np ALIENS: DELUXE EDITION

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Originally posted by soundtrakker:
I have a question regarding the ending of EYES WIDE SHUT. I left the theater baffled as to the meaning of the "mask on the bed". Did the mask belong to the wife? If so, was she a member of the secret orgy club long before her husband showed up? How creepy if she was present to witness his forced unmasking! I always suspected that the Sydney Pollack character was also behind one of those many masks.

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That's one of the mysteries of the film! I've never heard that theory before, but the mask definitely was the same one as Tom Cruises, so it wasn't hers. Perhaps she was looking through his things and found it. I've also heard a theory that the mask isn't even really on the bed. It's just Cruise's guilt symbolically manifesting itself on screen. Like all Kubrick films, the real answer is up to orselves to decide.

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I too am convinced that the masked guy at the club is Pollack, although after watching it last night I wonder if it couldn't be the middle aged foreigner dancing with Kidman at the beginning.

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There was another character replaced in the movie. Originally the young woman in Dalorise Claiborne (I's sorry, I forget her name) was was going to be the daughter of the dead guy that says she loves Cruise. I always thought that part was written for a younger woman.

IMHO, the Kubrick-influenced A.I. is beyond "cutting edge". I predict that this film will capture the awe of future generations; and, if the Japanese response is prophetic, perhaps this generation as well.

I thought it was a metaphor for Cruise's secret self; his hidden id/libido which took affront at his wife's candid confession of longing for another man earlier in the film. It actually works as a representation of the level of deceipt present--the film suggests--in any relationship; a layer of concealment. In "Eyes," Kidman's wanderlust took place in dreams. For Cruise, it was unleashed in an equally dreamy night out on the town.

The title "Eyes Wide Shut" seems to refer to the solution Kidman and Cruise arrive at at the conclusion of the film; each has become aware of the other's formerly hidden side...and must now, warily, move on with their intimacy. A little less naive, a little wiser about their natures and capacities...they resume their relationship. They see each other more clearly--their eyes "Wide"--though they also choose to look the other way, for the sake of their marriage (their eyes also, willfully "Shut").

As for why Kubrick goes with classical--though Eyes Wide Shut (some terrific Jocelyn Pook in there), Full Metal Jacket and The Shining all use some original material--I think he thought it lent a more mythic, timeless and larger than life quality to his films. I definitely feel that his films--especially 2001--would feel more dated were it not for his choice in music. Whatever reason "the classics" seem to have the shelf life they do, they only serve to give Kubrick's movies the same, ageless staying power. The North Stuff for A Space Odyssey? Doesn't that feel, like, so 33 years ago? But cue up Kubrick's version on that remastered dvd and it's fresh as it ever was, at least in my view.

[This message has been edited by Cooper (edited 31 July 2001).]

What we know:
Tom Cruise crashes the secret orgy club with the help of the blindfolded piano player, and arouses suspicion by arriving in a taxi instead of a limo. A search of his checked coat reveals the receipt for his costume rental, with his name on it. He is summoned before the Master of Ceremonies and forced to unmask. His cover blown, he is warned that he faces "dire consequences". A naked woman shouts from the balcony that she is willing to "sacrifice" herself so that Cruise might be spared. We later learn that this was the same woman that Cruise saved from a drug overdose at Sydney Pollock's party. She later turns up dead in her apartment, and Cruise views her body at the morgue. He also learns that his piano player friend has apparently been forced to fly back home to California. When Cruise returns the rented costume, he discovers that the mask is missing, which later turns up on his pillow next to his sleeping wife, Nicole Kidman.

Questions raised:
When Cruise crashes the masked orgy, he witnesses a strange ritual with even stranger music. The music/chant echoes depravity and unspeakable evil. When the naked woman on the balcony offers to sacrifice herself for Cruise, what was her fate? What happened to her before she turned up dead? Again, this was the woman Cruise had previously saved from a drug overdose (and possible suicide attempt). Was her life hell? Was she ready to die even before she had the opportunity to save Cruise?

My theory:
The naked woman on the balcony recognized Cruise, and wanting to protect the man who had been kind to her, announced that she would accept the club's punishment for Cruise's deception. We were never told what her punishment was, so here's my theory. Her punishment and fate was to be the victim in a "snuff" movie, with none other than the piano player as her forced lover/murderer. Perverted club + suicidal woman = snuff movie. And certainly the piano player, whose deception was also uncovered, would be forced into silence by his filmed participation.

And what of the lost mask? My theory is that Nicole Kidman was a member of the secret orgy club long before her husband Tom Cruise showed up, and was present to witness his unmasking. She found the mask at the orgy or later at home, and placed it on her husband's pillow as a means to confess her membership in the orgy club, and her unfulfillment with him sexually. Her last words to him are an optomistic, "Let's fuck".

