Thursday, June 18, 2009

I Saw Every Stanley Kubrick Movie and All I Got Was Some Lousy Enlightenment, Part II: 1968-1999



2001: A Space Odyssey—One of the ten greatest movies ever made, in my opinion. Or maybe not, because I don't feel comfortable calling it a movie. This is a poem, a symphony, with, courtesy of Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, Geoffrey Unsworth, and the special effects team led by Douglas Trumbull and Wally Veevers, a panorama of abstract imagery which ultimately tells a concrete story. And the audacity of 2001 demands so much of you that it is as easy to despise as to love…my father, his brothers, and several friends call it one of the most boring movies ever made. However, it asks that we sit through 140 minutes with dialogue either perfunctory or nonexistent, characters drawn with almost no shading or detail because, long stretches of silent action set to classical music or ultra-precise sound, and above all, a story where nothing and everything happens, the minimalist action tracing mankind's entire history from the very genesis of our evolving from apes…to the final step of our evolution into a transcendent, serene being above all war, division, and ills of the material world. But once this idea is understood, Kubrick's choices become clear. Dave Bowman (played by the very gentle Keir Dullea) and company are bland because they are bare shells on which we are supposed to project ourselves…WE are the heroes of the story. And the sequences are so quiet and minutely detailed so we can observe just how much WE are capable of, and why we (and Dave) pass the final supernatural test. We have brains with the capacity to grow. We have imagination and motivation to harness the elements in spectacular ways (the "Blue Danube" sequence). And we have the resourcefulness and determination to surmount challenges from even the most seemingly invincible opponents…for this is what happens in Dave's duel with the omniscient HAL 9000 (perfectly voiced by the eerily calm Douglas Rain). 2001 may be the great 20th Century epic, poetry on the level of Homer and nearing the Bible. I have seen it on small screens, big screens, projected in 35mm, and ultimately in 70mm, and every time it just gets more beautiful.

A Clockwork Orange—A lot of people rank this right with its predecessor as Kubrick's masterpiece. I admire it but don't like it THAT much. For me, it is the beginning of a theme which would carry through the rest of Kubrick's career, the interplay between the two sides of the human being, so separate from both the ape and the computer, which triumphed in 2001: the rational intellect and the emotional, imaginative heart. But even when he failed to offer a resolution, there was always a point to his movies, but here the point is lost on me. Are we supposed to condemn Alex (the charming, cocksure Malcolm McDowell) for his ruthless quest for sex and violence, or a society which could deny individuality by sucking all emotion and desire out of people? And when neither way seems right and we're supposed to condemn both, then what is the purpose of the film existing at all? Visually it's a hyperkinetic mess, aurally it sounds angry, bleating, pulsing with Anthony Burgess's invented language…as a work of art it has an overpowering entropy which fits the mental confusion it displays, but the result leaves me disoriented and unable to care. The "Singin' in the Rain" sequence, as one of the few times where the unruly energy is pulled into focus, is unforgettable, but even the fabled violence was less affecting when compared to how Kubrick used it in films like Full Metal Jacket.

Barry Lyndon—Kubrick's very close second-best movie. This time he has a theme worked out with verve and flair: human beings can devise all sorts of plans, carry them out, improvise to correct setbacks, ultimately succeed…and lose everything because we are humans, with all the accompanying flaws and passions which overrule and disrupt our sense. It's also an unbelievably beautiful film, one which required an artistic temperament and an energetic doer with both faculties working 110%. Kubrick did it, first by brilliantly adapting William Makepeace Thackeray (I can only imagine how he would have made Vanity Fair) by removing the trademark coincidences of the Victorian novel and replacing the first-person p.o.v. with a third-person narration (by Sir Michael Hordern) which weaves its way into the discourse through commentary, contradiction, and paradox. And in the screenplay and shooting, there is a true, riveting tension between, on the one hand, the ultra formal, chessboard-style action and measured, careful dialogue, and on the other hand, the repressed emotion and desire built into every scene's subtext. Then there is the beautiful John Alcott cinematography, including scenes shot strictly by candlelight, and sterling casting: feckless, all-charm-and-little-more Ryan O'Neal, cool regency beauty Marisa Berenson, puffed-up Patrick Magee, and smirky, savvy Hardy Krueger (who replaced the far too soulful Oskar Werner, just as O'Neal said yes after the far too heroic Robert Redford said no). This movie is three hours long and just as demanding as 2001—and it's worth all the effort.

