutes at Ziegler’s party, which is made clear by the aforementioned scene in which the man in the grey mask leads the woman to Bill’s side. This woman, who flirtatiously suggests going “someplace quiet,” represents the two models that flirt with Bill at Ziegler’s party and all but offer him sex. It’s implied in the orgy sequence, then, that it was Nick who encouraged these “models” to approach Bill. Remember that, curiously, we never see their introduction, even though we see Sandor Szavost introduce himself to Alice elsewhere in the mansion.

In addition to explaining Nick’s suspicious comments and activity at the party, this resolves a key discrepancy. If we’re assuming that the orgy ritual is only a dreamlike reimagining of earlier events, then we have to reject Bill’s deduction and Ziegler’s admission that Nick was forced back to Seattle because he told Bill about the orgy. As with Mandy’s murder, we must find the reason for Nick’s punishment within the Ziegler party, not the orgy. And this problem is solved immediately by realizing that it was Nick who employed Mandy, who in turn embarrassed Ziegler by overdosing and necessitating outside help.

Mystery solved!

Last section. The only thing we haven’t covered is Alice’s representation at the orgy ritual—because, for some reason, she isn’t represented at all. Or…is she?

Taking a quick, related detour: it’s incongruous that the orgy sequence features appearances multiple appearances from Mandy, given that she only appears at the very end of the Ziegler party episode. Her early appearances at the orgy largely consist of cryptic warnings to Bill, such as, “Go while you still can,” no parallel of which is observed at the Ziegler party, since Mandy doesn’t interact with Bill during the party. If the two sequences are analogs, how can we explain Mandy’s expanded role at the orgy?

Now recall that Alice’s bedroom confession causes Bill to worry whether his sexual relationship with Alice has been sustained only because of his income. This dynamic is disturbingly similar, Bill knows, to prostitution, which is why, as I detailed in Part 1 of this analysis, Bill’s subsequent encounters involve prostitution in various forms. We can fill in the last symbolic gap, therefore, by realizing that at the orgy, Mandy represents herself during the redemption scene—“redeeming” Bill to represent her untimely overdose—but Alice prior to that.

Bill has reimagined his wife as a prostitute. The fact that he projects Alice and Mandy as the same woman in the orgy shows that he perceives uncomfortable similarities between their lifestyles.

This claim works on all levels. When Bill arrives at the orgy, the red-cloaked man “pairs” him with Mandy, just as Ziegler greets Alice and Bill and sends them off with approval. Mandy’s remark, “I’m not sure what you think you’re doing,” echoes Alice’s “Do you know anyone here?” early in the party. Finally, when Bill asks Mandy at the orgy, “Who are you?” she responds mysteriously with, “You don’t want to know.” Of course he doesn’t: she’s his wife. Bill is reflecting on his own unwillingness to “unmask” the truths of his marriage.

Since this has been a long, heady analysis, I’ll leave its adjunct part up to you, as you watch Eyes Wide Shut again. We’ve talked only about Bill’s psychological experiences and how they manifest in an elaborate, dreamlike sequence. We haven’t talked about Alice’s experiences—but we could if we wanted to, because Alice also reports dreams of her own. Using the manner of analysis that I’ve laid out here, try to connect Alice’s experience at the Ziegler party to her own dreams, which, although not visualized onscreen like Bill’s, are plenty weird and emotionally packed in their own right.

If I had to pick one image to summarizes the themes of Eyes Wide Shut, it would be Ziegler’s pool table. Since we’ve established that red is symbolically linked with sex, we can interpret this image as a commentary that Ziegler uses sex as a game, with those of lesser status as the symbolic billiard balls, all for the purpose of maintaining and abusing power. Even well-off people like Bill are mere billiard balls to true elites like Ziegler. The masses act in their own sexual interests, oblivious to the control exerted on them from above.

 

–Jim Andersen

For more Kubrick masterpieces explained, check out my piece on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Movies Explained

Eyes Wide Shut Explained: Part 1

Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick’s last film and one of his most difficult to understand. Viewers will likely finish the film with major questions about key events. Who was the woman at the ritual? Who was the man in the grey mask? What was the meaning of the film’s unusual narrative? What was real, and what was a dream?

This piece will definitively answer those questions plus several more. While most analyses of Eyes Wide Shut that I’ve seen focus on connecting the film to dubious, real-world conspiracy theories, my essay below will use actual evidence in the film to draw thematic conclusions.

