Stanley Kubrick: Classic or Dud?

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I don't much like Kubrick; I find the majority of his work mindnumbingly dull. I was watching Full Metal Jacket the other night and Jesus Christ, I couldn't pay any attention to it. There wasn't one bit of it that interested me enough in what was going on in order to actually watch it, I ended up wandering around, wrapping Xmas gifts, etc. I've had the same response to most of his films. I fell asleep during EWS (took three tries to watch it). Lolita is kind of "ehhh, I guess I'll watch it, nowt else on". 2001 is like the King of Being Boring. etc etc. I don't know what it is about his style but I just cannot watch his films without wanting to cry for boredom. Even The Shining.

Stanley Kubrick = the epitome of love/hate???

― Ally (mlescaut), Monday, 9 December 2002 02:16 (10 years ago) Permalink

So what's wrong with nihilism? Kubrick's world view is bascially that of a humanity that's been taken over by its own creations/institutions and the total randomness of The Universe, whether it's the Doomsday device, HAL 9000, the Vietnamese sniper in FMJ, or the closing scene of The Killing.

Totally classic for Paths Of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, The Killing, and Barry Lyndon alone. Totally dud for Eyes Wide Shut, Clockwork Orange, and Lolita.

2001 was the very first movie I saw in a movie theater - as I recall I was five or six years old. Bash it if you must, but I still love it's timeless retrofuture look.

― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Monday, 9 December 2002 07:58 (10 years ago) Permalink

Daria: "Barry Lyndon" is almost the least spontaneous Kubrickfilm ever! His true masterpiece is "Lolita," just because it looks so bland and turns out to be a great sick comedy. I'm tempted to say I like it better than the book, just cause Nabokovphiles are such bores (not that Kubrickultists aren't too, I admit). Pauline Kael who HATED every film Kubrick made ever afterward (except The Shining, which she's very good on: why it doesn't quite gel but still sticks in your mind) had a great essay on it in her first book. Everyone is very good in it: I could rhapsodize about Sellers' performance(s) for hours (it's true: don't ever get me drunk and say "So Justyn, how about that LOLITA then?" or you'll have to run for cover), but Shelley Winters is amazing and tragic and hilarious and James Mason is about as good as he ever was. I even like Sue Lyon in it even though no one else ever does. Plus it features the best opening scene in any movie EVER. If you have problems with the whole Kubrick thing just pretend you're watching an early David Lynch film or something (was he even born yet?), it was very influential on him. It's really more like Sunset Boulevard or something than any other Kubrick film.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 9 December 2002 08:44 (10 years ago) Permalink

Eyes Wide Shut has some very Lynchian moments. So now the master has become the apprentice...

I don't know what people mean by "spontanaeous", but if you any kind of liking for rollicking romping historical drama then you will wuv Barry Lyndon. It is a top film.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 9 December 2002 10:46 (10 years ago) Permalink

"spontaneous" = presumably something Kubrick didn't plan beforehand. actually, since (as he admitted) the reason he did dozens and dozens of takes is because he wasn't quite sure what he wanted, I think people miss the point when they talk about him being a control freak. he was a FLAWED control freak, which makes him interesting (to me, anyway). my #2 Kubrick film is probably The Shining, which is basically all about this (see the "making of" documentary made by his daughter, where SK flips out at Shelley Duvall for flubbing a line and seems disturbingly Nicholson/Torrance-like).

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 9 December 2002 11:42 (10 years ago) Permalink

michel chion's little bfi book on eyes wide shut is good, and helped me like the film more: he begins by overrating it stratospherically (i think he calls it the greatest film ever made!!) but then he goes on to talk about and notices all kinds of interesting small sane stuff which wd be well talked abt in many other films also

i have still never watched clockwork orange, though i now have it on video

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 9 December 2002 11:57 (10 years ago) Permalink

I liked Eyes Wide Shut, Clockwork Orange and The Shining. I loved the first half of "Full Metal Jacket", but hated the second. Dr. Strangelove was good, but highly overrated.

