Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick was a man who was granted entrance into the world of the global elite, though he apparently saw himself as a hired servant, useful for their designs, rather than as a true insider. Kubrick directed 13 feature films over the course of his movie career. Although none of them were blockbusters at the box office, they were profitable and have over time been deemed by some to be among the finest examples of film making. In the 5th edition of Steven Jay Schneider’s 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 9 of Kubrick's films made the list. Kubrick stands out in this movie guide for having a higher percentage of his films to make the list than any other director. Kubrick’s films which are listed in this movie guide are Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987).

I concur that Stanley Kubrick was one of the most brilliant men to ever have directed movies. He was a profound esotericist, communicating volumes through subtle means as he employed symbolism in his movies to an extent rarely observed by other film makers. Kubrick was regarded as obsessive as a director. He was a perfectionist who attended to the minutiae of set details and the performance of actors. Kubrick refused to explain to people what his movies were about. He would often give some defense such as the following response when questioned about the deeper meaning of the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey.

How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo (Da Vinci) had written at the bottom of the canvas, ‘The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover’? This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.

I have written about the esoteric theme of 2001, A Space Odyssey in the book Attractive Deception in the chapter titled Satanic Inroads to Judaism and Christianity.

http://parablesblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/attractive-deception-part-6.html

Kubrick’s movies were often controversial due to their disturbing themes and immoral content. It is due to these elements that I have chosen to not view many of his films, including the one whose poster appears at the top of this chapter. I have, however, read both brief and in depth reviews of these films, for they have been the subject matter of many authors, documentarians, and conspiracy theorists. Kubrick often devised subtle means to convey esoteric messages in his films. These messages often focused on a world ruled by a global elite who operate in secret and commit abominable deeds. The movie Lolita incorporates a theme of pedophile rings where the elite traffic in the bodies of young children. A Clockwork Orange explores the subject of mind control and behavior conditioning. 2001, A Space Odyssey is ultimately an exposition of the religious beliefs of the global elite. The black monolith which repeatedly appears in the movie, always advancing man to some new state in his evolutionary development toward godhood, is the prima materia of Alchemy, the Philosopher’s Stone. It is symbolic of Satan in the guise of the Great Architect of the Universe, a Prometheus who defies the God of heaven to bring man forbidden knowledge as an act of benevolence to help man achieve his ultimate destiny.

Most people reading this description of 2001, A Space Odyssey would be inclined to shake their head in derision and ask, “Where is this man getting this stuff?” Kubrick was so skilled at hiding his messages in plain sight that few have ever discerned them. Kubrick’s final movie, Eyes Wide Shut focuses on the secretive activities of a global elite who meet in grand settings to conduct orgies and other abominations. Kubrick died of a heart attack three days after completing editing of the film. Some contend he was murdered because the film exposed too much of the activities of the global elite and that the movie was re-edited before its release three months later with much of its most damning content removed. I have no opinion to offer in this regard, not having any evidence to substantiate or refute such claims. Jay Weidner is an individual who believes Kubrick was killed by the government. In his documentary, Kubrick’s Odyssey, he states the following.

In the film “Wag the Dog,” Dustin Hoffman Plays a movie producer hired by the CIA to fake an event. His name in the movie is Stanley. In that movie, Stanley mysteriously dies after telling everyone he wants to take credit for the event he helped to fake.

Stanley Kubrick died soon after showing Eyes Wide Shut to the executives at Warner Brothers. It is rumored that they were very upset concerning that film. They wanted Kubrick to re-edit the film but he refused. I personally was in France when Stanley died and I saw, on French television, outtakes from the forthcoming Eyes Wide Shut. I saw outtakes from several scenes that were never in the finished film.

Warner Brothers has even come out and admitted that they re-edited the film. To this day they refuse to release a DVD of Stanley Kubrick’s cut. Not only is this a direct violation of the agreement that Kubrick had with Warner Brothers, but it also means that we will probably never see the un-edited version of this film.

Understanding Stanley Kubrick’s obsessiveness and his profound use of seemingly innocuous details to convey a message, is necessary to any review of his work. Before Stanley Kubrick died he had determined the date that Eyes Wide Shut would be released. He chose the date of July 16th, 1999. The date was not chosen arbitrarily, for it was the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. If, as many contend, Stanley Kubrick was employed by NASA to fake the Moon missions, not only the date, but the title of the movie, and elements of the movie posters, contain an enigmatic message. Look again at the poster for the movie at the head of this chapter. Note the one eye open symbolism which is so prevalent among the Illuminati.

Great Seal of the United States - Reverse

Kubrick is announcing, even in the movie’s advertisements, that the subject is the hidden acts of a global elite. Kubrick has used similar imagery in his other movies to announce their true subject.

