"The woman at the orgy who redeemed Bill wasn't Mandy and neither Domino. It was Marion!"
Firstly, it's not an 'orgy' (a term implying a free-for-all, an open, albeit crazy, but democratic socius, clearly not the case here), but a rigidly hierarchical neo-paganist ritual in which the women we see are clearly sex slaves being 'handed out' by a criminal, pseudo-patriarchal thug (Red Cloak, masquerading in a parody of civilized authority) to a bunch of elitist wealthy-corrupt hedonist-capitalist scumbags (like Ziegler and Co, the elite to which dumb Bill is so desperate to follow, copy, emulate, become, even though he doesn't even know this, as with most people).
Secondly. the "Mysterious Woman" (later transpiring to be "Mandy" or Amanda Curran) doesn't 'redeem' Bill, unless you want to believe the Lie that is this pathetic ritual of Power based on sexual antagonisms, on sexism, on the invocation of gender as an excuse for the systematic abuse of half of the human population. It is, obviously (and as even the grotesque Ziegler later confirms) a 'charade', a false semblance, an acting-out simulation, as with our everyday reality, but one with nevertheless lethal consequences, with a dead body, a corpse, a murder victim, yet another casualty of the violently corrupt Somerton elite.
It is simply, rationally, logically, obviously ridiculous to fantasize that the "Mysterious Woman" is empirically Marion or Domino or Alice (regular speculative delusions by viewers of the film, the more paranoid the more vehement in their absurdly ludicrous claims). It's totally nuts to fantasize Marion as a participant at the Somerton madness. Marion is in a state of bereavement, of hysteria after the sudden death of her father (the real reason she anxiously throws herself at 'Doctor' Bill, at his symbolic title, not his empirical reality).
"Marion knew him and she loved him. We saw that planted earlier in the movie. "
Alice, Bill's wife, "knew him and she loved him". Helena, Bill's daughter, "knew him and she loved him", and so on ... maybe they were all Machiavellian, sinister, evil, plotting, conspiratorial, nasty participants in the crazed Somerton hedonist-nihilist rituals that perpetuate consumerist capitalist ideology (ie the ideology - a suicidally destructive one - to which everyone in the current global capitalist economy subscribes while hypocritically denying it). No, Marion wasn't at any deranged Somerton ritual organized by the Zieglers of this world (be they Bill Clintons [Ziegler is a dead ringer for Bill Clinton, and his wife a dead ringer for Hillary Clinton; and their Madison Avenue mansion in the film was actually, historically, the headquarters of the Democratic Club for half a century] or Donald Trumps, or any of those other corrupt corporate capitalists who enjoy oppressing/exploiting everyone and everything).
"Also Bill tries to call her later but her BF answers the phone. This tells us she isn't there."
No, it doesn't tell us that Marion isn't there, but something very different, something very revealing about Bill: Marion's fiancé Carl doesn't know who is calling, treats the call as suspicious (as anyone would who is called out of the blue by some unknown caller), and responds accordingly, claiming that she's not there. Why didn't Bill announce who he was (his formal social-symbolic identification), the family's doctor, when Karl answered the phone? This is what is intriguing: he could simply have said to Karl who he was, that it was Dr Bill calling just to check up on how everyone was. But, revealingly, Bill doesn't do this, doesn't engage at all, instead panicking, retreating, refusing all communication. Why? Because he's not phoning up in his formal role as "Doctor", but as an act of libidinal desperation seeking to avoid or escape all of the pressures now bearing down upon him (the fact that the reality he smugly took for granted is an illusion, the fact that his wife is not a domestic, passive sex-slave, the fact that Bill himself is a slave to the Somerton crowd and the Zieglers of the world but is too stupid to be aware of this insight).
"Domino disappeared supposedly because of HIV."
She didn't 'disappear'. Just because she's not in her flat when Bill pathetically appears with a cake - how absurd is that? - and is instead met by her flat-mate, a fellow college student, Sally, who, clearly by the size of their tiny flat, are reduced to selling themselves for money to 'pay the bills' [ pay the insular-sexist "Bills" of this obscenely corrupt capitalist world), something the film's script makes more explicit [Domino in the script is the daughter of a doctor like Bill, is a college student in huge debt, and has been intimidated into prostitution to pay off her debts by scumbag capitalists like Ziegler, Millich ... and ultimately Bill; a common occurrence, normalized by ideology into being 'ordinary' and 'neutral'].
"Mandy's death is made unclear"
It is made very clear that she died as a result of a drug overdose. How is that 'unclear'? Rather, what is unclear is the CAUSE of her overdose, the possibility that she was drugged by the Somerton crowd (as with Ziegler earlier in his bathroom), gang-raped, and then murdered in the guise of a suicide/overdose.
"to let us believe that she was killed (but it was a drug overdose)."
