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Stanley Kubrick (July 26,
1928 – March 7, 1999) was an influential and acclaimed American film director
and producer. Born in The Bronx in New York City to Jewish parents of
Austro-Romanian and Polish origin, he became interested in photography at a
young age, and after graduating high school he obtained a job with the primarily
photographic magazine Look, first working freelance and eventually becoming a
full-time staff member. He made his foray into filmmaking by directing several
promotional and documentary shorts for RKO Pictures, most of which were financed
and made solely by Kubrick himself.
****
Born: July 26, 1928
Manhattan, New York City,
N.Y., USA
Died: March 7, 1999
Harpenden, Hertfordshire,
England, U.K.
Occupation: Film
director, screenwriter and film producer
****
Early
life
Kubrick was born on July
26, 1928 at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, United States,
the first child of Jacques Kubrick and his wife Gertrude (née Perveler). His
sister, Barbara, was born in 1934. Jacques, whose parents had been Jewish
immigrants of Austro-Romanian and Polish origin, was a successful doctor. At
Stanley's birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in
The Bronx.
Kubrick's father taught
him chess at age twelve, and the game would remain a lifelong obsession. At
thirteen Jacques Kubrick bought his son a Graflex camera, triggering Kubrick's
fascination with still photography. At this time, he also became interested in
jazz, and attempted a brief career as a drummer.
Kubrick attended William
Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. (Chanteuse Eydie Gorme was a
schoolmate.) He was a poor student with a meager grade average of 67. When he
graduated from high school in 1945, colleges were flooded with soldiers
returning from service in the Second World War, and Kubrick's poor grades
eliminated his hopes of attending a post-secondary school. Later in life,
Kubrick would speak of his education and of education in general with disdain,
and maintained that nothing in school interested him.
While in high school,
Kubrick was chosen to be the official school photographer for a year. Eventually
he sought job opportunities on his own and by the time of his graduation he had
sold a series of pictures to New York's Look magazine. To supplement his income,
Kubrick played "chess for quarters" in Washington Square Park and various
Manhattan chess clubs. Kubrick also registered for night courses at the City
College to improve his grade average. He worked as a freelancer for Look,
becoming an apprentice photographer in 1946 and later a full-time staff member.
During his years at Look,
Kubrick married Toba Metz and they moved to Greenwich Village. During this time
Kubrick began frequenting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and
cinemas all over New York City. He was particularly inspired by the complex and
fluid camera movements of Max Ophüls, whose films influenced Kubrick's later
visual style.
Many of his photographs
of this early period (1945-1950) have been published in the book "Drama and
Shadows" (2005, Phaidon Press).
Film
career and later life
Early
Films
In 1951, Kubrick's
friend, Alex Singer, persuaded him to start making short documentaries for the
March of Time, a provider of cinema-distributed newsreels. Kubrick agreed and
independently financed Day of the Fight in 1951. Although the distributor went
out of business that year, Kubrick sold Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for a
profit of one hundred dollars. Kubrick quit his job at Look and began work on
his second documentary short, Flying Padre (also from 1951), funded by RKO. A
third film, The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film, was a 30-minute
promotion short for the Seafarers' International Union. These three films, plus
several other short subjects which have not survived, constitute Kubrick's only
work in the documentary genre. He also served as second unit director on an
episode of the television show Omnibus about the life of Abraham Lincoln.
Beginning with Fear and
Desire in 1953, Kubrick began concentrating solely on feature-length narrative
films. Fear and Desire concerns a team of soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in
a fictional war. In the finale, the men realize the faces of their enemies are
identical to their own (the characters are played by the same actors). Kubrick
and wife Toba Metz were the only crew on the film, which was written by
Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler, who later became a successful playwright. Fear
and Desire garnered respectable reviews, but was a commercial failure. In later
life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, which he dismissed as an amateur
effort. He refused to allow Fear and Desire to be shown in retrospectives and
other public screenings after establishing himself as a major filmmaker. The
film was later released on DVD unofficially, and student filmmakers who have
seen it have confirmed that it is 'encouragingly bad'.
Kubrick's marriage to his
high school sweetheart Toba ended during the making of Fear and Desire. He
married his second wife, Austrian dancer Ruth Sobotka, in 1954. She made a cameo
appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss (1955). Like Fear and Desire,
Killer's Kiss is a short feature film with a running time of slightly over an
hour which had limited commercial and critical success. The film concerns a
young welterweight boxer at the end of his career who gets mixed up with
organized crime. Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were both privately funded by
loans from Kubrick's family.
The
Killing
Alex Singer introduced
Kubrick to a young producer named James B. Harris, and the two became lifelong
friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, financed
Kubrick's next three films. Harris and Kubrick purchased the rights to a Lionel
White novel called Clean Break which Kubrick and co-screenwriter Jim Thompson
turned into a screenplay about a race track heist gone terribly wrong. Starring
Sterling Hayden, The Killing was Kubrick's first film with a professional cast
and crew. The film made impressive use of non-linear time, unusual for the
1950s, and though not a financial success, was Kubrick's first critically
acclaimed film. The widespread admiration for The Killing brought Harris-Kubrick
Productions to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio offered the pair
its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next
project. They eventually chose The Burning Secret by Austrian writer Stefan
Zweig. Kubrick wrote a screenplay with Calder Willingham, but the deal with MGM
collapsed before the film got properly underway.
Paths
of Glory
Kubrick suggested an
adaptation of Humphrey Cobb's novel Paths of Glory. Set in World War I, the
story involves three innocent French soldiers charged with cowardice by their
superiors to set an example for the other men. Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel
Dax, a humanitarian officer trying to prevent the men's execution. Harris and
Kubrick created little interest in the project until a major star of Douglas'
caliber was on board, when United Artists agreed to finance the film. Paths of
Glory (1957) became Kubrick's first significant commercial and critical success
and established him as an up and coming talent. Critics praised the film's
unvarnished combat scenes and Kubrick's manipulation of the camera. A scene in
which Douglas marches through his soldiers' trench in a single, unbroken reverse
tracking shot has become classic and is often cited in film classes. Steven
Spielberg later stated that Paths of Glory is his favorite of Kubrick's films.
Paths of Glory was shot
in Munich, Bavaria. During production, Kubrick met and became romantically
involved with a young German actress named Christiane Harlan (who was credited
under the stage name of "Susanne Christian"), who played the only female
speaking part in the film. Christiane (born in 1932) was four years his junior
and was born in Germany into a theatrical family. She trained as a dancer and
actress. The two married within a year. The marriage was Kubrick's third and
last, ending with his death in 1999. In addition to raising Christiane's young
daughter Katharina (born 1953) from her previous marriage, the couple had two
daughters: Anya (b. 1958) and Vivian (b. 1960). Christiane's brother, Jan Harlan
acted as Kubrick's Executive Producer from 1975 forward.
