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DECODING EYES WIDE SHUT: MOURNING CREATION (FIRST HALF) – Transcript
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- Joe Girard analyzes Eyes Wide Shut through identifying background artworks, recognizing symbol codes, and applying the mirror form.
- Joe Girard explains that the exact middle of the movie occurs at the fourth dismissing pound of the red cloak's staff, dividing the arc and clock patterns.
- Joe Girard connects the 302 code values and variations like EOS to the Greek goddess of the dawn and the Hebrew word boker meaning morning.
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I won't take a minute to ask uh I I don't just support and uh try and help out the those who descent from the ridiculous uh belief of Christianity and the the horrible idea of vicarious redemption in In other words, the idea that by watching another person suffer, an innocent person suffer, that you could be freed not just from your debts or your sins, but your responsibilities,
you could cast your sins on a scapegoat. I don't just oppose that disgusting belief. I oppose the Judaism from which it's plagiarized and the Islam that plagiarizes from it. And I give u publicity and exposure whenever I can to those who were brave enough in old times to oppose this this nightmarish belief.
And one of the great opponents of the of the Islamic totalitarianism in ancient Persia was uh the great Omar Cayam perhaps the greatest poet of old Persia whose rubayat I'm sure is known at least to some of you. And my favorite verse of this uh comes from the Robert Legalian translation and it takes the form of a question. The the quattrin is in the form of a question. It says,
[snorts] "And do you think that unto such as you, a maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew, God gave a secret and denied it me?"
Well, well, what matters it? Believe that, too. Before Ice cream and mass mirror ran away with five years of my life, someone close to me was dying a long slow death by cancer over many years.
One random day texting the same friend who inspired ice cream. I tried to find a metaphor that might capture everything the experience was putting me through. And curiously, it was eyes wide shut that flooded my mind.
Dr. Bill's denial that something has died between he and Alice. His private anger at the thought of her leaving him. How he bargains for a way to return to what was. His depression realizing the failure of his mission not once but twice and his acceptance of the reality of that failure.
I began to wonder, is Cubrick's sex movie really about grief? Two things before we get started. One, I owe a major debt of time saved on this one to the brilliant Julie Karns, whose
analysis probably shaved years off my own work. this time. We don't always reach the same conclusions, but credit is highly deserved to her pioneering work decoding the mind of Cubri. So, as sorry as I am to have kept those of you waiting waiting this long, it would have been a lot longer or a lot less complete without Karns's giant shoulders from which to gaze.
And two, if you haven't seen my other videos, I have three core techniques of analysis you need to know about. Identifying the artworks that appear in his backgrounds can tell us something about the other scenes. Here's Menmore by Christian Cubri, Stanley's wife, hovering over a Christmas tree standing in a ring of presents.
And here's Menmore Towers with this redcloak figure standing in a ring of wrapped up ladies. What's the connection? Let's find out. in part by looking for other recurring symbol codes which can sometimes appear in multiple scenes or sometimes involve every scene. Like how there's two patterns to the way the red cloak dismisses the 11 ritual ladies. The
first four go in this arcing pattern, him going side to side, avoiding the magpie feather lady. But after a brief cutaway from the ritual floor, we return to find that magpie lady has shifted over to the other seven who remain. And now the red cloak is dismissing them one by one in this counterclockwise pattern.
Why? Well, that brings me to the last technique. When viewed forwards and backwards simultaneously, Cubrick's films reveal synchronicities of meaning that would otherwise escape notice. I call this the mirror form. It's similar to the literary technique known as kayastic structure, examples of which are found throughout the Abrahamic holy books. What the mirror form gives us is not a broad up and down of recurring
themes, but a second by second way of comparing opposite sides of the story. The exact middle of the movie is the fourth dismissing pound of the red cloak staff. So, the arc pattern and clock pattern get very neatly divided and reflect over one another.
Seeing them in tandem helps us realize that the third woman ordered to leave has magically returned and will now be the eighth to leave. Might that have something to do with how the mannequin at Rainbow Fashions, first seen in the third position, magically transports into the eighth as Bill and Milich approach the rainbow room? Might her black dress have something to do
with the red coat officer who takes her place in the next shot? And might it all have something to do with the Statue of Liberty, a New York icon that happens to stand at top the world's most famous 11pointed star?
If this doesn't sound like your kind of gem, I thought I should warn you the remainder won't deviate from these three principles. And to any skeptical scullies out there, I'm more on your side than you may realize. Cubric may not be, but I am.
It's true. I've had my hypothesis upended by new discoveries enough times to never feel 100% certain I'm reading the signs right. I wish I was coming to you with every background painting IDed, every symbol language codified, every mirror moment autopsy to completion. But sometimes life is too short not to publish your findings.
If we had to wait for each reality of natural science to be perfectly understood before we spoke about it. I wonder if we'd speak at all. >> >> If The Shining seemed like a chaotic
storm of information, Eyes Wide Shut is almost like chaos itself. The hell of having to explain it in a simple progressive linear sequence is that almost everything about it is easier to process once you know how it connects with the other code groups. Even with my three techniques, even after I felt like I had cracked his other films, I found myself at the start feeling a bit like a
newborn, wondering, is this all going to come together at some point? So, let's start with a relatively simple code group that emerges from Bill's taxi cab license plates. The best way to compare these codes, it turns out, is by looking at the distance between each letter or number in each code.
M is three letters away from P and four is two digits away from six. So 7 M96 and 7P94 make 03 02. The other two combos make these codes.
By the time I was figuring this out, I already had numerous clues involving a 302, but we'll come back to that in a minute. The two odd rides, the seventh and fourth, mark Bill going to check up on the fates of Amanda and Nick, the two people who come up again during his confrontation with Ziggler.
Some will know that when I see number codes like these, I look at what's happening at the corresponding time code in the mirror form. So 241 seconds goes to Bill's HIV reaction across from Alice confessing.
>> He wanted me Even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give up everything.
You you Helena. >> Then 2343 seconds is Bill telling Marian her dead father was who's a very brave man across from him.
Booty calling her 24 hours later. And 302 is one of my favorite overlays actually of Alice downing a flute of champagne.
>> Honey, I desperately need to go to the bathroom. while the bubbles from this bubble gun seem to swirl around inside her. What do these three overlays have in common?
Death would be the big thing, but I think we can be more specific and say it's HIV AIDS. First, we have Bill realizing what a night in Domino might have cost him across from Alice confessing a similar impulse. Then we have Bill actively trying to arrange for just such a transgression across from him in a room with a man who may have died of AIDS with his oxygen tank and IV drip there.
And finally, we have Alice on her urgent mission to prime her mind for the encounter with the Dapper Hungarian. How many of us, fearing a chance encounter with any deadly, easily transmittable disease, have pictured something just like this? the silent violent chemicals swirling around in us like bubbles, a waltz of invisible evil.