The film is adapted from the 1926 novel "Dream" by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. It was the last film written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick, and it was also the film he had not seen release during his lifetime. Compared with other Kubrick films, the distinctive feature of this film is the creation of narrative "things".
It uses sex and drugs as the two basic narrative categories in a three-day time frame, and shows the relationship between husband and wife in a middle-class family through the clues of two "sexual experiences": doctor Bill and his wife Alice. The process of stagnation, restlessness, alienation and return reveals the ecology and mentality of certain levels in the real society.
Bill and Alice have been married for nine years, and there are factors of consolidation in their emotional life unknowingly. The beginning of the film will show up. Two days before Christmas, I was invited by her employer to attend a party party. Alice, who was idle at home, put on a large-neckline see-through dress before she left, showing her slim and beautiful figure. She couldn't help asking her husband "how do I look", and the husband said " Perfect", but his wife said, "You didn't look at me at all." This brief conversation shows that there are gaps and gaps between the husband and wife, at least a misunderstanding. At the ball, the two were tempted by the opposite sex. Alice finally resisted the Hungarian rich man's teasing by saying that he was "married". Bill also turned down the two female models because he "loved his beautiful wife" and asked him to go to "The End of the Rainbow". "The enchantment.
However, out of the proposition that "everyone knows the virtues of men", Alice questioned her husband's loyalty, and used the excitement and paralysis of smoking marijuana to show that she had fallen in love with a naval officer at first sight, and she was born into a one-night stand and did not hesitate to abandon everything. idea. His wife's confession almost destroyed Bill's self-confidence. In a mentality of resentment, jealousy, and revenge, he could at first resist the kisses offered by the deceased's daughter, but he was still shaken by the prostitutes who met by the water. Although his wife’s phone call stopped the prostitution seeking pleasure, but after hearing Nick’s statement, he finally took the risk for the mysterious masked party and its many beauties. After experiencing the storm of fornication in the mansion and the thrill of being rescued, returning home in the early morning was still in shock. He also heard a "strange dream" of his wife, dreaming of kissing and making love with the navy officer in a deserted capital, and having sex with the crowd. After all, the dream is a subconscious reaction. In the dream, Alice blamed her husband Bill for everything. When Bill ran away, she "feeled great", knowing that her husband saw him in the arms of others and deliberately embarrassed him. , Laughed at him, laughing very loudly.
This reflects the emotional crisis between their husband and wife from another level. Faced with this kind of crisis, especially the sexual experience in his wife’s dream, he continued to have images of his wife having sex with a naval officer in his mind that day, and the dream words his wife told him in the early morning sounded in his ears, so he went out to the clinic at night. First, he dialed the phone to the daughter of the deceased, then took a taxi to meet the prostitute, and continued his journey of seeking alternative excitement, thereby extending their emotional crisis.
Regarding the individual sexual experiences of the Bills and his wife after being tempted by different parties at the party, the film unfolds with the help of virtual and real channels. "Hearing and hearing are fictitious, seeing is believing." Alice's "derailment" is mainly reflected in the field of language and consciousness. Her unrequited love for naval officers was revealed through her "confession" when she was excited by taking stimulants and her "straightforward" dreams after being shaken awake. Bill seeks new sexual excitement, and then displays it as a "visual experience".
Kubrick’s films often express his unique perceptions and ideas with unique perspectives, unique techniques, and unique images. If the wife's "consciousness" derailment is as weird as "dream reality", then the husband's "seeking" derailment experience is like a weird "realistic dream", full of doubts and suspense. For example, according to the address and secret words provided by Nick, after concealing his true identity, in the mysterious mansion, Bill really stepped into the "end of the rainbow" and experienced an AV film disguised in various masks and with religious rituals, which is better than sexual chaos. world. A naked beauty warned him that "the situation is very dangerous, hurry away", and died to save her life, and finally Bill saw the naked body of the beauty queen in the morgue. He managed to get Nick's hotel address, but the concierge mysteriously informed that someone had gone to the building, as if being threatened to leave. Early in the morning, he went to the Rainbow Clothes Shop to return the rental supplies, but his mask was missing.
