Eyes Wide Shut Is A Christmas Carol
General Reviews
Ah, Christmas, the time of snowy weather, joy, gifts, spending time with loved ones… and sex cults?
Now listen, I’ve been to the occasional crazy Christmas party, but Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut takes it to another level. Starring ’90s Tom Cruise and the Queen Goddess Nicole Kidman, the film follows a Manhattan doctor who embarks on a strange night of events after his wife admits to unfulfilled longing for another man.
So gather round the fire, children, as I tell you the tale.
Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) is thrown into an early onset midlife crisis after his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), admits to having sexual feelings for another man. This sends Bill spiralling. All in one Christmas night, he nearly has sex with a prostitute named Domino but can’t bring himself to go through with it. Soon after, he wanders into a smoky jazz bar and runs into Nick. Nick tells Bill about a secretive 2 a.m. gig, where he’ll be playing the piano blindfolded. He reveals the password needed to gain entry. Bill follows the clue to a secluded mansion, dons a mask, and stumbles into an eerie, ritualistic orgy attended by a powerful and anonymous elite. When Bill is discovered as an outsider, he’s threatened into silence or else…
After his night long odyssey, Bill returns home a changed man and apologizes to his wife. However, the mask remains, a reminder that the night did indeed happen.
Okay, stay with me here. Bill is essentially Scrooge: wealthy, insulated by privilege, and spiritually hollow despite having everything he’s supposed to want. On this surreal, Christmas night, he’s confronted not by benevolent guides, but by three darker “ghosts” that expose different facets of his dissatisfaction. Domino embodies temptation and fantasy, the promise that stepping outside his ordered life might finally make him feel alive. Nick functions as the call to the void, articulating the nihilistic freedom of abandoning meaning altogether. And presiding over it all is Death, the masked master of ceremonies, who doesn’t seduce or provoke so much as calmly remind Bill of the inevitable consequences of his every choice. 
Despite repeated warnings and clear alarm bells that would send anyone running home, Bill refuses to turn back. He keeps seeing where the night takes him, what his curiosity brings. He is so consumed by jealousy and ego after learning of his wife’s desire for another man that he presses forward, convinced he’s owed something more. Whatever that something or someone maybe.
In the end he gets his wish.
Like Scrooge before his awakening, Bill must be confronted with the cost of his entitlement before he can return home changed. But this Scrooge doesn’t get off so easily. What makes this film so jarring is that Bill cannot escape Death’s clutches so cleanly. He can’t simply buy poor Tiny Tim a turkey and make everything better.
Death in this tale lingers. Almost to say You have seen what you have seen, and you know what you know now and that cannot be changed.
“Are you sure of that?”
“Am I sure? Only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth.”
“ -And no dream is ever just a dream.”
Eyes Wide Shut feels like an old Christmas tale, a story that warns us and hints at the true meaning of the season. If we open our eyes, what we’ve been seeking may have been right in front of us all along.
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