It is rather challenging to call “Eyes Wide Shut” an incredible film in a traditional sense.

When viewed from the conventional lens of “a person trying to have a fun night and watch a film,” it is probably not the film for you.

It also lacks the gritty grounded realism of a painful masterpiece in something like “Requiem for a Dream;” the only good film Jared Leto ever starred in.

At least, that is what viewers at the time of release might have thought.

Upon release, the film was met with considerable dislike by critics and audiences. Pretentious, long, and wholly unbelievable, the film stars Tom Cruise (Bill Harford) and Nicole Kidman (Alice Harford) a couple who transgress into a dark underworld hidden in the palatial walls of the elite.

The plot is the perfect vehicle for Kubrick’s message. Evil does not operate by volcano lairs and alleyways — it hides in the folds of fat formed in the belly of the aristocracy.

It tries as hard as it can to appear typical.

Cruise and Kidman bring convincing performances — with touches of the explosive neuroticism of director Stanley Kubrick —  demonstrating themselves in strange body language and mannerisms neither actor displays at any other point in either of their very broad careers.

The lighting is also significant. The film uses Kubrick’s trademark dreamlike dissociative lighting mixed in with haunting holiday motifs in a manner that even justifies calling “Eyes Wide Shut” one’s favorite Christmas movie.

The film elicits the feeling of Christmas decorations up on Valentine’s Day — the parts of a dream that let you know it is incorrect.

In the decades since its release, “Eyes Wide Shut,” much like its director, has never strayed too far from mainstream dialogue despite its quite carnal source material. It has been the subject of conspiracy theories, most of the cast involved have never shut up about their work on it, and it ties neatly into a rather pretentious, “grand Kubrick mythos,” that has ascended to a cult status among genuine artists, pseudo-intellectuals, tin foil hat wearers, New-Agers and enjoyers of marijuana alike.

The 2020s have been an interesting decade for the film’s legacy, however.

One of the many things said of Kubrick’s swan song is a classic joke: that the film is a documentary.

Various mysterious and sometimes genuinely dark groups and organizations have been accused of being the inspiration for the mysterious 1990s New York human trafficking sex cult for the very rich depicted in the film.

At one time, people said it was The Church of Scientology.

At others, it was said to be the Illuminati.

In particularly crazy years, people even pointed the finger at a pizza parlor basement in Washington, D.C.

2026 was the year Kubrick provided receipts from beyond the grave.

In the form of a mysterious perverted billionaire living primarily in 1990s New York who hangs out with the elite, named Jeff — oops — Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack).

In the film, Ziegler is a wealthy socialite with dark hobbies hidden behind luxurious parties. His parties seem to attract models, sex workers, the rich and powerful, with a little room left over for the especially ambitious and naïve.

He seems to be above working a job; he has reached the level of wealth and power in which a person can do very little while pretending to do a lot.

Even a successful doctor like Bill Harford is placed in a completely subservient position by Ziegler. None of the doctor’s accomplishments is truly relevant to Ziegler. Harford’s swanky downtown New York condo looks about as big as Tom Cruise does when compared to Ziegler’s property.

The venue used for the masked group’s meetings is a former Rothschild mansion. The Rothschilds, a very real European banking dynasty, hosted a massive and bizarre masked party for elites in the mansion shortly before selling it.

Odd.

Descendants of the family also held a long-standing relationship with a disgraced financier who has never been spotted giving exceptional financial advice. No one is exactly sure how Jeffrey Epstein made his money.

Fiction and reality share dreamlike parallels.

He and the aforementioned fictional pervert also share incredibly rare body language quirks.

The raising of eyebrows as a statement of dramatic effect is basic body language. The kind of thing someone will tell you their first year studying to be a detective to make themselves feel self-certain. Elementary.

It is quite unusual, however, for a person to raise their eyebrows before a statement. This gesticulation is a learned performative behavior. The speaker is suggesting that the statement is important because they want the listener to understand its importance.

Not because they themselves feel it.

Ziegler and Epstein share this very rare quirk, physical similarities, location and predilection for women much younger than themselves.

“Eyes Wide Shut” is an adaptation of “Traumnovelle,” a 20th-century Austrian novel with a very similar plot. A wife psychosexually beats her husband down with fears of her lurid fantasies, which sends him embarking on a lust-fueled odyssey, constantly walking in lockstep with death. The only major differences between the film and book are setting — 1990s NYC vs turn of the century Vienna — and the presence of Ziegler’s character.

While a strong antagonist certainly helps drive a movie along, almost all of Kubrick’s career consists of adapting rather dicey and atypical books to film — many without traditional antagonists, adapted without traditional antagonists.

This makes Ziegler’s presence in the film a particularly interesting thing to ponder — Kubrick was deliberate to the point that his actors and actresses were known to lose hair. Why make this choice?

Why did Kubrick die weeks before the film’s wide release? Was it because he was a smoker who existed in a state of constant perfectionistic stress? A tired 70-year-old man just looking to get into heaven’s hookah lounge?

Alternatively, do dark forces within society hide behind elegant masquerade masks, laced in gold, velvet and satin, wearing the robes of kings, holding hearts of wickedness, blanketed behind a thin veneer of wealth, gold and glamour?

Critics at the time lambasted “Eyes Wide Shut” for being a sensual movie free of any sensuality. This is by design.

Recent reviews by the United Nations suggest that the Epstein human trafficking operation met the threshold to be considered crimes against humanity. In treating people like breeding cattle, there is no glamour and sensuality.

From the eyes of those who have dabbled in this world, such malfeasance would be undoubtedly bereft of any sensuality. This is even demonstrated in how every tryst with lust in the story walks in lockstep with death.

“Eyes Wide Shut” can be a boring film, but it is supposed to be.

If predators got into gunfights with Daniel Craig on their private island, the survivability of the operation would be compromised.

In that respect, their eyes are wide shut to the beauty of true intimacy — only dreaming of the reality they sleepwalk through.