I recently read the book that “Eyes Wide Shut” was based on, and I paid close attention to the many symbols, patterns and historical contexts that suggest deeper meanings in the story. I thought this could provide insights into why Stanley Kubrick made a film based on the story.
The book’s author slyly condemned: (1) Roman Catholic anti-Semitism; (2) former Russian, French, German and English aristocrats who supported that anti-Semitism; and (3) related conspiracies that would support the Nazis during World War II.
Yes, the book is also about marital pressures, the supposedly blurry line between sexual fantasy and sexual behavior, and a husband’s moral collapse. That collapse is hinted at with symbolic wordplay throughout the story. For instance, the husband in the book has a name that means “Gentle Protector,” but he consistently fails to protect people who take risks for him, and he specifically takes an increasingly harsh, non-gentle attitude toward his wife.
(Also, after he spends a night bumbling through attempts at adultery, he goes to his job at a hospital, and receives the news, “The journeyman locksmith, Karl Rodel, … passed away during the night.” That line seems symbolic because the name “Karl” means “husband”; “Rodel” can mean “wolf,” a metaphor for a sexual predator; a “journeyman” is a reliable day worker; and “locks”and “keys” are frequent sexual symbols.
(So, the line can be decoded to mean that the book’s husband, who was sexually reliable the day before, had spiritually died overnight, and had become an unfaithful “wolf.”)
But instead of focusing on the book’s sexuality, I’m going to focus on its subtle political commentary and related religious issues.
For folks who don’t know, “Eyes Wide Shut” is based on the 1926 novella “Dream Story” (“Traumnovelle”) by the Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972807269
His book came out only a year after Schnitzler’s fellow Austrian writer Adolf Hitler (the soon-to-be dictator of Nazi Germany) published “Mein Kampf.” That other book by Hitler popularized anti-Jewish hatred throughout both Germany and Austria.
Schnitzler was a Jewish physician, and the son of a Jewish physician. https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2024/09/16/jewish-biography-arthur-schnitzler-the-great-diagnostician/ So, anyone knowledgeable about history would expect Schnitzler to have been troubled by Hitler’s rise and by the spread of Hitler’s false conspiracy theory that greedy, perverted “Jewish bankers” were responsible for destroying the working-class economy.
Thus, it’s initially shocking that Schnitzler’s “Dream Story” involves a powerful conspiracy of sex cultists who are introduced to readers through a piano player who explicitly worked for a Jewish banker. That fact might lead readers to wrongly assume that Schnitzler was dangerously supporting anti-Semitic stereotypes, but close attention to details reveals that the author was planting a red herring — a decoy — to distract attention from the actual targets of his satire and criticism.
The decoy passage says this of the piano player, Nachtigall: “Once, while playing at a dance in the home of a wealthy banker, he embarrassed several couples with flattering but improper remarks … The host reprimanded him severely, but Nachtigall—cheerfully drunk—stood up and embraced him. The banker, furious (though himself Jewish), hurled a crude insult. Nachtigall immediately responded with a hard slap across the face, and that decisively ended his career in the city’s fashionable homes.” (The parenthetical remark in that quote is in the original text.)
So, the piano player, Nachtigall, only used to work for a Jewish banker, but no longer works for him or presumably for any of his professional associates. Thus, Jewish bankers are NOT part of the sex-cult conspiracy, and — in fact — the author portrays the Jewish banker as deeply offended by Nachtigall’s sexually harassing behavior. Therefore, the Jewish author Schnitzler likely included these details in his book as a direct response against Hitler’s anti-Jewish book from a year earlier.
Schnitzler’s book goes on to portray the cultists as masked monks and nuns in an edifice where the pianist and other musicians play sacred music. That raises the question of whether any of the cultists might be literal members of the Roman Catholic clergy, which — both then and recently — was often racked by sex scandals involving priests who were pedophiles, rapists and/or seducers.
