Jack and George

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) and George Peatty (Elisha Cook) share a similar physical appearance - that is to say, Nicholson and Cook share a similar appearance. George suspects he is being cuckolded by Sherry (Marie Windsor) in The Killing while Jack feels unappreciated, for lack of a better word, in The Shining. George, we can imagine, is resentful of Sherry, though he doesn't show it. Jack, on the other hand, is completely animated. And yet, from what we see, Wendy is a good person while Sherry is selfish and unfaithful, joking about the meal she hasn't cooked for tired George at the end of his work-day. Jack freezes to death in the maze, while George is shot in the altercation where he is the lone survivor, only to die later, before a cold, impersonal Sherry. Wendy survives, in spite (or because) of Jack, just as Sherry survives in spite (or because) of George. But Jack and George die foolish deaths; is cool, calm George any more intelligent or moral than Jack? Arguably not. 

It is strongly implied that Sherry sleeps with Val, so George's suspicions are likely correct. Johnny mentions to the existing group that two more men are going to join their race-track heist. The group are worried about the two men Johnny mentions: they are right to be worried, though they do not yet know the dangers that await them. The two additional men who do step in to help are little more than pawns: one, Nikki, gets shot, and the other, Maurice, goes to prison. The two men, Val (Vince Edwards) and Tiny (Joe Turkel), Johnny doesn't know are planning a heist of their heist, also die tragically. Val is arguably a pawn for Sherry, while Tiny is a pawn for Val.  

But I'll have to get into all that another time. The physical similarities between Elisha Cook and Jack Nicholson have been noted before. As characters, as I've stated above, Jack and George both fail after much suffering. 

Consider Jack (left) looking over his shoulder at two women departing the Overlook. Note this image was reversed and made black-and-white. Jack would have been looking over his right shoulder at the two women in The Shining. George enters a door in the locker room before just the race-track heist goes down. Both wear formal attire including a button-down shirt and sweater. Both hairlines are similar and receding; their facial features are sharp and thin, and suggest Anglo-Saxon heritage. 

This side-by-side is slightly more interesting - George (top) cocks his head right, as if listening to the sounds from outside the window, shortly before the meta-robbers, Val and Tiny, break down the doors, guns in hand. Jack's gaze falls in the mirror, not at Grady. Grady + Jack + Jack's mirror image = 3. George is "reflected" or "betrayed" in the image of Val and Tiny. In this way, Val and Tiny are almost imaginary allies or friends of George. Still, Jack and George are solitary figures, and their physical and narrative "twinning," as actors and characters, is uncanny. 

Vulgar positioning

 

Consider the positioning of Bill, then compare with the positioning of Hallorann. Both are below a larger figure or figures. Bill's head is at Victor's waist, while Hallorann's head falls at Ullman's waist. Not only are they submissive, but they are being degraded. Bill is humiliated; Hallorann gets killed. 

Eyes Wide Shut Forwards and Backwards

Some stills from an experiment inspired by John Fell Ryan's The Shining Forwards and Backwards. The experiment is little more than applying a similar method to a different Kubrick film. Visually and aesthetically, Eyes Wide Shut is far more blurry, messy, and organic in comparison to The Shining. Not all of the superimpositions are particularly impressive; tracking shots and dark interiors sometimes make the original image more blurred and confused. The Shining is "gothic" in nature: hard lines, stark contrasts, sharp edges, geometrical, etc. Eyes Wide Shut is not - it relies more on dream logic and dream aesthetic. Nonetheless, there are some striking and revealing superimpositions to be found. I've chosen the most interesting ones to include in this post. Descriptions are under each image. 

Alice's dream vs. Bill entering "Sharky's" cafe; Alice appearing devilish.

Alice's patronizing contrapposto pose vs. Bill and Victor's game of "no games." 

 

Alice describing the sailor in the hotel lobby vs. the revolving doors of the morgue lobby Bill enters.

Dr. Bill and nurse examine suspiciously attractive female patient in Bill's "daily" montage vs. Victor and Bill's philosophical waltz.

Bill staring in disbelief at Alice vs. Bill ordering a cappuccino at Sharky's. Note how the wreaths align with Bill's eyes, while the garland trails from his lips.  

Bill feeling threatened by Alice vs. Bill feeling threatened by the spy.

Alice's dream vs. Bill's sighting of the bald spy following him.

