Eyes Wide Shut is an anti-con­sumerist hol­i­day classic

One chilly winter’s night, Dr Bill Har­ford (Tom Cruise) strolls the glim­mer­ing streets of New York City with no par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tion in mind – his aim is sim­ply to stay away from his upper-class Cen­tral Park West apart­ment for as long as pos­si­ble, where his wife, Alice, and the depths of her sala­cious mind, awaits him.

Fol­low­ing a sex­u­al­ly charged argu­ment between the two of them, Bill leaves Alice late in the evening to tend to the bed­side of a deceased patient. After shar­ing an awk­ward roman­tic moment forced upon him by the dead man’s daugh­ter, Bill allows his evening to unfold before him like an aim­less dream, the path of which is adorned in tin­sel, red bows, and lit by the warm glow of Christ­mas lights.

Meant to lull you into a false sense of secu­ri­ty with its sedate atmos­phere – thanks in no small part to cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Lar­ry Smith – the rela­tion­ship between Stan­ley Kubrick’s final film and the most won­der­ful time of the year might seem, on the sur­face, entire­ly out of sync. The film appears to blur the line between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty while com­ment­ing on the veiled deprav­i­ty of soci­etal elites; on sex­u­al repres­sion; on old mon­ey ver­sus new mon­ey; on how evil rules the world, and there’s noth­ing any of us can do about it.

Bill’s Odyssean voy­age con­tin­ues at a jazz club where he catch­es up with an old col­lege bud­dy, who reveals that he plays piano at an exclu­sive, high­ly secre­tive sex club. Intrigued, Bill per­suades his friend to give him the code­word that will gain him entry into a world of mys­tery and masochism. By using Christ­mas as its back­drop, how­ev­er, Eyes Wide Shut’s nar­ra­tive runs par­al­lel to a dif­fer­ent, though sim­i­lar­ly omi­nous, cult.

There have been var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions of Kubrick’s deci­sion to set his film in New York over the hol­i­days (Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novel­la ​‘Traum­nov­el­le’, on which Eyes Wide Shut is loose­ly based, takes place in Vien­na dur­ing Mar­di Gras), from the ​‘reju­ve­nat­ing sym­bol­ism’ of Christ­mas as a reli­gious fes­ti­val, to sim­ple tech­ni­cal choic­es. Some have even read into the film’s depic­tion of Christ­mas trees and the way mate­ri­al­ism is shown as tak­ing prece­dence over the spir­i­tu­al­ism of the season.

In his essay for Reverse Shot, Michael Koresky notes that, ​“Christ­mas peeks from every cor­ner of prac­ti­cal­ly every scene, with trees both skele­tal and ver­dant bar­ing twin­kling col­ored lights; yet no one makes men­tion of Christ­mas oth­er than to remind each oth­er of the shop­ping that needs to be done.”

Indeed, the rot­ting fruits of cap­i­tal­ist con­sumerism are laid bare dur­ing the qui­et class war­fare of Christ­mas, empha­sised here by Bill’s vast wealth and strict­ly trans­ac­tion­al exis­tence (the first words he utters in the film are: ​“Hon­ey, have you seen my wal­let?”). He car­ries cash in order to cov­er any costs incurred in the spur of the moment, foots the bill of pros­ti­tute Domi­no (Vines­sa Shaw) despite hav­ing to leave before engag­ing in any sex­u­al acts with her, and rips a $100 bill clean in half to assure his cab­bie that he’ll pay hand­some­ly if he waits for Bill while he checks out the orgy mansion.

The film is book­end­ed by two extrav­a­gant Christ­mas scenes: first, the lux­u­ri­ous hol­i­day par­ty thrown by Bill’s wealthy patient Vic­tor Ziegler (Syd­ney Pol­lack); and final­ly, the Har­fords fol­low­ing their daugh­ter Hele­na (Madi­son Egin­ton) around an enor­mous toy store while she points out gifts she’d like San­ta to bring her. All the while, the man­u­fac­tured lus­tre of Christ­mas per­me­ates every scene – except, that is, with­in the cult, where the only dec­o­ra­tive flour­ish­es are the claret hues of the car­pet­ing and the cult leader’s cloak. The out­side world is already swathed in the drap­ery of one form of zeal­ous, rit­u­al­is­tic wor­ship – what need is there to bring it in another?

Though the con­tro­ver­sy didn’t tru­ly begin until six years after the film’s release, sug­ges­tions of a per­ceived ​“assault on Christ­mas” can be traced back to 1959. The so-called ​‘War on Christ­mas’ hit a nerve with a par­tic­u­lar sub­set of con­ser­v­a­tives who felt that their Chris­t­ian val­ues were being under­mined by the grow­ing calls for pro­gres­sivism and diver­si­ty among rep­re­sen­ta­tions of annu­al fes­tive tra­di­tions, and their fix­a­tion on this idea has only inten­si­fied over the years.

Thus, in Eyes Wide Shut the over­loaded, obses­sive influ­ence of Christ­mas on every­day life should be viewed as suf­fo­cat­ing more than whim­si­cal. In Decem­ber 2020, with much of the West­ern world adored in wreaths and twin­kling lights as shop­pers queue eager­ly out­side depart­ment stores despite the glob­al pan­dem­ic, the pair­ing of a fetishis­tic cult with Christ­mas seems all the more satir­i­cal­ly astute. After a cer­tain point, one has to won­der if Bill is being stalked by shiny trin­kets as much as the cultists he enrages.

In the film’s final scene, Bill and Alice dis­cuss the con­se­quences of Bill’s dan­ger­ous twi­light excur­sion, of their secrets and lies, and how they can move for­ward in spite of it all. Mean­while, they trail lit­tle Hele­na, impas­sive­ly tak­ing note of her wish list. All around them, the sights and sounds of a mas­sive toy store prac­ti­cal­ly swal­low them with­in the scene. The swarm of chat­ter­ing shop­pers bear­ing new­ly pur­chased gifts, the end­less strings of can­dy-coloured lights, the rows upon rows of stuffed ani­mals stacked on top of one anoth­er and spilling off shelves, the inane jin­gles that threat­en to over­pow­er their words.

It’s a poignant jux­ta­po­si­tion: Bill, hav­ing freed him­self of the bur­den of his secrets and opened him­self up to Alice, remains trapped in anoth­er way. In fact, both of them are trapped. Trapped by a world con­trolled by elites, and by mon­ey, and hedo­nism, and ho ho hos. Only out here, the man in the red cloak is San­ta Claus.