In the movie poster for A Clockwork Orange, the main character has an all-seeing-eye cufflink and the letter “A” resembles a pyramid. Also, in the movie poster for Eyes Wide Shut we see the image of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise reflected in a mirror, or “looking glass.” This evokes references to Through the Looking Glass which was Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland. These books were about an imaginary world, or perhaps they were about seeing the world as it really is. Significantly, a mirror always presents a reverse image. What we see in a mirror is the opposite of reality. The movie title Eyes Wide Shut is a statement on the condition of society. It could equally be a statement of the condition of the church, for I am reminded of the following Scripture reference.

Isaiah 42:19-20
Who is blind but My servant, or so deaf as My messenger whom I send? Who is so blind as he that is at peace with Me, or so blind as the servant of Yahweh? You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; Your ears are open, but none hears.

Kubrick is declaring that humanity has their “eyes wide shut.” That is to say, their eyes are opened, but they see nothing. Mankind is living in a fantasy land. They have embraced illusions, accepting a vision of the world which is false. Choosing the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission for the release date of this movie, was his attempt to draw men’s attention to one of the greatest deceptions of the 20th century, a deception which continues to hold its power to this day. Kubrick made a reference to Apollo 11, for he had been involved in the deception and knew its details intimately. Yet he had to do so by subtle means lest he run afoul of the powers-that-be.

Multiple posters were created to advertise Kubrick’s 13th movie. Another one is pictured above. One of the major themes of Eyes Wide Shut is that people wear masks. Throughout the movie, whenever the elite gather together they are observed wearing masks. The symbolic meaning is that people are deceivers. Especially among the mighty, the wealthy, the influential of this world, people masquerade as that which they are not so that they can commit their immoral and wicked deeds in anonymity. The ultimate deceiver and mask wearer is Satan who seeks to portray himself as a benevolent giver of gifts to mankind, when in truth he is a malevolent adversary of man.

II Corinthians 11:14-15
And no wonder, for even Satan masquerades as an angel of light. It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also masquerade as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

Stanley Kubrick was not a saint. He was not a professor of Christ. He was a sinful man who was disillusioned with humanity. He saw the worst in man, and realized that everyone was selfish, and prone to incredible acts of betrayal and harm toward others. In interviews, Kubrick stated the following.

The question becomes, 'Are you giving them something to make them a little happier, or are you putting in something that is inherently true to the material?' Are people behaving the way we all really behave, or are they behaving the way we would like them to behave? I mean, the world is not as it's presented in Frank Capra films. People love those films - which are beautifully made - but I wouldn't describe them as a true picture of life...

There's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious: we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly...

Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved - that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it’s a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure...

Sanitized violence in movies has been accepted for years. What seems to upset everybody now is the showing of the consequences of violence...

Kubrick wanted to portray the world as it truly is, even if the image presented is one of darkness, betrayal, selfishness, and senseless violence. It is little wonder that his movies did not prove to be blockbusters, for most people prefer happy endings and pleasant fictions to the darkness, exploitation, and tragedy which permeates human existence. Kubrick had to be careful in choosing how to portray some of the realities of this world system we live in lest he should incur the wrath of those who wish to remain hidden behind their masks. It surely did not escape Kubrick’s notice that men who had been considered a risk, liable to expose the deception of the Apollo Program, often met some tragic end through mysterious and hard to explain accidents.

Jay Weidner has done an excellent job of dissecting Kubrick’s film The Shining, demonstrating in convincing fashion that the director was using the movie as a covert vehicle to announce the deception of the Apollo Program and his part in it. Anyone who wants to perform a serious investigation of the truth of the Apollo Space Program should view Kubrick’s Odyssey - Part One by Jay Weidner.

Stanley Kubrick did not write his own movies from scratch. Rather, he chose the writings of others and adapted them to film. What is often very telling is observing where Stanley Kubrick departed from the story of the original author, altering it in some manner, using the creative license he had as the movie’s director. The Shining was a novel written by horror fiction author Stephen King. Stanley Kubrick purchased the rights to create a film version of the novel. He deviated from Stephen King’s work in such significant ways that Stephen King has remained a firm critic of his movie. In fact, Stephen King hated Kubrick’s adaptation of his book so much that he wrote his own screenplay for The Shining and later had it made into a 6 hour television mini-series.

Stanley Kubrick symbolically indicates in his movie adaptation that he has “wrecked” Stephen King’s vision for The Shining. In Stephen King’s novel the main character, along with his wife and son, drive a red Volkswagen Beetle to a remote hotel in Colorado. Stanley Kubrick changes this to a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, but along the drive they witness the scene of an accident where a large truck has crushed a red Volkswagen. This symbolically illustrates Kubrick wrecking Stephen King’s story.