― Cecil Kittens (Cecil), Monday, 9 December 2002 12:02 (10 years ago) Permalink

Lolita was nice, with great performances. But part of what made the book so great was the word choices in Humbert's first-person descriptions, not just the situations themselves. And the voiceover's by Mason in the film felt random and often unnecessary (oddly there were other scenes I thought would be improved by narration). I think its one his sloppiest works but it has a better sense of humanity than his later technocratic works.

I like the story that Terry Southern told him when Eyes Wide Shut was in the gestative state that it should be a comedy. I think he meant an intentional one.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:19 (10 years ago) Permalink

So what's wrong with nihilism?

There's nothing wrong with it, I just don't think he expresses it very well.

I mean, yes, I can see where certain aspects of Kubrick have influenced Lynch but by and large I think Lynch is a better storyteller, whereas Kubrick throws too much emphasis on the stylistic interest of his films and doesn't pay as much attention to getting the story told in the most effective manner. I only really like Strangelove, I suppose, but it's not a film I'd actively go out of my way to watch anymore.

Like I said, he's someone that people either love or hate. No one is kind of "eh" about Kubrick.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 01:30 (10 years ago) Permalink

does "Mulholland Dr." fit into yer hypothesis, Ally?

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 01:36 (10 years ago) Permalink

Or "Lost Highway"?

― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 02:49 (10 years ago) Permalink

Though I think both directors are (well, in Kubrick's case, was) two shades past overwacky, I prefer Lynch's tits'n'giggles over Kubrick's wrongheaded oppressiveness.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 03:08 (10 years ago) Permalink

I didn't say everything Lynch did was good, and Lost Highway definitely falls into my definition of "bad Lynch". Me finding you less boring than Kubrick != me finding you perfect.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 03:13 (10 years ago) Permalink

I haven't actually seen Eyes Wide Shut. Is it all kinds of crazy kinky? Does Cruise actually indulge in fetishy shit (I hope he wears a zorro mask!) and humpity bump with his wife or does he just stand around looking mad? Is he believable as a human being? I'm curious if it qualifies as a "so bad it's good" rental or if it's just boring.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 03:30 (10 years ago) Permalink

I thought it was just boring. Nothing too kinky at all, and Cruise just kind of stands around looking depressed through most of it.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 03:40 (10 years ago) Permalink

it is kind of funny in a v.lowkey (intentional) way

it is pervy not at all

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 09:25 (10 years ago) Permalink

I think '2001' and 'Clockwork' work nice together. Basically he's saying that machines are better than ppl right? If you make computers human they start killing people and don't work so well as machines, if you try to make humans into machines then they stop killing ppl but don't 'work' at ALL as 'people'. (Re '2001' - Frank Black is a big sci-fi head, maybe that's where the 'Bone Machine' concept RILLY came from? 'Bone machines' v 'Meat Puppets'?)

― dave q, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 09:30 (10 years ago) Permalink

See also 'Full Metal Jacket', where humans are made into killing machines but then want to kill EVERYONE, not just 'the enemy'!

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 10:01 (10 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

I have zero attention-span and have been known to check the clock even on movies I love (looked at my watch a couple of times during Blood Simple), but every Kubrick film I've seen compels me to keep watching. Maybe it's the icy nihilistic misanthropy or whatever, but I'm glued to the screen.

I chalk it up to Kubrick's confidence. There's an air to every film he did, something I can feel come through the screen. I think I've said elsewhere that my definition of a good film is one where the director accomplished what he set out to do. Kubrick's films always meet that criteria for me - he knew what he wanted, and he shot it.

I haven't seen Lolita or Barry Lyndon, but of the rest, the closest to a dud is A Clockwork Orange, even that's occasionally great.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 03:47 (9 years ago) Permalink

i think the knock on 2001 being "vacuous" is probably overstating the case (it's pretty archetypical sci-fi) but it's not exactly a philosophical movie either. i love it. i think it's funny and beautiful and strange. i dont think it's profound but who cares about that really.

detractors expect too much of it.

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 04:09 (9 years ago) Permalink

Did anyone else read the Jon Ronson article in last Saturday's Guardian?

(it was about him getting access to Kubrick's archives. The man was so anal, he even designed his own archival boxes. V. interesting)

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 09:20 (9 years ago) Permalink

great article!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 16:57 (9 years ago) Permalink

It was a brilliant article. I used to think Ronson was a twat on telly, but now I wonder if there is a better writer of this sort of article at present.