Spartacus
After returning to the
United States, Kubrick worked for six months on the Marlon Brando vehicle
One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Kubrick later claimed he was forced off the film because
Brando wanted to direct it himself, which he later did. Kubrick languished
working on screenplays which never reached production until Kirk Douglas
requested that he take over the director's chair on Spartacus (1960) from
Anthony Mann who, two weeks into shooting, was fired by the studio because of
his lack of leadership (or, more likely, due to creative disagreements with Kirk
Douglas). Based on the true story of a doomed uprising of Roman slaves,
Spartacus established Kubrick once and for all as a major director. The
production, however, was not a happy one. Creative differences arose between
Kubrick and Douglas, who was both star and producer of the film. Kubrick was
frustrated by his lack of creative control, and later largely disowned the film.
The battle for control between Douglas and Kubrick, who developed a good
relationship during Paths of Glory, caused a falling-out between them. In later
years Douglas referred to Kubrick as "a talented shit." Spartacus proved a major
commercial success and was well-received by critics, but the battles waged over
the film convinced Kubrick to find ways to work with the financial resources of
Hollywood while remaining independent of its production system. This was part of
the reasoning behind Kubrick's relocation to England in 1962. Kubrick later
referred to Hollywood film-making as "film by fiat, film by frenzy."
Lolita
In 1962, Kubrick moved to
England to make Lolita and resided there for the rest of his life. Not
surprisingly, Lolita caused Kubrick's first major controversy. The book, which
deals with a love affair between a middle-aged man and a twelve year old girl,
was already notorious when Kubrick embarked on the project; the difficulty of
the subject matter was eventually mocked in the film's tagline "How did they
ever make a film of Lolita?". Vladimir Nabokov, the book's author, produced a
three-hundred page screenplay which Kubrick abandoned. The final screenplay was
reportedly penned by Kubrick himself. Despite changing Lolita's age from twelve
to a more acceptable fourteen, several scenes in the final film had to be
re-edited for the film to be released. The result was a film that toned down
what were considered the more perverse aspects of the novel, sometimes leaving
much to the audience's imagination. Kubrick later commented that, had he
realized how severe the censorship limitations would be, he probably would not
have made the film. However, he always spoke highly of James Mason, who played
the pedophile/ephebophile Humbert Humbert in the film, later identifying him as
one of the actors with whom he most enjoyed working. Lolita was also the first
time Kubrick worked with British comic Peter Sellers, a collaboration which
proved one of the most successful of his early career.
Dr.
Strangelove
Kubrick's next project
was the cult classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb (1964). Based on the novel Red Alert by ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter
George (writing as Peter Bryant), and co-written for the screen by Kubrick and
George in collaboration with American satirist Terry Southern, Strangelove is
considered a masterpiece of black humor. While Red Alert was a deadly-serious
cautionary tale for the Cold War era, Strangelove would evolve, almost
accidentally, into what Kubrick called a "nightmare comedy".
Kubrick originally
intended to make the film a straight-ahead thriller, but found that the actual
conditions of nuclear war were so absurd that the screenplay soon became darkly
funny rather than suspenseful. Kubrick proceeded to reconceive the film as a
comedy and recruited Terry Southern to help provide the anarchistic irony the
subject required.
Peter Sellers, who had
played a memorable role in Lolita, was hired to play four roles simultaneously
in Strangelove. Sellers eventually played three of them, partially due to a leg
injury, and partially due to the difficulty of mastering bomber pilot Major
"King" Kong's Texas accent. Kubrick later called Sellers "amazing," but lamented
that his energy level rarely went beyond two or three takes. In response,
Kubrick set up two cameras to film Sellers and let the comedian improvise.
Strangelove is often cited as one of Sellers' best films and proof of his genius
as a comic actor.
Kubrick's decision to
film a Cold War thriller as a jet-black comedy was a daring risk, but paid off
for both himself and Columbia Pictures. The same studio coincidentally released
the nuclear war thriller Fail-Safe, which bore major similarities to
Strangelove, the same year. Kubrick considered legal action against the film,
but eventually decided against it.
The film portrays an
"accidental" nuclear war between Russia and the United States, which is set off
by the paranoid actions of the mad General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). The
film cuts between Burpleson Air Force Base, where RAF Group Captain Mandrake
(Peter Sellers) tries to stop General Ripper, and the War Room, where the
President (also Sellers), General Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the mad German
scientist Dr. Strangelove (again Sellers) try to stop (or, in some cases, not
stop) the B-52 bombers going to drop nuclear weapons on Russia, as well as Major
Kong's (Slim Pickens) renegade bomber plane. Ken Adam designed the sets for the
film, and the War Room set is considered a classic of production design.
By belittling the
sacrosanct norms of the political culture as the squabbling of intellectual
children, Strangelove foreshadowed the cultural upheavals of the late 1960s and
proved an enormous success with the nascent counterculture. Strangelove earned
four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and
the New York Film Critics' Best Director award. Kubrick's success with
Strangelove persuaded the studios that he was an auteur who could be trusted to
deliver popular films despite his unusual ideas.
2001:
A Space Odyssey
Kubrick spent five years
developing his next film, 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey (photographed in Super
Panavision 70). Kubrick wrote the screenplay with science fiction writer Sir
Arthur C. Clarke, expanding on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". The
screenplay was written simultaneously with the novel which was released in
tandem with the film, though the finished novel is credited only to Clarke and
the film deviates substantially from its screenplay in several ways. Both Clarke
and Kubrick later spoke very highly of one another.
The film's special
effects, overseen by Kubrick and engineered by legendary effects pioneer Douglas
Trumbull (Silent Running, Blade Runner), were groundbreaking and inspired many
of the special effects driven films which followed. 2001 is considered one of
the few films of its era whose special effects remain believable to today's
viewer. A host of manufacturing companies were consulted as to what the designs
of both special and everyday objects would look like in the year 2001. At the
time of the movie's release, speaking to journalists at a talk hosted by MGM,
Clarke commented on the look of the film, predicting that a generation of
engineers would design working spacecraft based on the fictional depictions in
the movie, "even if it isn't the best way to do it." Despite numerous
nominations in the categories of directing, writing, and producing, the only
Academy Award Kubrick ever received was for his supervision on the special
effects for 2001.
The film was also notable
for its use of classical music such as Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra
and Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube. Even more notable is Kubrick's use — albeit
unauthorized — of music from the contemporary avant-garde Hungarian composer,
György Ligeti. The director's use of Ligeti's music — including Atmospeheres,
Lux Aeterna, and the Requiem — marked the first major exposure of Ligeti's work,
and helped to establish his public persona and identity as one of Europe's most
important composers in the latter quarter of the 20th century. Kubrick's use of
music in 2001 was unusual for its time, in that the music is an essential part
of the film and not simply a commentary on or enhancement of the action.
