Great analysis. I also reached out to Yolande Snaith, a choreographer with her own dance company. Those who have also seen author Jon Ronsons 2008 documentary Stanley Kubricks Boxes, will however be familiar with the extreme obsessions of the master director himself. Its possible that Kubrick wanted to give us the feeling that something more depraved would be possible if we looked behind the wrong door in the mansion. However, it was clear to Yolande Snaith that Stanley didn't precisely know what he wanted from the scene. The soft twinkle of Christmas tree lights in the background and buoyant camera lends Kubrick's mysterious drama a fantastical atmosphere. We just did it again and again and again to get the timing right. This is of course even more relevant today because of the astonishing rape-allegations that came out in 2017 concerning Hollywoods top brass. The Christmas party is a facade. "Eyes Wide Shut" opened on July 16, 1999, and did well at the box office and with critics. I was a model and Id done a lot of catwalks, so I knew how to walk in heels. I'm pasting the relevant section from my piece below. The movie is based on a German novella from 1926 called "Traumnovelle," or "Dream Story," which focuses on a man in Vienna who finds out his wife has fantasies of other men, and goes on a two-day journey dealing with personal realizations about sex, individualism, and morality. Jeff Bezos, it turns out, sends awkward sexts. Eyes Wide Shut was accused of being out of touch at the time, but Kubrick was clearly after something stranger and more captivating. Somewhere in that scene, he said, there was a light out. Also rainbows are mentioned more than once! Stanley wanted it to go as far as we could possibly go. That was my brief! It's also a story about the constant temptation in a world that over-emphasizes sex.". Executing the scene was far more complicated than the research phase. The director cast Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, husband and wife at the time, as the main couple in the story named Bill and Alice. 2:10:32. And so on and so forth. And then there was the deliberate, trancelike cadence of the performances. But Kubrick wasnt after realism with these scenes. In terms of color symbology, I agree red is associated with sex (and maybe lust beyond the sexual -- money, power, etc). ! Wow, yes, thank you Kubrick. There were so many crew, so many extras, so many people on set, and nothing was happening. Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut Orgy Featured Cate Blanchett - IndieWire The fact that it was Tom and Nicole caused a lot of press. Blanchett was a rising star during the "Eyes Wide Shut" post-production phase. EYES WIDE SHUT, regrettably, continues that trend, even though some mainstream critics (and filmmakers) are still struggling to shower Kubrick with undeserved kudos. Hasan Minhaj Brings His Powerpoints and Power Suits to Independent Spirit Awards, Travis Barkers Finger Is Now the Enema of Blink-182 Fans. Of it, Kubrick told Playboy: Its not a message that I ever intend to convey in words. CENSORED! Next: Amy Poehler Compares Hosting The Golden Globes To A Stanley Kubrick Movie. They were erotic, but there was no humping going on. He was really excited about some music he was listening to, and he talked me through the section he wanted me to work on. While the women are dressed, there are echoes of seduction and sexuality, despite the outward appearance. I think the words he used were surreal and suggestive. Eyes Wide Shut: Holy Crap, I just Realized Something : r/movies - reddit Lines, roads, walking, processions towards a threshold or towards an altar. Brunette Indian Dancing The Ritual Dance On Their Place. Eyes Wide Shut is not Stanley Kubrick's best film. Though his films had always had provocative elements, the director had never tackled something so directly about sex and jealousy and fantasy before. *A version of this article appears in the June 24, 2019, issue ofNew YorkMagazine. My man. I was on the set with Tom and Stanley, finding things on our own. Just watched Eyes Wide Shut for the first time. What is the meaning For months, wed call them in once or twice a week and I would take a video camera and wed improvise a lot of stuff. I am reminded of a Kubrick quote from his famous 1968 Playboy interview about 2001: A Space Odyssey, The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.. Jocelyn Pook was a composer I knew, [who had a piece called] Backwards Priests. I was using that in the rehearsal studio because it felt very appropriate. Eyes Wide Shut | In-Depth Explanation and Analysis - YouTube "Eyes Wide Shut" opened on July 16, 1999, and did well at the box office and with critics. He wanted them to start on the ground. Because you never see his face. Kubrick tested this idea on his powerhouse stars Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in their roles of Dr. Bill and Alice Hartford. eyes wide shut daughter kidnapped Julienne Davis (Mandy): Stanley said, Its not gonna be any of this, and he made a thrusting gesture. The theory goes that to protect the nefarious leaders, Warner Bros quietly had the picture re-editedand now denies this ever happened. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. Eyes Wide Shut Symbols, Allegory and Motifs | GradeSaver The emotional abuse he put his actors through was apparently worth it for them, but it's up to debate whether or not it improved the final product. I've known a few couples over the years that retaliated against each other when one of them strayed, And, yes, I've also know spouses to become more controlling and watchful- i.e., insecure. Read this thread it is almost definitely the meaning behind the film https://www.