Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is the acclaimed director’s final film. But the movie is much more than that. It is a slow-burning fever dream that dares you to set everything aside and decode it. Dropped into theaters just days after Kubrick’s death, the film feels like a final provocation — a puzzle-box of sex, secrecy, and suburban dread that refuses to resolve cleanly. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story, it finds Kubrick trading fin-de-siècle Vienna for a chilly, late-’90s Manhattan, where desire is constantly simmering beneath the surface of every polished surface and Christmas light.
At the center of it all are Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, then Hollywood’s golden couple, playing Bill and Alice Harford. They are a well-heeled pair whose marriage begins to unravel after a single, offhand confession. What follows is a descent (or maybe an ascent?) into a world of masked rituals, unspoken rules, and erotic power plays. Cruise’s Bill stumbles through it all like a man half-asleep, chasing fantasies he doesn’t fully understand and barely survives.
And then there’s that ending. And it is cryptic, abrupt, and endlessly debated. Was it all a dream? Who’s really pulling the strings? And what, exactly, does Alice mean when she says they need to “f**k”? Kubrick doesn’t hand us answers. He leaves us with a question mark — and a mirror. Because Eyes Wide Shut isn’t just about Bill and Alice, it’s about us, watching, wondering, projecting. And maybe that’s the point.
What Happens in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’s Ending?
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But to understand why Kubrick left us all hanging, it helps to take a look at how the film actually ends. After a series of suspicious events and Bill’s surreal plunge into the masked underworld, Ziegler pulls him back to reality and assures him that nothing sinister is afoot. No one’s out to get him. The woman who saved him is dead, yes, but it was just a tragic coincidence. Or so Ziegler says. Whether you buy that explanation or not, Bill returns home shaken, guilt-ridden, and finally honest. He confesses everything to Alice (or at least everything he understands) and begs for a fresh start.
It’s a resolution of sorts because the film loops back to where it began, and yet, everything feels altered. The danger may be gone, but it still feels unsettling. Kubrick’s ending doesn’t tie things up; instead, it peels them open. On one level, it closes the book on Bill’s misadventure. On the other hand, it exposes the raw nerves of marriage. The fantasies we hide, the truths we dodge, the roles we perform. The final scene is a dare: to look closer at Milich, Mandy, the Red Cloak, and maybe even ourselves.
What’s the Purpose of Milich in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’?
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A lot of what happens in the first hour of Eyes Wide Shut only pays off in the film’s final moments, and even some of the longer sequences can only be understood when looking carefully beyond the surface. The whole scene at Milich’s shop is awkward and disjointed, adding hints of humor while simultaneously building tension toward something unsettling. At some point, Milich finds his underage daughter engaged in sexual activity with two older men in the back of the shop. He becomes hysterical and threatens to call the police. On the other hand, his daughter calmly holds tightly to Bill and whispers that he should “have a cloak lined with ermine.”
The words whispered by Milich’s daughter suggest she knows Bill’s destination, which fits perfectly with the movie’s mystical atmosphere. While it’s difficult to jump to conclusions, the scene in which Bill returns his costume to Milich makes it all the more obvious. Milich’s daughter shows up in underwear alongside the same two men from before. This time, Milich is not only completely nonchalant about it, but also offers his daughter to Bill. This scene suggests that Milich is now aware of Bill’s activities in the secret society, which changes his attitude toward Bill, letting his mask fall and revealing his true wicked nature.
Who Was the Masked Woman That Helped Bill?
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At the beginning of Eyes Wide Shut, a young woman, Mandy, with whom Ziegler was having an affair, overdoses in his room, and Dr. Bill is assigned to assist her. The incident isn’t discussed again until Bill infiltrates the masked orgy his buddy Nick mentioned. When people immediately perceive him as an outsider, a mysterious masked woman warns Bill he’s in great danger and must leave as soon as he can. It’s unclear how the woman and the rest of the group identified Bill as an intruder so easily, but the cab driver left waiting outside is one of the most obvious clues.
When Bill is summoned by a man in a red cloak and judged before the whole group, the masked woman steps forward and offers to be punished in Bill’s place. The woman in question turns out to be Mandy, whom Bill helped in Ziegler’s room. When he hears of her death by overdose the day after the secret meeting, Bill immediately suspects she really did sacrifice her life in exchange for his.
Mandy’s death becomes one of the movie’s unsolved mysteries. While Ziegler later calls Mandy a “junkie” and claims that she had it coming, it’s difficult not to suspect that there’s something darker about his masked sexual encounters. The whole ritualistic aspect of the secret meeting indicates that something out of an ordinary orgy was going on in there, and he might have been responsible for Mandy’s death.
Who Was the Red Cloak?
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The true identity of the Red Cloak figure, supposedly the leader of the secret meeting, isn’t revealed, and doesn’t quite impact the overall story. The audience might be inclined to focus on the masked group rather than on Eyes Wide Shut’s true conflict: Bill’s obsession and his marriage to Alice. However, there’s no denying that this meandering in the story was Kubrick’s purpose: he intentionally inserted a distressing twist in the middle to disorient both Bill and the audience. But the beauty of it is precisely how it all comes down again to the simple things in the end.
Regardless of the ending’s true intention, it’s reasonable to speculate that Ziegler might be the Red Cloak. At the end of the day, his manipulative manners, obscured by his nonchalant discourse, make it clear how comfortable he is behind a mask. Ziegler insists that Bill doesn’t arouse suspicion towards what he’s seen, but can’t hide his anger towards Nick and Mandy, indicating that Nick might not only have been beaten but was actually killed, just like Mandy.
The True Meaning of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
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In short, Eyes Wide Shut is a movie that redefines loving relationships from an unorthodox standpoint. The decision to tell this story from Bill’s point of view is highly effective because his obsessive need to fulfill his desire and patch up his pride perfectly exposes the true nature of fragile masculinity. The scene in which Alice and Bill argue about Ziegler’s party sums up everything. While Alice discusses jealousy from a pragmatic perspective, Bill is quick to dismiss her speculations as unfounded fantasies or stoner assumptions. However, when she opens up about her own fantasies, Bill is triggered by an unrelenting blow to his ego.
Eyes Wide Shut analyzes the decaying piles that support the structure of marriage and anonymity in a patriarchal society. Mandy embodies how women are often far more exposed than men, even when in the same circumstances. The masks suggest that even the most earnest relationships can’t survive without a few secrets. Neither demonizing what monogamy stands for nor defending its conservative constraints, the movie addresses the topic of ideal matrimonous life with a somewhat satirical approach, especially after Bill’s many failed attempts to cheat on his wife brings him to a dangerous masked orgy with nefarious consequences, let alone how close he came to contracting HIV from a sex worker, something that would have affected not only him but also Alice.
By committing to marriage, Bill’s life is no longer solely his own, which is why he breaks down when he finds the mask next to Alice’s pillow. That’s the pivotal moment he realizes how close he got to destroying the life he built. In the final scene, Alice formally tells Bill they have something very important to do: unify their fragmented selves and become two once again. Eyes Wide Shut is available to rent on Google Play and Apple TV.
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Release Date
July 16, 1999
Runtime
159 minutes
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