ABSTRACT
Eyes Wide Shut differs from Barry Lyndon in that the principal protagonists can be analysed in ways which do reveal their psychological attributes. It is also possible to show how the minor characters have qualities that are archetypal in nature. The symbol forms the crux of Jungian methods of analysing screen narrative by supplying a strong and supple link carrying two-way traffic between the psyche and the text. Thus Jungian symbols are stimuli distinguished by their capacity to channel unconscious energies and affects which they make available for eventual recognition. Eyes Wide Shut provides promising grounds for a Jungian reading because it plumbs with the lead protagonists the phantasmagoria that populates their own under-explored personalities. Eyes Wide Shut, given the difficulty of its subject and its aesthetic distance was probably on the surface too typically cool a Kubrick project to generate a strong collective response on its release.