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/994q4h/what_eyes_wide_shut_is_really_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf. 11:00. AG: I remember being on set one day. The vocalist had been improvising and had used some words from the Bhagavad Gita. Just as things are heating up, Alice interrupts the encounter with a phone call, again seeming to have a sixth sense about things. Kubrick was notorious for his grueling shooting schedule and the psychological games he played on actors in order to get out their best performances. Legman also recommended Flicien Rops, a very famous artist who specialized in all sorts of weird erotica.". He was also known as being a very challenging director to work with. Child sex slavery, rape, drug overdoses, money can be used to buy everything. Much of the movie is a Playboy-inspired, demonic circus of smut that exploits the bodies of women, while hypocritically keeping male modesty intact. Eyes Wide Shut Ending Explained: No Dream Is Ever Just A Dream, 20th anniversary retrospective on the film. At the same time, some people argued that "Eyes Wide Shut" was an unfinished film, and the final product was not the one Kubrick intended to release. AG: The premiere was quite interesting. 262K views 5 years ago The scene known as Masked Ball", depicting an occult satanic ritual orgy, from Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut" - when played in reverse, it is. Dreams and the subconscious are powerful, and have the ability to transform our waking lives. There was a fragile consensus about "Eyes Wide Shut" when it debuted back in 1999: that it was a bit of a letdown. And Stanley wanted the smoke coming out of the incense burner to be in the shot in a particular way, and smoke is fairly uncontrollable. Conspiracy theorists argue that Kubrick had never been shy about ratings (A Clockwork Orange was originally given an X-rating). I would ask for more money if I were you.. (aka unrated, international theatrical cut). A sub for fans to discuss the work of Stanley Kubrick, Press J to jump to the feed. Everything Everywhere All at Once leads with eight nominations tonight. The director died six days later, on March 7, 1999, at the age of 70. We went through the shots and picked out the offensive bits of sex and tried to work out the least annoying way of covering it up. While he almost gives in a few times, he makes it through the encounters unscathed until he gets to the main event, the secret society's weird orgy. When he bashed it on the ground, that would indicate when [the girls] had to begin to come up from the floor. Throughout his career, Stanley Kubrick notoriously disliked shooting. He described the whole scene being in this secret huge mansion with this secret society of men with prostitutes. There was another house we used which had belonged to the guy who discovered Tutankhamens tomb. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. this was some brilliant stuff. Stanley wasnt keen on doing it in many ways. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us. What do you fancy doing? Shed say, No Absolutely no Maybe Yes No Thats okay.. It's interesting to see the similarities to Kubrick's film even though Traumnovelle (Dream Story) takes place in the 1920's. You can watch it with English subtiles on YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d172U5tmTwQ LV: The cut was locked a week before Stanley had showed it in New York to Tom and Nicole, and he told them that was his final cut. Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 erotic mystery psychological drama film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. He said, Yeah, I really dont know what the music should be here, but try something sexy music. [Laughs.] We put some CGI characters, both male characters in black cloaks and female characters, to hide certain areas of frame. National reviewers myopic focus on sex, and the shallow psychologies of the films central couple, the Harfords, at the expense of every other element of the film-the trappings of stupendous wealtheven the sum Dr. Harford spends on a single night out-says more about the blindness of the elites to their own surroundings than it does about Kubricks inadequacies as a pornographer. Scene HD This pushes Bill into a sexual odyssey, where he wanders through the night, spontaneously ending up at a secretive masked ball . The scene known as Masked Ball, depicting an occult satanic ritual orgy, from Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut - when played in reverse, it is actually a Romanian Orthodox chant.The lyrics of the chant are as follows: nc ne rugm pentru mila, viaa, pacea, sntatea, mntuirea, cercetarea, lsarea i iertarea pcatelor robilor lui Dumnezeu, nchintori, miluitori i binefctori ai sfntului lcaului acestuia. It actually got used in Gangs of New York. Find it. Cate Blanchett's secret role in Eyes Wide Shut's infamous orgy scene revealed | Daily Mail Online. 