Starring Kirk Douglas in a most fitting role as the eponymous Spartacus, Kubrick’s adaptation of Howard Fast’s novel presents him not as the sharp, detached artist he came to be but as the studio auteur he once was. With Russell Metty as his Director of Photography and Dalton Trumbo co-writing the script, the film comes from the …
Paths of Glory is Stanley Kubrick’s first masterpiece. Some would argue that honor would go to his prior film The Killing, which is a fantastic, even great film, but to Paths of Glory, Kubrick brought the austere nature that would become his trademark for the first time. This is also the first work of Kubrick’s that has the feeling of …
With A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick crafted what is now a most iconic, infamous, and oft referenced depiction of violence. Based on the same-titled book by Anthony Burgess, Kubrick brought to vision what the author once fostered in the American imagination. A film, like so many of Kubrick‘s others, which …
In the early 1950s, young photographer Stanley Kubrick disparaged the state of filmmaking and arrogantly proclaimed he could do better. He attempted with his first film Fear and Desire, which he later (rightfully) suppressed stating it was amateurish and pretentious. Only recently has the George Eastman House, who …
The sound of rushing wind plays as the camera pans just above the clouds towards the tips of mountains peaking in the distance. The shot is a classic Kubrick device: by sweeping the screen with landscape shots he cleanses the viewers palate of everything else in their subconscious. The viewer has no choice, but be caught in …
Stanley Kubrick had a reputation for making what was said to be cold, distant films. He kept everyone at arm’s length while he told stories that were predominantly about the dehumanization of society and under most circumstances generally horrible people. This assertion seems dismissive and is natural if the viewer …
As part of our coverage of TIFF’s From Within - The Films of David Cronenberg series, this is a video essay comparing and contrasting Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, two adaptations of Stephen King. I was inspired by Next Projection’s own Luke Annand’s essay “Comparative Examination: The Shining and The Dead Zone” and Drew Morton’s video essay “Free Will in Kubrick’s The Shining.” A transcript of my voice-over narration is printed below.
Kubrick sets the stage for his adaptation of Nabokov’s literary classic with nothing more than a foot occupying the frame. Kubrick is (among many things) a visual artist, and in this single unbroken sequence that plays behind the credits he establishes much about the psychological elements behind the story that is about to unfold. The foot is clearly not one of an adult as the proportions aren’t quite fully developed. A man’s hand enters the frame and the characterizing wrinkles and weathered shade quickly imply that this man is much older than the person attached to the foot it gingerly approaches. The opening credits roll as the hand fastidiously and ritualistically applies nail polish with tender affection. We can sense the visual taboo even if we are completely unfamiliar with the story. We know that the action is not being carried out in a socially appropriate way as the hand labors daintily over each stroke of the brush.
By now we’re all familiar with the opening shots of a mountain passage as the camera swoops near trees, over jagged peaks, and over rushing mountain rapids as the blaring synth score sets the sinister undertones for Kubrick’s iconic horror film. This is the art of Kubrick. We’re in his realm now, and any perceived imperfections in the adaptation from the source material are irrelevant. This is a new interpretation that has little to do with King’s original novel. If film were capable of perfectly expressing the ideas contained in literature then there would be no need for literature. Film has its own power that is impossible to translate in to words, and each form of art carries its own merits, operates by its own rules, and owes nothing to the other forms of expression. This is a standalone work that merely uses its source material as a rudimentary framework and the means to wrap Kubrick’s highly effective filmmaking in to a digestible narrative. Kubrick uses the mastery of his craft to disorient the viewer and to play tricks on our subconscious, manipulating the audience like a finely tuned instrument and making us feel unsettled in ways that we may not be able to understand or articulate.
Tight Manhattan upper-class environments squeeze in characters and bare their misdeeds for the entire world to see. They’re all living in a Fitzgerald novel, but they are oblivious to the emptiness that creates distances between them in these too-close-for-comfort environments. This is an empty world of high-class promiscuity and bourgeoisie excess. This is a world of people that are supposed to be too erudite for the fatalistic trappings of human desire, but despite their outward appearances, they are driven by the same primal desires and irrational fears as anyone else. They try to mask their human qualities, but the stifling nature of their environments drives their desire to explode in secret closed-door expressions of carnality and hedonism. They all wear masks to shield their darkest desires, but the most effective masks are the ones they wear in public, whether it is the mask of doctor, upstanding citizen, or upper-class socialite.