Bill shattered by Alice's confession vs. Spy. Note the semi-circle window which falls above Bill's left eye, the red street-light in Bill's left eye, the lighted tree stemming from Bill's right eye, and the fire-escape ladder. The superimposition suggests Bill's diverse set of masks. The ladder relates to various ladders in The Shining, which allude to Masonic symbology, and, by extension, Biblical symbols, like Jacob's Ladder in the Awakening of Jacob story, from which this blog takes its name. 

Thoughtful Bill vs. night-time street. Note red globes near his eyes, reminiscent of the red circle at Somerton.

Cold, pensive Bill riding in taxi vs. empty nighttime street and lights.

Seated Bill with Marion vs. Bill and Sally.

Exhausted Dr. Bill vs. symmetrical Bill and Marion. Curiously similar to the middle-school textbook example of twin lamps or glasses to illustrate the idea of optical illusions. The center form almost looks like a woman in a blue dress. 

Bill and Marion on the verge of infidelity vs. Carl answering to Bill's silence.

Bill inquiring about Nick at Hotel Jason vs. Nick Nightingale introducing his band at Sonata Cafe. Nick's "manspread" pose ironically dovetails with Alan Cumming's flamboyant, sexualized verbiage he uses telling the story of Nick's checking out of the hotel. Note again that the clerk sexualizes the violent nature of Nick's departure. He sees the erotic in the violent.

Bill coming home to Alice vs. Bill bargaining with Milich.

Alice's confused nightmare vs. Milich showing Bill the costume room. 

Bill laying down after his long night vs. Milich and Bill talking.

Bill in taxi vs. Bill at masked ball. Note Bill's eyes are open at the ball and closed in the taxi.

Bill's "trial" or "mock trial" at Somerton vs. the trip there. 

Unnamed woman presumed to be Mandy preparing for the consequences of redeeming Bill vs. fade/montage of Bill's taxi passing through a community (Oyster Bay). Note the twin gables of the building which bear a strange resemblance to a mask (or hood). As Julie Kearns has noted, this building is actually the Oyster Bay Funeral Home. Note the symbolism of "oyster" - Aphrodite, the female sex, Hedonistic pleasure, "aphrodisiac" food, etc., as well as the lurking but obvious theme of Sex and Death. 

"Plague Doctor" masked man emerging to take the unnamed woman vs. the pine trees at Somerton when Bill first arrives (recall the Pinoli restaurant where the Magic Circle first formed in 1905, London). The particular cloak and mask supposedly play on the real uniform worn by plague doctors in 17th century Europe, beginning in Naples. The beak of the mask was stuffed with herbs to filter the air which was thought to contain miasmas, or airborne diseases. The eye-holes were covered with glass to protect the eyes from exposure to said "foul air." Cloak, hat/hood, gloves, and cane were used to protect the doctor who would treat all people.  

"Red cloak" presiding over Somerton vs. Bill and cabbie talking payments.

Bill tearing a $100 bill in half for the cabbie vs. establishing shot of Bill's "trial" just as the unnamed woman appears on the balcony to "redeem" him.

The unnamed woman watching the circular gathering from the balcony vs. Bill giving the password to the two guards. 

Bill entering Somerton without mask vs. Bill removing his mask during his "trial."

What we imagine to be Victor and his wife Illona looking down on Bill vs. Bill having a serious 

talk with the topless unnamed woman in one of Somerton's halls. 

Bill and the unnamed woman kissing through masks before leaving the main room vs. the man penetrating a masked woman cartoonishly in a reading room. Note the man aligns with Bill's mouth and the woman aligns with the unnamed woman's mouth.

Bill making a move on Sally (before Sally insists on telling Bill of Domino's HIV-positive diagnosis) vs. Marion's look of intrigue at Bill. 

Mid-Point

 

Nine years ago, John Fell Ryan superimposed a reversed version of The Shining onto the original. The audio track from the forward-playing version was retained for the experimental piece aptly titled The Shining Forwards and Backwards. The result was striking, and arguably sparked new conversation about Stanley Kubrick's mysterious, hypnotic 1980 "horror" film. 

If we follow the same method with Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, we find some similarities: for one, the middle-point of both films falls upon a single character's face. In The Shining, that character is Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the African-American cook who attempts to save Wendy and Danny from Jack's murderous wrath. We all know Hallorann's fate. 

