What an ugly look under the mask
——A brief analysis of Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut was the last work of American director Stanley Kubrick. The film sharply reflected the contradictions between religion and class, and Kubrick's death also cast a mysterious veil on the film.
Doctor Harvard and his wife Alice have been married for nine years, and his life style with his wife is at an impasse. At a party, he met Nick, a former college classmate. Under the temptation of Nick, Harvard decided to go to the place Nick said to find out. Harvard had no idea that one of his rash visits would get him and those around him into trouble.
The film presents different aspects of the director's analysis through multiple clues. In the marriage of the doctor Harvard and his wife, we are presented with the obsessive loyalty of men to women in the relationship between the two sexes, and it is also an in-depth discussion of the lifestyle after marriage. In the mode of education and getting along with the wife and daughter, the wife is teaching her daughter which of the two boys is richer. This seems to reflect whether women must depend on men to exist. As the doctor Harvard looks forward to finding an extramarital affair, one dilemma after another emerges and develops, and it is also discussing the execution of loyalty in a relationship.
Similarly, the film designs a lot of metaphors to deeply analyze religion, in order to satirize the darkness of people in the upper class. The hexagram shape that appears many times in the film, the time setting of Christmas, the extremely sacred religious rituals, the bishops and the people wearing masks, all this to cover up their most dirty and dark thoughts. The same mask is a symbolic prop, Harvard believes that this mask can allow him to enter the upper class and participate in a series of privileges. But it's not, it's all to cover up their ugliness and crimes. And when he saw the mask lying quietly on the bed at the last moment, he broke down and cried, he didn't want to believe that it was all real, dead woman, selfish rich man.
Finally, in the design of the soundtrack, the director also used it skillfully. The repeated piano sounds make people feel a strong sense of oppression, which undoubtedly renders the inner anxiety and tension of the characters. At the same time, the highly religious choir is not only the dark side of the infinite magical queue, but also satirizes the hypocrisy and arrogance of people in the upper class. They don't want to lower their bodies, and everything has to have a sense of useless ritual.
The film is not so much a family ethics film wrapped in horror, it seems more like a sharp blade that deeply explores society and human nature. He goes deep, layer after layer, to gender, to family, to class. An absurd event reflects different sides. In the end, everything was confusing, and the face under the mask was still ugly.
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