Eyes Wide Shut (1999): Secret Societies, Power, and Jeffery Epstein

We will be meeting at Pablo Creek Library in Community Room B

Join us as we unpack masks, secrets, and power as we dive into Eyes Wide Shut (1999), tracing Dr. Bill Harford’s journey into an exclusive, underground society of masked elites. Through its secret rituals and unspoken rules, the film becomes a lens on how hidden networks operate above ordinary accountability—and what it costs someone to glimpse the world behind the curtain.

Please note: We will not be watching the movie during the event, nor is viewing it beforehand required.

Movie Summary:
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) follows Dr. Bill Harford, a successful New York physician whose comfortable upper‑middle‑class life unravels over the course of a strange night. After his wife confesses to a secret desire, Bill is shaken into a spiral of jealousy and curiosity that leads him into a hidden world of masks, rituals, and secret gatherings. As he drifts through encounters filled with temptation, danger, and secrecy, the film peels back the glossy surface of bourgeois respectability, exposing the fragile trust in his marriage and the unsettling gap between the lives people present and the desires they conceal.

## 1. Behind the Masks: How Power Hides

1.1 In Eyes Wide Shut, the masked society runs on strict rules, ritual, and anonymity, and breaking those boundaries is met with threats. What do these rituals and masks suggest to you about how powerful groups protect themselves from scrutiny or consequences?​

1.2 In Eyes Wide Shut, everyone at the gathering appears “equal” under a mask, yet some clearly wield far more power and control. In our own cultural moment—whether it is tech billionaires, celebrity circles, or political insiders—where do you notice that same pattern of surface-level equality hiding deeper hierarchies, and how does it shape the way you see headlines, scandals, and who actually gets held accountable?​

2. Disguises and Invitations

2.1 The secret group in Eyes Wide Shut hides behind wealth, status, and elaborate ritual; Epstein’s circle hid behind private jets, elite connections, and polite society. When you compare these two worlds, what do you notice about how power can disguise harm as exclusivity or privilege?

2.2 In both the movie’s mansion and Epstein’s social world, many people seem to know “enough” to suspect something is wrong but stay involved anyway. What do you think keeps people silent or compliant when they sense something is off—fear, self-interest, numbness, something else?

3. Half-Truths and Weaponized Secrets

3.1 After Bill’s night in the mansion, he never really gets a clear answer about what happened or how much danger he was in; everything is half-explained and easy to doubt. How does that feeling of controlled ambiguity mirror the way information and “explanations” are released around scandals like Epstein’s, where millions of documents exist but so many basic questions remain open?

3.2 In Eyes Wide Shut, Bill slips into a world where everyone insists “nothing really happened,” even as danger and exploitation are obvious beneath the surface. In the Epstein files, we see powerful names from across the political spectrum, yet much of the public conversation turns into “gotcha” attacks on the other side instead of facing how widely the system is implicated. When you see both parties trying to weaponize these revelations against each other, how does that affect your trust in any side’s claim to be seeking truth or justice?

4. Lines We Draw, Stories We Believe

4.1 The masked ritual in the film depends on everyone agreeing to stay quiet so the whole machine can keep running; similarly, the Epstein documents show institutions, donors, and politicians of different parties all touching the same network while often blaming only their opponents. When you notice scandals where “your side” and “the other side” both have fingerprints on the story, what helps you decide when to stay loyal to a group and when your responsibility is to question, resist, or walk away altogether?​

4.2 With millions of Epstein-related documents and so many unanswered questions, conspiracy theories rush in to fill the gaps. How do you personally navigate the space between accepting official stories, questioning them, and not getting swallowed by paranoia when you hear about secretive elites?