The following is a sketch of the theme of the movie:
Essentially, "Eyes Wide Shut" is Homer's "Odyssey" re-worked to fit Freudian psychology. As a brief reminder, Freud posited that the human mind is composed of three competing components:
1. The Id, which represents the dark subconscious drives of lust for sex, power, violence an domination over others,
2. The Super Ego which is the result of expectations in our lives that drive us to conform to standards and is manifested as guilt and self criticism, and
3. The Ego, which is our little rational self that, weakly, tries to negotiate between the Id and Super Ego.
In a nutshell, Dr. Bill is a man who's Id is asleep and is completely driven by his Super Ego. He lives his life in perfect conformity with the way he thinks he should. He is a successful doctor with beautiful patients, has a beautiful wife and beautiful daughter, lives in a beautiful apartment surrounded by beautiful artwork, in a beautiful neighborhood and attends parties with beautiful people where beautiful models try to seduce him. He is happy in his existence, but he is blind to the darker elements of the human mind, thus, his eyes are "wide shut."
Dr. Bill is plastic and hollow. His smile is attractive but phony, His perspectives on the people around him are superficial and un-insightful.
As we meet his wife, she is angry. Her husband does not really see her as anything but a part of his beautiful life and she is alienated by it. She feels un-seen. She goes to the party and she feels the pull of seduction and the pangs of jealousy and she hates herself for it; and, moreover, she is angry because she is isolated from her husband because he seems blind to such human states of mind. She is a person hurting from loss of career but Dr. Bill doesn't seem to get it. They are still beautiful people living a beautiful life as they should.
In exasperation, she provokes her husband in an argument to finally try to get him to see her truly, as a complex human being dealing with dark feelings. She challenges his image of her and his limited human perspective by revealing a fantasy and, later, a dream. Her fantasy derived by an experience of a man who, with a glance, was able to see her, something Dr. Bill, seemingly, can't do.
Her provocation cracks his armor and the needles of his Id rush forth in the form of a maddening jealous sexual fantasy derived from his wife's revelations. He flees into the city where he goes through a tour of characters dominated by their Id. At first he dismisses them as off the wall until he finds himself at the ritualistic orgy of some super-rich secret society. The Super Rich follow Nietzsche's "Master Morality," i.e., they do whatever they please, which means chasing the desires of their Id, unbridled. The seemingly wildly out of place scene exemplifies an extreme display of the Id in overt human behavior, thus is useful to drive the awakening of Dr. Bill.
After witnessing the bizarre sexual ritual, he re-retraces his steps to re-visit the cast of characters he had visited the day before and sees them through open eyes, newly aware of their humanity in the darker elements of mankind. He reaches out to them, but can' make contact, which drives him home.
In his tour, Dr, Bill is exposed to all the powers of the Id: lust, power, perversion, domination and power. The experiences break the barriers erected by his Super Ego. His eyes are now open to the seamy realities of human nature. He feels the draw, the repulsion, the pain and the beauty. He discovers that the wold of the Id is sublime.
He goes home to find the mask laying on his pillow next to his wife. It is a symbol of the barrier from intimacy that his Super Ego had created. But now, the mask is gone, Dr. Bill's Id has been unleashed. He can see his wife for the first time though these eyes. He can now see her pain and anger for what it is, and see her as a whole person.
The wife is hurt but relieved to hear of his journey. Finally, the two can begin to share a balanced life. Not a superficially happy life contented by meeting superficial standards and expectations but rather living as whole people with both rational as well as dark, irrational and emotional sides.
On one level, the movie is quite dark. Can we call it personal growth when someone learns something that makes them less happy? It is like the choice of Neo in "The Matrix." Would it be better to be happily deluded or to see things as they actually are, in full color rather than just in black and white, if pain also comes along with it?
This is the dark ground covered by the film. Within this framework, that Dr, Bill has a personal awakening to the world of the Id, the progression of the film is quite clean. Every scene is useful in the progression.
I hope that this thematic structure will allow a few readers to better enjoy the film.
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Caveman (3)
6 years ago
Great post!! Amazing.
I think people themselves have to open their eyes to the things you mentioned here, before they can understand this movie.
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