Stanley Kubrick’s posthumous masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut enchanted audiences upon its release in 1999, emerging as one of the greatest swan songs in directorial history. Among Eyes Wide Shut’s many iconic characters—including Victor, Bill, and the latter’s yearning wife, Alice—one figure stands out as the paradigm of the film’s most closely-guarded secrets—the enigmatic cult leader known simply as “Red Cloak.”
While Kubrick purposely kept the idenтιтy of Red Cloak and his devotees a mystery, the film provides several hints as to the cult leader’s true persona. Though these clues have befuddled fans for years—much like other Kubrick films, such as The Shining—their inclusion reveals a much larger conspiracy at play that blurs the line between dreams and reality.
Red Cloak’s Idenтιтy Is Hinted At By A Newspaper That Bill Reads
A strong hint toward Red Cloak’s true idenтιтy comes in the latter half of the film when Bill (Tom Cruise) stops in a restaurant and picks up a newspaper, discovering that an ex-beauty queen—who’s later revealed by Victor (Sydney Pollack) to be the woman that sacrificed herself for Bill—has died of a drug overdose in a H๏τel room.
However, what’s interesting about this article is the relationship it reveals that the ex-beauty queen—aka “Mandy” (Julienne Davis)—had with London fashion designer “Leon Vitali,” who, according to the article, allegedly became enamored with her “not for how she wore his stunning clothes in public, but for how she wowed him by taking them off in private, seductive solo performances.”
For those unaware, Leon Vitali is the real name of Kubrick’s longtime collaborator, who plays Red Cloak in Eyes Wide Shut, strongly implying that the fashion designer is the man behind the red robes and golden mask. Furthermore, this revelation also lines up with Red Cloak’s sinister English accent, making it further plausible that Vitali is the mysterious cult leader.
Leon Vitali also starred in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon as the arrogant and privileged “Lord Bullingdon.”
Who Else Red Cloak Could Be In Eyes Wide Shut
Leon Vitali is not the only plausible character behind Red Cloak’s mask. Another likely figure is Bill’s wealthy patient Victor, who’s shown early on in the film to hold the same Sєxual proclivities as the masked cultists and openly admits to Bill that he was at the mansion on the night the curious doctor trespᴀssed on the erotic ritual.
As to why Victor is another likely candidate for Red Cloak’s true idenтιтy, three clues stand out. One, Victor is already shown to have a relationship with Mandy, very nearly witnessing her overdose during the film’s opening Christmas party. Seeing as Mandy is shown to hold authority within the secret society, this ᴀssociation likely isn’t a coincidence.
Two, there is the question of Victor’s threatening demeanor during the scene in which he divulges his attendance at the mansion, wherein he very pᴀssively aggressively ᴀsserts to Bill that “somebody died—it happens all the time.” Finally, in said scene, Victor habitually taps a billiard ball in a fashion reminiscent of Red Cloak’s ritualistic twin strikes of his staff.
Why Eyes Wide Shut Never Explicitly Reveals Red Cloak’s Idenтιтy
While Victor and Vitali are both prime candidates for Red Cloak, the film goes out of its way to leave his idenтιтy—and the idenтιтies of those in the secret society—wholly inconclusive. This falls in line with much of Kubrick’s filmography, as the director famously believed that ambiguity better promotes a story’s metaphysical meanings and thereby appeals further to the subconscious.
Furthermore, by leaving the idenтιтies of Red Cloak and the secret society ambiguous, the threat against Bill becomes increasingly more sinister due to both the fear of the unknown and the idea that the nature of the enigmatic in storytelling creates the illusion of far greater and more ubiquitous powers being at play in an otherwise finite world and narrative.
Finally, the film’s status as a dreamlike narrative is likewise an argument for its ambiguous nature, as its ritual reflects both Bill’s recurring visions of Alice’s (Nicole Kidman) fantasy with the naval officer and—even more so—Alice’s dream later in the film, which both enigmatically parallels her husband’s experience at the mansion and further exemplifies the paranoid nature of the subconscious.
Why Eyes Wide Shut Still Resonates With Audiences Today
Apart from its powerfully Sєxualized nature, what separates Eyes Wide Shut from the rest of Kubrick’s filmography is its depiction of power and the consequences of pursuing infidelity—a theme that resonates 26 years later in a society that—while perhaps not dominated so monoculturally as the mainstream Sєxualized landscape of the late ’90s—is nevertheless pervaded by algorithms that mᴀss-promote Sєxual imagery.
Eyes Wide Shut is based on Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella “Rhapsody: A Dream Novel.”
Thus, the mystique, surrealism, and anxiety surrounding Kubrick’s ultimate project remain a testament to the humanity’s interminable cycles of temptation and desire, with the elusive nature of Red Cloak and his cult of masked followers serving as a dire warning to those seeking adultery and a shadowy reflection of our species’ most innate and suppressed Sєxual desires—whether real or dreamed.
