Theme

you are very brave to ask the question as the "Kubrick Fan Club" says you are not allowed to.

KFC puts Stan up on a pedestal and prays to him and finds all manner of wondrous things in his movies that Stan himself never intended.

basically Stan was a very down to earth person who FLED the American Beauty in order to be able to observe it from afar and do "social comment" ON it.

in this movie he went a bit too far [via scenes deleted] and got bumped off for daring to expose the BIG P [and that is the REAL P and not the one you are TOLD is P via the Lolita Redux character]

so he grabs a book called DreamStory and very loosely uses it as a vehicle to tell his story. He uses a married couple scenario to produce "revenge", to GET Tom to the ultimate orgy of the Untouchables which was his point of the movie, but NOT for consenting adults as seen in movie.

we will never know the content of the scenes deleted but can simply assume there were "more things to see" when Tom was "looking around".

it ends with the loving couple as you say f|cking their way back to joy.

that is the basic structure but there are lots of Stanlyisms on the way as there always are.

I would need more posts to explain

Stanley's Chastity Belt

Without trying to be mean to FemiMen like our harry at IMDB, that is what Kubrick WAS doing with his "Big Brother/Female Eunuch" depiction of "The Argument" [to use Night's terminology in The Happening].

He cast a "picture perfect" Hollywood couple for the argument with an actual MARRIED couple, then he "plays with the rules [from Jules and Jim]" to get the left over testosterone of those like harry up to fever pitch, with Germaine Greer leading Sargent Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band.

So one of the clever little devices he uses is whenever Alice is with "the bad guy" ie her husband, she wears the little number that has no possible entry points during foreplay [if any], thus putting poor old Bill at a decided disadvantage for starters.

But we see in Bill's vision of Col Fitts doing combat that not only is there no chastity belt but Alice is whipping off the strides herself.

But such foreplay for the bad guy Bill in HIS fantasies is made dead easy [npi] so the femimen can do the tut tut bit, even though Bill never WAS unfaithful - but in "Secret Wimmin's Business" THAT does not matter.

a very clever chap was our Stanley, but maybe TOO clever for his own safety.

Summary

In this movie Kubrick uses the vehicle of the greatest mystery of all, ie Eve Syndrome, to start an ARGUMENT between a married couple.

We then track the REACTION of the husband which takes us to matters that [SHOULD BE] of National Importance, hidden within a candy wrapping of the Porn vs Erotica issue.

Nobody actually GOT the real issue but Kubrick got killed on suspicion.

Now read on.