Explore the Hidden Occult Symbolism Behind ‘Eyes Wide Shut’

Kubrick is renowned for his adaptations, often improving on the originals. Eyes Wide Shut is one of the director’s greatest and most underrated films. Eyes Wide Shut, more than any other movie, gave rise to my interest in cinema as a compelling storytelling medium. I’ve been haunted by the film since I first saw it, and have studied it in an attempt to understand it. So, this article is my contribution to the ongoing Stanley Kubrick film analyses swirling around out there. While written purely from my interest and not for profit, I’ve excluded many ideas to expand it into a book that would be for sale, so stay tuned.

Kubrick’s autumnal work, a tale of jealousy and sexual obsession, Eyes Wide Shut follows the erotically charged misadventures of Dr. Bill Harford (fun fact: ‘Harford’ is a condensation of ‘Harrison Ford’, due to Kubrick stating Harford should ‘be like’ Ford, the whitest bread guy Kubrick could think of), who is shocked when wife Alice reveals she contemplated having a one night stand with a naval officer a year earlier. A yuppie who likes to smoke a little pot before bed, Harford embarks on a night-long endeavor, during which he infiltrates an unnamed secret society’s masked orgy. The film is full of puzzles, riddles, and games, symbols helping to reveal the truths of the unconscious mind, and this large symbolic dimension helping foster emotional involvement.

All events start with Bill’s realization of his wife because his wife, Alice, admits that she has considered cheating on him. Then, he encounters strange cases after he confuses his mind with the dream of his wife with another man. I am planning to begin with that scene in which her wife admits the truth because before that scene, there is a party in Ziegler’s house and there are some clues in that party which consider the last part of the movie. So, Kubrick creates a transmission between the first and the last part of the film with clues, metaphors, and symbolic hidden messages.

At that party, we see that Bill and Alice belong to the upper class and have contact with the high society of New York. In the second part, Kubrick shows us the dark side of society from Bill’s perspective. He encounters a large gathering of masked individuals partaking in an occult ritual in a luxurious house with the advice of Nick Nightingale. Nick Nightingale is Bill’s old friend, it just so happens that they encounter each other at Ziegler’s party.

A nightingale is the type of bird that is known for singing at night, just like Nick Nightingale ‘sings’ secret information at the start of Bill’s fateful night.

In other words, Kubrick also hides the messages behind the names. They start to meet again and Nick tells them that he plays at secret parties that beautiful women attend. Therefore, Bill is interested in these secret parties because they want to have an experience with another woman after his wife’s confession. When he goes to one of these secret parties, he finds a new secret society that does dark rituals. Even though he does not know what they are doing, he is interested in society because he has not seen it before.

With that dark society, Kubrick may demonstrate the secret rituals of the Illuminati and he also shows us that the people who work for the Illuminati are usually in high society because, in the movie, these people have also fame, wealth, or reputation. He also gives a place to a woman, Mandy Amanda, who is killed by that secret society but her death seems like an overdose in a hotel. How this ritualistic murder is disguised as an overdose is highly similar to the many celebrity ritual deaths disguised as overdoses that occur in real life. When we skip the third part of the movie, we learn that Mandy Amanda is in Ziegler’s party because Ziegler is also a member of that dark society. So, Ziegler has an efficient role in the film in finding hidden messages from Kubrick.

As the message behind the name of Nick Nightingale; ‘Fidelio’, which is the password for entering the ritual, means faithfulness. Even, as Nightingale touches on ‘Fidelio’ is the name of an opera written by Beethoven about a wife who sacrifices herself to free her husband from death as a political prisoner. This password foreshadows the ritual routine of that secret society. After Bill learns the password and the place of the party, he rents a costume from a store named“Rainbow”. When we turn back to the first part of the movie, two girls hanging with Bill at the Ziegler’s party also touch on the rainbow specifically. I think, there is also a hidden message behind the word “rainbow”.

“Over the Rainbow” is a reference to the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the film The Wizard of Oz. MK Ultra was a decades-long mind control project involving the US military and the CIA. One of the branches of MK was the Monarch Project, which involved creating sex slaves for the rich by using deprivation techniques to break the slave down psychologically and inducing Dissociative Identity Disorder which was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. The slave could then be controlled by different personalities being triggered by auditory stimuli. Somewhere Over the Rainbow was the main song used to trigger the sex slave mentality, and eventually became code for the process of conditioning and triggering. It should be noted that NAMBLA also used the song as code for members that were into pre-pubescent child sex.

Kubrick stated that everything that he put in the film was true and that he had personal experience as proof. If it’s all true, that adds extra gravity to the film. Consider the 20 minutes cut from the film after Kubrick’s death showed Dr. Bill being led down to the basement where people, including young children, were being tortured and raped. Bill’s wife is then brought to the basement and led to him blindfolded where he’s threatened. Some say that the released film was his final cut, but Kubrick’s daughter admitted on the Kubrick Facebook page that the 20 minutes were cut and destroyed, but later deleted the post and turned over the running of the page.

During the ritual in the luxurious house, a couple who are wearing Venetian masks slowly turns towards Bill and stares at him creepily. I think they are Ziegler and his wife because Kubrick likes to keep things mysterious. In addition, staring right at the camera with the creepy masks are too disturbing although it is not a horror movie. In almost every movie of Kubrick, whatever kind are these, he succeeds to tense the movie viewers. So, we may say that it is his style. Moreover, the high priest in the ritual sits on a throne which features a very significant symbol: A double-headed eagle topped by a crown. When I searched for the meaning of the double-headed eagle, I learned that it is one of Freemasonry’s most ancient and prominent symbols. So, Kubrick might imply that the high priest cloaked in red is a 33rd Degree Freemason.

Lastly, the last scene of the movie takes place at a toy store which is a place full of highly symbolic items. Furthermore, after Bill learns that Domino whom he almost sleeps with has HIV, he realizes that he is followed by someone on the street so he stops and buys a newspaper because he wants to get rid of that man. On the front page of the newspaper, I realize the title which is ‘lucky to be alive. I think it represents Bill. In the last scene, Helena Harford, who is the daughter of Alice and Bill, walks by a toy called Magic Circle. So, it may demonstrate that the occult elite’s ways seep through popular culture, but are not noticed by those who have their eyes wide shut.

In a nutshell, Kubrick hides lots of messages behind his movie, Eyes Wide Shut, about secret, dark societies and relationships between women and men. While he sometimes hides those messages behind the names; such as the password and the pianist, Nick Nightingale; sometimes he gives some metaphors in his movie as a double-headed eagle. After all of these, no one should say that Kubrick just made that movie because when the film viewers notice these messages, it seems not only a movie. Just because of that, I admire Kubrick’s mind and perspective toward people.