Eyes Wide Shut

　

Before I came to Austin, Minnesota, I had never attended a movie screened for me alone. Even obscure foreign films that I saw at the University always had other viewers, at least twenty or more people in the audience. One year, I saw ten silent films from the German expressionist period. Those pictures were shown in the basement of the Lutheran Student Center on campus and there were always at least a dozen disciples gathered to watch the dim 16 mm prints clawed through the old projector. But, in Austin, it’s different: the Cineplex is located at the end of a mall that has failed and empty storefronts stretch into the distance lining the arcade littered with advertising and commercial parapheranalia dragged out of the abandoned shops and, at the remote end of the shopping center, beyond the wrecked food court, there is a Younkers, an outlet of an Iowa department store favored by middle-aged school-teachers and elderly women, the only other business surviving in the place. Most of the parking lot is ruinous, but lanes have been preserved against the general fissure and fracture of the old asphalt between the Cineplex end of the mall and the Younkers at its antipodes. Some parking spaces not too badly potholed survive at the exterior door to Younkers and there are twenty or so spaces, white lines badly abraded occupying a hollow place in the shattered prairie of the lot adjacent to the movie theater. Those twenty parking spaces are almost always vacant. You can enter the mall through a Shopko sutured to the structure and patrons of the theater generally walk through that business to shoplift candy and cans of pop to smuggle into the theater and so must of the theater’s customers park their cars in front of that store.

On many occasions, I have come to the movie, bought my ticket, and, then, sat alone in the theater to watch the film. The first time this happened, I felt privileged, as if I were a rich man attending a private screening in my mansion. But, later, the experience seemed depressing to me, melancholy and lonely. The individual theaters in the Cineplex are relatively new, but the ceilings leak and there is a pervasive odor of mildew and dank, decomposing butter, remnants of popcorn caught, I suppose, in the carpet or under the seats. A fat woman, the manager of the place, sits in her humid office under posters of horror movies, her door open into the empty lobby of the Cineplex where a morose girl plays the triple role of cashier, ticket-taker, and concession attendant. Sometimes, the girl selling tickets and popcorn shouts to the fat woman who calls back to her. Movie posters under glass line the lobby and, in the rest room, one of the urinals is always webbed with tape to prevent it from being used. The drinking fountain doesn’t flow so much as it spits gobs of water upward and the theaters are porous to the sounds from the adjacent screening rooms – in the middle of a love scene, you can hear colossal explosions occurring in the theater next-door. There is a never a line of people waiting to buy tickets. The only time that there is any delay in acquiring a ticket and entering the theater is when a local group home has brought its residents out for a matinee; in that case, a half-dozen or so wheelchairs with people slumped in them, silent with heads lolling onto their shoulders, wait to wheeled into the show.

One night in 1999, I went to the theater alone to see Eyes Wide Shut. I was drinking heavily in those days and so my pockets tinkled with little airplane bottles of whiskey and vodka. It was November and the weather was unsettled: earlier in the day, it had been warm and bright, but a cold front was advancing across the plains and the icy fog lingered in intersections, dull rays of sleet falling sometimes. The sleet was mixed with rain and sodden snowflakes and, although it didn’t seem capable of surviving on the roadways, the grass in the medians was dusted white and some of the rooftops seemed pale with an accumulation of ice. I noticed that the ragged lane leading from the fast food places on the boulevard to the twenty space hollow in the mall lot was slippery and my windshield wipers batted snowflakes away as they plunged onto the glass in front of me. It can be dangerous to park your car in the hollow when rain is predicted. The area flash floods and I have seen vehicles parked there literally floating in an ephemeral and filthy lagoon of water formed after a thunderstorm. But this night, the sleet didn’t seem sufficiently intense to warrant any concern and so I zigzagged around the potholes and put my car under an old, corroded lamp that had once provided light to this part of the lot but which was now lifeless and dark. When I exited my car, I hear strange sounds far away on the horizon, perhaps, a tremor of thunder, and trucks on the freeway a mile away made booming sounds as they bounced over defects in the concrete.

To my surprise, twenty or so people, mostly couples with small children were loitering around the entrance to the Cineplex. Toddlers were crying and I could smell a dirty diaper. The adults looked indignant and were conferring with one another. The fat woman was standing at the edge of the lobby. As I bought my ticket to the Kubrick film, I heard her telling an angry mother that the projection print for Toy Story 2 had, indeed, arrived in timely fashion, but the film was damaged and could be not be shown. A placard mounted on a stainless steel stanchion stood a half-dozen feet in front of the cashier’s station: a hand-lettered sign read: Toy Story 2 will not be shown tonight because of technical problems. Your patience is appreciated.

I bought a soft-drink for an outrageous price. I needed ice and soda to mix with my booze. The theater where Eyes Wide Shut was going to be shown was at the end of the carpeted corridor leading among the screening rooms. The farther down that hallway that I walked the darker it seemed and the stronger the odor of mildew and rotting butter. Something was wrong with the ventilation system and the air smelled untreated and swampy, like the exhalation from a marsh. As I expected, the theater was completely empty. The first seat that I selected in the exact center of the screening room was broken and sagged in an uncomfortable manner under me. I picked a seat nearby and it also seemed to be damaged so I went to the end of the row and sat in that place. The Coming Attractions were projected very dimly and the images seemed to be shown through a veil. The poor picture quality was, perhaps, related to the fact that the dim amber house-lights were still lit, probably to aid late-comers in locating their seats, but, of course, there were no late-comers – I was completely alone in the theater. The auditorium lights faded away and the red "EXIT" signs over doors that I presumed to be locked or otherwise inaccessible flared into brightness like cigarettes being lit in the dark and, then, the movie began.

Eyes Wide Shut is long and I don’t remember much about it. In the middle of the movie, the whiskey and vodka affected my concentration and, perhaps, I dozed or, at least, became indifferent to what was happening around me. I fumbled for one of the tiny vodka bottles and dropped it on the floor. It rolled forward on the sloping floor toward the screen and the sound that the glass made on the concrete was surprisingly loud and distinct. I stood up from my chair and went forward, following the sound of the rolling bottle and, then, groped among the seats and soggy spilled popcorn until I fished the bottle out from the crack where it had come to rest. I turned to go back to my seat and, then, saw that I was not alone in the theater. Apparently, when I had been inattentive, some people had arrived and taken seats in a place a half-dozen rows behind me. I was surprised, even a little alarmed. I thought that I had been completely alone in the theater and, certainly, had not noticed their entrance into the screening room and it seemed odd to me that they had come into the show when it half over.

As I made my way back to my seat, concealing the vodka bottle in my fist, I looked at the newcomers. At first, I couldn’t see them at all. The images on the screen were nocturnal and so there was insufficient light reflected back into the auditorium to illuminate them. The new arrivals seemed to be a family – I saw four shadows hunched in the darkness, their heads at various heights: two parents and two smaller children. I wondered why they had come to this movie. Eyes Wide Shut is not exactly a family picture and I supposed that they were baffled and appalled at what they saw.

Something happened on the screen to release a glimmer of white light and, in that flash, I saw the family clearly enough. A man, who looked like a farmer was seated at the end of aisle, glaring at the screen with a fixed, indignant stare. A woman with slumped shoulders and her eyes averted from the movie sat beside him. She was gripping the back of the empty seat in front of her as if she were riding on a roller coaster at an amusement park. Two small children leaned forward to watch the movie: their eyes were wide open and unblinking. The light reflected back onto the family was white and gave them a waxy, marble pallor. The man’s eyes and those of the two children seemed to be looking without seeing; there was something unfocused and dull about their gaze. The woman was shivering as if with cold and I could see her shoulders twitching slightly. They must have just come in from the cold outside because I inhaled a wet, icy chill from their plain clothing.

Of course, it was the wrong movie for this family to be watching and I felt that I should, perhaps, remonstrate with them or make an explanation or apology at least. No, no, you don’t want to see this movie...you won’t understand it and the images will only puzzle and anger you and there will nudity and sex scenes for which you will have to stammer explanations to your offspring and the whole thing will simply be a bad experience, an unfortunate attempt at a family outing that has gone terribly wrong. I sat down with these thoughts in my mind and poured the vodka from the bottle into my mostly empty cup of soda pop and melting ice and, although I strained my ears to hear, not a sound came from that family seated behind me, not a whisper or, even, a breath. They were completely still and their silence was so dramatic and formidable that it frightened me – how could they be sitting so completely motionless, like pale, white statues in the darkness? I didn’t try to glance over my shoulder at them, but, as the action in the film became increasingly erotic and explicit, I was worried for their sake and embarrassed also and I blamed the ticket-taker or the fat manager for accepting their money and letting them in to see this movie which was, after all, manifestly inappropriate for family viewing. At last, I shifted in my seat, and, as an orgy was underway on screen, turned my head to glance back at them. To my relief, the family was gone. They had slipped out of the theater just as silently as they had entered. The seats behind me were all vacant and dark.

The next day, I saw a headline in the local newspaper that read: FAMILY OF FOUR KILLED IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT. The story explained that a husband and wife with their two children had left their farm in the country to travel into town to see a movie. Neighbors said that the children were excited about seeing Buzz Lightyear and Woody in Toy Story 2. The country road was slick with fresh-fallen sleet and the man lost control of his pickup truck on the ice. The pickup left the road and toppled into a drainage ditch in full spate and brimming with icy water. The truck was upside down in the mud and water and the family drowned in the ditch.

I’m interested in films and Stanley Kubrick’s last picture, Eyes Wide Shut, is a movie that I would like to see again sober. But I’m afraid to watch the movie. Every time I’ve rented the DVD, I am unable to summon the courage to put the film in the machine. I guess that I’ll have to resign myself to never seeing that movie again.