2001: A Space Odyssey
represented a radical departure from Kubrick's previous films and conventional
film-making. Containing only forty-five minutes of dialogue, even these
conversations are often superfluous to background images and music. Dialogue
outlines plot points while presenting a dissociated view of mankind. Characters
mainly function as extensions of the film's thematic backbones, or are displayed
as anthropological archetypes. The story is obscure for most of the film's
running time and the ambiguous ending continues to perplex and fascinate
audiences today. Kubrick would never again push the experimental envelope quite
so hard. Despite its unorthodox nature, the film was an enormous box office
success and a pop cultural phenomenon. This came after an initial period of
public disinterest, followed by a counterculture word-of-mouth swell. The film
may not have had sufficient time in theaters to benefit from the buzz, were it
not for a six week contract, as ticket sales were abysmal in the first two
weeks. The film had nearly been pulled, and Jack Nicholson later would quote
Kubrick as having counted two hundred and seventeen walkouts during the premiere
(including the studio head). Paradoxically, Kubrick would win total creative
control from Hollywood by succeeding with one of the most "difficult" films ever
to win wide release.
Initial reactions from
critics were negative, attacking the film's lack of dialogue and seemingly
impenetrable storyline. Following the success of the movie, however, many
critics later revised their opinions. Audiences embraced the film, especially
the 60s counterculture, who loved the movie for its "Star Gate" sequence, a
seemingly psychedelic journey into the infinite reaches of the cosmos. The cult
following the film acquired in the burgeoning drug culture prompted the film's
distributors to add "The Ultimate Trip" to the movie's poster.
Interpretations of 2001:
A Space Odyssey are as widespread as its popularity, and though it was made in
1968 it still prompts debate today. When critic Joseph Gelmis asked Kubrick
about the meaning of the film, Kubrick replied[1]:
They are the areas I
prefer not to discuss because they are highly subjective and will differ from
viewer to viewer. In this sense, the film becomes anything the viewer sees in
it. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the
viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious
yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded.
2001: A Space Odyssey may
be Kubrick's most famous and influential film. Steven Spielberg has called it
his generation's "Big Bang", focusing their attention on the race to space. The
special effects techniques that Kubrick pioneered were later built upon by
Ridley Scott and George Lucas for films such as Alien and Star Wars,
respectively. 2001 is particularly notable as one of the few films in which
space travel is presented in as realistic a manner as possible. For example,
there is no sound in any of the space scenes, weightlessness is strictly adhered
to, and sequences in which characters are wearing space suits often contain only
the actor's breathing on the soundtrack. The only blemish in this regard is the
series of shots inside on the moon, where gravity appears to be operating at
Earth normal, despite no mention of "artificial" gravity.
Its primary themes
include: the origins and meaning of life, super-intelligent computers,
extraterrestrials, the search for God and a place in the universe, rebirth and
evolution. Whole books have been written about interpretations of it, and even
Arthur C. Clarke has gone on record of not knowing exactly what Kubrick was up
to when making the film, going as far to say that 2001 was 90% Kubrick's vision.
Napoleon
Kubrick's next project
was to be a large-scale biopic of Napoleon. He did a great deal of research,
read dozens of books on the French general, and wrote a preliminary screenplay.
With assistants he even created a meticulous card-catalog of the location and
activity of each of Napoleon's inner circle during the operative years. Kubrick
scouted locations and planned to shoot large parts of the film on the actual
historical sites where the events of Napoleon's life occurred. Kubrick, in notes
to his financial backers preserved in The Kubrick Archives, said that he wasn't
sure how his Napoleon film would turn out, but he expected to create 'the best
movie ever made.' The project, however, was ultimately cancelled in part due to
the prohibitive cost of making such an ambitious film on location, the release
in the west of Sergei Bondarchuk's epic film version of Tolstoy's War and Peace
(1968), and the box office failure of the Napoleon-themed Waterloo (1970). The
screenplay for the film has since surfaced on the Internet, and a great deal of
the historical research involved would influence Kubrick's later film Barry
Lyndon, which was set in the late eighteenth century, the historical period just
prior to the Napoleonic Wars.
A
Clockwork Orange
In place of his Napoleon,
Kubrick sought a project which he could make quickly on a small budget. He found
it in A Clockwork Orange (1971). The film is a dark and often shocking
exploration of violence in human society, and remains one of the few
non-pornographic films released with an 'X' rating in the United States,
although it was later changed to an 'R'. Based on the famous novel by Anthony
Burgess, the film tells the story of teenage hooligan Alex DeLarge (played by
Malcolm McDowell) who gleefully murders, steals, and rapes without the slightest
Kubrick hint of conscience or remorse. Finally imprisoned, Alex undergoes a
psychiatric treatment to be 'cured' of his violent urges. This conditions him to
be physically unable to engage in violent acts, but also renders him completely
helpless and incapable of moral choice, resulting in a brutal comeuppance at the
hands of Alex's former victims.
Kubrick shot A Clockwork
Orange very quickly and almost entirely on existing locations in and around
London. Despite the comparatively low-tech nature of the film, as compared to
2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick was highly innovative within these limitations,
once throwing a camera off a rooftop to achieve the desired disorienting effect.
For the score, Kubrick invited electronic pioneer Wendy Carlos, creator of
Switched-On Bach, to adapt famous classical works such as Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony to the Moog synthesizer. Carlos created a strange yet familiar-sounding
score which emphasizes the dystopian fantasy of the film, while still grounding
it in realism.
The film was extremely
controversial due to its explicit depictions of teenage gangs committing acts of
rape and violence. Released the same year as Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Don
Siegel's Dirty Harry, the three films sparked a ferocious debate in the media
over the effect of cinematic violence on society. The controversy was
exacerbated when copycat acts of violence were committed in England by criminals
wearing the same costumes as characters in A Clockwork Orange. (This language
includes many anglicized Russian words: the gang members refer to each other as
"droogies," which is taken from the Russian word for "friend.") When he and his
family received death threats as a result of the controversy, he took the
unusual step of removing the film from circulation in Britain. The film did not
appear again in the United Kingdom until its re-release in 2000, a year after
Kubrick's death. Imposing a ban on the film in Britain showed the unprecedented
power Kubrick had over his distributor, Warner Brothers. For the remainder of
his career he had total control over all aspects of his films, including
marketing and advertising; such was the faith Warner Brothers had in his
projects.
Anthony Burgess had mixed
feelings over Kubrick's film. Though Kubrick's film has a different ending from
Burgess's original novel, Burgess blamed his American publisher for this, and
not Kubrick. Kubrick based his screenplay on the American version of the novel,
from which the final chapter had been removed. In the book's original ending,
Alex, the anti-hero of the story, chooses to give up his criminal ways and lead
a peaceful and productive life. Kubrick did not read the final chapter until
well into production and decided that it was out of keeping with the tone of his
film. Burgess eventually dedicated his book Napoleon Symphony to Kubrick, who
had given him some of the ideas that Burgess used in the novel. In fact,
according to the online Kubrick FAQ, Napoleon Symphony was considered by Kubrick
as the starting point for the cancelled Napoleon film he once wished to make.
