Lecherous for a Mask: Desire and Impotence in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
“In dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk to you
In dreams you're mine all of the time
We're together in dreams, in dreams” - Roy Orbison
“There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might even be the most immoral desire a man can possess.” ― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
The fates dictated that Eyes Wide Shut was to be Stanley Kubrick’s final film. Depending on one’s ethical and aesthetic commitments, or lack thereof vis-à-vis the latter category, this was either auspicious or the fruits of an ill-omen. For his death was roughly coterminous with the release of what was indubitably the most notorious and pondered-over film in his catalogue.
This reputation owes, primarily, to the infamously debauched (by the standards of ‘99; not a guffaw was expressed amidst the Lighthouse’s viewership at a recent showing) masquerade sequence; undoubtedly its climax, the down-cast, dour, and somewhat understated scenes thereafter juxtapose appositely as the post-coital tristesse which naturally follows from the libidinal excess of the masked ball.
This scene is merely a later addition to a millennia-old tradition, stretching back to the Dionysian mysteries of Greece and Rome. The confluence of the erotic and the clandestine has always titillated mankind. The masquerade’s infamy has captured audiences’ idle speculation and fixation for over two decades. At its most extreme, this has manifested in terms of conspiratorial narratives, novel or tied to existing theories. Trite rhetorical techniques - What did Kubrick know? What was he trying to tell us? Did they kill him for exposing the truth? - abounded nascent youtube, capturing the attention (if only briefly) of many, including the author of this piece at the dawn of his adolescence.
Whilst the stricto sensu dismissal of conspiracy theories is fallacious and a-historical (what was 1916 if not the manifestation of a minoritarian conspiracy?), one should be guarded against the imbibement of narratives purveyed by people who suffer an inability to type absent the invocation of the ‘all-caps’ button. Such is generally the character of those who treat Eyes Wide Shut as a revelatory film.
It is my contention, after my second viewing, that the film’s most famous scene is a red-herring, distracting the audience from its essence: an exploration of impotence. The disharmony betwixt the conspiratorial intrigue and intimate facets is sufficient to substantiate my claim. For how can one reconcile Kubrick’s purported exposure of entropic elites with the sheer pervasiveness of themes pertinent to inter-sexual relations, the customary and legal confines of marriage in the modern world, the inability to actualise desire, and the transmutation of our longings in dream-scapes?
From the outset, the viewer is greeted to Dmitri Shostakovich’s ‘Waltz No. 2’, setting the tone for our sojourn in a New York infused with old world sensibilities. In her compendium of case studies regarding the role of music in Kubrick’s oeuvre, the musicologist Kate McQuiston states:
"The waltz often carries a sense of foregone conclusion (typically an ill-fated one, for Ophüls). The steps of the waltz are, after all, rigidly prescribed and predictable in their repetition.”
The polarity between the rigidity of norms, customs, and appearances, on the one hand, and the anarchic quality of our chthonic desires, on the other, is a cardinal motif adumbrated by Kubrick’s employment of ‘Waltz No. 2’.
Following the opening, the viewer accompanies the married (in the film and, at that time, in real life) protagonists, played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (for the purposes of this essay, I’ll refer to them by their real names), as they waltz and mingle at a debutante ball - hosted by Ziegler, a patient of Cruise’s.
It is at this point that Kubrick introduces the twin-motifs of desire and fantasy. Nicole Kidman’s character is subject to the breeding and charm of a Magyar boyar on the dance floor, narrowly resisting his exotic, elden world flirtations. Meanwhile, the ever-diminutive Cruise is flanked by two English courtesans of superior height; their accents bespeak of an education courtesy of Wycombe Abbey and, later, matriculation at Cambridge.
Cinematographically speaking, the scene is not distinguished by markers of a dream sequence, yet one cannot help but feel privy to desires, feelings, and longings which ought to be hidden - enmeshed and enclosed in the cloistered sanctuary of a lucid dream, far removed from the lacerating and punishing tendrils of fidelity. The exposure of our protagonists’ lecherous hankerings juxtaposes sharply with the formality of the ball; a microcosm of the tension between a rules laden civilisation and the yearnings which, if they are to be actualised, necessitate bypassing ossified precepts.
Early in the film, Nicole Kidman’s character confesses that she fantasises about a Naval officer who she once voyeuristically admired from afar, inducing visions of being cuckolded in the mind’s eye of Cruise. She later awakes from a dream, proceeding to vaunt of visions along similar lines. There is a venom, a bona fide sadism, in her voice, indicating that her words are intended as retribution toward a husband who has failed in his spousal capacity.
Contrastingly, Cruise’s quasi-infidelity is active and imminent, rather than being the passive provenance of dreams and fantasies - perhaps a commentary on the nature of the sexes? I won’t enumerate every instance, but, like with Kidman’s character, the actus reus of his indiscretion never manifests; only with respect to momentary intent is he ever actually culpable.
Whilst the film features plenty which would have been redacted by the Hays code, neither Kidman nor Cruise ever consummate their longings. At most, we witness the beginnings of flagrante, but a close up of Kidman’s stultified countenance makes it probable that it was an early night.
The infamous masquerade scene must be contextualised in light of a marriage reduced to impotence. Whether designed to ensure mutual blackmail and thus group coherency, or whether orchestrated by Baal himself for purposes of metaphysical scope, for Cruise the masked ball, wherein only the mask effaces and desire playfully intersperses absent customary and normative encumbrance, offers the obverse of his everyday condition. Ironically, his face, composed of cartilage, flesh, and bone, takes on a mask-like, counterfeit quality, symbolising the biopolitical submission of flesh and its imperatives: the sins of flesh.
Yet, in some respects the masked ball retains qualities analogous to the dreams of Kidman and Cruise’s descent into dusky decadence. Its standard bearers guard its existence with a zealous seriousness, bordering on criminality toward the covetous designs of Cruise. Repression endures despite its embrace of sexual passion, which it mediates via rarified rites in lieu of socially accepted institutions. Salvation from the maladies which plague Cruise’s life is not to be found there.
In an open ended film that leaves its audience with more questions than answers, the reconciliation of Kidman and Cruise’s relationship is the sole assurance. Both characters endure an odyssey of dissociation from their marital dues, opting instead for flights into dreamscapes of infidelity, occultic orgies, and the bleakness of the brothel. Yet they are left unsatisfied. To move forward the spell of impotence, and the maladies that flow therefrom, must be broken. Such is the meaning of the final dialogue of the film:
“Alice Harford [Nicole Kidman]: Let's not use that word, you know? It frightens me. But I do love you. And, you know, there's something very important that we need to do as soon as possible.
Dr. Bill Harford [Tom Cruise]: What's that?
Alice Harford: Fuck.”