Thread by @SKUNK_GF

Watching Eyes Wide Shut *clueless*

At the party Bill and Alice are both hit on by members of high society, and in both cases they are coaxed into going somewhere.

Note that Alice is offered to go to "the sculpture gallery upstairs" while Bill actually goes upstairs, to help treat a call girl (or as Ziegler would say "a hooker"). This itself is a diversion from going "where the rainbow ends" as we all know

It's been pointed out that Alice seems to have ESP when she calls Bill just as he is about to sleep with Domino, but Nick seems to have a little ESP of his own. "I never understood why you walked away." "Really? It's a nice feeling I do it a lot" *is beckoned away*

As I had suspected, the same man who calls Bill up to Ziegler's bathroom also pulls Nick away. I wonder what kind of favor Ziegler needed from Nick? Is that why he's at the party? Like Bill said "this is what you get for making house calls"

i.e. if I cozy up to these guys and do some dirty work, I get a little bonus

Bills treatment measures for a speedball overdose (which was often deadly before narcan came around) amount to nothing more than "open your eyes for me"
Bill is helping her get out of this situation of being a prostitute, he wants to see her eyes wide....

Alice's accusation towards Bill makes no sense "so what you're saying is the only reason any man wants to talk to me is because he wants to fuck me?" No, he wasn't saying that, he was saying it makes sense that this particular man wanted to fuck her because she's beautiful.

But Bill goes right along with it. Why? Maybe he's thinking about himself. The only person he recognized at the party was his colleague from med school. The models coo at him about how much they love doctors. "Is the only reason anyone talks to me because I'm a doctor?"

Victor "knows he doesn't have to mention it" i.e. Bills done this sort of thing for him before. And what did he just tell Mandy? "Open your eyes.... You can't keep doing this."

We are being introduced to a world where everyone is treated instrumentally, as a means to an end.
"There are exceptions"
"And what makes you an exception?"

The argument between Alice and Bill would seem to resonate to audiences thinking they were gonna see a sexy thriller. Why aren't they turned on right now? "If for no other reason, because she's afraid of what I might find"

When Bill is called to the dead father, he believed that he was such an important doctor that he needed to show his face, as @sixthreeirl pointed out. But there's a double deception here. You the audience might think she wants sex. She doesn't, well not just sex anyway...

She wants a lavish life in New York City with the mob-money doctor. Not a boring life in college town Michigan with Karl. She wants Doctor bill's money. But "women just don't think that way" do they?

Here's something I didn't notice before in Alice's story. "The waiter brought him a message at which point he left.... Nothing rings a bell?" Well, that certainly rings a bell for us. What's with people getting tapped on the shoulder and leaving?

"I was ready to give up everything. You, helena, my whole fucking future, everything." Just like Bill is about to do.

"If they wanted me, only for one night, I was ready to give up everything."

Throughout Bill's journey, Alice is "more dear to [him] than ever" she checks in, she asks how he's doing, she's worried. Just before he's about to sleep with the call girl (and almost get HIV) she calls, and his guilt overcomes him. His love for her feels "both tender and sad"

It's such a distinctly understied part of the movie. AIDS was still very much a scary thing in 1999. Alice's call saves his life.

And a phone call, late at night, from a patient, interrupts her story. Where does something like that happen, outside of a dream?

"it hasn't really sunk in yet"
"It's so unreal"
Says the patient...

It's not too unusual for an adult woman to call her father daddy, but when the patient did it I couldn't help but think of Helena, bills daughter. It's as if we're listening to Helena narrate the preceding events "daddy had such a good day...."

"...then he said he was going to take a nap..."

The dream starts here

The principal photography of EWS began November 1996. I have a feeling Kubrick might have seen an early screening of Lost Highway, which came out in France in January of 1997.

Lost Highway explores the theme of someone repeating past events in a dream world.

Like Fred, Bill meets his own doppelganger. An upper middle class man whose wife seems to want something more...

Tom is propositioned by the call girl, just like he's propositioned by the models at the party.

His masculinity is challenged by the Yale thugs, just as it is by the taller and more virile Sander Szavost

The call girl's house is tiny, and absurdly, has a bathtub in the kitchen?? Atop which are Christmas presents. We are now in the bathroom at Ziegler's house.
"Should we talk about money?"