100 Times. This, after all, was supposed to be a feature film with two of the world's biggest stars (tom and Nicole Kidman) and hopefully be seen by the masses. And apparently, there were some real-life influences for this story beat. Like there was a bit of an homage to Clockwork Orange. And he was a very hands-on editor. When Stanley was looking at the tapes of rehearsal, he asked, What is that music?. At the time I found it somewhat frustrating, cause I, as a woman, have a very different view of women. He initially enlisted one of Britains top choreographers to help conceive a far more surreal and suggestive series of vignettes and tableaux for the orgy. They actually have women there in masks and guys in evening suits who patronize them. Eyes Wide Shut was roughly based onArthur Schnitzlers 1926 Traumnovelle (Dream Story), according to an interview by Vulture. The second half of Eyes Wide Shut sees Bill being given ominous warnings from this secret society, and he can't seem to find his mask from the party. For a few weeks, most of the rep houses in the city were screening Stanley Kubricks Eyes Wide Shut. That level of precision was pretty exceptional. And a lot of the characters stood still that was part of the style of the scene. Eyes Wide Shut Explained: What did it all mean? | This is Barry Bill is used to having all of the power in their relationship, so her admission leaves him bewildered and emasculated as he aimlessly wanders the city streets. So physically and intellectually, it was demanding. It ties together many of the recurring themes and elements quite nicely. Many projects are in the works - albeit slowly - but there's no telling which video will release when. ago I really enjoyed reading this. Cate Blanchett's secret role in Eyes Wide Shut's infamous orgy scene So the feeling of Bill being "recognized" when he enters the ritual makes sense, because he was indeed known to Ziegler earlier at Ziegler's own home. Page updates daily! Hes dangerous, hes terrifying, hes an extra in, How to Watch the 2023 Oscars Celebrate All 23 Categories Live Again. They know how to do this, Stanley. There was a problem because the models would have to be paid a lot more to do that, and some of them didnt want to do it. Its somewhere up in the Hollywood Hills, or around that area. Im glad he wasnt alive to go through this whole [MPAA] thing cause it was ridiculous and stupid. In the final scene of "Eyes Wide Shut," Bill and Alice take their daughter shopping for Christmas toys, and Alice delivers the serious monologue: "I think we should be grateful. You know, theres apparently an Eyes Wide Shut club in L.A. It was complicated, and so was finding the right places to do it. Paddy Eason (supervising digital compositor): Fairly soon after [Kubricks death], my producer Rachel Penfold and I were called up to the Kubrick place to have a meeting about something to do with Eyes Wide Shut, with the inner circle charged with finishing the film. Offscreen, he was one himself. As one critic pointed out, why ask the biggest star in the world to carry your film and then hide his face under a mask for 20 minutes? The director took take after take of the same scene, but not because he had a detailed vision in mind. Related: Heres Why It Was So Hard For Stanley Kubrick To Direct 'The Shining', "I think his vision of the orgy scene over the course of the time we worked on it became much more of a literal orgy," Yolande explained. It used a vocal sampled from another earlier recording. One of the problems was that they had to be totally natural. It seems to appear whenever Bill is wrestling with the underlying lie of his situation. And we as the actors were sort of like, Whats going on? And what happened was Stanley had noticed that there was a light out. "He supplied us with a lot of information about secret societies and sexual mores in Vienna at the time of Schnitzler. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic contentI intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to explain a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation. He knew this would be his last film. He's written for TheTalko, Baby Gaga, Moms, and Screen Rant. (aka R-rated version). I had three lasers on the Steadicam, pointed to the ground, and when they all lined up, a grip would drop a plumb line from a string from the lens; then Id line my lasers up, and then the grip would talk me into the mark, saying I was two inches, one inch on the mark. Eyes Wide Shut, the phrase itself, is a calling card among secret societies, meaning 'my eyes are shut to your misdeeds, brother.'. How uncoincidental still that Helena happens also to be the name of the Greek goddess of beauty. "After a few weeks, he started to talk to me about the ritual, the masked ball, and the disrobing ritual. All rights reserved. It's only after he starts talking to Nick Nightingale that he becomes actively engaged in getting into the orgy. Because two things are sure: first, Warner Bros applied several modifications to Kubrick's version . Britains royal family cheats in the most boring ways. We were playing around with different ritualistic formations. His eyes may be open, but they are metaphorically shut to the truth of these secret desires. And as with Kubricks earlier The Shining (another initially dismissed film that is now a classic), there have been plenty of conspiracy theories around it, mainly from overzealous viewers connecting the films secret society of possibly murderous, mega-wealthy hedonists to all sorts of shadowy organizations allegedly operating in the real world. LV: Elveden was this house that was owned by the Guinness family. In the most famous scene, Harford ends up at a mansion where he finds dozens of masked elites taking part in cult-like, ritualistic sex ceremonies with masked, naked women. I went through every modeling agency, every dance academy. I told him, Its not that Im saying that I wont do it; Im saying that I cant do it. I was upset. For Bill and Alice, sex and temptation is all around them, but they only have eyes for each other. I had been sexually assaulted on the street in London just a few years earlier, and being attacked does things to you. "I did feel I was more of an artistic assistant for Stanley to develop a clearer vision of what that whole scene was," Yolande said.