At the half-way point of Eyes Wide Shut, we find Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) watching impassively in cloak and mask at the Somerton mansion. Unlike Hallorann, though, Bill's fate is not sealed on screen. Maybe Bill is "shining" like Hallorann; arguably, he is aware that things are going awry in other places, and that bad things are happening or are going to happen. Hallorann tells Danny that when something happens, it leaves a trace. There are traces all throughout Eyes Wide Shut, both those that Bill leaves in his nighttime odyssey, and, those that are left from external events. We do find Bill following some of the traces of his past actions. 

The Good Doctor has certainly sacrificed trust and credibility in order to get to Somerton in the first place, not to mention when he confesses to his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman). We never hear the confession, but, in the next scene, we see sullen and teary-eyed Alice seated across from a despondent, almost child-like Bill. But, Bill is still alive at the end of the film, possibly the result of a woman at Somerton who theatrically "redeems" him so that he can go freely from the masked ball which he had no business attending. When the same woman ends up dead the next day, Victor (Sydney Pollack), wants Bill to believe that it was not related to the scene at Somerton, but was merely the result of a bad drug habit. Just like Bill, with a lack of information, we return to the forked road where we decide what we will believe. 

In the film's final scene, Alice tells Bill, "Maybe I think we should be grateful - grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream." This dovetails nicely with the newspaper headline which escapes Bill's attention earlier, that simply reads, "Lucky To Be Alive." Although, it's worth noting the inclusion of the word "maybe," which casts Alice in a strangely suspicious light. Should there be an ambivalence regarding gratitude? The ambiguity is almost caustic: have they learned nothing? Alice is no more traitorous than Bill, which I think is the point. But to suggest that this marital egalitarianism allows for the possibility of hope is somewhat blind.

As Tim Kreider pointed out in his 2006 essay, "Introducing Sociology," Bill has effectively been blackmailed by Victor. He knows of Somerton, he knows of drug abuse, of hookers, of potential homicide, of wealthy and powerful men (though not by name). In the age of Jeffrey Epstein, all of this is disturbingly familiar. The question of Bill's future determines to what degree Eyes Wide Shut offers any optimism about Bill's life - or anybody's life. 

To elucidate: what is the likelihood that after these two strange days Bill will refuse his doctorly services to the Ziegler's? And to think he even has this choice - if anything, Victor has reason to keep a closer watch on Bill. The spies Victor commands only point to a beginning of indirect servitude and complicity. But like the reading of any Kubrick film, I'm torn: I think Victor wants Bill to stay out, but I'm not sure Bill wants the same thing. If Bill doesn't want this, then Victor could make conditions - this would be the beginning of explicit blackmail. 

Much like Judah Rosenthal in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, I can easily picture Bill wanting to come clean with what he knows. Unlike Dr. Rosenthal, who ordered his mistress to be killed, Bill hasn't actually done anything. It's more about what Bill hasn't done. He hasn't notified authorities. He hasn't found out anything more about what happened to his old friend, Nick Nightingale. He surely hasn't decided what he believes regarding Victor's explanations. Dr. Rosenthal is not so much shattered by his emotions, but by his lack of emotion: he has successfully and almost effortlessly killed somebody. "Banality of evil" would be an understatement: he is only following his own orders. He is shattered by the fact that he could have come up with such barbaric orders himself. Bill's emotions are probably misplaced, while his "shattering" deals more with externalities. For example, that entire worlds exist right before his eyes that he has never recognized, some of them quite sinister, insidious, and malicious. 

If Bill is just beginning to see at the end of the film, then there is much work left to do, much left to be seen. Eyes Wide Shut as a final film is a plea for learning, growth, and redemption. 

The magic circle

 

The "Magic Circle" game that appears to the left of the shot above appears in the final scene of Eyes Wide Shut, when the Harfords are Christmas shopping at a toy store. The red color clearly relates to the red carpet at Somerton (third from top), and the red felt of the pool table at Ziegler's mansion (not pictured), while magic alludes to the sinister and the occult. 

A brief investigation of the fictional board game by scholar Julie Kearns is mentioned in a post on the Somerton Tumblr (dedicated to Kubrick), as well as on her website, Idyllopus Press. Kearns speculates that the board game is a sign of misdirection in the plot, as magic itself is about misdirection (and, I would add, deception). Is Bill finally facing reality with his eyes open? 

