Amazing thematic telephoto effect in EWS

[Jeff Bernstein]

Since 1999, I have watched EWS something like 300, 400 times. My Notes on Eyes Wide Shut, written in autumn 1999, demonstrated that my mind was in close synchronization with the film. But (and call me a slow learner), it took until earlier today for me to notice something . . . mind-bendingly amazing.

 

Back in 1999, in my Notes on Eyes Wide Shut, I wrote about the “Rainbow Dots Motif” : those shots of EWS (few in number) with multicolored Christmas lights blurry in the background (telephoto effect) to visualize characterological interiority and to convey something thematic. Two examples follow: the final shot of the Marion sequence (the dots convey her “upset”); and Dr. Bill in the Sonata Cafe saying, “You’re a long way from home.”

 

In the last shot of the daytime Somerton gate scene, in the right third of the screen, the trees in the background, due to the telephoto effect, are generating the “Rainbow Dots Motif” : the dots are moving, not frozen as in a jpeg : they are mutating (recalling Seneca’s “obscura nutat silva”), wavering like a man’s mind mystified : an effect similar to the wavering effect in Fassbinder’s Angst vor der Angst (1975), but, here, in the background.

 

Jeffrey Scott Bernstein

17 August 2022

 

http://www.jeffreyscottbernstein.com/kubrick/

https://www.odysseyandiliad.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1gwmjlmRJ0oYjhutHquRzQ/featured

 

[David Sekanina]

1 hour ago, Jeff Bernstein said:

Since 1999, I have watched EWS something like 300, 400 times.

The longer you search for meaning in something, the more "patterns" you start to see, that aren't really there. Similar to some people over-analyzing the Zapruder footage and finding new silhouettes etc...

But I could be wrong - as long as you're having fun doing it, great ?

[Jeff Bernstein]

An artwork has a theoretically infinite number of significations, depending on the time one devotes to it. Yes, a Story, a type of artwork, must have a Foundation : a foundation simple enough so that the audience “has no doubt in their minds” moment by moment of what is generally going on. But that is only a start.

 

A participant is not a viewer, not a watcher, but a maker of meaning beyond the Simple Foundation. The more concentration, the sharper the thought, the more multitudinous the understanding = the more powerful the Being.

Art is Freedom. And if your thoughts are interesting to others : "fine, wonderful, marvellous." (Brazil)

 

But why do I have to tell you this?

[David Sekanina]

13 hours ago, Jeff Bernstein said:

But why do I have to tell you this?

I don't know. Maybe because you watched 'Eyes Wide Shut' 300 to 400 times?

[Uli Meyer]

Planet Earth?