In The Shining the main character’s name is Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson. Jack has a son named Danny. Kubrick uses these two characters to represent the conflicted parts of his own nature. The son Danny represents the artistic, creative, innocent, and carefree aspect of Kubrick, while the father Jack represents a more calculating and businesslike part of his nature. In the movie the father has a dream where he murders his wife and son, hacking them into little pieces. Later on he attempts to do so, but fails. This signifies the conflict that arose in Kubrick’s life when he made a lucrative deal with the government to fake the Apollo missions, an action which nearly killed his artistic and more childlike nature and threatened his family’s existence.

As the movie begins we see Jack arriving at The Overlook Hotel where he has agreed to serve as the winter caretaker. There are no guests at the hotel in the winter, and we are informed that the greatest stress of the job is its isolation. This would certainly be true of anyone working on faking the Apollo Moon missions, for they would not be able to tell anyone what they were doing. As Jack enters the hotel manager’s office, we observe some of the minutiae of detail which Kubrick has arranged to inform us that what we are viewing is a representation of his own meeting with the U.S. government when he agreed to take on the Apollo assignment.

The hotel manager is dressed in red, white, and blue. Behind him in the window is a statue of an eagle, the symbol of America as well as the name of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.

As the camera zooms in on the manager, we see a U.S. flag on his desk. The manager’s name is Stuart Ullman, whose initials when written last name first would be U.S.. His first and last name also have the exact same number of characters as United States. Jay Weidner points out that the manager is wearing a toupe which makes him resemble John F. Kennedy, the U.S. President who publicly initiated the lunar program.

During the interview we learn that Jack is a writer and part of the deal he strikes is that as long as he does his job as caretaker for The Overlook Hotel, he can spend as much time as he wants writing. This parallels Stanley Kubrick’s own deal, for he worked on 2001, A Space Odyssey at the same time he was working for NASA on the Apollo Moon missions.

Throughout the movie, Room 237 plays a significant role. An employee of the hotel tells young Danny to never go near that room, to stay out, for he has no business there. We are made aware that something strange, even sinister, is associated with that room. In the first shot of the room which we see in the image above, we see a set of mirrors. Again, Stanley Kubrick pays such attention to detail and symbolic messages that it seems right to conclude that he is telling us that this room represents a distorted view of reality.

Jay Weidner points out that Kubrick altered the room number, for Stephen King wrote of it as Room 217. Kubrick’s alteration was intentional and symbolic, for the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 237,000 miles, a figure which was published in the 1960s. Also, the only letters on the key tag are ROOM N°. If you drop the small o, the letters can be used to spell the words “Moon” and “Room.” This is the “Moon Room.”

In one scene from the movie we see Jack Torrance, representing the calculating and businesslike side of Kubrick, enter this room. The room is supposed to be empty, but there is a young attractive woman who is naked in the shower. She steps out of the shower and she and Jack embrace and engage in passionate kissing. As Jack is kissing the woman she is transformed into an old hag with what appear to be large bed sores all over her body. Jack is repulsed and pushes her away. Kubrick is symbolically communicating that he found the Apollo Moon program to be attractive and enticing when it was first presented to him, but that it transformed into something hideous that he no longer wanted to be associated with.

Throughout the movie the hotel is given personality, as if it is possessed by a malevolent intelligence. The Overlook Hotel is itself a symbol of America. We are informed in the movie that the hotel was built on the graves of Native American Indians, which is equally true of America as a nation. Throughout the hotel there are Native American decorations. The largest one of them bears a striking resemblance to a group of rockets.

It is in this large room that Jack sits at a table with his typewriter to work. This represents Kubrick’s work on the Apollo project. The typewriter that Jack uses is a German brand named Adler.

The word Adler is German for “Eagle.” A subtle link is provided here to remind us that NASA’s space program was heavily dependent upon German engineers which the United States government secreted away to America at the end of World War II. The instrument that Jack is working on is one of German engineering, even as the American space program was dependent upon the same. Beside the typewriter we also see a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, the same brand that Stanley Kubrick smoked.

One of the more terrifying moments of the movie is when Jack’s wife, played by Shelley Duval, comes into the room when Jack is not present and finds that he has been typing the same message over and over on hundreds of sheets of paper.

Jay Weidner suggests that the word “All” is a reference to “Apollo 11,” or A-11. Kubrick is communicating to us that his work on the Apollo 11 program was wearying, and took a toll upon him physically and mentally. In the movie we see the character played by Jack Nicholson begin to deteriorate physically and mentally after leaving the hotel manager’s office to begin his new duties. One of the next scenes after Jack takes the job shows him in bed as his wife brings him breakfast.

