Kubrick
DESCRIPTION:
The rediscovery of “Eyes Wide Shut” in the wake of the Epstein case casts Kubrick as a prophet of criminal elites. The discourse surrounding Kubrick and Epstein itself, however, is symptomatic of a culture that represses the impunity of the elite.
Kubrick’s final warning? Eyes Wide Shut, Epstein and the politics of turning a blind eye
The rediscovery of Eyes Wide Shut in the wake of the Epstein case has given rise to a familiar refrain: Stanley Kubrick’s final film was a ‘warning’ about the world of Epstein, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones and similar elite circles. In this discourse, the masked orgy in Somerton is no longer a dreamlike allegory but becomes a coded documentation of real power. Both the film and Kubrick’s sudden death are retrospectively placed within the same narrative as the Epstein files: a story of forbidden knowledge, the impunity of the elite, and the silence of those who reveal too much.
Rather than asking whether Kubrick ‘knew about Epstein’, the Kubrick-Epstein discourse itself is a symptom. The very claim that Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick’s ‘final warning’ says less about Kubrick’s secret contacts than it does about a society that is trying, far too late, to come to terms with the link between sexual crimes committed by the elite and structural impunity. The film does not predict the Epstein affair; it formalises a power structure that later becomes reality in the affair. The uncanny similarity between the two is the result of this shared structure, not of hidden biographical connections.
Three levels of meaning
The first step is to distinguish between what belongs to Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle (1926), what belongs to documented historical traditions, and what belongs to Kubrick’s own allegorical construction.
Schnitzler’s preceding architecture
The elements that most inspire conspiracy theories – the masked secret society, the woman who sacrifices herself to protect the intruder, the dead woman in the mortuary, the password-protected entrance – are all already present in Schnitzler’s novella. Fridolin infiltrates an aristocratic masked orgy; a woman sacrifices herself to protect him; later, in the mortuary, he finds a female corpse whom he believes to be his saviour; access to the ball is controlled by a password (‘Denmark’).
These narrative elements predate the Rothschild Surrealist balls, the Bohemian Grove videos and the Epstein scandal by decades. Any interpretation that treats the masked orgy as Kubrick’s direct reference to specific events of the late 20th century must therefore either ignore Schnitzler or make the implausible claim that Schnitzler himself had already encoded these events. The more plausible hypothesis is that Schnitzler captured a recurring pattern: an aristocratic sexual economy centred on secrecy, exclusion and the devaluation of women as interchangeable objects.
Historical and esoteric references
Kubrick and his team add several historically verifiable elements to this Schnitzlerian foundation. Three of these, in particular, demonstrate a high degree of documentary reliability.
• Venetian carnival masks: The orgy masks are unmistakably Venetian in design, as confirmed by costume designer Marit Allen. Historically, the bauta served as a symbol of transgression, allowing the city’s nobility, clergy and citizens to indulge in debauchery, commit adultery and seek same-sex encounters under the cloak of anonymity. Kubrick employs precisely this social logic: masks as a symbol of the elite’s decadent, consequence-free lifestyle.
• Reversed Orthodox Liturgy: Jocelyn Pook’s Masked Ball is based on a recording of a Romanian Orthodox liturgy played backwards, a compositional choice that is documented as a deliberate reversal. The use of sacred texts played backwards as a sign of sacrilege has a long history in Western esotericism. Kubrick’s use of this technique follows in this tradition, without becoming a documentary record of an actual black mass.
• Hierarchical dress code: The Somerton ceremony combines the hierarchical robes and ritual circumambulation of the Golden Dawn and the O.T.O., the spectacle of ‘Hellfire’-style clubs, and the processional conventions of Bohemian Grove’s ‘Cremation of Care’. Domhoff and Weiss describe Grove rites featuring hooded robes, a high-priest figure, and a central statue, and these elements clearly shape Kubrick’s visual construction without reducing it to a Grove report.
In any case, Kubrick does not simply make things up. He combines historically documented forms to create a single, condensed image of an elitist ritual.
Kubrick’s own allegorical systems
There is also what the comparative matrix identifies as the ‘original Kubrick allegory’: visual systems without a direct occult precursor, designed to articulate a social and psychological critique.
• Christmas lights as the Imaginary: Dimmed Christmas tree lights bathe almost every interior – Ziegler’s party, the Harford flat, Domino’s room – in a warm, colourful glow, whilst Somerton is the only interior where they are absent. The lights function as a visualisation of the Lacanian imaginary: the projection screen of consumerist desire that promises jouissance but fails to deliver.
• Colour theory: Red is systematically associated with sex and danger, blue with money and alienation. This is not taken from some esoteric handbook; it is Kubrick’s own social semiotics, in which sexuality and financial power are encoded as two opposing poles.
• Ziegler as the Master: Victor Ziegler is a character invented by Raphael and Kubrick, for whom there is no counterpart in Schnitzler’s work. His monologue in the billiard room embodies the Master’s discourse: he frames the reality of violence within a narrative and, at the same time, implicitly reminds Bill of what is at stake for his family.
The film’s warning lies here: in Kubrick’s characterisation of late-capitalist power as a structure that transforms sexuality into a commodity and secrecy into symbolic capital.
From allegory to coded documentary
In light of this multi-layered construction, the Kubrick-Epstein discourse can be understood as the process through which an allegory of power is reinterpreted as a veiled documentary.
Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, Epstein
A line of reasoning that has now become commonplace goes as follows: Somerton equals Bohemian Grove equals Skull and Bones equals Epstein’s island. The key elements are formal similarity, the logic of blackmail, and retrospective confirmation.
