Episode Details

You know, nobody understands Eyes Wide Shut. Nobody.

Every time it gets mentioned people look at you like they’re remembering the trauma of their one attempt to read Das Kapital.

Watch the full video essay

Because Eyes Wide Shut is one of those films that, despite…or even because…of  being very obviously about *something*, has become a kind of cultural Rorschach test for people who don’t want to see uncomfortable truths.

So Eye Wide Shut has generated a proliferation of bullsh*t interpretations.

“Ah, yes, Tom Cruise represents the Jungian Animus confronting the Shadow Anima.”

“Actually, Nicole Kidman is the Feminine Other confronting the social patriarchy.”

Or whatever conspiracy theories Reddit users dream-up from the comfort of their gamer chairs.

And of course now… now… we have the Epstein theory.

Re-ignited recently by Roger Avary, of Pulp Fiction fame, claiming he half remembers overhearing a conversation somewhere once about a rumour that the studio re-cut Eyes Wide Shut.

And KILLED Kubrick when he protested.

Which must be true if it’s on Joe Rogan.

The idea is that the reclusive Kubrick, who by the 1990s was hiding in an English mansion like a sort of anxious, bearded tortoise, somehow knew who the feck Jeffrey Epstein was. 

Yes. Old Stan was apparently spending his days inventing new camera lenses and his nights going, “I must warn humanity about that finance bloke who sources blow jobs for Bill Clinton.”

But like all good conspiracy theories, this one is formed around a gritty bit of truth.

Kubrick’s movies are symbolic. They are coded. But they’re also brutally direct statements we refuse to acknowledge, because they make us feel like the stupid, complicit mammals we are.

2001?

Ooooh, is the monolith aliens or God or the collective unconscious? Is it about a giant smartphone sucking us in to the next dimension? No, although that is a fun theory. Kubrick’s Space Odyssey is much, much more direct.

“You dumb apes and your stupid rockets aren’t going anywhere until you EVOLVE.”

Clockwork Orange?

Is it the bleak, violent dystopian future we’re heading towards? No, it’s just Tuesday in Britain. And the uncomfortable truth that society breeds droogs like Alex because it needs violent, expendable young men.

The Shining?

The ultimate house on the hill and haunted hotel movie, that author Stephen King has always hated because Kubrick didn’t make a horror movie. He made a real movie that shouts its message in your face with a hereeee’s JOHHNNY. The biggest danger to women and children isn’t poltergeists…it’s men.

Full Metal Jacket?

A haunting condemnati