Stanley Kubrick: Checkmate in 11 Moves

by The Great White Gypsy

There was a time when milestones in cinema involved actual art. A director’s technique, an editor’s style, a writer’s testicular fortitude. A time when groundbreaking films were more than just the sum of their parts. Nowadays, a milestone in cinema is when a director rips off Dances with Wolves to make a 3 hour 3-D smurf-gasm that gets nominated for 9 Academy Awards. Or a pretentiously graphic, racially devolutionary abortion…that gets nominated for 9 Academy Awards. I hate everyone. But it didn’t used to be that way.

Every director has a niche. They don’t necessarily stick to it 100% of the time, but it’s what they’re known for. Tarantino has violent, homage-laden ballets. The Coens have ensemble cast capers. Scorcese has organized crime (you fucking rat, you). John Carpenter has campy horror. Shyamalan has stupid doo-doo dumb.

In writing this article, I realize I will inevitably have to answer the question of “why?”. Why Kubrick? Why not Cassavetes? Kazan? Lumet? Coppola? If you look at the filmographies of any of these names, you will always see some sort of trend in the familiar titles. But Kubrick’s filmography reads like this: a heist, a WWI court-martial, a Roman epic, a controversial love story, a political black comedy, a science fiction masterpiece, a violent cultural commentary, a sweeping Irish drama, a horror classic, a Vietnam War film, a psycho-sexual thriller. Do you see a niche there? I don’t.

I chose Kubrick because, in a career that lasted almost 50 years, the man only made 11 films. He was a perfectionist, and he demanded perfection from his cast, his crew, and himself. But he also pushed the envelope on every single one of his films. He butted heads with censorship, controversial subject matter, politics, and culture. The man was cinema. He didn’t just direct and write, he embodied both a time period and a timeless technical craft. I chose him because, in the pantheon of Hollywood deities, Kubrick is fucking Zeus.

The Man

Kubrick was born in New York in 1928. By age 17, he was already an accomplished photographer for Look Magazine. He was also an accomplished chess player, playing for money (even hustling a little) in Greenwich Village. At 23, he used every dollar he had to finance the transition to filming, starting with a short documentary. After that, he directed several documentaries, but didn’t have to wait long to direct his first independent feature. In 1953 he directed Fear and Desire. It didn’t even earn it’s investment back upon release, was denounced by it’s producers, and possibly caused Kubrick’s first divorce. Luckily, it was only two years until his next film, Killer’s Kiss, and he met his second wife on set. Its reception was much warmer, and the next year Kubrick directed his first studio film, The Killing. Three projects later he was working on a film with the already legendary Marlon Brando. Right before filming began, Brando decided to direct the movie himself. That, plus Kubrick’s second divorce, prompted the director to make a permanent move to England, where he directed the remainder of his films.

Kubrick always had multiple projects in the works, was always reading, researching, working. Though he had a relatively low output, he was a machine. 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut was his final film. He died of a heart attack less than a week after he had finished post-production. Among his unfinished projects was A.I., a sci-fi film he’d been working on for years. However, visual effects technology never got to the level Kubrick needed to fulfill his vision, and it stayed on the backburner until, years after his death, his “friend” Steven Spielberg got his bagel-loving hands on it, causing it to be stillborn by opening weekend. Good thing that’s not Kubrick’s legacy, huh?

The Films

Kubrick’s first major film, The Killing, is damned impressive for the time period. As far as heist films go, it’s fairly straightforward. The story is told in a non-linear fashion that has been recently popularized by films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp FIction. The narration sucks, but Jim Thompson (author, The Killer Inside Me) wrote the dialog, which considering the time period is pretty solid.

His next film, Paths of Glory (1957) would’ve never gotten off the ground had Kirk Douglas not been cast in the lead. Again, Thompson helped with the writing, and Kubrick continued to hone his style, adding long tracking shots to his already noticeable repertoire of facial closeups and three-way character conflict.

Teaming with Kirk Douglas was probably the best thing to ever happen to Stanley Kubrick. Two years later, Douglas was working on Spartacus with director Anthony Mann. They had a falling out, and Douglas demanded that Mann be replaced with Kubrick. For anyone who loved Gladiator (one of my favorite films), Spartacus was the original, the purest of the gritty Roman epics. Working with a huge budget, and with major actors like Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Tony Curtis opened the door wide for Kubrick. Despite certain censorship issues, the film was a huge success, and Hollywood knew he was a force to be reckoned with.

Having settled in England, Kubrick decided to be a cheeky bastard, and began work on Lolita, with Vladimir Nabokov adapting his own novel. Obviously, the story of a middle-aged man being in love with his 14-year-old stepdaughter is a tad…touchy. Especially in 1962. Several actors - worried about the public backlash - turned down the role before James Mason agreed to it. If you watch The Professional or the Lolita remake, the 1961 version might not be as “controversial”, but overall it’s a very well-directed film, and Kubrick regular Peter Sellers does a fantastic job.