"just leave it up to me"
"I'm in your hands"
--------
"Well Victor I think you can take it from here."
-----
"Don't worry, I don't keep track of the time"
---------
"Keep her here another hour"

Where's Alice? Well, she's up late at night, eating moonpies right out of the box and watching TV in a bathrobe. Sweets, a bathrobe, and romantic movies: the stereotypical image of the heartbroken woman.

Of course, this is Bill's dream. He's fantasizing about kissing a beautiful woman while his wife is a mess. His love for her is, in this moment, "tender and sad..."

And then she saves his life with a phone call. He doesn't know how long it's gonna be. In the words of the call girl: "I don't keep track of the time"
You might have noticed by now that Bill seems to keep switching hats with prostitutes....

At the Sonata club, Nick gives us deja Vu, cutting the music just as Bill arrives, like at the party. They meet, and nonchalantly catch up with each other like before.

Nick reveals that his family is in Seattle, while he travels all over to whatever gigs he can find. Like Bill, he makes "house calls"

And he plays the piano..... blindfolded. Even if his eyes are "wide open" he can't see a thing. His eyes are "wide shut"

"The last time, the blindfold wasn't on so well"
He's interrupted by another phone call, another tap on the shoulder

"you couldn't get in with those clothes, everyone is always costumed and masked"
Just like at the party before, everyone was wearing a mask.

And then Bill goes where the rainbow ends

Instead of Peter, he meets he doesn't know. In the bathroom at the party, we saw a Victor we hadn't seen before.

Bill gets into the shop with money, the same way Victor probably earns Bill's secrecy with money.

$100 didn't work, but $200 does. Extra money lets you break the rules.

The costume shop has a theft alarm, "can't be too careful these days" so how did those Japanese guys get in?
You already know why. Milich let them in.
Note that the men already know Milich's name, even though supposedly "the young lady invited us here"

And he seems to know what Bill means when he asks for the cloak and the mask... He tests it, offering other costumes, but Bill confirms.

He then sets up the fake scandal. He makes sure Bill sees that his daughter is a prostitute.
The Japanese men are crossdressing in geisha makeup, again playing the motif of men being compared to prostitutes.
His daughter gives bill a knowing smile...

As astute viewers know, she whispers "you should wear a coat lined with ermine" the fur of royalty. But someone in this movie wore an ermine coat earlier. Who?

Bill seems to unconsciously know his situation. He is a prostitute in ermine furs, a royal geisha.

As Bill drives out into the countryside, there is one split-second shot of the taxi driving under a big, glowing "Happy Holiday" sign. Bill sees the warm light of Christmas for the last time...

Instead of calling another cab when the party is over, Bill tells his driver to wait. Why?
At the beginning of the movie, Bill promised the babysitter that he would "hold our cab so you can get a ride home" Again, in his dream Bill compares himself to a lower-class woman.

Note that the guards are polite and considerate, despite Victor later telling him how suspicious it was to show up in a cab. It seems too easy, almost as if it's all staged...

Another oddity: Bill comes in unmasked, despite the coat man being masked. The coat man doesn't seem to mind! Seems fishy...

The ritual begins. The women go from a kneeling position, to a kowtow, to kneeling again, to standing up, to naked. They are "growing up". Four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon.... they were doomed to be prostitutes from birth.

They come closer, they kneel again, and kiss each other in a round. They "share their spit". What can you get from sharing spit with people?
What can you get from sharing another kind of body fluid?

And then, we get that famously cryptic slow zoom on a tall figure, and a shorter one together, separate from the rest. The tall one wears a tricorne and the bauta mask, a mask traditionally worn by politicians, and only by men. The tall one is a man.

We can infer the shorter one is a woman. They are a couple. The woman is wearing a jester hat, and a mask with bright makeup and a single teardrop, like a sad clown.
Hey, this sounds familiar....

What were those other costumes that Milich offered bill? "Clowns, officers, pirates...."
Pirates wear tricornes, don't they?
And a sad clown in colorful makeup.... hm....

Note, also, that this is the only masked figure whose eyes we see. Everyone else's eyes are shrouded in darkness, besides Bill and him. Just black holes with nothing behind them, "wide shut".
Why is he the only other guest with his eyes visible?