He went to see the prostitute that night and was told that the woman had left after getting the HIV-positive blood test report. In the afternoon, he drove back to the mysterious villa in the suburbs and received a threatening letter. Someone followed him at night. Although the employer made an urgent appointment and told them that everything was deliberately arranged, everything was like acting, and the purpose was to intimidate and seal, but the truth still seemed to be true and not true, confusing, giving people a feeling of dreams but not dreams, treacherous and treacherous. It forms the distinctive feature of the film's narrative "things", and at the same time deepens the film's theme about "a person can't know the truth of life throughout his life". This may be another meaning of the so-called "close your eyes".
Through the presentation of images, sound images, and events, the audience followed the Bills and his wife to open their “closed” eyes. What they saw and heard, in addition to the cracks and crises that arose after the middle-aged married life became dull and boring, but also There is an ugly reality of drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, hypocrisy, and deception in American society. As far as the upper class is concerned, the wealthy employer Ziegler took advantage of the family prom to have an affair with the female model. The Hungarian rich man who looked like a gentleman did everything possible to tease and seduce Alice to bed. The name "will scare you into sleep."
In the middle class, Marianne, who is about to marry college teacher Carl, suddenly embraced Bill and confided that she "does not want to go with Carl" beside her father's body; Alice has a crush on a naval officer and has been hiding her husband for a year and a half. For a long time; Bill rescued Ziegler’s little lover who was injecting drug overdose and warned her that she should go for drug treatment, but he smoked marijuana with his wife that night; Nick, who was hired by the rich, not only leaked the sexual privacy of the rich, but also grew old. Classmates go astray. At the bottom of society, women who stand on the street are infected with HIV, female models are also engaged in skincare and drug use. The immigrant Mickey who opened a clothes shop not only pimps for underage daughters, but also designs to blackmail two Asian clients. All of these have revealed the devastation in American society and life from different angles and sides.
Of course, the focus of the film is still to show that despite all the temptations and the danger of emotional crisis, the Bills finally returned based on sincere love through communication and understanding, especially the dominant aspects of beauty and warmth in human nature. It gives people useful lessons, just as Alice said when she bought gifts for her daughter on Christmas Day at the end of the film: "We should be thankful that we have survived our adventures, whether they are real or just dreams." "The important thing is that we are all Woke up, and I hope we can always stay awake." As a result, the narrative and theme of the film show an ethical color.
The film recognizes and affirms the power of sincere love and the warmth of beautiful human nature. Regarding the plot construction shown by the video and the "sound image", facing the show off and seduction of the rich man, Alice, who is no longer a gallery manager, not only refused but also flatly stated that she would not see each other again because she was "married." Bill escaped the sexual temptation of the two female models, refused Marianne’s embrace, and immediately stopped seeking pleasure and prostitution after his wife’s call. Hurt her". After the temptation and hardship of their marriage and love, they were able to return on Christmas Day, and they still love each other from their true hearts. The creators tried their best to touch the beautiful aspects of human nature. For example, Bill once handed out his handkerchief when others were lost in the sand. He still left the agreed fee for suspending prostitutes and gave Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. In distress, he wears a feather crown on his head. The tall woman in the mask stepped forward and was willing to make atonement for him. Ziegler, wearing a horn mask, kept secretly protecting her. These are the brilliance of human nature that transcends gender, age, and class.
