Keep eyes open to see the symbolism

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Director: Stanley Kubrik


There are many versions of Hinduism and their search for the truth and attainment of blissfulness. The Vaishvanaites seem to think that the conversation between the charioteer and his Master encompasses all questions of life whilst the Shaivaites accept the union of the male and female counterpart of Nature as the way to reach peace. A different group of Tantric followers refer to a time when Shiva is said to be in a carnal embrace with Shakti as bliss. The lustful union of male and female is described as like a serpentine union that arise from the base of the spine to reach its peak as it reaches the brain to give a feeling of complete enlightenment called Kundalini. Interestingly, the medical caduceus uses the picture of a pair of snakes coiled around a twig as a symbol of a human body in perfect health!

The right-sided snake refers to the male component whilst the left is the feminine part. No, said yet another group. The left part refers to forbidden pleasures like flesh, wine and intoxicants. This group include the Aghoris who lead such ascetic lives amongst the dead bodies in Benares, feeding on corpses in the funeral pyre, smoking weed and splurging themselves with ash just as the loner Shiva is sometimes portrayed in certain Puranas!

The scriptures hint that this form of Tantric practices has arisen from the traditional Hindu cultures' peripheral societies, named the outcast and the scorned gravediggers who are accused as dog-eaters. Maybe, the writer of this story, which was actually written with the Viennese upper society in mind, in this film, though, is directed at the higher echelon of the community. He hints that, despite the seemingly aesthetic demure of their lifestyles, they still yearn for the clandestine deviant way of living scorned by modern society.

Star of Ishtar

This Stanley Kubrick's swansong (he died in his sleep five days after the last final cut) is rife with symbolism and discusses matters related to humankind's primal need, the act of procreation. The film is painstakingly slow but is gripping with its dialogue. The words are sometimes poetic, spoken slowly and calculatedly, making the audience second-guess what the next word would be.

Talking about symbolism, it is Christmas time in the movie, but instead of the Star of David on the Christmas tree, we see the 8-pointed Star of Ishtar, a symbol of the Babylonian Goddess of fertility, love and sexuality. She is said to have many lovers and was not too kind to them.

More about tongue-in-the-cheek references got to do with the choices of the characters' names. Bill (Dr William Harford, Tom Cruise) may refer to bills as in the dollar bill implying that money can buy anything and that everything has a price. We repeatedly see how he uses his money to demand services and products, as well as how he flashes his 'doctor card' to organise things. His wife is Alice (like Alice in Wonderland, Nicole Kidman). Like Alice in the classic, she is bored with life and does not know what to do with life. She is an art curator by training but a stay home mum by choice to mind her young daughter.

By virtue of Dr Bill's liaison with elite patients, he and his wife are invited to a grand Christmas party. Slowly the theme of the story unfolds. The seemingly perfect polished aesthetic life is marred with dark secrets as the host is sexually engaged with a young, nearly drug overdosed temptress. All turned out all right. Then Bill meets his old medical school drop-out friend, Nick Nightingale, a pianist. Slowly he is drawn into a spiralling scheme of occult practices and vowed secrecy.

Meanwhile, the bored champagne guzzling Alice is courted by a Hungarian prowler whose name Sandor just happened to the founder of Church of Satan's middle name, Anton Sandor Lavey! Symbolism again.


Later back home, Alice narrates a prior instant when she went all jello for a young naval officer. That starts a dilemma of sorts for the couple as they wonder what actually keeps a couple intact. Is it loyalty to each other based on society made arrangements and rules? Is the social pact a way to clip the primal, animalistic behaviour to kerb the indiscriminate sowing of wild oats? Are the social norms different for the females as they are delegated to caring for offsprings? Are they just to suppress the inner desires and just appear pretty for her husband and the society they live in? Does her role as a lovely object end after getting a good catch as her life is taken care of? Are the education and nurturing imparted to them wasted in that sense? Is having thoughts of sexual fantasy and infidelity equal to adultery? Can it be construed as being disloyal to the spouse? That is when Bill goes astray on a self-discovery voyage over the next couple of days.

