8 Myths in Stanley Kubrick Films Need Your Interpretation

One of my major tasks of February film watching is finishing Stanley Kubrick: Visionary Filmmaker Collection Blu-ray. It has been the best-experienced film month I’ve ever had. Re-visiting those 7 Stanley Kubrick films is more than appreciating the master’s cinema. It is like BEING STANLEY KUBRICK, you know. Like the film Being John Malkovic, enter the brain of one of the most intelligent human-being ever lived on earth, and try to accept and solve those maze-like challenges he threw to us with his films.

Since this is the 2nd or even 3rd time I viewed these films, I noticed more details and raised more questions this time. I’d like to post some of them here. In case you share the same admiration for him and his films as I do, or you happen to have particular affection toward a certain film of his. We can try to interpreter them in our own ways together.

The 8 questions below concern his 3 most mysterious films – 2001:The Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. They are all quite open questions and I would appreciate your participation in the discussions in the comments.

2001:The Space Odyssey

#1 What was the so-called “star child” ? Was it an enhanced super being? Was it the future of mankind as what Stanley Kubrick had predicted?

#2 Do you think computers in the near future can have emotions like HAL in the film and they will be powerful enough to fight against man’s will?

The Shining

#3 Were the ghosts Jack saw in the hotel real or just his imaginations?

#4 Was the people in the photograph at the end of the film the reincarnation of Jack or it meant after he dies, he is ‘absorbed’ back through time into the past of the hotel?

Eyes Wide Shut

#5 What was the purpose of the costume shop owner’s daughter character and her relationship with those 2 Japanese men?

#6 Was the prostitute died of drug overdose or it was because she was punished by her attempt to save Bill from the orgy party?

#7 Who put the mask on the pillow at the end of the film? Was it Bill’s wife? If so, since when did she find out about the whole matter?

#8 Was Bill’s whole adventure through the film only a sexual dream just like his wife’s? or it actually happened?

All kinds of thoughts are welcome here. You can pick the ones you feel most interested to answer. I’m very eager to know what your interpretations are.