This year alone, I have already mentioned, on the pages of this blog, the passing of at least five creative greats who are no longer with us. I’ve touched briefly on the impact each has had on my life, but one genius I miss practically every month that passes is the incomparable Stanley Kubrick, who would have been eighty today. I can safely say that no other filmmaker has had the level of impact on my life that Kubrick has.
Like many in my age group, the first Kubrick film I can remember seeing wasn’t even technically a Stanley Kubrick film (at least with the level of research and control he would take with the bulk of his later films): “Spartacus”, which he took over from Anthony Mann who left after a falling-out with producer/star Kirk Douglas; he couldn’t have made a better choice (they’d worked together previously on “Paths of Glory”), Kubrick admirably picking up the reigns, delivering the calibre of Hollywood epic that was expected of him.
But it was “2001: A Space Odyssey” that floored me, though, even on television, even at a young age. This was Kubrick’s new style, after searching for several years, and that style perfectly captured the lonliness of space and the non-verbalized granduer of The Dawn of Man and beyond. It was probably the first time that I realized a film didn’t have to stick to the same standard structure that pretty much every Hollywood film followed.
The moody/classical soundtrack to the film was actually one of the first LPs I ever owned. Strange choice for a supposedly normal young boy.
“Lolita” and “Dr. Strangelove” were Kubrick’s interim searching films. If you’d approached them the way that I approached them, you’d be baffled to see that they were crafted by the same genius who made “2001″, but when I saw “A Clockwork Orange”, amongst a batch of the first video rentals I ever made (”Jaws”, “Apocalypse Now” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” rounded out the group), I could clearly see the same dark sense of humor that had Alex tortured to the soundtrack of his favorite composer, Humbert Humbert tragically lusting, and the aftermath of an insane base commander launching his “birds” against Cold War Russia.
It flavored what I’d previously seen in “2001″, gave it new depth and texture.
As I was learning, in depth, through film books from my local library, who Kubrick was, 1980 was ramping up for the release of “The Shining”, which would be the first Kubrick film in five years. At the time, living in age-restrictive Canada, there was no way I could see the R-rated film when it was released (even though that didn’t stop me from sneaking into the drive-in to see “Alien” the previous year), but I did have the soundtrack recording and a very tattered issue of American Film (the A.F.I. magazine that was around at the time) with it’s article on Kubrick’s grand return.
In absence of actually seeing the film, I did what I was forced to do with a lot of films (growing up in a small town with few theatre choices, and, like I said, strict age restrictions for R-movies), and made up the film in my head with what I had. Usually, finally seeing the real film was a huge disappointment, but in this case, when I finally got to see the film on home video, it surpassed my expectations.
By the time “Full Metal Jacket” came out, I was old enough to view it and had already seen every other film in the Kubrick catalogue several times, with the exception of “Barry Lyndon” which I would have to wait for film school and a Kubrick retrospective to see. I was probably one of the only people laughing in the theatre during both these films, because, I knew Kubrick and what he found darkly funny. Even today, I smile to myself as soldier after soldier runs out into the field, against orders, to rescue a fallen comrade, only to get taken-out by the same sniper. There’s nothing funny about this scene, but I still find it hysterical, because I know that Kubrick is looking at the human condition: this happens because emotionally, it’s the right thing to do, but emotions betray us, and people are harmed as a result.
So many of Kubrick’s films revolve around this theme (interwoven seamlessly with others), I thought, many years later, that this was the key to deciphering why I didn’t like “Eyes Wide Shut”. I am, and always will be convinced that Kubrick didn’t actually finish the film, despite what we were all told after his untimely death. It just doesn’t feel like a Kubrick film. Sure, there are moments that are pure Stanley, but it’s nearly easier picking out his guiding hand in Spielberg’s “A.I.” mishmash than “Eyes Wide Shut”.
In my last year of high school, we were given an “open” assignment in English class, in which we could create anything we wanted: write a short story, paint a picture, make a film, etc., as long as it was influenced by some great artist, accompanied by an essay explaining what you’d learned. I, of course, chose to make a film, and chose Stanley Kubrick as my inspiration. I crafted a short script with the same right themes as Kubrick, did my best to emulate long tracking shots, wide, fish-eye close-ups and John Alcott-esque blown-out windows cinematography. In addition, I went on, at length, on paper about Kubrick’s films and how they had influenced me.
What I got in return was a harshly-graded essay, where the stubborn, religious teacher could not get past my mention, at the beginning of “A Clockwork Orange”. He’d never actually seen the film, but knew, from his church groups, that it was evil because of the nudity and violence it glorified. Likewise, my little Kubrick film was harshly received, the class favorite instead being an edited-in-camera slasher film made by two guys who said their influence was Hitchcock, although they didn’t even bother to pen an essay supporting their work, nor seen any Hitchcock film apart from the shower sequence from “Psycho” (extrapolating, of course, that all his films were like “Friday the 13th” but were in black and white).
Perhaps, had I realized, like these guys, that the lowest common denominator was the class seeing their friends goofing with a bottle of ketchup and a goalie mask, I could have walked away with a better grade, but I was happy to know, like I’m sure Stanley did, that my work spoke for itself, from the heart.
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