The intractable ambiguities of Eyes Wide Shut (EWS) prevent us from making any one conclusion: I think EWS is the most difficult of Kubrick's films to categorize or even to analyze. Countless scenes, and details within scenes, can be read multiple ways - change one fact and you have to change all the others, lest you accept a paradoxical conclusion. Which, again, I think is the point - the relativity of any one conclusion. 

Regardless, I will offer some marginalia on the inclusion of the "Magic Circle" board game and any significance it may offer to the film Eyes Wide Shut. For example, beginning with the observation that the Magic Circle is in fact a real magic club founded in London in 1905, Kearns mentions a certain Martin Chapender, a magician whose expertise involved billiard balls. Chapender died of meningitis at 25 (or 26). When Bill visits Ziegler in the billiards room, Ziegler pours a few glasses of scotch, and remarks that it's a twenty-five year old (scotch). He tells Bill he'll send him over a case. Bill has just come from the morgue. Mandy, the dead woman whose identity he wants to confirm, was thirty years old. A "twenty-five year old" in a "case" sounds eerily like the thirty-year old on the slab.

Is Eyes Wide Shut a meditation on the morbid? Of course. But only as much as it is a meditation on fantasy and dreams. One interesting thing to consider: when people call Eyes Wide Shut a "vampire movie" it isn't an un-warranted criticism. Consider matching the fantastical with the morbid - what would we arrive at if not the notion of vampires? Folklore from Eastern Europe describes the vampire as an un-dead being who drinks blood. The vampire may attack living people, or, feast on recently deceased people or animals. We see Bill’s face come disturbingly close to the dead, naked body of Mandy in the morgue. A key detail: her eyes are open. Only in death do we see clearly? Perhaps. The scene is a somewhat overt hint at vampirism, followed by the orgy, which was more than a little sinister.  

Additionally, the older man, Sandor Szavost, who dances with Alice at Ziegler's ball is Hungarian. Milich, the owner of the Rainbow costume store, has an accent that could generally be called Eastern European. The name "Milich" is common among Slavs in the Balkans. Traumnovelle is a product of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and takes place in Vienna. Not far to the east lies Romania, where Vlad the Impaler hailed from. Dracula is largely based on Vlad, whose cruel military defense tactics in Medieval times immortalized and mythologized him as the embodiment of a real vampire. Dracula, the 1897 Gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker, is the "ur-text" for modern Dracula/vampire fantasy and horror. In fact, Dracula's Death, a 1921 Hungarian silent horror film, is thought to be the first film featuring a Count Dracula character. It opened in Vienna. In Eyes Wide Shut, composer Jocelyn Pook's "Masked Ball" piece relies in part upon Orthodox Chants sung in Romanian; the chilling "magic" of Pook's work is the careful reversing of the recording, a gesture which in no subtle way invokes the idea of unholy incantations. 

As to whether Eyes Wide Shut is more pessimistic or more optimistic, we, like Bill, are presented with two conflicting ideas: that Mandy simply overdosed, or, that something like a sacrifice is what actually took place. Ziegler pushes the former explanation; the entire orgy, he would have Bill believe, was staged, a sort of theatrical show. Does the vampire theme hold up, then? Yes and no: again, Bill visits the morgue. Perhaps he is grappling with the secret organization's extreme objectification of women and life in general; how could they be so careless? 

The death of Martin Chapender marked the beginning of the Magic Circle; in fact, the name was chosen partly to commemorate Chapender via the initials, "MC." Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (Dream Story), which was published in 1926, came twenty-one years after 1905. Numbers like 21, 25, 26, and 30, all point to youth. Bill is modeled after the character Fridolin, who we're told is 35 - arguably a transitional age that is too old to be young, and too young to be considered old - another example of ambiguity. 

There is a Blue Plaque for the Magic Circle located at Pinoli's restaurant in Soho, London, where the group was supposedly founded in 1905. Pinoli's was an Italian restaurant located at 17 Wardour Street, London, until it closed in 1949. “Pinoli” is the Italian word for “pine nut,” a small nut which is harvested from the cones of certain species of pine trees for a myriad uses in Italian cooking. Note the Verona Restaurant and Caffe de Emilio Bill passes which both point to Italy. Also, the presence of pine trees at Somerton.

https://somerton.tumblr.com/post/74307146040/magick-red-circle

http://www.idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/