Killed by a drug overdose (unless you are implying that having a lethal drug overdose does not constitute being killed!!!!).
"Why else would Kubrick put the scene with Marion and her father's death in the movie?"
Because the film is dealing with, portraying, examining, themes that are far removed from the pathetic, petty, myopic, insular idiocies of some stupid bourgeoise modern couple (the self-absorbed, dumb upper-class corrupted Harfords). It is examining not only the nature of the Real (including death, which everyone today treats as a mere 'inconvenience' to be repressed), but the nature of Power, Sexuality, Identity, Intimacy, and of how they not only influence subjectivity (and undermine as much as reinforcing it) but of how they are determined by such external forces as Capitalism, money, credit, social-symbolic position, etc.
That scene in Marion's father's bedroom (compare/contrast this scene with the ending bedroom scene in Kubrick's previous "2001") is the beginning of Bill's subjective unravelling (and the audience's), is hugely symbolic/metaphoric (the death of patriarchy in contemporary society: we live in a post-patriarchal world, capitalism having destroyed all fixed social structures, now escalating even further). It reveals Bill's inability to deal with the Real of Desire, his wife's desires ("how dare she have desires of her own!"), other's desires, of being excluded from their desires (hence his chasing after prostitutes/models, women who restore for Bill their role in his traditional male libidinal economy, as passive, obedient, sex-slaves and trophy wives devoid of all Desire), and later again his exclusion from the Desire Space of the corrupt Somerton elite - an elite that Bill wanted to secretly belong to, while pretending to himself that he didn't), an exclusion that totally destitutes him, undermines completely his identity, 'emasculates' him, renders him desperate, helpless, impotent, hence now sexually predatory (notice how he actively chases after women, like Domino/Sally and Marion AFTER Somerton, not before it ...
[to be resumed/continued. LOL]
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avalonsutra-18976
8 years ago
Interesting interpretations, although a bit too heavy on the feminist-inclined side. Also, anal-retentive a little bit? Not capable of inferring the meaning of simple words in my short description?
Please explain to us why Marion suddenly started to kiss Bill and tells him that she wants to be near him and not with her boyfriend, even though she should be grieving about her lost father (an emotion of which she shows preciously few).
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countdown-to-zero
8 years ago
"Interesting interpretations, although a bit too heavy on the feminist-inclined."
No, on the film-inclined side, on the side of Truth, which is what the film is about, what it critically portrays, the truth that everyone represses in order to sustain and conform to the misery of their daily existence.
"Also, anal-retentive a little bit? Not capable of inferring the meaning of simple words in my short description?"
All words are polysemous, have multiple actual/potential meanings and significations. It is those who insist on rigid, fixed, simple-minded meanings of things or words who are anally retentive, who are repressed, who are living in denial.
"Please explain to us why Marion suddenly started to kiss Bill and tells him that she wants to be near him and not with her boyfriend, even though she should be grieving about her lost father (an emotion of which she shows preciously few)."
This is absurd. Did you even watch this scene? Because it appears you are having extreme difficulty comprehending it even at the most basic level, seeking to reverse what is actually happening in this sequence. Marion IS grieving, is totally distraught, anxious, hysterical, the presupposed certainties of her world having totally collapsed, and this is why she throws herself at Bill, to temporarily escape, seek brief refuge from the traumatic horror of the real of death.
You seem to be trying to dictate a reactionary morality here, of how a grieving woman "should" behave (even denying what is actually there on the screen), desiring to demonize her, when it is scum like Ziegler, Milich, the Somerton parasites, and ultimately the smug and corrupt 'doctor' Bill Harford who you OUGHT to be questioning, which is precisely what the film is doing, is what the film is about, what the film is exposing, but viewers, as the film explicitly demonstrates on multiple levels, even in its title, have their eyes wilfully 'wide shut' to the truth about themselves and the fictionally constructed world/reality they falsely reside in.
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Barbed_Wire_Strawberry
8 years ago
She was about to be married - in typical custom 'given away'. Bad time psychologically for her father to die - and no mention of Marion's mother if I recall. Marion's husband to be is taller doppelganger of Bill, who is now questioning the nature of his marriage (his wife said that having sex with a guy she was attracted to once would be throwing her life away - that means Bill and daughter and home etc) - the marital dilemma is shown to have sexual as well as social/economic implications.
Many situations in the film mirror each other. The scene sets the tone for the rest of the film. Watch the way Bill enters and then the way Carl enters, the shots are mirrored. The colours are also a clue in making associations between characters, settings, scenes, motifs etc. Something about Bill and Alice's relationship (relationships in general, relationships relative to society) is being mirrored with Marion, Carl and dead father (house servant too).
Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride
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virics
8 years ago
I won't comment on this theory of yours, but you, sir, have made my day with this comment.
My favorite part is "anal-retentive". Great choice of words.
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