We follow Bill's adventure of sexual desires, a secret society with occult practices and how the elites cover their trail of debauchery with wealth and influence. Just like the upper-class Venetian Society in the Italian Renaissance still wanted to join the festivities in the town with a myriad of cultures without exhibiting their identity. Hence, the masked parties were a rave. So, pervasive carnal treachery is not confined to the lower rung members but also in the upper crust, but they manage to conceal their track more quickly.

Interestingly, a Tamil song rendition to create the ambience of a spiritual Tantric practice when the secret society is in session. It seems that verses from the Bhagavadgita were initially intended to form the lyrics but was changed at the last minute.

Something revered as divine by our ancestors as they could not understand its intrinsically incredible powers of release and procreation, it has now evolved to become a pastime. The world has become fixated on it. They have no qualms of recruiting children of those inflicted with poverty and underprivileged to traffic them to satisfy the needs of the haves.

In the end, we come to realise that everything comes with a price. With the news of the mysterious death of a participant of the cult and a character afflicted with HIV and the threat of harm to society, it all seems not worth it.

Like in Freudian suggestion, the world is a balance between Eros and Thanatos. Eros being the life-giving one of love, continuity of life and pro-social action, whilst Thanatos is the destructive force.

Ref: http://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-hidden-and-not-so-hidden-messages-in-stanley-kubricks-eyes-wide-shut-pt-iii/

Eternal peace? Dream on...

Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Producer and Director: Stanley Kubrik

Normally I do not fancy watching combat movies- people (on the enemy line) dying aimlessly but the Americans rarely do, and when they do, it would be a great deal which would beg for revenge! But this one is different! 

It is an anti-war movie that looks at the Vietnam War from a satirical view. It highlights the contradiction of man, the duality of man, just like the main character who wears a 'PEACE' sign on his uniform and the word 'Born to Kill' on his helmet. 

Another trigger happy soldier bears the words 'I am become death' on his helmet, apparently a quote from Bhagavadgita.
The soldiers could not understand why they were fighting for the same people who hate their guts and presence there. The Americans go on a shooting spree targeting farmers, women and children from atop a flying helicopter with no qualms.

The film shows the initial training of soldiers under extreme conditions with the constant harassment of the drillmaster, driving a private insane. He took his own life but not before gunning his master!
The fight scenes were quite intense, brutal, and life-like.

We can all talk all day all night about living in peace and harmony till all the cows come home and go grazing again but it ain't gonna happen!

Will never learn

Dr. Strangelove - or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Director: Stanley Kubrik

A satirical look at the world superpowers who seem more interested in annihilating each other rather than policing the world and living in harmony. The seed of destruction seem to have planted from the time we, Man, either as Adam and Eve or as primordial ancestors started walking this Earth.
This British-American black comedy showcasing the ever versatile Peter Sellers in 3 roles - a bumbling Army officer, a handicapped ex-Nazi German scientist and as the President.

Peter Sellers

The special effects seen here are a pale comparison to what Hollywood and other studios have to offer these days, nevertheless, the film is quite entertaining if you are looking for a different brand of clean dark humour.

A bombshell film of 60s

Lolita (1962)
Director: Stanley Kubrick

Another controversial movie made in the early 60s involving incestuous pubescent love. It is an adaptation of a Russian story. Still, due to the sensitivities of the general public of that era, the screenplay had to be altered significantly, and many scenes were just suggestive dialogues left to the imagination of the viewer.

Humbert Humbert (James Mason) is a European 40 something divorced professor who has some time before starting his stint in the university. He rents a room from a promiscuous widow (Charlotte, Shelly Winters) just because he fancies the precocious teenage daughter (Lolita, Sue Leon). He gets along well with them while writing his book and joining in the family outings. The landlady forthrightly expresses her feelings to our professor while the daughter is sent off to a summer camp.

They marry. An argument breaks out when Charlotte reads his diary. Here, he had written his desires for his stepdaughter and had addressed his wife as a cow and other derogatory terms). Frustrated, she runs out in the rain to be hit by a car, fatally wounding her.

Humbert picks Lolita from the summer camp. Without telling her about her mother's demise, he takes an extended tour to the supposed hospital with suspicious characters (whom he thinks are the cops) following them. They have an incestuous relationship, and finally, he spills the beans about Charlotte's accident.