According to Burgess's autobiography You've Had Your Time and his 1986
introduction to A Clockwork Orange, Burgess was irritated that Kubrick,
according to Burgess, ignored the controversy surrounding the film adaptation
and left Burgess alone to defend a work of art that was not his own. Another
likely reason for Burgess's ambivalence regarding the film is that he considered
the novel to be one of his lesser works and wanted to be remembered for the
books he considered superior. In large part due to the movie's success, however,
A Clockwork Orange has become Burgess's best known work. It remains perhaps
Kubrick's most notorious and controversial film.
Barry
Lyndon
Kubrick's next film was
an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, also
known as Barry Lyndon, a picaresque novel about an 18th century gambler and
social climber who slowly insinuates himself into high society. It would be
Kubrick's least appreciated post-Strangelove film, despite the strong
performances of Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson and Irish actress Marie Kean, as
well as Kubrick's innovative cinematography and attention to period detail.
While a box-office failure in the United States, the film found a large audience
in Europe, particularly in France.
Barry Lyndon (1975) was
considered by some critics, especially one of Kubrick's greatest Kubrick
detractors Pauline Kael, to be cold, slow-moving, and lifeless. The film's
length — over three hours — and measured pace put off many critics and US
audiences. However, the film also received many rave reviews in the United
States with such noted critics as Rex Reed and Richard Schickel praising it. A
Time Magazine cover story on the film was published and Kubrick was nominated
for an Oscar. As with most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndon's reputation has
grown over the years, particularly among other filmmakers. Acclaimed director
Martin Scorsese cited it as his favorite Kubrick film. Steven Spielberg has
praised its "impeccable technique," though when younger he famously described it
as "like going through the Prado without lunch."
As in his other films,
Kubrick used innovative camera and lighting techniques. Most famously, many
interior scenes were shot with a specially adapted high-speed still camera lens
originally invented for the NASA space program. This allowed many scenes to be
lit only with candlelight and created an almost two-dimensional diffused image
reminiscent of 18th century paintings. Kubrick's blending of music, mise en
scene, costume and action set standards for period dramas that few other films
have matched. The film won four Academy Awards, more than any other Kubrick
film. Despite this, Barry Lyndon was not the box office success some of
Kubrick's previous films were, and he was reportedly deeply discouraged by its
poor reception.
The
Shining
Kubrick's pace slowed
considerably after Barry Lyndon, and he would not make another film until The
Shining. Released in 1980, the film was an adaptation of Stephen King's popular
horror novel. The film starred Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in the story of
an aspiring writer who takes a job as the off-season caretaker at the Overlook
Hotel, a high-class resort deep in the mountains of Colorado. The job demands
that he, his wife and child spend the winter alone in the hotel, isolated. His
child, Danny, is gifted with telepathy called "shining," and glimpses visions of
the past and future. The hotel begins displaying increasingly horrifying and
phantasmagoric images to Danny, most famously the apparition of two little girls
murdered years before by their father, the former caretaker. Jack is slowly
driven mad by the haunted Overlook Hotel until he collapses into a homicidal
psychosis, and tries to kill his family with an axe.
The film was shot mostly
at Elstree and Pinewood Studios near London, where the sets were built in their
entirety, however the exterior of the Overlook Hotel is Timberline Lodge, a ski
resort on Mount Hood, Oregon. Kubrick extensively used the newly-invented
Steadicam, a spring-mounted camera support which allowed smooth movement in
enclosed spaces, to convey the claustrophobic oppression of the haunted hotel.
The Shining, more than
any other film, gave birth to the legend of Kubrick as a megalomanic
perfectionist. He reportedly demanded hundreds of takes of certain scenes (about
1.3 million feet of film was used), particularly plaguing actress Shelley
Duvall. Kubrick's daughter, Vivian Kubrick, shot a short documentary film during
production. It is available on the DVD release of the film and is one of the few
documents of Kubrick in action during the latter half of his career.
The film opened to mostly
negative reviews but did very well with audiences and made Warner Brothers a
considerable profit. Like most of Kubrick's films, subsequent critical reaction
sees the film in a more favorable light. Stephen King was dissatisfied with the
movie, calling Kubrick "a man who thinks too much and feels too little." King
later collaborated with Mick Garris to create a made-for-television miniseries
version of the novel in 1997. Since then, King has spoken with less hostility
toward Kubrick and his film. It has been said that part of the reason for King's
dislike of the film was that Kubrick pestered the author with constant phone
calls during production. Kubrick reportedly once woke King at 3 a.m. to ask "Do
you believe in God?"
Among horror fans, The
Shining became a cult classic, often appearing alongside The Exorcist at the top
of lists of the best horror films. Some of its images, such as an antique
elevator disgorging a tidal wave of blood, became among the most recognizable
and widely known images from any Kubrick film. The Shining renewed Warner
Brothers faith in Kubrick's ability to make both artistically satisfying and
successful films after the commercial failure of Barry Lyndon in the United
States. As a pop culture phenomenon, the film has been the object of countless
parodies, from The Simpsons and MAD Magazine to recent films such as Seed Of
Chucky.
Full
Metal Jacket
It was seven years until
Kubrick's next film, Full Metal Jacket (1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's
Vietnam War novel, The Short-Timers, starring Matthew Modine as Joker, Adam
Baldwin as Animal Mother, R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and Vincent
D'Onofrio as Private Pyle. The film begins at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris
Island, where GySgt Hartman ruthlessly pushes his new men through punishing
recruit training to release their repressed killing instincts and transform them
from "maggots" to Marines. Pvt Pyle, an overweight, mentally challenged
conscript subjected to relentless physical and verbal abuse by GySgt Hartman,
slowly cracks under the strain. As a result, Pvt Pyle shoots and kills GySgt
Hartman before taking his own life as he repeats the then familiar Marine
mantra: "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine..." This
scene concludes the boot-camp portion of the film.
The second half of the
film follows Joker, since been promoted to Sergeant as he tries to stay sane in
Vietnam. As a reporter for the United States Military's newspaper the Stars and
Stripes, Joker occupies a middle ground in the conflict, using wit and sarcasm
to detach himself from the absurd nature of war. While an American and a member
of the United States Marine Corps, he is also a reporter and compelled to abide
by the ethics of that profession. The film then follows a platoon's advance on
Hue City, decimated by the major urban warfare during the Tet Offensive. The
film ends in a climactic battle between Joker's platoon and a lone sniper among
the rubble of Hue City and Joker's first kill.
Filming a Vietnam War
film in England presented considerable challenges for Kubrick and his team. Much
of the filming took place in the Docklands area of London, with the ruined city
set created by production designer Anton Furst. This helped to make the film
very different visually from contemporary Vietnam films such as Platoon or
Hamburger Hill. Instead of being set in the pervasive tropical jungle of
South-East Asia, the second half of the movie unfolds in a city, bringing the
element of urban warfare to an otherwise jungle war. Kubrick said to Gene Siskel
that his attraction to Hasford's book was because it was "neither anti-war or
pro-war" and had "no moral or political position" and was primarily concerned
with "the way things are."
