Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

• Directed by Stanley Kubrick
• Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

Eyes Wide Shut has been called a cult film by some. The film has been popular with some audiences, while others only find the movie baffling. Eyes Wide Shut is beyond intriguing because not everyone who sees the film seems to see the same thing.

What you see depends on if you are watching it with eyes that are wide open or eyes that are wide shut. The title, itself, is a reference to awareness. If your eyes are wide open, you will recognize elements in the film hidden to those who have not reached a certain level of awareness. You will recognize the film’s purpose, too, which only speaks to those who can see. To those who see with eyes wide open, the message Kubrick managed to put across before his untimely death, is a bold affront to members of an international cabal.

To those unaware, who see with their closed eyes, Eyes Wide Shut is a soft porn film that managed to slip some naughtiness past the ratings police and its ending seems to have no point at all. The film would seem vacuous and disjointed. To the unconscious viewer, the entire purpose of the film is hidden.

This fact has raised a lot of questions from those who do see its purpose and who know that its director, Stanley Kubrick, died under mysterious circumstances shortly after the film’s release. Eyes Wide Shut was filmed in secrecy in England. It is no secret that the two starring actors are members of an organization that has an illuminated origin – by that I mean, its founder was a powerful occultist, even if his knowledge came only from his fortunate associations.

Eyes Wide Shut has many elements of the occult in it. It tells the story of a prominent doctor, “Bill Harford,” played by Cruise and his beautiful wife, “Alice,” played by Kidman, who live a seemingly ideal life. It seems ideal because at the beginning of the film Cruise’s eyes are closed to many things. At the beginning of the film, Bill wonders why his friend, “Victor Ziegler,” invites them to these fancy parties every year. His question is soon to be answered.

Bill Harford is a self-assured doctor. He is certain of his place in his world and his importance. As a doctor, he is accustomed to a life of privilege. He is certain, too, of his wife’s devotion. He feels in control in emergency situations, indeed, it is Harford who is called in frequently whenever there is a matter of life and death. But, soon, he is to go “where the rainbow ends.”

The rainbow is a constant reference throughout the film. To those viewing with their eyes wide open it is a clear reference to the MK-Ultra program, a part of Project Paper Clip that began after World War II, when many high level German scientists were brought to the U.S. to work of various occult projects. A particular branch of the MK-Ultra program was called the Monarch program and involved the use of trauma-based and drug induced mind control on very young girls and women to be used as sex slaves and drug mules for the purposes of a shadowy elite class. The rainbow seems to be a less than subtle reference to “Wizard of Oz” programming, a form of trauma-based compartmentalization, that is used on little girls.

As Harford is little by little awakened, his eyes ever so slowly opened, to the reality of the world around him, he is thrown off balance. He learns that his wife may not be who he thinks she is. Or at least, the audience is left to wonder if she, too, is one of the women in the bizarre ritual that Harford unwittingly stumbled into. He learns that the world is run by people who hide behind masks, both literally and figuratively. They are people who, if you knew who they were, “you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.” Those were the words of Ziegler when Harford got too close to this secret in the film.

The ritual portrayed in the film is a fascination to anyone interested in occult subject – anyone aware of the methods of ritual used in the far east in ancient times to call the imprisoned discarnate entities from the bowels of the earth. In the film version, the participants are masked, while words are chanted in a low voice, creating a low vibration. The priest strikes his staff rhythmically against the ground and the women choose a partner and go off to various rooms to participate in orgies.

In occult lore, perverse sex is one means of calling demons into a circle. The other is through the spilling of blood, preferably the blood of an infant, all the better, one recently cut from the womb. In ancient rituals in the far east, the blood was spilled upon the bare earth, words of encouragement were spoken, the earth struck with a staff and then, it is said, the ancient ones, imprisoned in Hell, would arise from the earth. Aleister Crowley, a very close friend and colleague of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the organization of which the two actors in this film are members. Both of these men were brilliant writers, too, each in their own right. Their writings, like this film, are given all the more power by their vast reserve of knowledge on hidden subjects.

So, this film can be seen two ways. You can watch it for what it appears to be on the surface and find it very enjoyable and probably just a little weird and then go on with your ordinary life. Or, you can watch this film again and again. If you take note of the details in it and the information in this review, your eyes will be open to things you could not see before. But, take caution, if you do, you will become just like Bill Harford at the end of the film. Once your eyes are wide open, you will never be able to shut them again.