Compatible with the expression of narrative discourse, the image structure of the film precisely uses a perspective that combines subjective and objective perspectives. At the beginning of the film, Alice takes off her original dress at a frontal angle. This shot is not so much an objective shot for the audience, but a subjective shot of her husband Bill. It not only shows the shadow of Alice, but also pave the way for Bill to say that he loves his beautiful wife. At the party ball, the distant scene of Bill and the two female models gathered from Alice’s point of view became the cause of her vague indifference and helplessness that night, and her anger the next night. Using the stimulus of smoking marijuana, she forced her husband to question her husband. She didn't believe that Bill was telling the truth. She laughed and bends down until she confided her secret love for the navy officer, all from the subjective point of view of her husband. The husband’s initial tolerance, then surprise, and finally stunned are objective shots, not only highlighting the important position of his beloved wife in Bill’s inner space, but also clearly reproducing him from love and restraint to self-confidence collapse and revenge. The process of psychological changes in mentality.
He took a taxi overnight to the suburban villa, using subjective shots to show what Bill saw and feeling as he approached the door of the villa, and objective shots showing that an interior sedan drove him to the door of the mansion, highlighting its mystery and magnificence. As soon as he puts on the bronzing mask and enters the lobby of the mansion, the film mainly uses the camera to follow Bill, and uses his subjective point of view to show the fornication of various halls under the mask. When he reveals his “eye-opening”, it is like “unseen” as Nick said. . In the meantime, two echoing subjective shots were used to show that the spectator with the horn mask on the stage and Bill nodded to each other, which not only strengthened the sense of mystery and created suspense, but also laid the wiring for Ziegler to admit that he was also "present." When Bill's whereabouts were discovered and questioned, the film used a large rotating objective lens and a circular composition to repeatedly show the crowd wearing numerous masks and layers surrounding Bill, showing a sense of pressure and a sinister situation. When the figure at the center of the circle, who looks like the cardinal leader, held a scepter and screamed at Bill, "Take my clothes off", with the scream of "Stop!", the camera suddenly pushed towards the woman with the crested mask on the terrace. Corresponding to the close-up of Bill's facial expression, it becomes Bill's subjective lens content. This shot scheduling, point of view, and editing form strongly strengthened the awe-inspiring momentum of the woman to stand up for help, as well as the shock of Bill and the audience.
Compared with the audience’s objective and external perspective, the subjective perspective and subjective perspective of the characters in the play can also be divided into not only the subjective external perspective and external perspective of what they see and hear, but also the subjective internal thoughts and memories of their inner world. Angle of view, inner point of view and corresponding sound and picture structure. On the screen, the image of wife and naval officer having sex with each other is shown in five subjective phantom shots of Bill. The first was when he took a taxi to Nelson's house. Bill had the illusion of his wife loving and caressing on the navy officer's bed; the second was when he left Marianne and saw a couple making each other on the street, it immediately appeared before his eyes. When Alice undressed for a navy officer, she couldn't help but slap a high-five; the third was in a taxi driving to the mysterious manor villa in the suburbs, and he was still imagining Alice having sex with a naval officer; the fourth was He was sitting at the desk in the clinic during the day, and the picture of his wife having sex with a naval officer came to his mind; the fifth was that that night, he lied that the clinic had something to do and left home, and he once again saw the scene of his wife having sex with others. These five subjective lenses are what Bill thinks, and they are the inner vision of the subjective inner perspective.
There are two flashbacks of sound in the film. One was that he was taking care of the clinic and told Alice that he would go out after dinner. When he went to the refrigerator to take out a can of drinks, his ears rang out again in the early morning when his wife told him "Fuck with other men, there are too many men," I don't know how many "dreaming words" there are, and I can't help but smile awkwardly at my wife. The second is that he went to the morgue, carefully examined the body of the savior, and recalled what she said: "Because I may be dead, and you will be dead."
These internal perspectives, auditory internal vision, and internal sound images, as the conscious process of the characters, are interspersed in a sequential narrative structure, which not only visualizes and visualizes Alice’s “consciousness derailment”, but also makes Bill’s The mentality of revenge and the sense of gratitude and sorrow have been externalized, thus highlighting his "seeking derailment" and his motivation for repentance afterwards. At the same time, he breaks through the constraints of the traditional narrative pattern, showing the fusion of traditionalism and modernism. The characteristics and its vitality, thus also drawn a perfect end to Stanley Kubrick's film career.
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