Eyes Wide Shut questions [spoilers]

I’ve heard about this film a lot, being Kubrick’s last, and the other day I watched it. I have some questions, some of which may even have actual answers.

The Leelee Sobieski character, why did she recommend an ermine-lined cloak? Given that there were sexual shenanigans going on there too, was there some relation between her and the party or was it like the costumier’s equivalent of “Would you like fries with that?” Would you like ermine lining with that?

I’ve heard that Kubrick died before finishing the editing. Was the original plan to have Dr Bill’s wife’s confession of having once had sexual fantasies about another man drive him into night-time adventures? Because that seems like a rather weak premise that doesn’t really have anything to do with the main fish-out-of-water plot.

Ziegler’s party: Dr Bill is going off with a couple of models to the place “where the rainbow ends” and is dragged off just before finding out where that is. Where is that? It’s not a sexual euphemism that I’ve come across before.

The dream his wife was having when he got back from Pervert Central: how did he know there was more of it when she stopped talking? Is he meant to have divined it from he manner or is there some link between her dream-orgy and the sex-orgy he’s just got back from?

When he first gets to the mansion, who are the two masked people on the balcony who nod at him? And how do they know who he is, this being before the staff have had a chance to go through his pockets? Is Ziegler meant to be one of them?

I can’t comment on the movie. Saw it a long time ago and I don’t remember a thing.

But I just can’t pass up this opportunity to note the post/username combo that gave me a little chuckle.

That’s more or less the entire plot of the movie, isn’t it? Kubrick hadn’t finished editing the movie, but it was basically done. It’s not like he was going to completely tear down the story and start filming again.

I don’t think it’s supposed to refer to anyplace specific or to be a recognizable euphemism. Maybe it means they’re going to fulfill his fantasies.

I guess we’re supposed to think his experiences made him realize there was more to her story.

It’s possible he’s one of them, but we’re not supposed to know that. There are no clues. This is a dreamy movie in a lot of ways and not everything is supposed to have a strict logical answer.

I think the plot was all the little adventures he had while he was out and about. The wife stuff is a sort of anti-macguffin. He runs away from that which is what drives him into the situations he gets into.

That’s what I don’t like about Kubrick, as I now remember. Too much of that.

The movie was based on a book called Traumnovelle (Dream Story), so it shouldn’t be surprising Kubrick took a dreamy/nightmarish take on it.

But I think Marley’s pretty much got it.

Personally, I think Cruise is a dud in this (and almost all of his films, but I watched A Few Good Men last night, and I think he was great in that one, but that’s an exception), and I wonder what Kubrick would’ve done with a much better actor.

You think he’s a dud?

You watched it last night?

An exception?
And the above is what drove me nuts about Cruise in the film! :mad:

I thought Kubrick had finished the final cut of the movie and delivered it just days before his death.

In thinking about this movie, the only question I can’t answer that I want to know is
“Did Tom Cruise run in this film, and if so, when? I can’t recall and it’s driving me crazy.”

As for the movie itself, I found it a little creepy that Cruise wanted to have sex with his real life wife on film. Almost as if to convince the public that their relationship was normal, and Nicole was not the beard she was rumored to be.

The strangest part of the movie (and there were many) was that Cruise asked the costume shop owner for a “mask and a cape” if I remember correctly. What he received was not what I was imagining, and yet it fit perfectly for the party.

So, do these parties actually exist, and if so, is the mask/cape attire standard?
I could buy that this was supposed to be a dream sequence. In reality, it’s the only way the movie makes any sense at all.

Fidelio

A Few Good Men is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I hate Tom Cruise.

(But everybody knows it’s really Jack’s movie, anyway. :slight_smile: )

This is one of my favorite films and I have watched it in its entirety around a dozen times, and probably 30 to 50 times more in bits-and-pieces or playing in the background while I’m doing other stuff. The aesthetic of the movie and the weird, detached dialog captivated me. I think it’s probably Cruise’s second best film, behind Vanilla Sky - which, coincidentally, also involves Cruise wearing a mask.