Full Metal Jacket opened
to mixed reviews but found a reasonably large audience, despite being
overshadowed by Oliver Stone's Platoon. This was one reason for Kubrick not
making Aryan Papers, in fear that its publicity would be stolen by Steven
Spielberg's Schindler's List.
Eyes
Wide Shut
Kubrick's presence in
Hollywood remained mute for over ten years following Full Metal Jacket, and
speculation arose that he had essentially retired from filmmaking. While rumors
surfaced from time to time regarding possible new Kubrick projects, including
Aryan Papers and the posthumously produced A.I., Kubrick's final film would be
Eyes Wide Shut, starring then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as an upper
middle class Manhattan couple caught up in a sexual odyssey. The story, based on
Arthur Schnitzler's novella Traumnovelle, known in English as Dream Story,
follows Dr. William Harford on a journey into the sexual underworld after his
wife, Alice, shatters his faith in her fidelity when she confesses to nearly
giving him and their daughter up for just one night with another man. After
trespassing on to the rituals of a sinister and mysterious cult, Dr. Harford
thinks twice before seeking revenge against his wife and learns he and his
family might be in danger. In 1999, days after screening a final cut of Eyes
Wide Shut for his family, lead actors Cruise and Kidman, and Warner Bros.
executives, Kubrick died of a massive heart attack in his sleep at the age of
70. He was interred next to his favorite tree in Childwickbury Manor,
Hertfordshire, England.
The film was in
production for over two years and two of the main cast members, Harvey Keitel
and Jennifer Jason Leigh, had to be replaced during the course of filming. While
set in New York, the film was shot entirely on London soundstages with only a
few locations. Shots of Manhattan itself were pick-up shots filmed in New York
by a second-unit crew. Due to Kubrick's secrecy about the film, rumors flew
about the plot and content of the film, most of it highly inaccurate. Most
especially, the film's sexual content caused a firestorm of speculation, with
some journalists speculating that it would be "the sexiest film ever made." The
participation of celebrity couple Cruise and Kidman did little to control the
pre-release hype.
The film opened to smash
box-office business which slowed down considerably in the weeks following the
film's release. Far from an erotic thriller, Eyes Wide Shut proved to be a slow,
mysterious, dreamlike meditation on the themes of marriage, fidelity, betrayal
and the illusion versus the reality of sex. Critics were mostly negative in
their reaction to the film, attacking its slow pace and what they perceived as
emotional inertia. Kubrick's defenders have speculated that the mixed critical
and box-office response to the movie was deeply affected by pre-release
misconceptions of the film. The movie was disliked, they claimed, because it
frustrated audience expectations. Like most of Kubrick's films, Eyes Wide Shut
has improved its reputation with critics and audiences over time.[citation
needed] According to some of his friends and family, Eyes Wide Shut was
Kubrick's personal favorite of his own films. Contrary to that, however, in 2006
R. Lee Ermey went on record as saying Kubrick told him over the phone, shortly
before his death, that Eyes Wide Shut was "a piece of shit" and that the critics
would "have him for lunch". [2] However, Todd Field the director of In the
Bedroom and Little Children who acted for Kubrick refutes Ermey's claims.
"Stanley was absolutely thrilled with the film. He was still working on the film
when he died. And he probably died because he finally relaxed. It was one of the
happiest weekends of his life, he had just shown the first cut to Terry, Tom and
Nicole. He would have kept working on it, like he did on all of his films. But I
know he was over the moon about the film, as I was told this from people who
were with him daily throughout post-production. My production partner was
Stanley’s assistant for thirty years." Field stated that Kubrick advised him to
stay away from the Texas Chainsaw actor: " I’d originally thought about R. Lee
Ermey for In the Bedroom, and I talked to Stanley a lot about that film, and all
I can say is Stanley was adamant that I not work with Ermey for all kinds of
reasons that I won't get into because there is no reason to do that to anyone,
even if that person is saying slanderous things about Stanley that I know for a
fact are completely untrue."[3]
Eyes Wide Shut, like
Lolita before it, faced a certain amount of censorship before being released. In
the United States and Canada, digitally manufactured figures were strategically
placed in order to mask some of the explicit sex scenes. This was done to secure
an "R" rating from the MPAA. In Europe and the rest of the world, the film has
been released in its uncut, original form.
Unrealized projects
An exacting perfectionist
who often worked for years on pre-production planning and research, Kubrick had
a number of unrealized projects during his career. All but one were never
completed as films, but are of some interest to fans of the director.
Most famously, he never
filmed his much-researched biopic of Napoleon (Bonaparte) I of France, which was
originally to star Jack Nicholson as Napoleon after Kubrick saw him in Easy
Rider. Kubrick and Nicholson eventually worked together on The Shining. After
years of preproduction, the movie was set aside indefinitely in favor of more
economically feasible projects. As late as 1987, Kubrick stated that he had not
given up on the project, mentioning that he had read almost 500 books on the
historical figure. He was convinced that a film worthy of the subject had not
yet appeared.
In the early 1990s,
Kubrick almost went into production on a film of Louis Begley's Wartime Lies,
the story of a boy and his mother in hiding during the Holocaust. The first
draft screenplay, titled "Aryan Papers", had been penned by Kubrick himself.
Kubrick chose not to make the film due to the release of Steven Spielberg's
Holocaust-themed Schindler's List in 1993. In addition, according to Kubrick's
wife, Christiane, the subject itself had become too depressing and difficult for
the director. Kubrick eventually concluded that an accurate film about the
Holocaust was beyond the capacity of cinema.
A.I.:
Artificial Intelligence — posthumous completion
One Kubrick project was
eventually completed by another director, Steven Spielberg. Throughout the 1980s
and early 90s, Kubrick collaborated with various writers (including Brian Aldiss,
Sara Maitland and Ian Watson) on a project called by various names, including
"Pinocchio" and "Artificial Intelligence."
The film was developed
expanding on Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long," which
Kubrick and his writers turned into a feature-length film in three acts. It was
a futuristic fairy tale about a robot which resembles and behaves as a child,
who is sold as a temporary surrogate to a family whose only son is in a coma.
The robot, however, learns of this, and out of sympathy is left abandoned in the
woods by his owners instead of being returned to the factory for destruction.
The rest of the story concerns the robot's programmed efforts to understand how
he differs from humans, and whether it is worth remaining functional in a world
on the brink of self-destruction.
Kubrick reportedly held
long telephone discussions with Steven Spielberg regarding the film, and,
according to Spielberg, at one point stated that the subject matter was closer
to Spielberg's sensibilities than his. In 2001, following Kubrick's death,
Spielberg took the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers, and
composed a new screenplay, and in association with what remained of Kubrick's
production unit, made the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, starring Haley
Joel Osment.