They move into the university town. He teaches in a university, and she studies in the school nearby. He becomes an over-protective parent and monitors her every move. She, on the other hand, plays truant. When the truth is known, and when Humbert realises that the neighbours are talking about their unusual father-daughter relationship, he takes Lolita on a road trip (for educational purposes).

Along the way, he encounters some suspicious characters. Lolita fell seriously ill and had to be hospitalised. As she gets better, she absconds from the ward and is never found.

Precocious imp

3 years later, Humbert receives a letter from Lolita. She is now married to some guy, pregnant and was broke. Humbert takes a drive there to discover that all the while, he had been taken for a ride as well. The suspicious guy who was following them was her boyfriend (Peter Sellers, like a chameleon in many disguises). After running from the hospital with him, she followed him to Hollywood as he was a play-writer. The role that she was promised turned out to be for 'arty' films. And she left. She was 6 months pregnant and was to start life new in Alaska. Humbert leaves the scene...

The artist value of the film is commendable. Mason, the seasoned player, sets the mood for a broody insecure intellect. We feel pity for Shelley Winter gives a good account of a lady who tries to show her bourgeoisie and how she is laughed at subtly. Peter Sellers must have got the role for Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series after his excellence disguises here. Overall a good film if you are not judgemental of the moral aspects of how the story progresses.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Controversy to alert the masses?

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Director: Stanley Kubrik
Stanley Kubrik is one heck of a director who seem put his hand in many various genre of movies. Just like many of his films, Clockwork Orange received contrasting reviews when it came out, ranging from being a pornography to a stroke of genius. Pretty soon they were in the same level as being a classic.

The story is from Anthony Burgess' 1962 book of the same name.

Alex is a socio-path teenager of a futuristic London who finds sheer pleasure in hanging around a milk bar and going around beating people up just for the kick of it. He plays truant from school and bullies his gang members too.

One day as he and his friends were trying to hoodwink a lady to get into her house, the police is alerted. His gang members double crossed him and Alex ends up in jail alone. As his last victim dies, he is imprisoned for 14 years.

He goes along with his chores in prison as a helper to a pastor. With his help, he manages to be a volunteer in an experimental form of aversion therapy. He is injected with a special anti-sera and is exposed to violent movies. Alex develops intense aversion and reaction to any form of physical and sexual violence.

His remarkable transformation is the proud brainchild of the Ministry and is hailed as the way to reduce congestion in jails. The pastor however is not impressed. He exerts that any change should come from within, not induced by drugs. His argument is steam rolled by the fact that the end result is what that matters.

Alex's prison term is shortened and is released.
He returns home after two and a half years to discover that his room has been rented out to a lodger. The lodger is loved by his parents for he does all the things that Alex, as a son failed to perform. Feeling dejected, he leaves his parents' home.
As he was walking along the streets, he bumps into a drunkard whom he had bashed up before his incarceration. The drunk with his friends give him a sound beating. Lucky for Alex, he is rescued by 2 young policemen. Hold behold, the 2 bobbies turned out to be blokes who were whacked by Alex and his gang earlier!

Again he is taken deep into a jungle and beaten up and left out cold. You see, the effect of the treatment has left him completely defenceless against the cruelty of the real world!

Alex drags his sorry self to a house nearby. But what do you know? Alex had beaten up the occupants of the house too. The man of the house, a writer, has been left a paraplegic as a result of the assault and his wife had succumbed to pneumonia. Alex was confident that he would not be recognised as he was masked during the assault.

His cover, however, was uncovered when he started singing Gene Kelly's 'Singing in the Rain' in the bath - the same song that he was singing during the mayhem.

The writer called in his friends who interviewed Alex, pledging to help him. After discovering that his weakness was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was incorporated into his treatment regime, he lock him up and played the tune repeatedly to drive him to jump through a window.

He miraculously survives the fall with multiple injuries needing prolonged hospital stay. The papers have a field day lambasting the Government for failing in their bid to control man's activity. The government ratings plummets.