The masks in the film, by the way, are Venetian style masks, though many of them are exaggerated modernist takes on the traditional style. The one worn by the Man on the Balcony (who may or may not be Ziegler) is a bauta, which I think is one of the scarier looking masks because of its blank features and weirdly angled jaw. When I was a kid of 5 years or so, I saw the videotape cover for The Music Teacher at the video store, and it disturbed me greatly. I’ll never forget the weird feeling that came over me when I first saw that mask.

Harvey Keitel was originally going to play Ziegler. Supposedly during a take he masturbated into Nicole Kidman’s hair and was subsequently fired and replaced by Pollack, although I always doubted the veracity of this story. But I guess it’s possible. In any case, it is certainly a deliberate choice that the audience is left to wonder if it was really Ziegler on the balcony watching Cruise. We can only speculate. But it is worth mentioning that Ziegler seems to not be very high up among the ranks of the masked party group. He claims towards the end of the movie, in the final conversation with Cruise, that he was the one who “recommended [Nightingale] to ‘those people’,” and that they were angry with his decision after it became known that Nightingale disclosed the party to Hartford. This phrasing would indicate that Ziegler is not one of the higher ups in the group and rather is someone whose own position among the members might be uncertain and insecure.

He claimed that if Hartford knew the identities of some of the other people in the group, he “wouldn’t sleep so well.” We can only assume this means that many people in positions of great influence in society were part of the bizarre sex club.

One quirk of the party scene that I always enjoyed: as Hartford is being led into the main room by the guards to meet Red Cloak, he goes through a little ballroom dance where many couples of masked man/nude masked women are dancing. Among them, if you pay attention, are two homosexual couples as well: two tuxedoed women dancing together, presumably masculine lesbians, and two completely nude men, presumably gay. (The two men are British porn legends Tony DeSergio and Lee Henshaw.)

Also great: Red Cloak is played by Leon Vitali, who also played another one of my all time favorite characters - Lord Bullingdon, in Barry Lyndon. His voice during the angry interrogation of Hartford, while raspier and deeper with age, is still obviously the same one who delivered the great dressing-down tirade against Lyndon.

There are many other great little quirky details in the film; I am tired now but I will post more if this thread gets some more replies.

I certainly don’t remember any running. Lots of solemnly paced walking, when Ziegler’s man is following him and when he’s at the party, but no running comes to mind.

The rumour was that he was gay, wasn’t it? But I think the Scientologists cured that.

I hadn’t thought of that. Even had a hood, which I wouldn’t consider to be standard as part of a cloak, and which turned out to be requisite for the party.

Presumably if such things go on they would be rather hush-hush. The book Honeytrap! The Scandal, about the Profumo Affair does allude to similar things going on amongst the aristocracy, who are famous for that sort of thing, and more recently there have been stories about Peter Mandelson and the yachts of various Russian oligarchs… and there’s the work of Jon Ronson, a journalist, who “infiltrated” Bohemian Grove, where there’s a meeting of rich people, and found pictures of the attendees in various states of undress and cross-dress, but that’s lots of old men dressing up in lingerie, not a sex party.

But I’ve never been invited to one, so I can’t really say. When it comes to illicit parties I’m more likely to turn up at the cock-fights on the local council estate than a sex-party at a country manor.

It’s a movie, why should it make sense?

Yes, and that is what he was saying. Cruise is with his wife in this movie to prove she is not just a beard.

I too doubt it. As you may recall, there were a lot of bizarre rumors surrounding this film before it opened - Tom Cruise was supposed to appear in a dress, he and Nicole were supposed to have full-on sex complete with penetration on screen, etc. This just seems like something else in that vein.

I saw it pointed out once that the scenes in the mansion with the sex orgy are some of the only shots in the whole movie completely lacking Christmas decorations. Almost every other shot has a colorful (rainbow) Christmas tree or other colored christmas light in it. Even if that was deliberate it’s surely symbolic and not meant to imply they’re literally taking him anywhere specific. I thought it was a neat observation though because I’ve always found all Christmas trees/lights in the movie visually fascinating.

