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The "haunting" effects of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut can be identified as creating curiosity, fear and anxiety in the viewer. They can be understood as painting a mosaic of symbolism in the viewer's eye, and as depositing fragments of concepts inside his mind. The film's slow pace seems to open wide gaps between the joints of the story's framework, causing the viewer to lose his secure sense of balance during the progression of the …

…ate the reality of the masked cult as both an explainable and controlled operation and as an omniscient force independent of its players. An exercise in both banal and complex themes and situations, Eyes Wide Shut promises to engage the viewer in an exploration of a variety of elements; elements which are commonly used in cinema but which, through Kubrick's careful and sensitive appropriation, have gained new meanings along the motions of his artistic process.