I haven't seen some of the most important films: Lolita, 2001, Strangelove, but the ones I've seen follow a very odd pattern, in that, in my opinion, the first halves seem to be brilliant, particularly the openings, and the second halves poor. The films strike me as getting more and more conventional as the story unravels, for some reason.

The first half of "A Clockwork Orange" is full of extraordinary imagery, for example, but the plot dies a sudden death the minute the McDowell is arrested and his menace cancelled. The opening of Full Metal Jacket - the drill sergeant and the recruits, is mesmerising, but the later stuff, so obviously filmed among old British warehouses, is dismal, particularly the fight against the female sniper, her femaleness seeming to me irrelevent: a sniper's a sniper. The Shining sets itself up grippingly, but goes too over the top, for my money, later on. Barry Lyndon is beautiful at first and then gets remarkably slow and dull, though I agree that Rossiter is extraordinary as the dancing piper. Eyes Wide Shut - well the relationship stuff interested me at first, but then the whole culty thing became risible - and, once again, slow.

But Kubrik's INTERESTING, no two ways about it.

― Baravelli. (Jake Proudlock), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 18:26 (9 years ago) Permalink

you really think the shining goes too over the top? that's what i love about that movie!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 18:32 (9 years ago) Permalink

Hmm, I thought Barry Lyndon's second half was better than the first, what with the commentary on societal norms. The ending was definitely one of it's strong points. Also, could you elaborate a bit on Clockwork Orange; isn't the movie kinda pointless without the second half?

If you haven't seen Dr. Strangelove, I'd think you like it. It's hilarious from the beginning to the end. Definitely Kubrick's best flick. Lolita is in my opinion underrated, perhaps because it's kinda different from the book (though the script was written by Nabokov) - it's more of a black comedy, and the power relations between Lolita and Humbert are reversed.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 18:47 (9 years ago) Permalink

I don't know how you can criticize Barry Lyndon for being slow and dull in the second half, when that's exactly the arc of the storyline - all uphill the first half, and a gradual descent into hopelessness in the second. IMO, that's one of Kubrick's greatest movies.

Eyes Wide Shut on the other hand did just seem a little slow for me. The pacing made it tense, but it also made it hard to be passionate about.

― dleone (dleone), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:00 (9 years ago) Permalink

The Shining is the only horror movie that actually gets my pulse racing - the chase through the maze is as intense as film gets.

I like the second half of FMJ better than the first. The first is easier to enjoy - lots of quotable lines and laughs, and the setup is so familiar in an anti-military way. But the second is darker and has such a surreal aura (the movie crew, the general, etc.), and the way it doesn't just play out as an anti-war movie is great.

About the sets - sometimes I hear that it looks just like Vietnam, some people claim it looks like a UK location. Having never been to either, I couldn't say. (They could be one and the same - what were Vietnamese colonial-era cities like?)

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:06 (9 years ago) Permalink

I think one thing even the fanboys tend to overlook is his wonderfully dark sense of humor. You don't see it as much in his most heralded films, but Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket and Clockwork Orange in particular are full of those "should I be laughing at this? what's wrong with me!?!" moments.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:08 (9 years ago) Permalink

"Hardcore, Joker. Fucking hardcore."

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:11 (9 years ago) Permalink

here is a sense of humor = i will make a film about space travel, at the height of the oh-so-exciting space race, but i will make it still and lifeless and to fuck up people's expectations i will put the astronauts in coffins and hamster wheels and the film will also be deathly static to reflect the banality of the whole technological trip (because i read arendt and heidegger).

that was the reading i learned in school, anyway. i buy it. it's a fucked up sense of humor and a boring movie if you're not focused on "getting it", though.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:14 (9 years ago) Permalink

come on that's a pretty good joke!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:15 (9 years ago) Permalink

yeah, but obviously films can do better things than illustrate manifestos.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:16 (9 years ago) Permalink

still the only movie to admit there's no sound in space!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:16 (9 years ago) Permalink

and actually i'm not familiar with the arendt/heidegger reading

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:16 (9 years ago) Permalink

Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket and Clockwork Orange in particular are full of those "should I be laughing at this? what's wrong with me!?!" moments.