The film contains a
posthumous producing credit for Stanley Kubrick at the beginning, and the brief
dedication "For Stanley" at the end. The film contains many recurrent Kubrick
motifs, such as an omniscient narrator, an extreme form of the three act
structure, the themes of humanity and inhumanity, and a sardonic view of
Freudian psychology.
A.I. was not a major box
office or critical success, and the unorthodox combination of two vastly
different directorial visions was considered by some critics a confusing failure
unappealing to fans of both Spielberg and Kubrick. However, the film has a cult
following among science-fiction fans and is considered by some to be one of
Spielberg's finest films.
Lunatic at Large
On November 1, 2006,
Philip Hobbs, Kubrick's son-in-law, announced that they will be shepherding a
film treatment of Lunatic at Large, which was commissioned by film director
Stanley Kubrick for treatment from noir pulp novelist Jim Thompson in the 1950s,
but it had become lost until Kubrick's 1999 death.[1]
Character
Kubrick was often
unwilling to discuss personal matters publicly, or to speak publicly at all.
Over time, his image in the media has ranged anywhere from being a reclusive
genius to a megalomaniacal lunatic shut off from the world. Since his death,
Kubrick's friends and family have denied this. Kubrick clearly left behind a
strong family and many close friends. Many of those who worked for him speak
highly in his favor. The rumor regarding his reclusiveness is largely a myth,
and may have resulted from his aversion to travel once installed at St. Albans.
Kubrick was afraid of flying and refused to take airplane trips, so he rarely
left England over the last forty years of his life. Kubrick once told a friend
that he went to London (about 40 minutes by car) four to five times a year
solely for appointments with his dentist. Kubrick also shunned the Hollywood
system and its publicity machine. His appearance was not well known in his later
years, and a British man by the name of Alan Conway successfully pretended he
was Kubrick to meet several well-known actors and get into fancy clubs. Conway
is the subject of the film Colour Me Kubrick (2005), written by Kubrick's
assistant Anthony Frewin and directed by Brian Cook, Kubrick's First Assistant
Director for 25 years.
Kubrick was constantly in
contact with family members and business associates, often by telephone, and
contacted collaborators at all hours for conversations lasting from under a
minute to several hours. Many of Kubrick's admirers and friends spoke of these
telephone conversations with great affection and nostalgia after his death, most
especially Michael Herr and Steven Spielberg. In his memoir of Kubrick, Herr
said that dozens of people claim to have spoken to Kubrick on the day of his
death and remarked "I believe all of them." Kubrick also frequently invited
various people to his house, ranging from actors to close friends, admired film
directors, writers, and intellectuals. Kubrick was also an animal lover. He
owned many dogs and cats throughout his life and showed an extraordinary
affection for them. Christiane, Kubrick's widow, said in her book version of
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures that Kubrick brought his cats to the editing
room to spend time with them that was lost while he was shooting his films.
Matthew Modine remembers Kubrick being deeply upset when a family of rabbits was
accidentally killed during the making of Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick was so upset
that he cancelled shooting for the rest of the day. Philip Kaplan, one of
Kubrick's lawyers and friends, reports that Stanley once cancelled a meeting
with him and another lawyer who had flown to London from the United States for
the meeting, at the last moment, because he sat up all night with a dying cat
and was in no shape to participate. Kaplan also reports that the huge kitchen
table at St. Albans was supported by an undulating base and that within each
curved space was a dog, most of no recognizable breed and some not notably
friendly to strangers.
Kubrick had a reputation
of being tactless and rude to many people he worked with. Some of Kubrick's
collaborators have complained of a coldness or lack of sympathy for the feelings
of others on his part. Although Kubrick became close friends with Clockwork
Orange star Malcolm McDowell during filming, Kubrick abruptly terminated the
friendship soon after the film was complete. McDowell was deeply hurt by this
and the schism between the two men lasted until Kubrick's death. Michael Herr,
in his otherwise positive memoir to Kubrick, complains that Kubrick was
extremely cheap and very greedy about money. He states that Kubrick was a
"terrible" man to do business with and that the director was upset until the day
he died that Jack Nicholson made more money from The Shining than he did.
Science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss was fired from Kubrick's never completed
project AI for vacationing with his family in violation of his contract, even
though Kubrick had put the project on hold at the time. Kubrick brought in other
writers to help write the AI script, but fired them because he felt they were
useless. Kirk Douglas often commented on Kubrick's unwillingness to compromise,
his out of control ego and ruthless pursuit to make a film his own distinct work
of art instead of a group effort (it must be noted, however, that in interviews
Kubrick often acknowledged and admired the effort of his team, especially those
who made the special effects for 2001 possible). However, Douglas has
acknowledged that a large part of his dislike for Kubrick was caused by
Kubrick's consistently negative statements about Spartacus. James Earl Jones,
despite his admiration for Kubrick on an artistic level, spoke negatively of his
experience on Dr. Strangelove, saying that Kubrick was disrespectful to actors,
using them as instruments in a grand design rather than allowing them to be
creative artists in their own right. George C. Scott, who admired Kubrick in
retrospect, famously resented Kubrick using his most over-the-top performances
for the final cut of Dr. Strangelove, after promising they would not be seen by
audiences. Kubrick's crew has stated that he was notorious for not complimenting
anyone and rarely showed admiration for his co-workers for fear it would make
them complacent. Kubrick complimented them on their work only after the movie
was finished, unless he felt their work was "genius." The only actors that
Kubrick called "genius" were Peter Sellers, James Mason and Malcolm McDowell.
Upon purchasing the
Childwickbury Manor in Hertforshire, England, Kubrick set up his life so that
family and business were one. He purchased top-of-the-line film editing
equipment and owned all of his own cameras. Children and animals would
frequently come in and out of the room as he worked on a script or met with an
actor.
Although Kubrick was
greatly disliked by many of the people he worked with, many speak kindly of him,
including co-workers and friends Jack Nicholson, Diane Johnson, Tom Cruise, Joe
Turkel, Con Pederson, Sterling Hayden, Scatman Crothers, Carl Solomon, Ryan
O'Neal, Anthony Frewin, Ian Watson, John Milius, Jocelyn Pook, Sydney Pollack,
R. Lee Ermey, and others. Michael Herr's memoir to Kubrick and Matthew Modine's
book Full Metal Jacket Diary show a different, much more kind, sane and warm
version of Kubrick than the conventional view of him as cold, demanding and
impersonal. In a series of interviews found on the DVD of Eyes Wide Shut, a
teary eyed Tom Cruise remembers Kubrick with great affection. Nicole Kidman also
shares his sentiments. Shelley Winters, when asked what she thought of him,
answered, "A gift." Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy in The Shining did not
always get along with Kubrick, as seen in The Making of the Shining, but has
said that in retrospect it was a great experience that made her smarter — though
she'd never want to do it again. Also, Malcolm McDowell in retrospect said that
he felt some of his statements about Kubrick were "unfair" and were a "cry out"
to Kubrick to call him. He has mused that it was because Kubrick saw some of
Alex (the main character in A Clockwork Orange) in McDowell, and McDowell has
commented on how much this termination of friendship personally hurt him.