I seem to pick this movie up at the same spot each time:

Cruise visits Pollack, then goes and identifies a body at the hospital and ends up at the orgy/weird party. Seeing that snippet a few times does not really give one a sense of what the movie is about.

That’s for sure.

Questions for those of you who have seen it multiple times (I’ve seen it a few times, so I know just enough to ask questions, but not enough to answer them)

How did Cruise expose himself (or get exposed) at the sex party? At first I thought a complete stranger would be obvious (he came in a taxi, so that raised a flag right there), and then he got into the mansion dressed in that costume. Perhaps the attendance at these things are fairly standard, and the masks are well known? Other than that, I didn’t see anything that would have tipped him as an outsider, but even if it did, how in the world did they know it was Cruise?

I also thought that outing Cruise at the party was a risky thing to do. Assuming these people were famous, recognizable, or important social or political figures, wouldn’t it be possible for Cruise to recognize someone’s voice? The best strategy would be to let him go on his own accord, without exposing anything at all to him, and making sure he doesn’t show up again.

Given the secrecy around the party, I think they could assume any outsider privy to the location and the password got it from the only variable in the evening - the piano player. Change piano players, Cruise is never scene again, and problem is solved without risk to exposure.

Second, somewhat related question, Cruise obviously knew the address. Wouldn’t that tell him something? Obviously, someone owned that property. That info is public. Why antagonize him at all? Get him out as quickly and quietly as possible and be done with it.

Finally, if I remember correctly, the woman that first approached Cruise and told him he needed to go never saw him without his mask on. How did she recognize him? She clearly knew it was Cruise, but he hadn’t exposed himself (via mask) had he? Did the costume shop owner perhaps tip the folks off at the party with a phone call? As he knew the correct costume to rent to Cruise, perhaps he was a key contributer of costumes to this group of party goers?

Also, as I recall, Ziegler and Kidman’s character weren’t in any scenes together.

Backwards: he goes to the orgy, then IDs the body (which is the body of the woman who “sacrificed” herself for him at the party to allow him to escape), then goes to see Ziegler. Although he also went to Ziegler’s right at the start.

I think you might be right, but I assumed masturbating into her hair, if it was anything more than a rumour, was just the sort of backstage hijinks that go on in Hollywood.

Ziegler said they found the receipt for renting the costume in the pocket of his coat, which he handed in at the door. That, with the taxi, was enough to get him brought out in front of the crowd where he was ordered to remove his mask, at which point at least Ziegler would have recognised him.

Well, he only heard the voice of the one in the red and he’d seen several of the others naked already. Besides which it’s left deliberately as a grey area whether they were actually going to kill him or not before the woman’s intervention, which would have solved that problem.

Because you want to shut him up, I suppose. Not that much can be done with the address.

Could be. As she’d met him previously perhaps she recognised him through the mask, or at least recognised that he wasn’t a regular, while the higher-ups were checking the make sure and so advised him to get out before they could confirm who he wasn’t and grab him.

It also struck me as odd that Cruise said, “I need a tux, a cloack with a mask and a hood.”

Why a tux?

Nothing Nightingale ever said indicated that a tux would be needed for the party. All he said was “You’ll never get in there with those clothes. Everyone is always costumed and masked.” Costumed and masked - pretty unspecific.

Yet Cruise assumed a tux would be needed in addition to the other costume items. I don’t get it.

“Dud” may have been the wrong word. “Miscast” might better sum up how I feel about Cruise in this movie.

A Few Good Men was on AMC the night before.

It seems Cruise can play a young up-and-coming lawyer pretty well. I hate Cruise, but I think he did a damned good job in AFGM and The Firm. ETA: Jack was brilliant in AFGM–when he gives his short speech on the witness stand (paraphrasing: “You lie under the blanket of freedom I provide then question the way in which I provide it…”) he is nothing short of magnificent.

:confused: