r/StanleyKubrick

Upon re-watching EWS (again), I realized just how important the party scene with Alice & the Hungarian is. The scene lays the foundation for the entire movie.

In the scene, Alice is clearly intrigued by the Hungarian’s advances. She is flattered and amused. She is also very intrigued, UP TO A LINE.

That is the entire point of the movie. Kubrick was commenting on desire, comfort, commitment, and secrets within marriage. That party scene represents what every married person has actually experienced but never admits - secret desires. More importantly, the scene represents what every married person is most scared of emotionally - their spouses having secret desires.

The party scene sets the stage for Tom Cruise’s crisis of confidence and his own exploration. Without the scene, Alice’s confession to ‘lil Tommy about her hidden desires would be no more than drug-induced blathering. But we know Alice really feels it, because we actually see it.

I would also suggest the party scene with Alice and the Hungarian is the sexiest scene in the whole movie. Those looks that Nicole Kidman gives the Hungarian are absolutely entrancing. The looks go well beyond flirty. Alice is practically making love to the Hungarian with her eyes. Anyone who has gotten similar looks in real life would agree that they are unforgettable. Nicole Kidman is such a great actress to get it on-screen!!!

We dive into Eyes Wide Shut and explore how Stanley Kubrick crafts a haunting story about marriage, desire, and the hidden world of elite power. Through the lens of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, we unpack themes of emotional fidelity, sexual obsession, and the blurred line between fantasy and reality in one of cinema’s most mysterious films.

Obv Spoilers. From what I can tell, the cult was pulling the strings the entire time, with Alice in on it as well. She lied about going to the bathroom at the beginning and instead downs drinks; she tells bill what she knows is a heavy, relationship straining fantasy and doesn’t apologize or try to work with him through it and just leaves him to his thoughts; she tells him of a “nightmare” she was having where she was having an orgy and laughing in bills face, including doing it with the same guy she told him she fantasized about earlier; she (I’m guessing here) was the one who took his mask and put it on his pillow; and at the toy store she was calm and collected and all too eager to give the cult their daughter.

Question is, if she was in on it the whole time, why didn’t she sleep with the guy she danced with at the party? She’s already part of the sex cult and I assume the party was full of sex cult members; was she just not feeling it? Was it to establish that she’s a bit unfaithful to Bill without giving away too much to the audience? Every other scene she’s in, she’s specifically manipulating Bill, so it just doesn’t make sense that she’d keep it up while he’s out of the room. Maybe they’re friends from the sex cult and were just having fun role playing lol.

Anyway those are my thoughts. Love to hear yours!

I've been watching since 2002. Since then, I watch all his films at least once every two years. Of course, some years I skip this or that, but for me, his films are like an old friend that I need to constantly revisit. Sometimes when I go too long without watching, I feel a kind of nostalgia. Well.. I grew up watching them.

I think I've watched The Shining over 50 times, especially in my teens. When I'm driving on a sunny day, I always remember the film's opening credits. I don't know how to explain it, but this film makes me remember American '70s films.. it's strange.

How about you friends?

It is one of horror's most unsettling moments. The final shot of 'The Shining' puts Jack Torrance among the guests in a photograph taken decades before.

And it has led to some of the wildest theories in cinema.

Kubrick’s ending has puzzled audiences for decades, with theories ranging from reincarnation to the idea that the Overlook Hotel absorbs its victims into its own history. As Kubrick himself suggested, the image hints that Jack may have “always been the caretaker,” trapped in a cycle that transcends time.

Rather than offering a clear answer, the film leaves behind something far more unsettling: the sense that Jack has lost his identity entirely, becoming just another part of the hotel’s endless past.

Like much of Kubrick’s work, it’s a moment designed not to be explained, but to haunt us all.

It could be one of the reasons Kirk and he didn’t get along and why Kietel dropped out of EWS.

I hope this isn't too off topic, as it is my first post here, but these connections came to me almost like in a dream

I know (because I've googled it) that other people found similitudes between Eyes Wide Shut and After Hours. That's an old one for me, as it's the one wild lost night in NY where the protagonist learns he has no control over the events that are now governing his life.

That reminds me of Good Time as well.

But this literal dream I had kind of mixed the energy of those movies (Eyes Wide Shut in particular) with the ending of The Conversation, where Gene Hackman tears down his own environment after an equally excruciating journey where, at the end, he finds himself equally as lost and out of control as the protagonists of the preeviously mentioned movies.

I was wondering what other connections do the fellow Kubrick fans here do in their minds, in this almost stream-of-consciousness exercise. I hope I'm not going on a tangent, if so, forgive me mods!

My hope is that through here we may all remember (or even discover) good movies based on each others Kubrick-lead-dreams