Well, Dr. Strangelove is a comedy, and "should I be laughing at this? what's wrong with me!?!" is exactly what it's about. I guess Kubrick should've done more comedies, perhaps his nihilism would've suited that genre better.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:17 (9 years ago) Permalink

The opening of Full Metal Jacket - the drill sergeant and the recruits, is mesmerising, but the later stuff, so obviously filmed among old British warehouses, is dismal, particularly the fight against the female sniper, her femaleness seeming to me irrelevent: a sniper's a sniper.

sigh

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

Virtually all Kubrick's films are comedies.
Not *conventional* comedies of course, it's his own black humour
which drives them.

― pete s, Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

x-post to slutsky...

arendt was fascinated by satellites - she thought it was funny that we'd send up this thing INTO SPACE and we were all so excited that it was IN SPACE and we'd make such a big deal about SPACE, yet the whole time the thing was just staring back at the earth. y'know how 99% of space shuttle photographs show the earth, either in the background or as the subject.

so for her the space programs and science fiction are funny because they're not about outer space, they just reinforce or explain our relations to the earth and ourselves. heidegger wrote extensively in the same vein, though about technology and nature.

the heidegger/arendt part = we send man INTO SPACE to confront a GIANT ALIEN MONOLITH and he basically he ends up confronting texas instruments. in the meantime, there's not really anything to do but stare at photos from earth, eat packaged earth food, confront yourself in the form of endless mental and physical exercise. sort of deflates romantic sci-fi.

again, not entirely vacuous but not so great as to decisively redeem the hour-and-a-half space sequence.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:29 (9 years ago) Permalink

we also all agreed that the climax of the film was when bowman ignored the "danger" stickers and warning labels and jumped into hard vacuum. everything after that point was basically irrelevant, everything before the flight to jupiter irrelevant also. that would've made a good edit of the movie.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:31 (9 years ago) Permalink

dleone otm about barry lyndon. it's one of his best.
my theory: he was so well placed to evoke the eighteenth century because his character/mind was so suited to it.

― pete s, Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:33 (9 years ago) Permalink

Virtually all Kubrick's films are comedies.
Not *conventional* comedies of course, it's his own black humour
which drives them.

Um, I have to disagree. Kubrick took his films rather seriously, the black humour is just one aspect of them. I'd say only Lolita, Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange were "driven" by Kubrick's humour, though some of the others have comedic moments as well, obviously. Still, it's hard to imagine someone calling Paths of Glory, or Barry Lyndon, or even Eyes Wide Shut "comedies".

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 19:34 (9 years ago) Permalink

Paths of Glory and Eyes Wide Shut i haven't seen.
But Barry Lyndon is a modern take on the picaresque
form; it includes tragedy, romance, etc. and the moralising which usually came with these tales as a 'justification' for the immorality
portrayed within. But the form is a comic one, and allows us to glimpse stories of dissolute behaviour, sex, intruige. Kubrick sticks pretty closely to this format, imo, because as i said the cynical, detached humour you find in much 18th c. lit. suits him down to the ground. He doesn't need to add anything, just show a promising life corrupted by fate and human frailties.

(Incidentally, i'm aware it's based on Thackeray's 19th c. novel)

― pete s, Tuesday, 30 March 2004 20:05 (9 years ago) Permalink

thanks for explaining that vahid, it's an interesting reading.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 20:06 (9 years ago) Permalink

i will make a film about space travel, at the height of the oh-so-exciting space race, but i will make it still and lifeless

this seems to me to be a pretty subjective reaction, because i dont find any part of the film "still and lifeless"--sometimes the characters themselves are, but the film itself never is. the docking sequence is beautiful, and the strauss is perfect because the machines are dancing.

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 20:40 (9 years ago) Permalink

yeah, i mean i agree with ryan and vahid both on this, there's a lot of beautiful motion AND a lot of stillness/quiet. so uh everyone's right.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 21:02 (9 years ago) Permalink

yay!

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 21:04 (9 years ago) Permalink

11 months pass...

you know how sometimes you overreact agin things you liked as a teenager? no? well, i do, and kubo is one of them. i got myself a dvd of 'barry lyndon' to celebrate the fact we're on viewing terms again, possibly as long as a year ago. still not seen it. what i really need here is personal advice: how do i convince my kube-skeptic SO that she owes this film 3 hours? anyone in marketing out there?