Observe in this picture that we see Jack in a mirror. Immediately after taking the job this scene appears informing us that we are now seeing things through the looking glass. Reality is distorted. Illusion is now the order of the day. If you look closely you will also see that the shirt worn by Jack Nicholson has a large image of an eagle on it.

One of the hidden themes Kubrick placed into the movie revolved around the toll his decision in accepting this role with NASA took upon his wife and children. Outside the hotel there is a large maze constructed of some type of trees or shrubs. There is a model of the maze in the lobby of the hotel, and we are shown Jack looking at it. As he stares he sees his wife and son in the maze seeking to find a way out. There is no way out of the model of the maze, however.

Related to this theme is another departure from Stephen King’s novel. In the book version we are informed that the former caretaker went crazy due to the isolation of the job and murdered his wife and daughter. In the movie Kubrick shows the former caretaker to have had two daughters who were twins. Various messages can be gleaned from this discrepancy. The space program preceding Apollo was the Gemini program, Gemini being represented by twins. Were we being informed that Kubrick was replacing someone else who could not stand the pressure of the deception he was engaged in, and it ended up costing him the life of his family?

At one point in The Shining, Danny is riding his big wheel around the hotel when he sees the twins at the end of a hallway. The say to him, “Come and play with us Danny, forever and ever.” Danny then sees flashes of the twins murdered.

In one part of the movie Jack begins to see people that were formerly invisible to him. One large meeting hall is populated with the elite of the world. We are being informed that Stanley Kubrick has now been given entre into the circles of the global elite. While in this room, Jack meets the former caretaker who is now working as a waiter. Since the caretaker had the same job Jack now holds, we are informed that Jack really isn’t one of the elite, but merely a servant.

The former caretaker informs Jack that his son Danny is “trying to bring an outsider” into their business. Jack receives this information soberly, knowing that it represents a threat to their lives. The job title of the character played by Nicholson, that of a “caretaker,” is imbued with meaning. He had better “take care” with the information he has been made privy to, for he has been entrusted with the responsibilities of a caretaker of American secrets.

One of the most revealing moments of symbolic meaning in the movie occurs when young Danny is observed playing with his trucks on a carpeted hallway. There is an unusual geometric pattern to the carpet. It is a hexagonal pattern which resembles rocket pad 39 at Cape Canaveral, Florida where the Apollo missions were launched. The launching pad is symbolized by the red hexagon at the center where Danny is bent over. As he is playing, a tennis ball rolls up to him. This symbolically repeats the invitation the twins had given to Danny; “Come play with us Danny.” There was no one present to roll the ball to him, so we are left to assume that the malevolent spirit of The Overlook Hotel was responsible for rolling the ball.

As Danny stands up, Stanley Kubrick announces through subtle means his own acceptance to play ball, for on Danny’s sweater is an image of Apollo 11. As Danny stands up we are observing a symbolic launching of Apollo 11 lifting up from the pad 39.

Beginning Launch

We Have Lift Off

A telling detail is that there was no actual Apollo 11 rocket that Danny was playing with. All we see is an image of the Apollo 11 on Danny’s sweater. This is a covert means of stating that the Apollo 11 mission was not real. It was merely an image - an illusion. After standing to his feet Danny walks down the hall to Room 237 and finds the door open and he enters. This again is symbolic of Kubrick carrying the mission from the launch pad to the Moon.

Toward the end of the movie we see a clearly deranged Jack trying to kill his wife. His wife manages to lock Jack into a storeroom. Once again we see the cleverly placed props that Kubrick included in the scene to make the association to the Apollo Space Program. Next to the wall are boxes of “Golden Rey” food items. Apollo was the Sun god of Rome, and was depicted with golden rays shining forth from the crown of his head. Also, on the top shelf behind Jack we see Tang breakfast drink. This was the drink famously advertised as having been developed for the astronauts who took Tang to the Moon.

Many more details from the movie could be cited, demonstrating the manner in which Stanley Kubrick used The Shining to convey a hidden message about his involvement in the Apollo Program, and the toll it took on his life. I will conclude with one last image. This is from the last scene of the movie where we see an old photo of Jack among the invisible elite that he was only able to see once he accepted the job at The Overlook Hotel. In Jack’s right hand is a folded up note as if he is seeking to disclose a secret to the photographer. Behind Jack is a man reaching for his arm to keep him from showing others what is in his hand.

Stanley Kubrick is the man who attempted to show people through photographic and movie images what was truly going on. Yet, in 1999, thirty years after the Apollo 11 mission, and 19 years after he revealed his secrets through The Shining, society continued to have their “Eyes Wide Shut.”

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