Why 'Eyes Wide Shut' Truly Is A Great Christmas Movie

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Preface: 'Eyes Wide Shut' is one of my favorite movies of all time. I was finally able to see it in theaters for the first time the other night. For as long as people have been making the joke about 'Die Hard' being a Christmas movie, I've been joking about how 'Eyes Wide Shut' is the better one.

I first saw it when I was about 22 and it shaped my perspective on how the forces truly driving society hide behind a facade and how government and other institutions are illusory constructs meant to conceal the truth about what lies beneath them. I could go on for hours about it but this piece doesn't serve as an analysis about the whole scope of the film, otherwise it would be a few dozen pages longer. For analysis of the film as a whole I recommend reading the work of BoyDrinksInk, who offers a truly great examination of it.

Commenter KyttenX also recommended I read this analysis by Vigilant Citizen which gets into a lot of the occult symbolism in the imagery of the movie and social commentary on its themes. KyttenX has been on ZeroHedge since 2015, so I'm not surprised they had a great perspective to contribute.

Merry Christmas to all.

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While whether to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" is one of the most contentious questions that puts people at odds during the holiday season, another trope that emerges around this time of the year offers a much more lighthearted thought exercise. As debate about whether or not John McTiernan's iconic 1988 action movie Die Hard qualifies as a Christmas movie makes the rounds across the discourse of the popular zeitgeist, the premise of the meme beckons the question as to whether a film simply set during Christmas gives it that distinction. Cinephiles who ascribe to the belief that Die Hard is a Christmas movie open a Pandora's box of sorts that extends the discussion to other unassuming films. One such film that rightfully earns the title of a Christmas movie is the final work in the filmography of the virtuoso director Stanley Kubrick: his 1999 erotic mystery Eyes Wide Shut.

Eyes Wide Shut became iconic for a number of reasons following its release. From being a Hollywood blockbuster released at a time where its lead actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were married and at the height of their powers to the enigmatic message and lurid imagery omnipresent from the opening shot of the film, Eyes Wide Shut captivated audiences and left a legacy all of Kubrick's films have. 25 years after its July 13th, 1999 premiere, the enigma surrounding the film has made it one of Kubrick's most carefully examined and often misunderstood masterpieces. The predominant thought surrounding the movie is regarding the message Kubrick intended to make regarding the occult undertones driving the elite in society. That dimension of the film has led to Eyes Wide Shut adding ample mystery to the unexpected death of its director before the film was released, prompting questions about if the final work product was his intended vision.

For the purposes of this piece, the conspiratorial, esoteric, and occult themes of the movie aren't what is being examined. Instead, this analysis intends to shed light on the themes, motifs, imagery, and other reasons why Eyes Wide Shut actually is a Christmas movie in every sense of the term.

Kubrick based Eyes Wide Shut on the 1926 novella Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, better known as Dream Story or Traumnovelle in its native German, by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. The original work is set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th Century and unlike Kubrick's adaptation, sets the story around Mardis Gras. While those facets of Traumnovelle were kept intact by director Wolfgang Glück in his 1969 made-for-television film adaptation, Kubrick transposes the story onto the Christmas season in New York City for his modernized interpretation. Regardless of the changes to the story, Glück and Kubrick's film adaptations and Schnitzler's novella itself are framed around a central dichotomy that drives their plot and aptly describes the degeneration of Christmas in modern times: the sacred and the profane.

French sociologist and political theorist Émile Durkheim put forward the dichotomy of sacred and profane as a central characteristic of religion. Durkheim wrote "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden" when he consecrated his application of the term in 1912. That tenet of Durkheim's is undoubtedly prominent throughout Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick best showcases this from the onset of the film when the protagonist Dr. Bill Harford and his wife Alice are first introduced to audiences as they prepare for a lavish Christmas gala hosted by Harford's friend and associate Victor Ziegler. The party's baroque decor represents an adulteration of Christmas itself, as the holiness of the sacred day is replaced by the avarice represented by the hyper-materialism shamelessly put on display by Ziegler's wealth and social standing.

During their first dance upon arriving at the party, Alice asks Bill why Ziegler bothers to invite them to these events, ultimately asking her husband whether or not he even knows anyone at the party. Kubrick's use of the line "Not a soul" that Dr. Harford replies to Alice with is a quintessential example of the director's use of subtlety to make a profound message. The intentional use of those words conveys the soullessness of the party. It perversely corrupts the very spirit of Christmas, made evident when the night quickly spirals into a sordid affair that serves as the film's inciting incident on way to a plot that bewilders the imagination of audiences to this day.