The action of Eyes Wide Shut begins when Bill Harford’s (Tom Cruise) wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), shares that, in the early years of their marriage, she fantasized uncontrollably about a naval officer that she saw in passing but never met. The confession rattles Bill—so much that many analysts have concluded that the subject of the movie is sexual jealousy.

Jealousy, however, doesn’t quite fit Bill’s behavior. A jealous husband would increase his oversight of Alice out of suspicion, which Bill does not; instead, he leaves the house for long periods to go on adventures of his own.

So the first question that will help us understand Eyes Wide Shut is: why does Alice’s confession leave Bill so upset, and what is the specific nature of his emotional state following that conversation? The answer, which I’ll go on to support, is that Bill has become afraid that Alice married him for his money and that, by extension, she doesn’t desire him sexually. 

Alice’s brief fantasy, after all, involved a striking officer of presumably lower economic status than Bill, a doctor. Therefore, the story, intentionally or not, casts Bill as the safe, steady choice—and the officer as the desirable but unviable suitor. Although Alice was “willing to give up… my whole fucking future” for the man, she ultimately remained with Bill, suggesting that she merely settled for him due to other factors, especially his affluence.

And we know that the interplay between money and sex is Bill’s primary concern afterward because it dominates all of his subsequent encounters. For instance, Bill then speaks with a daughter of a patient of his, and she essentially retells Alice’s story of the naval officer—only with Bill in the role of the desirable stranger. Soon after that, Bill nearly has sex with a prostitute, and after that, he witnesses a costume store owner discover his young daughter in a sexual situation, a discovery that he later profits on by prostituting her.

These minor episodes, though, are only thematic openers to the famous “orgy” sequence, in which Bill manages to gain admission to an event that features masked men and women having sex in bizarre, ritualistic fashion.

The key to understanding the orgy is that it represents Bill reflecting on a previous event—the party at Victor Ziegler’s house—through a new lens that has only become available to him following Alice’s confession. As we’ve said, after Alice’s story about the naval officer, Bill worries that she married him due to economic incentives. Because of that worry, he reflects on the earlier Ziegler party as a hub for the unsettling exchange of sex and money—a reflection brought onscreen in the dreamlike orgy sequence.

Consider that both scenes, the Ziegler party and the orgy, take place at extravagant mansions, and the prospect of sexual adventure, even outside of marriage, is prominent in both. At the Ziegler party, Bill and Alice flirt with strangers. Ziegler himself, also married, gets in trouble after a prostitute overdoses in his bathroom, necessitating Bill’s medical intervention. Nearly every scene at Ziegler’s highlights sex as a driving social force. In the orgy sequence, this is also the case, only more explicitly.

In addition, the two scenes feature a common dynamic between men and women, in which men are of higher status and women display sex appeal. At Ziegler’s, Bill banters with “a couple of models.” Ziegler admits that the woman in his bathroom was “a hooker.” Meanwhile, Alice’s suitor is a rich “friend of the Zieglers.”

It’s fairly obvious that the models who converse with Bill were paid by Ziegler to attend the party, given that even Bill and Alice feel out of their league there. The models may have been hired as eye candy, but perhaps more realistically to be available for the male guests: they all but offer Bill sex, a rather unlikely development (given his awkward flirting) unless explained by professional obligation.

Recall that at the orgy, a red-cloaked man commands women to undress and sends them off with wealthy male guests. Metaphorically, then, this is what Ziegler has done by paying vulnerable young women to attend his party. A great YouTube video exists here detailing the interesting visual cues that link Ziegler to the “man in the red cloak” who leads the ritual at the orgy. It’s difficult to disagree, based on the evidence in the video, that Kubrick wants us to recognize that the two characters play similar roles at their respective events.

To understand the orgy sequence, think of it as a dream. It’s not a literal dream: Bill does attend it in reality, as evidenced by his costume rental and his later discussion with Ziegler, who references the event and claims to have been a guest. But it unfolds in the manner of a dream, with its events and characters based on real events. Eyes Wide Shut is loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler’s book, Traumnovelle, or “Dream Story,” so it makes sense that the story progresses in parts as a dream would.

Having definitively established this link between the movie’s two most crucial episodes, we can explore the symbolic cues it provides for the rest of the movie.