Firstly, Alex Jones’s covert footage of the Bohemians’ ‘Cremation of Care’ shows hooded figures, a high priest, an owl, and a ritual taking place on the lakeshore. The formal similarity to Somerton is striking enough to suggest that Kubrick must have had direct knowledge of it. Secondly, reports on Skull and Bones and similar societies describe compromising initiation rites, mutual surveillance and sexualised rituals, which the discourse then treats as the hidden model for Ziegler’s world. Thirdly, Epstein’s documented practices – grooming, the commodification of young women, systematic influence, and spatial staging through elite estates – can be applied almost seamlessly to the structure of Somerton.
What this chain of associations overlooks is the Schnitzlerian dimension and the composite nature of Kubrick’s ceremonial imagery. The parallels with Epstein are undeniable, but they lie on a formal level, not that of personal acquaintance.
Total intentionality and the suppression of structure
Conspiracy literature operates based on what The Matrix refers to as the ‘unrestricted intent of the author’. Every detail, from the faces of the extras to names and props, is treated as deliberate code. This approach leaves no room for chance, shared cultural references, or a composite construction. A Venetian mask resembling one worn at an elite party, or a prop that overlaps with later elite networks, must serve as proof of insider knowledge rather than evidence of recurring aesthetics among elites.
The paradox is that this over-interpretation actually limits the film’s significance. Instead of asking what the film says about the nature of the elite’s secrecy, it narrows the question down to which specific names, houses or networks Kubrick is supposedly said to have alluded to. The more productive question is surely what the film says about power – something that no single individual could fully know, yet which it nevertheless portrays with formal precision.
Après-coup and retroactive prophecy
The psychoanalytic concept of après-coup is particularly useful here. In the light of later events, earlier content takes on a new meaning retrospectively. The Epstein files function in exactly this way about Eyes Wide Shut. They reveal that a structure that was once regarded as dreamlike or surreal was, in fact, socially legible all along, albeit excluded from collective knowledge.
From an implausible dream to a realistic diagram
When Eyes Wide Shut was released in 1999, many critics dismissed the Somerton orgy as unrealistic, sterile or aesthetically over-controlled. Žižek’s description of it as ‘ridiculously aseptic’ sums up this early reaction well. According to Epstein, however, this same aesthetic coldness now appears realistically: power organises sex not as authenticity, but as ritualised dominance, control and immunity.
The viewer thus experiences a double shock. Firstly, the realisation that the film presented a blueprint of a world that was only publicly acknowledged much later. Secondly, the realisation that this earlier blueprint did not alter the social order; it was absorbed, misinterpreted and forgotten. The Kubrick-Epstein discourse emerges precisely at this point, as an attempt to rebrand the earlier encounter with Somerton as a ‘warning’ that, whilst present, went unnoticed.
Denial and the image of the murdered whistleblower
In the realm of the imagination, the figure of the murdered whistleblower plays a stabilising role. If Kubrick was killed because he revealed too much, and the film was altered after his death, then the subject can cling to the conviction that the truth was concealed from him and violently suppressed.
The production records do not support this claim. The comparison matrix, based on Kolker and Abrams, Nigel Galt, and Jan Harlan, shows that the documented post-production changes were minor and routine and refutes the theory of major ‘missing scenes’. Nevertheless, the rumour persists because it allows for a form of denial: it enables one to hold simultaneously to the truth of the film and to the impossibility of social change, by imagining that the crucial revelation was withheld.
Political Gnosis without Conspiracy
Arthur Versluis’ concept of ‘political gnosis’ offers a more precise framework than both debunking and conspiratorial confirmation. The film reveals that behind the façade of wealth and glamour lies an initiatory structure that transforms power into spectacle and sexuality into a commodity, without naming a single organisation.
Structural revelation
The film’s symbolic system operates on three levels that cannot be reduced to one another: documented historical elements, original Kubrick allegories, and content borrowed from Schnitzler. Conspiracy discourse reduces these levels to the single thesis that Kubrick depicts a genuine ritual of a genuine conspiracy. An open interpretation keeps the levels distinct and thus explains more: it acknowledges that the film uses recognisable ceremonial forms to reveal a structure that recurs across elites and eras, including, but not limited to, Epstein’s circle.
Subject positions according to Epstein
According to Epstein, three main positions can be identified in the discussion surrounding the film.
• A paranoid one: believes that the film has finally been deciphered and that hidden abuses of power have been exposed.
• A depressive one: believes that Kubrick spoke the truth, was silenced, and that nothing more can be done about it now.
• The divided subject implied by the film itself: someone who catches only a fleeting glimpse of the reality of power, is put off by it, and returns to the imaginary cycles of family, money and consumption, without ever gaining full understanding.
It is this third position that the film adopts and which conspiracy discourse seeks to avoid. To see with eyes wide shut means grasping structure through imagination, without there being any sovereign vantage point outside that structure.
Conclusion
If Eyes Wide Shut is a warning, it is not primarily a warning about Epstein as an individual. It is a warning about a social structure: the organisation of elitist secrecy, sexual commodification and impunity, about the fascination this exerts on those excluded from it; and about the ease with which criticism of that structure is transformed into a personalised myth.
The Kubrick-Epstein debate is symptomatic. It articulates, in a distorted yet illuminating way, a society’s belated realisation that criminality amongst the elite was never as unlikely as liberal common sense would have us believe. The real scandal in Eyes Wide Shut is not that Kubrick secretly documented a hidden circle, but that the film portrays a general power structure so clearly that subsequent events suddenly make it seem like a documentary.
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