[khlzhqax] Eyes Wide Shut

Thoughts on how to interpret the movie:

Filmmaking as art: the movie (adapted from Traumnovelle "Dream Story") is simply a demo reel of doing a dream sequence (possibly) better than had ever been done before, realistically capturing the experience of being in a dream through filmmaking techniques, including acting.  Other filmmakers are encouraged to copy.

However, if you want to realistically experience what it's like to dream, you could just dream.  Maybe the movie is useful to describe dreaming to someone, some entity, who doesn't dream.  Or for people who no longer have "normal" dreams.  Or for people who never remember their dreams, not even their sensation.

Everything else, the plot, all the pretty actors, the sex, was merely a financial necessity to get investors to fund making the demo reel.

Alternative interpretations:

A movie is better than a dream because you can't control your dreams, but a movie you can rewatch and it'll be the same each time.  However, if one wanted to film an experience enjoyable to rewatch whenever you want, one could easily do better than Eyes Wide Shut.  It doesn't even have to be a dream sequence.

Maybe it's a story about sex parties among the elite, or sex parties in general.  However, it's not a very good story, because it mostly doesn't appear that the elite are having much fun.  Even if it's a different kink than the movie viewer's, standard tropes could have conveyed that the characters are enjoying themselves.

Maybe it had to look not fun to get it past the censors.  It's ironic that it's not the nudity or sex that got censored, but the fun.  Because people having fun having sex is straight up pornography.

Maybe it's inspired by a reality of sex parties among the elite not actually being that much fun.  However, such a story could also have been told better, e.g., foreshadowing of something else not being as fun as expected, or more reactions afterward of disappointment.  It would also need to explain the logic of, why do them, why attend them, if they aren't fun?

Maybe it's one man's experience of attending a sex party and not having much fun, projecting, as unreliable narrator, his not-fun experience onto everyone else not having fun either.  But similarly to previous, this could have been foreshadowed by the protagonist earlier not having fun.

Maybe it's a story that being elite in general is not actually much fun.  However, such a story could also have been told better, perhaps following different characters in different classes in parallel, seeing them all similarly not have fun, or even the lower classes having more fun (e.g., Titanic).

The pizzagater conspiracy theorists say the movie was an expose on child prostitution among the elite.  However, such a story could easily have been told better, if only to not get Kubrick assassinated: for example, make it a movie about child prostitution along the elite in ancient Rome or other fantasy world.  Also, as evidenced by R. Kelly, realistically documenting child prostitution requires documenting the enablers and the complicated social power structures that allow it to happen and be kept hidden (all of which could have been depicted in a story taking place in ancient Rome).