McDowell said that he was very sad when Kubrick died.
Politics
In his memoir of Kubrick,
Michael Herr, his personal friend and co-writer of the screenplay for Full Metal
Jacket, wrote:
Stanley had views on
everything, but I would not exactly call them political... His views on
democracy were those of most people I know, neither left or right, not exactly
brimming with belief, a noble failed experiment along our evolutionary way,
brought low by base instincts, money and self-interest and stupidity... He
thought the best system might be under a benign despot, though he had little
belief that such a man could be found. He wasn't a cynic, but he could have
easily passed for one. He was certainly a capitalist. He believed himself to be
a realist.
Herr also wrote that
Kubrick owned guns and that he did not think war is entirely a bad thing. In the
documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Herr says "...he also accepted
to acknowledge that, of all the things war is, it is also very beautiful."
Kubrick, according to Ian Watson, reportedly said of the pre-1997 socialist
Labour Party “If the Labourites ever get in, I’ll leave the country.” Watson
explains Kubrick was extremely opposed to laws on taxing the rich and welfare in
general. [4] Michael Herr said of initial reactions to Full Metal Jacket "The
political left will call Kubrick a fascist." [5] Despite that Full Metal Jacket
is often cited as an anti-war film, in his 1987 interview with Gene Siskel
called Candidly Kubrick, Kubrick has said, "Full Metal Jacket suggests there is
more to say about war than it is just bad." In the same interview he said that
everything serious the drill sergeant says, such as "A rifle is only a tool, it
is a hard heart that kills" is completely true. Though some have said Kubrick
disliked America, Michael Herr says, on the other hand, that America was all he
talked about and that he often thought of moving back. It was said that Kubrick
was sent VHS tapes from American friends of pro-football, Seinfeld, The Simpsons
and other television shows which he could not get in the United Kingdom. Kubrick
also told Siskel he was not anti-American and that he thought that America was a
good country, though he did not think that Ronald Reagan was a good President.
He also said he thought that people in the world did not take the nuclear threat
of the time as seriously as they should and he was extremely suspicious of
centralized banking systems. Some claim this evidence suggests Kubrick's views
lean Right while others still say he leans Left. It is unknown, however, if
Kubrick belonged to any political group.
Kubrick's works depict
his own view of human nature and are critical of moral/political stances based
on other views of human nature. For example, in A Clockwork Orange, the police
are as violent and vulgar as the droogs, and Kubrick depicts both the subversive
writer Mr. Alexander (a figure of the Left) and the authoritarian Minister of
the Interior (a figure of the Right), as manipulative, hypocritical and
sinister. In regard to A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick said to the New York Times,
Man isn't a noble
savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to
be objective about anything where his own interests are involved — that about
sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's
a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false
view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.
He also said in the same
interview:
The idea that social
restraints are all bad is based on a utopian and unrealistic vision of man. But
in this movie you have an example of social institutions gone a bit berserk.
Obviously social institutions faced with the law-and-order problem might choose
to become grotesquely oppressive. The movie poses two extremes: it shows Alex in
his pre-civilized state, and society committing a worse evil in attempting to
cure him."
Kubrick's earlier work
can be seen as more "liberal" than his later work. Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory
and Spartacus in Spartacus are comparable to liberals, and the satire of
government and military in Dr. Strangelove seems to point to a liberal political
perspective (although the ignorant, hawk General Turgidson in the "War Room" is
still more decisive than the peaceful, pacifist President Merkin Muffley).
Kubrick's more mature works are more pessimistic and suspicious of the so-called
innate goodness of mankind. In a letter to the New York Times in response to
Fred M. Hechinger declaring A Clockwork Orange "fascist", Kubrick wrote:
It is quite true that
my film's view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a
similarly allegorical narrative — but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have
to view man as a noble savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is
not yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope)...The age of
the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of
Rousseau's Emile: 'Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is
society's fault.' It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural
state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society...Rousseau's
romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man, not man who corrupts
society, places a flattering gauze between ourselves and reality. This view, to
use Mr. Hechinger's frame of reference, is solid box office but, in the end,
such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair.
Kubrick shares much of
this view with Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis and The Social Contract
(not to be confused with Rousseau's) and author Arthur Koestler who is famous
for writing The Ghost In The Machine, both of whom Kubrick quotes in his defense
against Hechinger. Both authors (Koestler through psychology and Ardrey through
anthropology) search for the cause of humanity's capacity for death and
destruction and both, like Kubrick, are suspicious of the liberal belief in
innate goodness of mankind (which Ardrey and Kubrick attribute to Rousseau, who,
in Ardrey's words: "Fathered the romantic fallacy") and Behaviourism, especially
what they consider "radical Behaviourism", whom they blame primarily on B.F.
Skinner. (Mainstream anthropology contest Kubricks Ardrey's view of man having
an ancestor that was unremorsefully murderous and destructive, and mainstream
psychologists' belief in innate empathy contradicts Koestler's or Kubrick's view
of man as innately evil, or sadistic and unempathetic).
Reading Ardrey's African
Genesis reveals he shared Kubrick's bleak view of man, and the growing concern
of the juvenile delinquent, as Ardrey writes:
"Society flatters itself
in thinking that it has rejected the juvenile delinquent; the delinquent has
rejected society. And in the shadowed byways of his world so consummately free,
this ingenious, normal adolescent human creature has created a way of life in
perfect image of his animal needs."
Such a description brings
to mind Alex, the delinquent thug in A Clockwork Orange. Ardrey also says
society might eventually domesticate man through slavery and cure his innate
urge to kill and destroy:
"We and our greater
philosophers must grant, I believe, that the masters of a universal society with
the aid of a captive science might just possibly succeed in producing, over a
long period, a lasting answer to the problem of our animal nature: a universal
human slave inherently obedient to other people's reason."
This brings to mind the
Minister of the Interior and his proposal for the answer to street violence in
Kubrick's film. However Ardrey also believes:
"Whether through
sentimental attachment or rational choice, I find myself moved to prefer the
wild creatures among who I was born to the more literal Homo sapiens that
science and tyranny might produce."
Kubrick shows this in A
Clockwork Orange, that a quick "cure" is not the answer to juvenile delinquency
or violence, but that, as the clergyman in A Clockwork Orange, whom Kubrick has
called "the moral voice of the story" says, "Goodness must come from within.
Goodness must be chosen. If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." In
fact, Kubrick said in an interview with The New York Times that his view of man
was closer to the Christian view than humanistic or Jewish views, as he said, "I
mean, it's essentially Christian theology anyway, that view of man." [6] In this
context, Kubrick's film is neither amoral or fascist, but has a strong moral
stance and is strongly anti-totalitarian. As Kubrick said in an interview with
Gene Siskel:
To restrain man is
not to redeem him...I think the danger is not that authority will collapse, but
that, finally, in order to preserve itself, it will become very repressive...Law
and order is not a phoney issue, not just an excuse for the Right to go further
right.