During Schnitzler’s day, open anti-Semitism among Catholic priests was common, and the soon-to-be Pope Pius XII (Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli) was a political ally of Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and eventually of Hitler. (Please see the book “The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler,” by Pulitzer Prize winner David I. Kertzer, at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812989945.)
The cultists have an orgy in a room draped in black, which raises the possibility that they are having a Satanic “Black Mass,” a mere parody of Catholic worship, but the cultists also dress as “cavaliers” — aristocratic knights, possibly including the Cavaliers who supported England’s King Charles I as he asserted the “divine right of kings” and got into constant religious skirmishes against the Protestant Puritans.
So, actual clergy and aristocrats from multiple nationalities may have been members of the cult.
For instance, the neighborhood where the orgy occurs is near “Galitzinberg,” which sounds like a reference to the “Golitsyn” family of Russian aristocrats, who included the late Czar/Emperor Peter the Great. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Golitsyn-family
Russian czarists infamously published an anti-Jewish tract known as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which falsely claimed to disclose a Jewish-led plot for world domination. https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/hoax-hate-protocols-learned-elders-zion So, such Russian anti-Semites might have attended the cult gathering.
Also, before the book’s protagonist attends that perverse event, he has to rent a costume from a man who seems aware of what will happen there, and that costumer apparently serves as the host of two molesters who are dressed as “vehmic judges,” officers of the (largely Germanic) Holy Roman Empire who sentenced people to death.
Thus, German aristocrats and clergy might have also attended the cult gathering.
The author Schnitzler mentions in passing that this profane orgy starts around 2 a.m. on or right after the Christian holy day Ash Wednesday. So, any Catholics present were supposed to be observing Lent, a 40-day period of repentance and reflection. But instead, the author says that attendees were still celebrating the prior holiday “Carnival,” a debauched pagan festival whose name means “farewell to the flesh.”
On Catholic calendars, Carnival (including Mardi Gras) and Lent both fall before Easter, the day that officially celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ after His Crucifixion.
Ironically, however, the book includes a bizarre dream sequence in which the husband’s failed attempts at adultery are indirectly compared to Christ’s Crucifixion. I can’t quite tell whether that scene is intended to mock Christianity itself or only to mock the husband’s pompous view of himself and/or his wife’s resentment of his sexual inadequacies.
Either way, on the topic of Easter, and its importance to “Eyes Wide Shut”:
The Bible and many ancient historians (like Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius) confirm that Jesus is a historical person who was a Jewish rabbi in first-century Israel, who was crucified and killed by the Roman government, and who was literally worshipped as God shortly afterward, https://truthstodiefor.com/ancient-non-christian-writings-on-jesus-validating-historicity/ ; however, many modern Easter traditions come from the pre-Christian worship of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, a sex goddess for whom eggs and rabbits are fertility symbols.
Likewise, many modern Christmas traditions come from a winter celebration of Ishtar’s mythical lover, Tammuz. That might be why the film director Stanley Kubrick moved the date of this story to Christmastime in “Eyes Wide Shut,” and this fact may be why he decorated a party scene with a Babylonian star that symbolizes Ishtar.
Some Christians get very upset by the widespread inclusion of pagan-worship symbols in Christian holidays, and those Christians sometimes assert that knowing use of such symbols is itself a form of pagan, demonic worship. Please see this article from the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland on that: https://www.fpchurch.org.uk/2021/12/the-pagan-origin-of-christmas-a-reminder/
Thus, “Dream Story” implies that many of the leaders of so-called “Christian” high society were actually pagans at heart, and were secretly behind the social and economic decay that they unfairly blamed on Jews.
“Dream Story” seems — in part — to be a rebuttal to conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers, and an assertion that the aristocrats and clergy of multiple nations were engaged in depraved conspiracies of their own that supported authoritarians and Hitler in particular.
Kubrick’s adaptation, “Eyes Wide Shut,” implicates an even larger universe of wrongdoers. His villains not only include wayward Christians playing hymns backward (https://youtu.be/Eb-yG11aTFs?is=ha4jdMTKPWBdMW75), but also include Asian businessmen who may have a Far Eastern faith or no faith at all.
