ARTUR AUGUSTO ABDALLA RENZO

This research project aims to carry out a reading of Stanley Kubrick's last film through the framework of so called Critical Theory. Bringing filmic analysis to bear on philosophical discourse, the objective is to tease out to what extent the formal tensions of "Eyes Wide Shut" -- a picture which did poorly at the box office as well as with the critics -- reveal something of the historical matter at the turn of the century. A preliminary hypothesis is that the concept of “late style” developed by Theodor Adorno in 1937 could prove to be a fruitful interpretive key to investigate the specific character of this “failure”, understood in the terms laid out by Peter Szondi's “Theory of the Modern Drama”.