Kubrick is revered as a God amongst filmmakers. There is truth to that. But let’s strip away some of the platitudes for the moment. Yes, Kubrick was a visionary. In terms of composition and lighting he has few peers. Storywise, he was driven to tell populist visions in the later section of his career. He was well aware of making movies that made money. Two of the five films presented here are awkward, and not entirely successful for what they are. Kubrick might have been a recluse, or someone who simply didn’t take the racket of press all that seriously. Can you blame him? But like Terrence Malick, his desire to not take the spotlight, to live somewhat anonymously in England made him the target of all sorts of speculation, and encased his myth in the amber of respect and someone already ascended to heaven and infamy well before he died. Few could claim to know him, or at least of those who are loose-lipped. But you can also see his attraction to Spielberg, to which the two shared a relationship - Kubrick wanted to keep his finger on the pulse, a pulse one could argue he never had much of a finger on (or that is to say populist artist and Kubrick aren’t words I think many would put together). But his long delays between productions (he completed three pictures within his last twenty years of life) has put him on a pedestal, and the time between productions only helped ensconce the legend. I doubt I can remove that feeling or attitude, but it seems the only way to begin is to point out two elements of his oeuvre that are often skipped over.

-Stanley Kubrick was a disciple of Max Ophuls. Since virtually none of Ophuls films have been made available in the digital era (basically Lola Montes), many of you will have to take my word what that means. Ophuls composed musically, and when you watch all of Kubrick’s films there is a great sense of rhythm and musicality. Many of Kubrick’s greatest moments play as dance sequences. It’s too bad he never made an out an out musical. But if you can track down La Ronde, Caught, Letters from an Unknown Woman, and The Earings of Madame D’, you can see where much of his movement came from. Why Kubrick impresses so is that inherent sense of rhythm. It’s in all the greats, but his pacing seems born out of a previous century. At least once he found the steadicam.

-Stanley Kubrick had the sense of humor of an adolescent boy. This is most apparent in Dr. Strangelove and in A Clockwork Orange. It can be very witty, or altogether immature, but almost all of his films are funny. Sometimes it’s such a black wit that the sense of humor can be overlooked in the text. When people talk about his genius, comedy tends to get a short shrift, but it should also be no surprise that he loved dumb comedy, and was a huge fan of The Jerk. He was also a huge fan of Modern Romance. But the former is important in understanding he originally wanted Steve Martin as the lead in Eyes Wide Shut.

And with that:

2001: A Space Odyssey

One of the most seemingly inscrutable of American masterpieces, 2001 started its life in some question as a number of critics (like Pauline Kael) who thought it was full of it. The film was partly saved by the attitudes of the country at the time, or that is to say it became a success because with acid and marijuana use part of the popular consciousness. It became a head movie.

It’s also one of the great films that is doomed, destined and designed to only be appreciated by theatrical viewing. Such could be said for most films made before 1960, but the scope, the size, the rhythm is best appreciated on screens the size of apartment complexes, not on screens intended for home use.

At the dawn of civilization, apes roamed the earth afraid of predators. Then an obelisk appears and attracts some of the apes. Shortly thereafter the apes begin to understand the use of tools and learn to stand upright. Such leads to violence not only against possible food and predators, but also against other apes. Cut to the future (still our future) and that basic tool has evolved into manned space flight. Scientists have found something on the moon: Another obelisk. Such leads to a trip to Jupiter, headed up by Drs. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood). Their only companion is the computer HAL (voiced by Douglas Rain), who when concerned about their mission starts killing everyone on board. Bowman survives and goes to Jupiter. Weird visuals ensue, and lead to a white room where Bowman grows old and at his death begins the next stage of evolution. The star baby.

I reveal the entire plot because it is partly incidental (and partly because at this point, if you don’t know this film, you’re not paying enough attention), but mostly because it’s open to numerous interpretations. Much has been suggested about the ending. Is it, like Dr. Strangelove, a punch-line to an intergalactic joke? The question is how does Kubrick feel about this other presence? Kubrick was something of an avowed atheist (or so says Jack Nicholson), so perhaps that’s correct. My interpretation (which is just that) is similar to my feelings about The New World: I think Kubrick sees evolution as necessary and welcomed, even if it means death and destruction to all that came before. But I also think that Kubrick wanted audiences to think for themselves, and no interpretation was or is more accurate. I like to see hope in it, though.

What strikes me most in viewing the film again - to which I saw first when I was six years old, and then watched for a second time on laserdisc (CAV, Criterion, if that means anything to you) with my father and brother, both who could not get into it – is the sense of musicality. The Blue Danube sequence is a hilarious sequence of the vision of our future. Much of the film is choreographed in such a way that it is – as Star Wars was later termed - a space opera.

2001 as a date has come and gone. The world has, instead of expanding into outer space, chose to instead expand into inner space. The next iterations of these films will likely not exist in a tangible form. Or not.  I will always want to own a hard copy of some things, and movies are one of them. But as someone who grew up under the shadow of NASA being quite possibly the coolest thing ever, that we have not chased these dreams disappoint me. But 2001 still fills me with awe.

