Eyes Wide Shut & Dream Story

there is an abundance of colourful lights and lavishly decorated trees in every home, shop, bar, and workplace. On a taxi ride, even ordinary street lights look like chains of festive lights.   Bill is less sympathetic on screen than Fridolin is on the page, and there is friction between him and Alice even before she confesses her fantasy (at his request).   The film is remarkably unerotic, despite plenty of nudity and brief glimpses of group sex.   But the most profound difference is that the film lacks the hypnotic, dreamy, enchanted aura of the book. This is partly because all Bill's adventures are unquestionably real, and hers unquestionably imagined. It lacks the subtle blurring of reality that is so distinctive in the book, though it indirectly acknowledges the possibility in the final scene, when they paraphrase several lines from the book. The realism of Bill’s exploits are partly because you see them on screen (without the visual or musical mist used for Alice’s), and also because there’s a new character, Ziegler, who connects many of the otherwise disjointed people and events.  There is sensual menace, though, at the secret society’s party, which is more of a mystical cult than I pictured from the book. Cold stone interiors, sinister masks, and a total lack of the festive gew-gaws that are ubiquitous in the rest of the film, collude to raise the pulse and seal the fear.

Books like eyes wide shut & dream story

eyes wide shut & dream story

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