The next 13 years saw Kubrick hit his stride. Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and Barry Lyndon (1975) are still considered his best work. That isn’t just because Kubrick personally earned 13 Oscar nominations total for the four films (Best Director, Picture, and Writing for all four) and won Best Visual Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you’ve seen these four films, you know that they are not only Kubrick’s finest, but some of the most landmark films in history. Dr. Strangelove is the ultimate black comedy, with so many era-specific political jokes, and Peter Seller’s unique brand of multiple character humor (fuck Eddie Murphy and his undeserved paychecks) that - God willing - it can never be remade. The same can be said for 2001, which is the original sci-fi masterpiece, with more imitators, parodies, and quotes than any other film of the time period. If anyone tried to remake A Clockwork Orange, I’d beat them senseless to a Beethoven soundtrack myself. The light-hearted violence, contrasting music, and innovative cinematography instantly made it one of the biggest cult classics before or since. And though you may not have heard of it, or seen it, Barry Lyndon is a beautiful, patient Irish drama that probably could’ve been done by anyone else. But it would not have been anywhere near as perfect without Kubrick’s trademarks.

Admittedly, Kubrick’s last three films aren’t as black and white. The Shining, despite being one of the most iconic horror films ever (and one that still gives me the creeps), got mixed reviews. Even Stephen King didn’t care for the adaptation, and he made his own version years later. Full Metal Jacket is widely praised as one of the best Vietnam films. However, the difference between it and Platoon, while having nothing to do with style, became a matter of ideology and humanistic war sentiment. Even more divisive were the reviews of his last film, Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick himself called it his best film ever, but the general public had a hard time stomaching the sexual immorality and surrealism.

The Passion

You read the titles above, and I guarantee you at least recognize 9 of those 11 titles. So how does a perfection nazi who always had a full plate manage to create landmark masterpieces every time? It helps if you’re also a rebel.

Stanley Kubrick sounds like the boss from hell. Most of his films took years to make, and almost all of that was filming. He took miles of extra film for every project, made actors do 60-70 takes on one scene sometimes, just to make sure he got it right. His attention to detail was impeccable. (quick side note: it amazes me that a perfectionist such as Kubrick allowed so much improvisation for his actors; maintaining professionalism with Peter Sellers around can’t be easy.) It’s even rumored that, after Dr. Strangelove, George C. Scott swore he’d never work with Kubrick again.

To his credit, he never backed down from controversial material. Pedophilia, wanton violence and rape, nuclear war, underground sex clubs. He tackled all of them in his career. But it was all for the sake of the art. He didn’t just adapt Nabokov’s book, he had the man write a screenplay himself. He read stacks and stacks of books on nuclear war because, even though it ended up being a comedy, he wanted Dr. Strangelove to be as accurate as possible.

He also kept strange company, especially in the beginning of his career. Jim Thompson, who helped with the writing in The Killing and Paths of Glory, was a controversial author whose depiction of violence (especially against women) had gotten him in a lot of trouble in the ‘50’s. When he signed on for Spartacus, Kubrick insisted that Dalton Trumbo write the script. An interesting choice, considering Trumbo was a blacklisted writer living in Mexico after his conviction as one of The Hollywood Ten.

The Legacy

They told him people would never go for a non-linear storyline. Now it’s a widely used tool. They gave him crap for his depiction of foreign military, banning his film for years in France. Now…well, no one cares about French people. In Spartacus, he used amputees and midgets, along with 8,500 extras, to simulate a bloody Roman battlefield. They said it was too much. Now, CGI lets us watch entire armies get decapitated and maimed. What we sometimes forget about the pioneers of film, music, and art is that, though they may not have violent, life threatening opposition to their craft, censorship was a constant burden. Only after people like Stanley Kubrick pushed the envelope, bucked the system, and changed people’s minds could mainstream cinema keep these hard-won elements in its toolbox. But that still wouldn’t have been enough if he hadn’t been so goddamn good at his work. Watch The Killing, and then watch Eyes Wide Shut. These films are separated by 40 years, yet you can see so many similarities, and not just Kubrick’s trademarks. The core elements of The Killing would be equally entertaining and interesting if it was made next month. If you look at the technical style of Eyes Wide Shut (scene transitions, camera work, tracking shots, etc.), it could have just as easily been made in the 1950’s. Kubrick’s subject matter was constantly changing, growing, adapting to the times. But his style, his technique, the soul of his filmmaking never really changed; it continued to come into focus. It doesn’t matter if you like the story. It doesn’t matter if the acting is subpar. His films are, in a simplistic-yet-deeply-impressive way, perfect.

I’m willing to admit that this is all subjective. You may think Stanley Kubrick’s movies are crap. But the one thing you can’t deny, the one thing everyone in this generation needs to realize and acknowledge, is that his films, and those of his contemporaries, paved the way for a cinematic climate that allows us to keep pushing the envelope. We as a generation, as a society, need to open our eyes and see all this flashy, dumbed down, 3-D crap for what it is: a gimmick. Real cinema doesn’t need gimmicks. Real cinema is artists, passionate about their craft, who will never stop expanding the boundaries and challenging not only themselves but their audiences as well.

Filmography

posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 by greatwhitegypsy in film, spotlights

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