The Minister moves in to use Alex in their public relations exercise whilst promising work and perks for life. Alex happily agrees. Only then we realise that the fall had somehow reverted him back to his wayward ways as his dreams are filled with sex and violence again...

Clockwork Orange is described as a social satire ridiculing the society's endeavour to control what is acceptable in a society. It is fine if they just stick to that message. There is no need to have unnecessary irrelevant exposure of flesh and forbidden parts of both  gender. But then, it would not have drawn so much controversy and publicity and it would have just gone down in the annal of history of time as a just another forgettable futuristic film! 

Things better left to Imagination

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Director:Stanley Kubrik
Phew! That is what I told myself. This film is the perfect example how a good quality film just blows your mind. It is not difficult to understand why such an offering with so much of silence, dearth of dialogue and good old Johann Strauss II's Blue Danube orchestral music goes a long way to have an impact to its audience than all the marvel of pyrotechnics and nonsensical exhibition of flesh can do. This 1968 offering has a cult like following and conspiracy theorist have targeted Kubrik (the director and co-screenplay writer with Arthur C Clark) of having a hand to staging the televised screening of the moon landing that never happened!
This flick is indeed a classic with its cinematography far ahead of its time. The story is divided into 4 parts and for a good part of it is left to our imagination. This epic has been the precursor for many sci-fi movies to come after that, eg. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars and many more.
A good 5 minutes is spent on introducing the now legendary music score which is often used to indicate the climax of an event like the announcement of the winner of a competition, with the picture of the Sun emerging behind Earth as seen from space.
The next 15 minutes show how primates learn skills after holding a bone. They learn to hunt and also fight amongst themselves. They see a monolithic structure which emits a strong vibration and probably gives them wisdom. Soon after this, he learns to use a bone as a tool to attack. He throws the long bone in mid air and we are drawn into the next scene... a space ship (?nuclear warhead).
As if to denote evolution of these creatures, we next we see a space ship cruising in outer space to the soothing sounds of the Blue Danube.

Only after 25 minutes, do we hear speech. A flight stewardess struggles to walk the aisle of a commercial plane set-up like space ship in zero gravity environment. The vehicle then reaches its destination. As the passengers alight the craft, the computer verifies them by voice identification.
A US investigator is sent to the Moon Base to investigate some strange occurrences. After much fanfare, the researches reach again a monolithic structure which emits high frequency sounds. The stone is apparently pointing towards Jupiter. Swish...We are into the third story.
A space ship is enroute to planet Jupiter with 2 astronauts, 3 astronauts in suspended hibernation and a known it all computer HAL 9000. The computer (which may have developed emotions) diagnoses that one of their radar may malfunction, so the astronauts go out to investigate. After finding that there is nothing wrong with the structures, the astronauts were 'lip-read' by HAL that he (the computer) was going to be shut down! HAL severs one of the astronaut's oxygen supply and locks out the other. The life support of the hibernating astronauts are terminated.
The remaining astronaut enters the ship via an emergency entrance and manually shuts down HAL. A pre-recorded message reveals the secret about the monolithic structure found on Moon 18 months previously. We then move on to the last story - Jupiter and Beyond Infinity.
The previous astronaut, Bowman, leaves the mother ship in a space pod towards Jupiter. He enters the atmosphere and is drawn into a dizzying kaleidoscopic journey of psychedelic hues into another dimension. He sees himself growing old progressively in a majestic white room with white piano, regal furniture and the works like the one in John Lennon's white room in the music video of Imagine!
He sees the monolithic structure again and he is transformed into a fetus encapsulated in a bubble gazing into planet Earth. The End.
The dearth of dialogue makes one's imagination go wild with interpretation of what is actually shown on the screen. The monolithic structure reminds us of the shivaling (shivalingam), the black stone that allegedly had fallen from the skies to land in Kailash at the foot of Himalayas which gives wisdom to Man. The evolution of Man is depicted (if you believe in the Theory of Evolution) of how from a brainless hominid, he evolved to gain simple living skills, to create Artificial Intelligence (which in turn controlled him!) and to explore beyond the stars. There is also a suggestion of reincarnation...
Maybe I can catch the sequel and learn more secrets..(2010: The Year We Make Contact)