First, I’ll focus on Kubrick’s use of color in the two scenes. The Ziegler party is lit by Christmas lights, multicolored and decorative. The orgy scene, on the other hand, features darker lighting and emphasizes red and blue.

ews partyews orgy

We can infer, then, that the multicolored lights represent the “façade” of the Ziegler party, with its formalities and splendor disguising an ugly interior. Indeed, most sets that Bill passes through during the rest of the movie feature Christmas trees decorated by these multicolored, glamorous lights. They invoke the Ziegler party, indicating that Bill is still thinking idealistically, resisting his growing suspicion that money and sex are intertwined.

However, after Bill’s final talk with Ziegler, he returns home and turns off his Christmas tree lights, indicating that he’s given into that suspicion. He opens the refrigerator and sits down at his table with a beer. This is truly “where the rainbow ends”—the rainbow revealed to mean the rainbow-colored lights that symbolize idealism, as first introduced at Ziegler’s party.

But what of the red and blue scheme featured in the orgy scene? That, too, recurs throughout Bill’s adventure, and those colors signify, respectively, sex and money. Red is always linked with sex, and blue is always linked with money.

Consider, firstly, the costume store. When Bill first visits, the prominent color is red, as Mr. Millich discovers his daughter having sex with two men. But the second time Bill visits, Millich is wearing blue. His daughter enters from a red-lit room with the two men seen earlier, and Millich hints that he has prostituted his daughter (“we have come to another arrangement”). Thus, Millich wears blue to represent his monetary gain, while his daughter still wears red, evoking her sexual participation.

ews costume ews costume2

Secondly, consider the scene with Domino, the prostitute. She wears purple, the only character in the film to do so. Purple is a mixture of red and blue; fitting, since Domino embodies the interplay between money and sex. Consider also the image below that features a red and a blue light behind her head.

ews domino ews domino2Other examples of red and blue fitting this symbolic framework in the film are plentiful. To survey briefly, recall the Harfords’ bed (red), the lighting in the Harfords’ expensive apartment (blue), the bars of the orgy mansion doors (blue, only the rich may enter), and the toy store at the end of the movie (red, the couple agrees that the best solution is to “fuck”).

This framework also enables a more telling interpretation of certain scenes. Let’s return to Bill’s early cab ride, during which he pictures Alice having sex with the naval officer. The images of Alice and the officer are filtered in grey-blue. But why not red, if red is supposed to be associated with sex? It’s because Bill is actually thinking about money following Alice’s confession. Although he’s picturing his wife in a sexual act, he’s thinking about the role of money in his marriage—and in Alice’s decision not to pursue the naval officer.

ews alice

We’ve covered colors, so let’s move on to a different motif: masks. In the orgy sequence, everyone wears them. One might wonder, though, why this is the case if the orgy represents the Ziegler party. But this would be a misinterpretation of the relationship between the two scenes.

Think of it like this: since the the Ziegler party operates via facades and deceptions, its guests are represented in the orgy sequence as wearing literal masks. The orgy doesn’t uncover any secrets to Bill; rather, it represents his reflections on the true nature of the event following Alice’s confession.

It’s significant, therefore, that Bill “loses” his mask at the orgy: following the reflection on money and sex that the orgy represents, he’s less able or willing to put on the same social façade as before. Shortly after losing it, he turns off his Christmas tree lights—as we’ve said, a similar symbolic event: “where the rainbow ends.” Not surprisingly, then, the costume store is called Rainbow Fashion.

But after returning to his apartment after his conversation with Ziegler, the mask is somehow sitting on Bill’s pillow. What does this mean?

The answer is that the mask’s presence symbolizes Bill’s last chance to suppress what he has witnessed. The mask represents the social facade of Ziegler’s guests, a facade that Bill also formerly assumed. But he has now “lost” that mask. By cutting to the mask, Kubrick signals that Bill has one more chance to assume the facade again. The mask isn’t literally there; it’s an entirely symbolic visual.

Notice also that Kubrick cuts to the mask on the pillow long before Bill even enters the bedroom. Kubrick is communicating that Bill is considering this return to his blissful ignorance as soon as he enters the apartment. Bill probably thinks it over as he drinks his Budweiser. Ultimately, though, he decides against reclaiming the mask, instead breaking down in tears to Alice (“I’ll tell you everything!”). In a bizarre, Kubrickian way, it’s an uplifting ending, especially since the couple endures the ensuing difficult conversation and decides to remain together.

 

End of Part 1

Continue to Part 2, which explains the mysteries of Mandy the prostitute, the man on the balcony, and whether Alice was at the ritual.