Alice: "Do you know anyone at this party?"
Bill: "Not.... a.... soul....."

Bill nods in acknowledgement at the bauta. He knows what he did. He saw a young girl being raped by two men, and turned a blind eye to it. He's pretty used to doing that.

And the red cloak approaches each woman and sends them off with a man. He pimps them.

He's wearing a red cloak. Remember the Poe story?

The woman in the feathered mask kisses him, just like Domino. Then she warns him of a great danger, and tells him to leave.

And so begins the orgy of debauched, anonymous sex. The prostitutes who shared their spit around the red death, go on to spread it throughout the party.

We meet the tricorne again. He motions to his girl (a different one from before) to approach bill and offer herself to him.
Deja vu...

And the woman in the feathered mask saves him again.
As Bill is lead to the red room, and Nick is lead away, we see two gay couples innocently dancing, each one with a fully clothed (protected partner)
Why? Kubrick wants us to know: gay people are not the problem here.

Bill knows the password for admittance, but he doesn't know the password for the house.
He is among the elite, but he's not one of them.
He is commanded to remove his mask, and then his clothes.
The mask is off, he's no more than a prostitute to them.

The woman in the feathered mask sacrifices herself for him, and is led away by the plague doctor. The red death spares Bill the upper-class doctor, and takes the anonymous prostitute instead.

"No one can change her fate now. When a promise has been made here, there is no turning back."
Once you have the plague, there is no turning back.

Bill looks into his daughter's room. She is flanked by lampshades with clowns on them.
In screenwriting, to "hang a lampshade" is to point out something that breaks the suspension of disbelief.

Stanley has hung a lampshade on the clown. He is confirming what we suspected. The party was real. The man in the tricorne was Milich, and the person in the clown mask was... you know who...
And she wasn't the only one....

Alice was Bill in her dream. She was in "a deserted city, naked, scared, and ashamed. I thought it was your fault. Once you were gone I felt so much better. Everyone was fucking, I was fucking other men"

"I wanted to make fun of you, I laughed as loud as I could"
Bill is a clown in her dream (he's arguably a clown throughout the movie).
We already know the connection between clowns and prostitutes, and prostitutes and Bill.

Bill tries to tail Nick, and ends up at his hotel. Here we get our third reference to homosexuality, as Alan Cumming obviously flirts with Bill, and comments on the "big guys" Nick was with. Reminds me of the "big guys" from Yale who threw gay slurs at Bill earlier.

In the beginning of the movie, we see a gross display of homophobia. But here, our clearly gay bellboy is kind and helpful. He clues Bill in to the real danger ahead. He doesn't carry the plague. He didn't cause the plague. He warns Bill of the plague.

Kubrick is making a serious commentary on the AIDS epidemic: It wasn't caused by gay people. It was caused by the class-wide, sexuality-wide system of prostitution. The "hookers" at the party spread it because they had to have anonymous, unprotected sex to feed themselves.

On that note, anyone else having doubts about Nick's story? I know a lot of musicians travel, but the idea of leaving your wife and four boys in Seattle to play piano in New York seems a little far-fetched.
Nick might be batting for the other team, if you know what I mean.

In this light, those two men "big guys" might represent the waves of homophobic violence during the AIDS crisis. Nick tries to pass Alan Cumming an envelope. He tries to warn a fellow gay man "we are being targeted"

Immediately after is the notorious scene where another mask comes off and Milich tries to pimp his daughter out to Bill. He saw him at the party, he assumes he's up for it. They used to accuse gay men of being pedophiles. What are our good old heterosexual men up to?

Okay, total change of subject here, but something interesting about the lineup at the costume shop. Bill, the American. Milich, the nondescript European. And the two unnamed Japanese guys.
The Trilateral Commission!

Many people know the original main characters in the book were Jewish, and the bullies were originally antisemitic, not homophobic. Now Milich: grumbling, perverted, obsessed with money....

had he approximated his R's instead of rolled them, I think Kubrick might have gotten accused of antisemitism himself!
You think Kubrick might have known about a certain Jewish guy from New York who pimped out young girls to wealthy men?

Well I'm a little tired, Kubrick has melted my brain for the night. I think I'll continue this in the morning lol, stay tuned!