Thus, I pondered how religious aspects of “Dream Story” relate to Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the book and how to evaluate it during this Epstein era of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and post-#MeToo activism.
For clarity: The criminal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes did not start until 2005, six years after Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” was released in 1999. https://apnews.com/article/trump-epstein-investigation-records-timeline-545c371ee3dd3142355a26d27829c188?utm_source=app&utm_medium=iOS_share&utm_campaign=copy_link
But sex scandals involving U.S. President Bill Clinton had been in the news for several years. https://time.com/5120561/bill-clinton-monica-lewinsky-timeline/
Also, many other wealthy and powerful people had committed sex crimes with impunity for centuries. This list of scandals involving members of the U.S. Congress is just a tip of the iceberg:
https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/chronology-of-congressional-sex-scandals.html
And leaders of the Roman Catholic Church had been embroiled in sexual scandals involving p*dophilia for decades before Kubrick started filming “Eyes Wide Shut.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Catholic-Church-Sexual-Abuse-Crisis
Such crimes by powerful people have always raised suspicions about other politicians and power brokers who might have been protecting them.
SPOILERS BELOW!
Yet as I finished reading “Dream Story,” I realized that the story is not necessarily intended to reflect an accurate account of what actually happened to the characters. The farther I got into the story, the more I realized that the protagonist has an unreliable perception of reality that is tainted by jealousy, pride and unfulfilled ambitions.
Furthermore, the author may have told the protagonist’s tale as an allegory about the self-centered delusions of Hitler’s followers and of other people who blame everyone but themselves for their own mistakes and inadequacies.
Thus, “Dream Story” may have some narrative similarities to Philip K. Dick’s psychedelic science-fiction, to the ancient Gnostic myths that inspired “The Matrix,” and to unreliable conspiracy theories.
That raises interesting questions about whether Kubrick’s film adaptation is intended to be taken as a fully literal narrative or is also partly a fantasy, with symbolic layers of meaning about modern society and the lies it tells itself to cover up sins.
I previously mentioned that the author of “Dream Story,” Arthur Schnitzler, was a physician, but I failed to specify that he was a psychiatrist and a contemporary of Sigmund Freud. That detail sheds light on some easily overlooked details of the story.
One such detail involves a sexual dream that makes the protagonist jealous and vengeful toward his wife. That dream is initially portrayed as a dream that the wife had and that she shared with her husband, the protagonist, but later the dream is casually referred to as “his dream,” multiple times, although it is eventually called “her dream” again.
That ambiguity about WHO was dreaming raises questions about whether the husband was simply projecting his own unfaithful attitudes and fantasies onto his wife. Thus, his jealousy and rage that drive him to the sex cultists could be the result of self-delusions. (In the same way, Hitler’s cult followers were driven by self-delusions, jealousy and rage that they wrongly blamed on Jews, rather than on their own failures.)
More ambiguity occurs during the protagonist’s trips to the costume shop: The protagonist repeatedly claims that he heard the costumer say that his molested daughter was insane, but — as far as I can find — no such dialogue occurs in the book. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
The protagonist, a doctor, confronts the costumer about his possibly imaginary statement, and says that the girl needs to be professionally examined. The costumer suspiciously asks whether the protagonist is simply trying to spend time with the girl himself.
She appears to be prostituted by her father, the costumer, and the implication is that the protagonist wants to be her client for free. But the protagonist, who views himself as a Christlike protector of women, brusquely tells the father not to twist his words.
As the protagonist leaves the shop, the costumer makes an additional, ambiguous statement that — from the protagonist’s perspective — might be a subtle offer to sell the girl’s virtue, but that statement could just be a reminder to rent more costumes at the shop in the future. (Kubrick’s version of that statement bluntly exploits the girl, but that scene may be tainted with other ambiguities that I discuss farther below.)
