Eye’s Wide Shut: Kubrick’s Great Mystery — Part I

Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, “Eyes Wide Shut” is a adult fairy tale. Based on the novel Traumnovelle, or “Dream Story”, the movie has an unclear meaning. Is this the story of a frustrated husband and wife pair, waking up to their desires, told in symbols? Or did the husband discover an actual sex cult? We don’t know.

Yet humas are pattern-matching creatures. So much so that sometimes we find patterns that are not there, the stuff of paranoia and conspiracy theories. I’ve done a bit of this myself. In high school I remember looking through Beatles lyrics and iconography, looking for evidence that Paul is dead. In college, though I did not actually try to set it up and watch it, I heard that the lyrics to the Pink Floyd album “Dark Side of the Moon” line up with the Wizard of Oz. Then as a young adult, I watched “Eyes Wide Shut”, the Stanley Kubrick film.

I didn’t get it.

Kubrick is supposed to be this brilliant director, yet I found the actors unbelievable, the musical score odd, the whole thing just … boring.

The film was sold as this sort of erotic thriller, and it had nudity, but I found it the most dry, dull…