Authored by Moshe ben Maimon via Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn – Moreh Nevukhim
Stanley Kubrick certainly knew and read the works of Charles Ber Chavel,
a twentieth-century writer of medieval rabbinical theology, aligned with the thought of Nachmanides, or Maimonides.
Stanley was thus familiar with the ideas, philosophical and theological concepts developed by the medieval Jewish scholar and philosopher Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, also known as Nachmanides or Ramban. These ideas and concepts encompass a wide range of topics, such as halakhah (Jewish law), mysticism, astrology and the nature of God and the universe, but also jurisprudence.
An often cited juridical maxim written by Maimonides: “It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty people than to send a single innocent one to death.” He argued that the execution of a defendant without having the absolute certainty of his guilt, would lead to a decreasing slope for the role of the evidence, until arriving at a conviction based solely on the whim of the judge. Which is what has certainly been happening for decades and decades in Italy , where anyone is now put on trial based on the whims of magistrates aligned with politicians.
In Eyes Wide Shut the physical evil of the disease: AIDS, is represented, as is the moral evil represented by the Illuminati at the Castle.
But how does Maimonides explain the existence of Evil?
Maimonides argues that evil does not exist as an autonomous entity, created specifically, but that it is rather the simple absence of good.
In other words, he states that creating something by causing the non-existence of its opposite is not the same thing as creating something that exists.
This concept can be interpreted as evil manifesting itself as a lack of good or as the deprivation of what is good.
Stanley Kubrick had given orders to his subordinates to remove every reference and detail attributable to Jewish religiosity in the preparation of Eyes Wide Shut, this does not mean that he had completely distorted the work from Jewish theology.
That Christmas doesn’t even seem like a Christmas, it’s densely artificial. No reference to the Christmas Mass, but rather the Mass becomes the Reception, or Receptions.
The purest Judaism instead flows like a river in flood in the bowels of the lights and shadows of the film, or the final testament of the Great Master.