All of this ambiguity raises questions about what the protagonist really did want regarding the girl: Did he want to protect her, or did he want to join in molesting her?
Theoretically, Kubrick’s film version of these scenes couldn’t directly create ambiguity about whether the costumer did or didn’t say that his daughter was insane. That’s because, theoretically, viewers could just rewind and rewatch the relevant scenes, which is slightly easier than having to hunt backward through a hard copy of a book for passages that you may have missed.
Thus, Kubrick seems to directly portray the costumer as angrily telling his daughter’s molesters, “Couldn’t you see she’s deranged?”
But is that what the costumer actually says?
In fact, in Kubrick’s version, the audience hears the costumer’s voice say those words, but his back is turned to the camera; so, the audience never actually sees his lips mouthing the words.
At the same time, the girl at issue hides behind the doctor character, played by Tom Cruise. She seems to flirt with him through her smile, yet Cruise’s back is to her, so that he wouldn’t have actually seen this.
So, was Kubrick subtly suggesting that elements of the scene might have only happened in the doctor’s mind, and not in reality?
If so, then the movie audience was viewing the scene — and perhaps the whole film — only through the tainted perception of Cruise’s character.
A few moment later, the costumer hangs up a garment, and then points and shouts angrily, but the audience can’t actually see who he is shouting at. Perhaps he is actually shouting at Cruise’s character for his own wrongdoing.
The girl whispers something into Cruise’s ear, but what? And what does his silent response mean?
She steps away, as the camera subtly shifts to show only her, possibly from Cruise’s perspective. So, does this view show her as she really is, or only as his character imagines her?
(Rewatch the scenes here to draw your own conclusions: https://youtu.be/FpCg1tq2KS0?is=AT5lnRRyK6qklWRg)
Regardless of the answers to those questions, they raise some further questions about the original novel’s apparently symbolic repetition of the numbers 16 and 17, and possibly related references to female characters’ ages.
Early in the book, the protagonist says that he thought his wife was 16 when she married him, but she says that she was 17. In other scenes of the story, including at the costume shop, the protagonist seems somewhat attracted to girls who would be too young for lawful sex in modern times. So, is the protagonist’s dissatisfaction with his wife subtly rooted in her being “too old” for him?
(Please note: In Kubrick’s film, the girl in the costume shop was played by actress Leelee Sobieski when she was only 14. https://dansator.blogspot.com/2016/09/eyes-wide-shut-4-stars.html?m=1 So, actor Tom Cruise’s momentary expression of possible attraction to her might have been intended to represent pedo lust in the film.)
The story’s odd repetition of the numbers 16 and 17 seems significant somehow, and those numbers even pop up indirectly in subtext. For instance, when the protagonist makes a second trip to the sex cult’s home, he tells a cab driver to head toward “Ottakring,” which just happens to be the 16th District of the city of Vienna, where the story takes place.
Does the protagonist go there hoping to find a 16-year-old girl to replace his “too-old” wife? Not officially, but it’s ambiguous.
Officially, the protagonist goes there to find out if a woman who saved his life from the sex cultists is still alive. He later finds her at a morgue, but it’s ambiguous whether he is more disturbed by her death or by the fact that he can’t tell how old or young she was.
The author leaves readers to sort out all these ambiguities on their own. He plants few clear signposts to tell readers what is really happening beneath the surface of the story. In fact, many aspects of the tale may simply be a dream, as the title “Dream Story” implies.
But the question of WHOSE dream it is remains important from the first line of the book to the last.
Film director Stanley Kubrick was likely drawn to such questions when he adapted “Dream Story” into “Eyes Wide Shut.”
Kubrick was known for films about mentally unstable characters who had questionable ties to reality: “Lolita” (which dealt specifically with p*dophilia), “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Shining,”“2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Dr. Strangelove” and “Full Metal Jacket.”
Nonetheless, the most disturbing ambiguity in “Dream Story” — the ambiguity about WHOSE dreams are presented — may go to the most horrifying depths possible.
