Stanley Kubrick: Classic or Dud?

I know I for one really want to know how he pulled off the exploding Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan.

Just saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at The Fox Theater in Atlanta and I have to say it was the most amazing Kubrick film experience I have ever had. The print they showed was absolutely beautiful, with brighter colors than I have ever seen, and the sound was terrific. The acoustics in the theater really enhanced in particular the more ambient parts of this film. The breathing sequences were very intense! So many new things I noticed watching this, so many things I wanted to take note of! Alas I could not keep track because I was enthralled with the film and absolutely absorbed in every moment. Even projected on a big screen the special effects are all absolutely flawless (the cheetah attack in the beginning.....wow!!!!) and watching this movie is always like participating in a beautiful symbolic dream.

Of course, during the intermission I heard someone joke about wanting to fall asleep. Perhaps they would have been happier with Transformers 2 (which was previewed right before this ambient/spiritual masterpiece!).

The very spiritual nature of this movie is something I felt most of all this time around, and something I hadn't noticed before. The pacing, the emphasis on sounds and vibrations, the shifting between forms of consciousness (apes to Dr. Floyd to Dave to HAL etc.), the meditative pacing; it felt very in tune with Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions. The way Dave keeps seeing himself in the conclusion, and not recognizing his own body, I now recognize as evidence that the psychedelic out of body trip that he has taken is not simply a trip to a physical destination but a trip to an entirely new state of consciousness. He looks at himself in the mirror because he is in the process of becoming a post-corporeal entity; a planetary consciousness. The star-child is Kubrick's way of pointing out Sagan's "Tiny Blue Dot", the recognition that with the space age we are gaining a new perspective on our planet: that the Earth IS mankind. The deep symbiotic relationship we have with our planet is something that becomes startlingly clear when viewed from outer space.

Something about the shot of the tiny pod, holding lifeless (?) Frank in its arms, hopelessly facing the Discovery One now controlled by an unresponsive HAL really got to me. Almost feel like it points to some kind of religious iconography but now sure what.

¿

http://library.thinkquest.org/20176/images/pieta.gif

Something about the shot of the tiny pod, holding lifeless (?) Frank in its arms, hopelessly facing the Discovery One now controlled by an unresponsive HAL really got to me. Almost feel like it points to some kind of religious iconography but now sure what.

― Adam Bruneau, Sunday, July 26, 2009 2:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what i love about that scene is how it's shot "over the shoulder" of the discovery one... it's basically a simple shot-reverse shot dialogue setup the way it's composed and edited.

Yes, with the ships anthropomorphized somewhat, I definitely see that. You have to wonder if the monolith evolves not just the human race but their technology as well; now mankind = starchild/planetary consciousness and technology = mankind consciousness. Technology has become human. Note HAL's capability for error, emotional responses, and murder to ensure his own survival. Like the apes in the beginning, the first thing HAL does in his new evolutionary paradigm is kill.

With the past week's discussions of the Cold War Space Race it made the beginning apes/bones = man/spaceships connection seem even more cynical. He may show a US and Russian coexistence in space but the underlying message is that even thousands of years later we are still using technology as a clubbing bone.

Also that ape clubbing scene really brought Clockwork Orange to mind in a big way.

Also re: Kubrick = no sense of humor. The toilet instructions reveal (because they are SOO long and it says 'Please read in entirety before using') was really f-ing funny and the part where HAL is trying to talk Dave out of shutting him down at the end, the audience was laughing out loud at every line. Going in to 2001 I had no expectations for anyone to make a peep the entire film.

"It all tastes like chicken anyway."

http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/498370620/playing-chess-with-kubrick

Very interesting article - thanks for linking.

it was one cool little anecdote after another.

After Stanley Kubrick

Christiane Kubrick had 42 wonderful years with her husband. But in the decade since his death, she has been beset by tragedy. For the first time, she talks about losing one daughter to cancer, another to Scientology – and why her uncle made films for Goebbels

kubrick's sense of imagery peaked in 1971. discussion?

A Clockwork Orange does not have better "imagery" than Barry Lyndon.

http://www.thehydramag.com/2010/08/17/stanley-kubricks-boxes/

i wonder if that napoleon script will ever get made.

morbz otm

barry lyndon is probably his best film

the killing is my favorite

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/12/lost_2001_footage_found.html
think this is going to prove that kubrick faked the moon landing

It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.

reads like Kubrick is boozed up and excited. Napoleon though, what could have been...

I saw Richard Corliss introduce Lolita last night, with a lengthy Q&A afterwards. Corliss was interesting, but a) well into the Q&A, you find out that he actually doesn't think much of the film; I'd much rather hear someone defend a film than pick it apart (in fairness, Corliss was stepping in for David Thomson), and b) he rambles. Boy, does he ramble.

'lolita' is the best one, i think.

never saw Barry Lyndon or Fear and Desire, but I think I'd rate the rest like so:

The Shining > Lolita > Dr. Strangelove > Clockwork Orange > 2001 > Full Metal Jacket > Spartacus > The Killing > Eyes Wide Shut > Killer's Kiss

As terrific as Mason, Winters and Sellers are in the film, I can't for the life of me understand rating Lolita so highly; it was adapted about 6-8 years too soon. (But would've been back to being bowdlerized if it had been made in Hollywood after '74, of course.)

