Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a
Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
Writer and critic David Hering joins us from Liverpool to discuss the final film from the ingenious Stanley Kubrick,
Eyes Wide Shut. Originally conceived in the 1970s as a follow-up to Kubrick's landmark
2001: A Space Odyssey as a more straightforward sex comedy, the film adapts and updates Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella
Traumnovelle (Dream Story) into a visually stunning, phantasmagorical, and startlingly prescient dark night of the soul featuring one of Hollywood's then most famous couples that explores the psychosexual anxieties of masculinity and patriarchal power dynamics - upheld by loci of elite influence - that oppress, sublimate, and throttle our desires.
We begin by examining the metatextual maelstrom surrounding the film, and how a series of distinct discourses (Kubrick's first film in over a decade, his sudden death shortly after the film's completion, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's tabloid-ready romance) united to produce a landmark film event that was met by a befuddled critical and commercial audience alike. Then, we discuss the film's milieu, its controlled artificiality, and Kubrick's masterful use of repetition to create a uniquely dreamlike essence that beguiles even as it suggests a disquieting world of influence operating just outside of our periphery. Finally, we unpack the film's mysteries and unresolved tensions; how the film's conclusion (and iconic final line) suggest a subtle defiance toward the systems of control that minimize and abstract our libidinal, desirous agency.
.
.
.
.