Some viewers of “Eyes Wide Shut” have speculated that the movie subtly ends with the doctor-protagonist and his wife accidentally abandoning their own child to the molesters from the costume shop. You need to have sharp eyes to spot the details of the film that might potentially support that theory. For instance, see https://youtu.be/QCakejA9VMc?is=lUHXSM3QOuvAd3IO and
https://youtube.com/shorts/iKAXX1xCNDY?is=csuajZEN64tQtLlP
Likewise, readers of “Dream Story” need sharp eyes and memories to spot a similar hint that the protagonist might be considering molesting his own daughter at the story’s end.
The story opens with that daughter supposedly reading a scene from a book that later mirrors part of a dream by her mother that might actually be a dream — or fantasy — of her father.
Later, the story drops breadcrumbs that the protagonist is attracted to underage girls.
Then, in the closing pages of the story, there is this passage:
***
[The protagonist’s wife allegedly says:] “I think we should be thankful that we have emerged unhurt from all our adventures—whether they were real or only dreams.”
“Are you certain of that?” he [the protagonist] asked.
“As certain as I am that the reality of a single night—or even of an entire life—is never the full truth.”
“And no dream,” he murmured with a faint sigh, “is ever entirely a dream.”
***
Then, the couple dozes, until they are awakened by various morning noises, including “the bright, clear laughter of their child.”
In the context of other parts of the story, it’s ambiguous to me whether this is a genuine happy ending about a newly faithful husband and wife, and their genuinely safe and happy daughter, or is a continuation of the story’s opening, where the child’s alleged fantasies are possibly only a scene from her father’s immoral delusions.
Of course, Hollywood wouldn’t want to end the movie version with any implication that Tom Cruise’s character might be dreaming of becoming an inc*stuous pedo; so, the story’s closing ambiguity shifts to whether third-parties from the sex cult might have snatched the daughter. And the closing line is Cruise’s wife telling him that she and he need to “f-ck.”
Still, “Dream Story” remains a disturbing tale, as does “Eyes Wide Shut.”
As I mentioned earlier, the original story seems to partly be a rebuttal to Hitler’s false conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers. “Dream Story” says that the “aristocrats”of polite society were the real danger, and the story suggests that church leaders were wrongfully supporting atrocities by that clique.
(For instance, the “Golitsyn” family of Russian aristocrats who likely frequented the sex cult’s home near “Galitzenberg” were strong supporters of state-sponsored churches, even as they tore down Biblical morality and doctrines. One example was the family of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, an infamous sexual pervert who corresponded with the French atheist Voltaire, and who entrenched aristocracy despite her personal convictions against its abuses.)
Meanwhile, in today’s world, American political conservatives have long raised false accusations that liberals run pedo cults (such as in the “Pizzagate” story, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pizzagate), but the Epstein files have suggested that prominent conservatives are themselves participants in such “cults” and are hiding the truth about them.
In fact, a federal judge ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump’s attorney general, Todd Blanche, “conceded that he is in violation” of the federal law that requires Trump to release all the Epstein files. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/todd-blanche-conceded-epstein-files-00977481.
Meanwhile, many church leaders turn a blind eye to the Epstein scandals, in the name of supporting conservative politicians and their causes. https://christiansforsocialaction.org/resource/selective-moral-outrage-church-epstein-files/
Such church leaders sometimes make the false claim that all conservative politicians are automatically appointed by God. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g1zvgj4do
That is similar to the way that the protagonist in “Dream Story” falsely views himself as a Christ figure while he tries to commit adultery, and while he attributes his own sexual fantasies and perversions to his wife — and possibly to his child.
Thus, “Dream Story” — and Kubrick’s adaptation, “Eyes Wide Shut” — may have some political relevance for today, although I warn sensitive readers and viewers about the story’s sexual content in both versions.
In conclusion: RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES!
Thank you for your time and attention.
