The decency of Eyes Wide Shut

Published November 28, 2025 2:20am ET



In all the words that have been devoted to the films of Stanley Kubrick, I do not know whether any writer has invoked Gustave Flaubert’s famous injunction to “be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Yet no 20th-century artist, writer, filmmaker, composer, or otherwise, better embodied the spirit of Flaubert’s counsel than Kubrick.

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