[Image at left from the Wikipedia 'Eyes Wide Shut' page; "Eyes Wide Shut poster",[a] licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]Welcome to the analysis of Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, Eyes Wide Shut. Buttons at the bottom of each post enable navigation through the parts of the analysis. Regarding the appearance of possible anti-Semitism on this blog, please see the 'Disclaimers' section near the bottom of this page.
Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), a young couple from New York, go to a Christmas party, given by a wealthy patient, Victor Ziegler. Bill meets an old friend from medical school, Nick Nightingale, who now plays piano professionally. While a Hungarian man tries to pick up Alice, two young models try to take Bill off for a tryst. He is interrupted by a call from his host upstairs, who had been having sex with Mandy, a young woman who has overdosed on a speedball.
Above left: At Victor Ziegler's party, Bill (standing on left) meets and old friend from medical school, Nick Nightingale. Above right: Bill with two young models at the party.
The next evening at home, while smoking marijuana, Bill's wife asks him if he had sex with the two girls. After Bill reassures her, she asks if he is ever jealous of men who are attracted to her. As the discussion gets heated, he states that he thinks women are more faithful than men. She rebuts him, telling him of a recent fantasy she had about a naval officer they had encountered on a vacation. Disturbed by Alice's revelation, Bill is just then called to the deathbed of the father of a now-engaged female friend, who impulsively kisses him and tells him she loves him. Putting her off, Bill takes a walk and meets a prostitute named Domino, and goes to her apartment.
His wife phones as he begins to kiss Domino, after which he calls off the awkward encounter. Meeting Nick at a café, Bill learns that Nick has a following engagement where he must play piano blindfolded. After Bill presses for details, he learns that to gain admittance, one needs a costume, a mask, and the password.
Nick and Bill converse at the Sonata Café.
Bill drives late at night to a costume shop. He offers the owner, Mr. Milich, a generous amount of money to rent a costume, and while searching, Milich catches his teenage daughter with two Japanese men and expresses outrage at their lack of sense of decency, and threatens to call the police.
Just before dawn, Bill arrives home guilty and confused, where his wife Alice is now awake, crying, and tells him of a troubling dream in which she had sex with the naval officer and many other men, while laughing at the idea of Bill seeing her with them. The next morning, Bill goes to Nick's hotel, and the desk clerk tells Bill that a bruised and frightened Nick checked out a few hours earlier after returning with two large, dangerous-looking men. Nick tried to pass an envelope to him when they were leaving, but it was intercepted, and Nick was driven away by the two men. Bill goes to return the costume — but not the mask, which Bill has misplaced — and Milich, with his daughter by his side, states he can do other favors for Bill "and it needn't be a costume."
Bill talking with Milich and his daughter.
The Japanese men leave; Milich implies to Bill that he has sold his daughter for prostitution. Bill returns to the country mansion in his own car and is met at the gate by a man with a note warning him to cease and desist his inquiries. At home, Bill thinks about Alice's dream while he watches her tutor their daughter.
That evening, Bill goes to the home of the prostitute with a gift. Her roommate greets him, telling him Domino has just tested positive for HIV. Bill leaves, and then notices that a man is following him. After losing the man, Bill reads a newspaper story about a beauty queen who had died of a drug overdose. Bill wonders if the woman discussed in the article is Mandy.
After Bill examines what is revealed to be Mandy's body at the morgue, Ziegler summons Bill to his house and tells him he knows all the events of the past night and day. Ziegler was one of those involved with the ritual orgy and his own position with the secret society has been jeopardized by Bill's intrusion. Bill asks about the death of Mandy, whom Ziegler has identified as the woman at the party who'd "sacrificed" herself to prevent Bill's punishment, and about Nick. Ziegler insists that Nick is safely back at home in Seattle, but does not know where to contact him. Ziegler also insists that the "punishment" had nothing to do with Mandy's death; she was an addict and had died from another accidental drug overdose. Bill does not know if Ziegler is telling him the truth, but says nothing further.
Above left: Bill looks at Mandy's body at the morgue. Above right: Victor Ziegler tries to comfort Bill.
When Bill returns home, he sees the rented mask on his pillow next to his sleeping wife. He breaks down in tears (as shown at left) and as Alice awakes, he decides to tell her the whole truth of the past two days.
The next morning, Bill and Alice go Christmas shopping with their daughter. His wife muses that recent events do not define their life and they should be grateful they have survived and are still together and that she loves him. She then answers when asked what to next, saying that they need to, in her own words, "fuck", as soon as possible.[b]
We will begin to analyze the movie in part 2.
a. Poster for Eyes Wide Shut: The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, Warner Bros., the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
b. Wikipedia, 'Eyes Wide Shut'. Web, n.d. URL = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_wide_shut.