A Clockwork Orange

Alex De Large (Malcolm McDowell) is a psychopath, or at the very least, a sociopath. He hangs out with his friends (droogs, as they are called in the language of the film) and they spend their days stealing cars, getting into fights, beating up bums, robbing homes and raping. Alex does a number of horrible things, but Alex is a charmer, even going so far as to croon “Singin’ in the Rain” while torturing and raping a couple.

Eventually he’s caught and is offered the Ludovico technique to turn him off of violence. This also ruins Beethoven’s Ninth symphony for him. Returning to the world, the technique makes him unable to fight back or have sex. And when he returns to his family, he’s shunned, and then is revisited by most of his victims. Eventually that Ninth becomes his salvation and the treatment’s undoing.

A Clockwork Orange is the perfect film for fourteen-year-old boys. Kubrick, having removed Anthony Burgress’s final chapter, instead makes a case for free will where the entire world is made of horrible people. This ties directly into 2001, in that both films suggest that man is predatory by nature. Those who have the power to abuse others do so because they can. Then again, the victim in the second half is Alex, and his attackers are those he victimized. This may be welcome after one or two encounters, but by the end, sympathy for the devil-Alex is unavoidable. Perhaps it also suggests that the world does not by nature believe in rehabilitation.

The other big problem with this film is that Stanley Kubrick is a pervert. Well, maybe not a pervert, but he liked looking at hot chicks, which makes him a man (not a God). And so Kubrick shows a number of attractive women with perfect breasts being violated. Seeing this film as a young boy (I got it from the library, when I was 14), I have to admit to it turning me on. And it made me laugh. When Alex said “No time for the in and out love, I’ve only come to check the meter!” I laughed my ass off. But Dr. Strangelove may have been trenchant satire, it’s still a dark piece of business that wants us to laugh at the end of the world. Perhaps Kubrick was crying on the inside. If the women and the film wasn’t so beautiful… if it felt scummy, then that might be something.

Kubrick makes his point, but it’s a minor one, and the film gets by on sheer technique alone. You fall for Alex. Is that the point? Can one distance oneself from him? I have never been able to, and to a certain extent Kubrick asks you to revel. Should we strong, or should we laugh? It’s a masterpiece of control, but that the movie would be Alex’s favorite movie is not an irony lost.

My feelings remain mixed because I can not separate myself from the young man in me who got sweaty watching the film, excited by the thrills of feeling turned on by someone so grossly asserting their control in world through violence and sex. Alex could have willing partners, he just likes to also mix it up. Neil Labutte likely also felt stirred by this film.

The Shinning

By 1980, Kubrick (who had a free pass at Warner Brothers) was coming off his first flop. Barry Lyndon was usurped by Star Wars, and the Lucas/Spielberg revolution. Warner Brothers are shits for not including Lyndon (which may be his masterpiece) or Lolita in this collection. Stephen King was hot at this time, so were horror films, films like Carrie, Jaws, Halloween.

Kubrick was, in his way, trying to up his freedom by delivering a hit film. Alas, there are those who find The Shining scary, and those who don’t. I’m in the latter category. I think you might have needed to see this film at the right time. Or, as Kubrick said to Nicholson, it’s a hopeful film for him because any film that offers ghosts suggests an afterlife 0 suggesting Kubrick himself did not believe in ghosts and ghouls. He likely could not get entirely behind the premise as more than a goof. What he may have connected to was the isolation and desire to create, even if it was shit. There are theories that final years of Kubrick resemble Jack’s time at the Overlook. I find that theory bunk, but it’s a novel one just the same.

Jack Torrence (Nicholson) is offered a job at The Overlook Hotel. He takes his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Danny has a voice in his mouth called Tony that the cook (Scatman Crothers) at the Overlook tells him is his gift, that people who “shine” can have conversations in their head, but that’s there’s a bad room in the hotel, a place where evil has its way. While Jack is an alcoholic who stopped drinking because of some accidental violence he did to Danny.

Time passes. Jack is tempted to drink. He finds sympathetic ghosts at the hotel room bar. Such leads to his undoing.

When Scatman Crothers is seen at his home, feeling the Shining, sitting under a velvet portrait of a naked and proud black woman, it feels like the film reveals itself. This is a black comedy. There are affecting moments, like when Shelley Duvall has to defend herself from her husband’s psychotically violent advances, but there’s something to be said to the ironic nature that the only actual act of violence is also something that could be describe as an existential joke. Does someone getting blown by someone in a bear suit constitute a great perversion, or a joke? I would argue the latter.

But again, I go back to the musicality of Kubrick. When you watch those long, hypnotic tracking shots of Danny gliding around the hotel, it’s so involving because it keeps going. It sucks you in. Even if Kubrick’s film is more existential joke than horror film, what’s important is that he gets dream logic right, which is also very involving. Intellectually I can respect that take, but emotionally it never gets under my skin like Carpenter or Hooper were able to. Perhaps those films benefit from their amateur status. You buy it because the reality of the filming makes it feel more there. More real. This never feels like it gets under my skin. I am the sort of person who really only finds real-world horror scary. People with knives. Henry, the portrait of a serial killer. Leatherface. Ghosts don’t do much for me. Like Kubrick, I’m assuming. But his film is definitely a piece of fascinating business, even if it seems to fail on its basic level. There is a genius to the madness of a man who types a novel consisting of one sentence over and over.

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