Another of Durkeim's tenets on the sacred and profrane emerges from the lust and temptation injected into the plot during the party before Dr. Harford and Alice leave and return home to their daughter Helena. Durukeim characterized rites of passage as a representation of the nature of the dichotomy in which the sacred and profane transition back and forth between each state as it they rested on a pendulum. Durkheim's examination of rites of passage to make this point about the sacred and profane is clearly understood by Kubrick as he uses the iconic scenes in Eyes Wide Shut set during an occult sex ritual which is a rite of passage itself to do demonstrate that understanding. Harford stumbles into the ritual after his night takes an unexpected journey following and argument with his wife upon their return from Ziegler's party over her fantasies of infidelity, juxtaposing the vow of marriage transitioning from something sacred to something profane such as the envy that erodes Dr. Harford's trust in his wife. The revelation of Alice's fantasy about cheating on him itself is brought about by the profane aura of Ziegler's party that seemingly infects the two of them as if it were a disease.

While the occult sex party that Dr. Harford arrives at is viewed at surface-level as a nod to the secret societies of the elite that truly drive history, the mass orgy is a powerful vehicle for a theme central to the birth of Christ commemorated on Christmas Day: redemption from sin through sacrifice. Once Dr. Harford is exposed for being an uninvited guest who has infiltrated the secret society by virtue of happenstance, his head is put to the sword as the revelation of his infiltration becomes the catalyst for his ultimate demise. That is the case until one of the women offered to guests by the cult as a sex object emerges during the confrontation between Dr. Harford and the cult, uttering a bellowing cry that she will "redeem him." Her offer sends a shock through the masked onlookers, with the red-cloaked leader of the cult questioning her commitment in utter disbelief "You will redeem him?" he asks, making the dire consequence of her offer obvious. She agrees to her redeem Harford and is led off screen by one of the cult's menacing masked guards, allowing the protagonist to escape with his life.

While Dr. Harford was able to escape with his life, the masked woman was not. This becomes clear in the third act of the film set during the day after the occult ritual. As Dr. Harford retraces his steps from the previous evening trying to make sense of what happened, he stumbles across an article in the New York Post written by crime-beat reporter Larry Celona reporting on the death of a model who Dr. Harford saved from overdosing during Ziegler's party at the beginning of the film. Harford pieces together that the model was the masked woman at the ritual and that she offered her life to save his because he saved her at Ziegler's party, unbeknownst to him. Her sacrifice redeems Harford of his sins of pride, lust, and wrath that led him down the path that ultimately brought him to the occult sex ritual being performed as a rite of passage by the cult, symbolizing Christ's sacrifice of his own life to redeem mankind for its sins.

(A quick aside. I know that I said I wouldn't focus on the conspiratorial dimensions of Eyes Wide Shut but since the "free speech platform" that is X won't let me embed my post on this like many other posts people make that are controversial but Larry Celona is also the reporter for broke Jeffrey Epstein's "death" in 2019. Epstein of course was closely associated with Prince Andrew, who was the Duke Of York. By virtue of holding the title, the Duke Of York is also the Commander Of The Royal Lancers, meaning that as its commander, Prince Andrew was a Royal Lancer. The name Larry Celona is an anagram for Royal Lancer....but I digress....)

At the conclusion of the film, Dr. Harford is intimidated by the secret society to keep him from asking any more questions about what happened the previous evening. The final message that finally convinces him to cease his inquiries about what happened is made when the mask he wore at the party that he was asked to remove to expose his identity to the anonymous onlookers which he believed to have lost is left on his empty pillow next to his sleeping wife. The secret society's infiltration into the most intimate depths of his life forces Dr. Harford to confess everything that transpired to Alice.

In the final scene, after Dr. Harford reveals everything to Alice, the two take their daughter Helena Christmas shopping. Helena's innocent exuberance shines in stark juxtaposition to her visibly shaken parents. As the gravity of what unfolded after their argument makes reconciliation of the trivial nature of what led them to fight to begin with a simple task, what really matters is brought into focus as Helena joyfully looks through gifts at the store they're shopping at bathed in the serene white ambiance of traditional Christmas lights representing not just her purity but serving as a symbol of the purity of the shining light that guided the Three Magi to Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Alice's penultimate message to her husband is "I think we should both be grateful that we have come unharmed out of all our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream." Her line marks the first time the word "grateful" is said throughout the whole film. That message amidst the backdrop of expensive gifts being perused about by vapid shoppers ostensibly lost in the material corruption of Christmas offers a powerful message about what the holiday is truly about: gratitude for all we are only able to have because of the sacrifice and redemption of our sins by Jesus Christ.

Its poignant conclusion demonstrates why Eyes Wide Shut is a Christmas movie in every sense of the term.