― N_RQ, Thursday, 10 March 2005 14:14 (8 years ago) Permalink

dr vick wz all YAY B.LYNDON in my kubester-sceptic face* recently but it turned out she meant tom jones

eg the day she, sistrah becky, me and becky's boyf aplyed DESERT ISLAND DVDS and i sighed audibly when 2001 was mentioned and wz quite korrektly taken to task

psi have now seen clockwork o. (as in "o dear")

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 10 March 2005 14:21 (8 years ago) Permalink

i saw 'clockwork orange' when it was "banned" (in fact withdrawn by the ?embarrassed? stan) so decided it was good more or less on the basis of the covertness of seeing it. i think it might be a good parody of 'movies rot your mind' kritix from qd leavis to 'screen' magazine.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 10 March 2005 14:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

Very Classic, if only because I can immediately recall more memorable images from his work than any other director. It's always struck me that his films work best as a series of still photographs.

― Huey (Huey), Thursday, 10 March 2005 14:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

Skipping 451 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

I hate it fwiw

― Donkamole Marvin (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 8 March 2013 18:26 (2 months ago) Permalink

like it or hate it, AI was faithful to Kubrick's story treatment.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Friday, 8 March 2013 18:34 (2 months ago) Permalink

yeah my issues with it are independent of the Spielberg vs. Kubrick brouhaha

― Donkamole Marvin (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 8 March 2013 18:35 (2 months ago) Permalink

its kinda hard to say how faithful kubrick would have been to his own treatment tho

― zero dark (s1ocki), Friday, 8 March 2013 18:36 (2 months ago) Permalink

Cool, i didn't read the story treatment, i watched the movie.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 8 March 2013 18:58 (2 months ago) Permalink

spielberg shld hire Miklós Jancsó to direct the napoleon script

― Ward Fowler, Friday, 8 March 2013 19:27 (2 months ago) Permalink

ai was boring and cruel in the way kubrick is prone to but without his enigmatic stateliness

― plax (ico), Saturday, 9 March 2013 00:21 (2 months ago) Permalink

enigmatic stateliness replaced by Spielberg's sweaty hamfists

― Donkamole Marvin (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 9 March 2013 00:29 (2 months ago) Permalink

nope

― Gukbe, Saturday, 9 March 2013 00:50 (2 months ago) Permalink

for the umpteenth fucking time, K gave the project to him, saying he was better for it.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 9 March 2013 01:03 (2 months ago) Permalink

yeah we've all done this too many times

― Gukbe, Saturday, 9 March 2013 01:12 (2 months ago) Permalink

Retrospective at the ifc center in NYC later this month

― calstars, Monday, 11 March 2013 12:17 (2 months ago) Permalink

can anyone tell me what the album cover referenced here is?

― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Monday, 11 March 2013 15:56 (2 months ago) Permalink

kraftwerk's radioactivity

― ☠ ☃ ☠ (mh), Monday, 11 March 2013 15:57 (2 months ago) Permalink

(it's in the air for you and me)

― ☠ ☃ ☠ (mh), Monday, 11 March 2013 15:57 (2 months ago) Permalink

http://www.nfb.ca/film/universe/

Universe, by Roman Kroitor & Colin Low
1960
28 min 53 s

This is the Canada Film Board documentary that 'inspired' 2001. Kubrick brought over a number of people that worked on this, including the voice of HAL 9000 Douglas Rain, who appears here as narrator! Great film!

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 11 March 2013 16:01 (2 months ago) Permalink

oh for fuck's sake i knew that and couldn't place it. thanks.

― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Monday, 11 March 2013 16:06 (2 months ago) Permalink

now to go buy and wear it with impunity

― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Monday, 11 March 2013 16:06 (2 months ago) Permalink

Awesome link Adam, thank you

― calstars, Monday, 11 March 2013 16:13 (2 months ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

http://filmmakeriq.com/2011/08/30-amazing-stanley-kubrick-cinemagraphs/

― MaresNest, Monday, 20 May 2013 16:26 (4 days ago) Permalink

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