I like all four principals. Corliss had good words for Mason and Lyon, doesn't like Winters, and thinks Sellers is doing a mediocre rehearsal for Dr. Strangelove. I agree with one thing he said: it's like each of them is off in a different movie.

lolita has this weird problem where the like primary mechanic of the book--humbert's direct-to-you narration, where he wheedles and equivocates and jokes with you, and shows off, and tries to charm you, and keeps referring to himself as a "murderer" while hoping his bigger crime will just slip through you, and without meaning to slowly reveals his total narcissism and isolation and callousness and sickness--cannot be reproduced on film. or at least isn't. i dunno how you'd do it. so humbert as a character is much more cartoonish in the movie; he's an arch, fastidious villain. as played by mason he's hilarious though. winters is also great, and comes the closest to reproducing the unreliable-narrator effects: she gives charlotte some dignity when the camera and the lights and even the story structure are sneering at her, just like in the book. and the girl's good too! too old obviously, and too straightforwardly sexual--the only way to find dolly haze sexually attractive (unless you are also into little girls) should be to come to it through humbert's lust for her, to share it a little, and that should feel weird and horrible and troubling and be full of doubt. but an early-blooming teenager is, again, the part that's written; lyon does a good job with it. the egg scene is lol.

i don't know if i have an opinion about sellers. i go back and forth on the balcony scene. sometimes it seems like a masterpiece of cruelty-to-paranoiacs and sometimes it's just dumb.

i've never seen the jeremy irons thing.

Sellers' scenes have aged the worst for me, or at least the ones I can't watch without getting restless. But I'm sure I'd do the same if I reread the novel.

"a rehearsal for dr. strangelove" underrates the stuff sellers does in this movie that is very specific to nabokov's quilty--he definitely tries. but yeah he's much better in strangelove. strangelove is nearly perfect.

(i love strangelove and the shining, like lolita and 2001 a lot, and hate clockwork).

i always disliked clockwork, but i saw it in the theater recently and it was a little better than i remembered. funnier than i remembered, anyway.

i haven't seen it in a long time, so i'll defer. i do remember that scene where malcolm mcdowell is in tighty-whiteys being lectured (in his bedroom for some reason) by the school headmaster or whoever, and the school headmaster is this very particular kind of british-schoolboy-literature unctuous sadist with his unctuous sadism turned up all the way to molester levels, as being sickly funny; it's always stayed with me.

besides that i dunno. a lot of fisheye shots of people making absurd faces. everyone in movie is horrifying grotesque whom kubrick distances us from (compare w/ scene in book, way more unpleasant than anything in movie, where they kill that guy and then read and mock the love letter in his pocket). alex made out to be weirdly passive and pathetic for a thrill killer. total void of compassion which really bothers me. extremely looooooooooong. but yeah, it's been a while.

like, the thing is, it's not necessary for alex's school headmaster to be an unctuous sadist molester--the movie waaaaaaaay overpedals the Oppressive Society thing when the whole evil of the ludovico technique is that it could seem like a good idea to a decent state. instead everything around alex is deranged. if everyone in the world is a disgusting cartoon why not kill them.

although haha i probably still wouldn't like the movie that much if it were just a series of horrific murders of compassionately drawn and human characters. but that's just because i'm squeamish.

god sorry one more thing: admittedly GREAT opening titles.

no one did fonts better than SK.

In one of those unexpected ironies, the book reads like an early Kubrick film: a mordant, funny attack on authority. But the movie is oppressive.

I like Clockwork least of all Kubrick's films. (Haven't seen the first.) It took me a long time, but I've started to come around a bit on 2001; after three viewings, I really like Barry Lyndon. Those were two that I was slow on, or at least slower than with the rest. Strangelove, too; didn't get it when I was 16 or 17, like it fine now. But I really do dislike Clockwork. (I know the last one's really trashy, but I'd even take it over Clockwork.)

Was Clockwork Orange and Sleeper made around the same time? It sort of has the same feel (minus oversized prop bananas).

Kubrick works best when he's given compost.

Sleeper's a year or two later, I think.

clockwork's '71, sleeper's '73, so kinda.

I mean, Paths of Glory as a script is every midcentury liberal war-sure-is-hell cliche reenergized (Adolphe Menjou even gets to keep his villainous mustache).

note that woody allen would definitely have gone to see a clockwork orange, probably to impress people, so some of the dystopia-parody stuff could have come from there, sure. (and metropolis.)

The great thing about ACO is Malcolm McDowell's performance; physical, rock-star sexy, commanding. Doesn't quite suit Anthony Burgess's intentions, perhaps.

i do remember that scene where malcolm mcdowell is in tighty-whiteys being lectured (in his bedroom for some reason) by the school headmaster or whoever, and the school headmaster is this very particular kind of british-schoolboy-literature unctuous sadist with his unctuous sadism turned up all the way to molester levels, as being sickly funny; it's always stayed with me.

that + the spaghetti scene were what i was thinking of - the latter is played very broadly, but its still very funny. i think it was also during that scene where i realized that literally every performance in the movie was flat-out awful, except maybe david prowse who didn't have any lines.

i still don't think much of the movie, but i guess i was taken by the cinematic-ness of it or something - which is p much how i feel about The Shining too, another movie that i'll always see in the theater whenever there's an opportunity

Love Paths of Glory. Not for its politics--just for the excitement, for the performances, and for the weirdness of Tim Carey.

i think it was also during that scene where i realized that literally every performance in the movie was flat-out awful

there's some unfortunate line of kabuki insanity that this movie crosses for me and the shining doesn't.

Kubrick's Clockwork is definitely a comedy, not a satire, just like Strangelove. He's not offering an implicit humanistic critique because he thinks humans will fuck it up no matter what.

But like that end title of Barry Lyndon says of the 18th century's rich and poor, knave and lord, "They are all equal now."

The great thing about ACO is Malcolm McDowell's performance; physical, rock-star sexy, commanding. Doesn't quite suit Anthony Burgess's intentions, perhaps.

yeah i think him being the only attractive thing in the movie is a real problem. i think kael said the same thing although the only thing i actually remember is the Little Nell joke.

For me, McDowell is really the only redeeming thing about ACO.