Religion
Stanley Kubrick was born
Jewish, but never much practiced this religion, as his parents were not very
religious either. When asked by Michel Ciment in an interview if he had a
religious upbringing, Kubrick replied:
"No, not at
all."[7]
Kubrick is often said to
be an atheist, but this may not be quite true. In Stanley Kubrick: A Life in
Pictures, Jack Nicholson recalls that Kubrick said The Shining is an overall
optimistic story because "anything that says there's anything after death is
ultimately an optimistic story."
In Kubrick's interview
with Craig McGregor, he said:
2001 would give a
little insight into my metaphysical interests," he explains. "I'd be very
surprised if the universe wasn't full of an intelligence of an order that to us
would seem God-like. I find it very exciting to have a semi-logical belief that
there's a great deal to the universe we don't understand, and that there is an
intelligence of an incredible magnitude outside the Earth. It's something I've
become more and more interested in. I find it a very exciting and satisfying
hope.[8]
When asked by Eric
Nordern in Kubrick's interview with Playboy if 2001: A Space Odyssey was a
religious film, Kubrick elaborated:
I will say that the
God concept is at the heart of 2001 but not any traditional, anthropomorphic
image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do
believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once
you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy
alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100
billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given a planet in a stable orbit,
not too hot and not too cold, and given a few billion years of chance chemical
reactions created by the interaction of a sun's energy on the planet's
chemicals, it's fairly certain that life in one form or another will eventually
emerge. It's reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless
billions of such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some
proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun is by no
means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic age, so it seems
likely that there are billions of planets in the universe not only where
intelligent life is on a lower scale than man but other billions where it is
approximately equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of
millions of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological
strides that man has made in a few millennia — less than a microsecond in the
chronology of the universe — can you imagine the evolutionary development that
much older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological
species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine
entities — and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis
of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their
potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans.
[9]
In the same interview, he
also blames the poor critical reaction to 2001 as follows:
Perhaps there is a
certain element of the lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and
materialist and Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad
mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema. [10]
In an interview with
William Kloman of The New York Times, when asked why there is hardly any
dialogue in 2001, Kubrick explained:
I don't have the
slightest Kubrick doubt that to tell a story like this, you couldn't do it with
words. There are only 46 minutes of dialogue scenes in the film, and 113 of
non-dialogue. There are certain areas of feeling and reality — or unreality or
innermost yearning, whatever you want to call it — which are notably
inaccessible to words. Music can get into these areas. Painting can get into
them. Non-verbal forms of expression can. But words are a terrible straitjacket.
It's interesting how many prisoners of that straitjacket resent its being
loosened or taken off. There's a side to the human personality that somehow
senses that wherever the cosmic truth may lie, it doesn't lie in A, B, C, D. It
lies somewhere in the mysterious, unknowable aspects of thought and life and
experience. Man has always responded to it. Religion, mythology, allegories —
it's always been one of the most responsive chords in man. With rationalism,
modern man has tried to eliminate it, and successfully dealt some pretty jarring
blows to religion. In a sense, what's happening now in films and in popular
music is a reaction to the stifling limitations of rationalism. One wants to
break out of the clearly arguable, demonstrable things which really are not very
meaningful, or very useful or inspiring, nor does one even sense any enormous
truth in them.
Stephen King recalled
Kubrick calling him late at night while he was filming The Shining and Kubrick
asked him, "Do you believe in God?" King said that he had answered, "Yes," but
has had three different versions of what happened next. One time, he said that
Kubrick simply hung up on him. On other occasions, he claimed Kubrick said, "I
knew it," and then hung up on him. On yet another occasion, King claimed that
Kubrick said, before hanging up, "No, I don't think there is a God." Stephen
King said that the primary reason why he didn't like Kubrick's adaptation of The
Shining was as follows:
"I think there are two
basic problems with the movie. First, Kubrick is a very cold man — pragmatic and
rational — and he had great difficulty conceiving even academically, of a
supernatural world...Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a
visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of
the Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made
the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That
was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film
believable to others."
Curiously and ironically,
King's choice for directing the 1997 miniseries version of The Shining was Mick
Garris, who, according to the interview with his wife found on the DVD of the
Masters of Horror series episode of Chocolate, was a "confirmed atheist", who
does not believe in the supernatural at all, while Kubrick was actually more
open to the possibility. Also, King said that he believed H. P. Lovecraft was
the greatest Kubrick master of the classic horror tale (something he shared in
common with Kubrick), but Lovecraft famously scoffed at the notion of a literal
belief in the supernatural and was a very rational and pragmatic man himself.
Finally, Katharina
Kubrick Hobbs was asked by alt.movies.kubrick if Stanley Kubrick believed in
God. Here is her response:
"Hmm, tricky. I think he
believed in something, if you understand my meaning. He was a bit of a fatalist
actually, but he was also very superstitious. Truly a mixture of nature and
nurture. I don't know exactly what he believed, he probably would have said that
no-one can really ever know for sure, and that it would be rather arrogant to
assume that one could *know*. I asked him once after The Shining, if he believed
in ghosts. He said that it would be nice if there "were" ghosts, as that would
imply that there is something after death. In fact, I think he said, "Gee I hope
so."...He did not have a religious funeral service. He's not buried in
consecrated ground. We always celebrated Christmas and had huge Christmas
trees." [11]
Filmography
Documentary Short Films
Day of the Fight (1951)
Flying Padre (1951)
The Seafarers (1953)
Feature Films
Fear and Desire (1953)
Killer's Kiss (1955)
The Killing (1956)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Spartacus (1960)
Lolita (1962)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
The Shining (1980)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
References
1. http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q13.html
2. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0037.html
3. David Hughes (2000).
The Complete Kubrick. London: Virgin. ISBN 0-7535-0452-9.
4. Stanley Kubrick: A
Life in Pictures. Documentary film. Dir. Jan Harlan. Warner Home Video, 2001.
142 min.
5. Kubrick on The Shining
An interview with Michel Ciment
6. The Hechinger Debacle
7. Anthony Burgess,
(1962, 1986). A Clockwork Orange. Norton. ISBN 0-393-31283-6.
8. Stanley Kubrick,
(2001). Stanley Kubrick: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN
1-57806-297-7.
9. Jeremy Bernstein
(November 1966). "A Day in the Life of Stanley Kubrick". The New Yorker.
10. Lyons, V and
Fitzgerald, M. (2005) ‘’Asperger syndrome : a gift or a curse?’’ New York : Nova
Science Publishers. ISBN 1-59454-387-9
11. Rainer Crone (text)
and Stanley Kubrick (photographs) (2005). Drama and Shadows: Photographs
1945-1950. Phaidon Press. ISBN 0-7148-4438-1.
12. Alison Castle
(editor) and Stanley Kubrick (photographs) (2005). The Stanley Kubrick Archives.
Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-2284-1.
****
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