Kubrick is underrated

I want to talk briefly of one of the greatest directors of the American film scope. This is not intended to be a thorough essay about his life and work but only an introduction that hopefully will motivate interest for his movies.

Stanley Kubrick was a big perfectionist that gave great priority to the story, the most important element in a film. He never filmed any original script but In his big lapses of time between movies he mostly read library catalogs for finding great human stories, but "not successfully written", he didn't wanted to spoil great works. He tried to read everything that was written and watch all what was filmed.

He was autodidact, a professional Chess player and a photographer before making his early pictures. He said that Chess taught him to control the initial emotion of intuition before making a desition and think again. This is pure intellectualism that is evident in his movies.

Kubrick had probably the finest control over Characters, Space and Time. The eight weeks of training in Full Metal Jacket were felt like years in a prison guarded by a character that no one can forget. Recall any Kubrick movie and think about this three elements.

He was a very technical director, reinventing the craft of filmaking in each movie. (i.e. The first use of Steadycam in the tricycle chase in the Shining, the huge retroprojector in 2001 or the candlelight scenes in Barry Lyndon that needed a NASA borrowed lens.)

His movies feature thoroughly studied shots with thoroughly chosen Classical pieces. Everything that can be seen in a scene has its reason, whether for insinuating a philosophical issue or for inserting an image to our subconscience (i.e. the picture of a nude pregnant woman lying on a red carpet in the scene with an overdose nude girl lying in a red couch in Eyes Wide Shut).

Along his most used symbologies there are the masks and the games (i.e. Chess in Barry Lyndon, Ping Pong in Lolita and 2001 and Pool in EWS); representations of false personality and fate, the “prosopons” and "fatum" topics of Greek tragedy from which he was obviously influenced.

Some basic thoughts to be noted in his films are:

The psychological sexual anguishes of Jack D. Ripper that result in the end of the world in Dr. Stragelove.

The scent of humanity in 2001 A Space Odyssey (note that HAL is the only character to die like a man).

The point of view of a drug addict committing “ultraviolent” acts and suffering the consequences of it in an impeccable order.

The conflict of family and self interest taken to an extreme in The Shining.

The dehumanization of people in Full Metal Jacket. (Killers that in essence are lost children singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme in a scenario of absolute destruction).

And last but not least, Eyes Wide Shut, a great piece of art insinuating perversions at the first halve of the movie and showing them starkly in the second one.

Something to have in mind is that he worked for years in a movie about Napoleon, he claimed to have read more than 500 volumes about him and spent the most of his time between films looking for a great story to make the movie for which he would be remembered. He certainly will, but not for it.

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