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[This message has been edited by soundtrakker (edited 10 August 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Cooper (edited 08 August 2001).]

why would they kill someone and let cruise go?

why wouldnt cruise go to the cops?

this could have been a provactive movie exploring the sexual underground as it exits instead it is all 1 big dream that doesnt make sense in a "real world sense" i.e. the sacrifice ONLY mkaes sense in a dream/symbolic way

it is highly watchable as an exciting dream but deviod of plot and realism it leaves you with the empty post-dream feeling

[This message has been edited by Cooper (edited 10 August 2001).]

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Originally posted by Ubik:
My reaction when I first saw that scene was that the mask belonged to the wife, that she had been a part of the secret society, and this was her way of telling him that she knew everything he had been doing. Of course, within moments we learned that this wasn't the case. That was the only moment in this dreadful and ponderous film where I thought the story was about to take an intriguing twist...The truth is, as is now becoming apparent, Kubrick's unique cinematic voice had nothing left to express after "Full Metal Jacket." The only other ideas he had were bankrupt; he wrestled with them for decades because they were no good and he couldn't make anything of them. Rather than staying retired from films, he went ahead anyway with "Eyes Wide Shut" and gave his other pointless idea, "A.I.," to Spielberg to see what he could make from it. Kubrick's legacy is sadly compromised as a result.

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I find nothing sad or bankrupt about Kubrick's legacy; and I am amazed that the mask on the pillow in "Eyes Wide Shut" is generating this debate.

To me, it was obvious that the mask had been left on Dr. Bill's pillow by the faceless people who had been engineering the orgy as a warning: just when Dr. Bill thinks he has escaped the evening's ordeal, he realizes these faceless people still have the power to bring his relationship with his wife crashing down with this final parting gift. Dreadful and ponderous were not adjectives that sprang to mind.

Years later, to this viewer, after all the hoopla and anticipation of Kubrick's final film have faded into memory, "Eyes Wide Shut" stands as a chilling and subversive exclamation point at the end of Kubrick's brilliant career -- particularly with the movie's hilarious parting line of dialogue.

I'm looking forward to the hindsight that future years will bring to Spielberg and Kubrick's "A.I." Kubrick never retired because film was his life's blood. I'd dare say the same will apply to Spielberg.

Oh, and Wickenstein: it's spelled DOLORES Claiborne.

Sydney Pollack's character was, of course, at the Masked Ball; Nicole Kidman, however, is a representative of the "trophy wife" concept. That is why she is established early on in the film in the "daily routine" sequence.

While certainly Tom Cruise's character is of the upper class, the people that he finds himself dealing with at the Masked Ball make him look homeless. His presence at Pollack's party was exactly what it ended up being... to be on hand in case things should get out of hand.

The Masked Ball itself represents an enigmatic aspect of power, one so ubiquitous that it can not even be defined. Sexuality is tied into power in the male mindset (rape is a crime of power, not sexuality, despite the nature of the act), and one sees at the Masked Ball a hyperpatriarchal situation.

When Sydney Pollack offers alternate theories regarding what happened to the "victims" Tom Cruise searches for, the message is not that he is attempting to decieve Cruise (chances are he doesn't expect Cruise to believe him any more than we do), but rather to express the fact that an event can be distorted provided one has the means to do it... and that reality itself is so based on our subjective perception that to pinpoint an "event" can often be as pointless as the empty sex seen at the Masked Ball.

No, I don't think Nicole Kidman had anything to do with the Masked Ball. I think rather that she found the mask and leaving it on the bed was a question and a challenge, one which Cruise is ill-prepared to deal with.

To those who consider Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick's failure, I would ask that they return to the film and, instead of looking for insights on sexuality (the film pretty much gets all that out of the way in the first place), look instead from the point of view of class perspective and personal perception (I live in New York and while I have never seen a street that looks like the ones seen in the film, I must admit that there is an element to them that seems oddly familiar). Yes, much of Eyes Wide Shut has a dreamlike quality to it, but the story does follow its internal logic if one looks at it for what it is, rather than what they expected it to be.

1. The girl Cruise saves from a drug overdose at the party, and the masked girl who saves Cruise at the orgy, and the dead girl Cruise views at the morgue are all the same person, Amanda (Mandy) Curran.

2. The blindfolded piano player is forced to fly home to Seattle, not California.

3. The newspaper headline reads, EX-BEAUTY QUEEN IN HOTEL DRUG OVERDOSE. We learn that Mandy was found alone and unconscious in her apartment, with her door locked from inside, and that she later died at the hospital. This would seem to snuff out my snuff movie theory. Yet I still suspect that something other than drugs was a factor in her death, something only that bizarre club could conceive, like electric shock torture or something.

This long, strange movie raises sooooooo many questions, and the clues in the dialogue come non-stop, but exasperatingly slow, with long pauses.

New theories will probably pop into my head, but I still believe Kidman was at the masked orgy. The video begins with a plug for http://www.kubrickfilms.com" TARGET=_blank>www.kubrickfilms.com which may offer new insights into this enigma of a movie.

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