The Shining—A good but very problematic film. Suspense and horror work because audiences react on a visceral level…we feel the shivers in the dark, the terror of either not knowing what's coming next or knowing too much. The IDEA of a man slowly releasing his homicidal mania in a secluded environment with innocent people should be perfect, but the focus is so intent on carefully poking into every side of Jack Torrance's madness that the suspense and horror are diluted, and with Kubrick shifting the emphasis away from Danny, the hero, to Jack, audience's empathy for the victims is reduced. So in the end, not as satisfying as it should have been. However, the atmosphere is exactly right, all the nooks and crannies of the Overlook being exploited into an ever-increasing dread, and Jack Nicholson, incapable of ever being less than interesting, BECOMES a troubled, psychotic killer.

Full Metal Jacket—Maybe it was old age, acquiring an English country house where he could live his own way, and forty years of marriage and raising daughters, but I believe that Kubrick's last two films are also his most purely human. His fourth and final war movie ratchets his style and personal convictions to their peak. The mannered choreography of Paths of Glory is now ultra-mindless communal action, with all the characters moving through even the most chaotic situations with an inflexible, thoughtless order. The violence is more terrifying than ever. And Kubrick's lifelong interest in discourse is similarly brought to a higher level, as communication is reduced to barrages, clichés, euphemistic jargon, and nonsensical emoting of words which can't really describe how the characters feel in an endless go-round. But most of all, the storytelling (in collaboration with Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford) is cinematic narrative at its best. Watching it, I recognized a stunning use of Blake Snyder's thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure. The thrust of the movie is how the military works by exploiting mankind's inner urge for conflict and molding soldiers into emotionless machines capable only of killing. Joker, the protagonist, is confronted by so many terrifying examples of this antithesis of humanity. The sadistic, completely unfeeling, and thus doubly obscene Hartman, Gomer Pyle, whose indoctrination shatters his resistant but weak mind, and Animal Mother, the supreme sensualist who actually wears a "full metal jacket," with bullets to spare. In the final synthesis, Joker becomes a killer by slaying the sniper who killed his friend Cowboy…BUT…Joker acts not from murderous rage but from mercy for the wounded, pained Vietnamese girl, and he uses his own, jacket-less pistol, not the rifle he was trained to think of as a sexual object. He kills on his terms, not the army's. Man may fight war until he self-destructs, Kubrick seems to be saying, but the human element will not be shattered.

Eyes Wide Shut—The final statement. Going back to the beginning, Kubrick makes another movie about fear and desire, filling it with eroticism, lavish cinematography, and intelligence galore. I am now going to repeat myself a bit from my previous blog…for Eyes Wide Shut had a strong impact on me at first viewing…it is the only Kubrick film I have ONLY seen projected. And I devised a theory that Kubrick and Fredric Raphael mixed Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (the real source material) with the story of Eden, where Tom Cruise's Bill is Adam, Nicole Kidman's Alice is Eve, and Sydney Pollack's Ziegler is God (and how appropriate that Kubrick cast another director in the part). Bill and Alice begin the film in innocence, or at least Bill does.  He is happy in his marriage, deeply in love with Alice, confident of their stability.  Then Alice flirts with the devilishly handsome European--a foreign presence.  When Bill calls her on it, Alice admits her temptations and sexual fantasies.  She has a knowledge of human nature Bill does not possess...but it drives Bill, his ideal shattered, onto his great odyssey.  The journey through New York is for him the eating of the apple.  He acquires knowledge of what humans are sexually capable of as he sees the sex all around him, particularly in the masked orgy, and how far we will go in the throes of passion.  And he discovers good and evil by seeing these acts for what they are in full: the prostitute has AIDS, the angry father actually lets his teenage daughter run promiscuously, and the orgy is a sadistic, misogynistic plaything for the wealthy, powerful, and dangerous.  Then, in the climax, Bill's knowledge of good and evil is complete when Ziegler, who not only knows all but also knows more than he tells (and is the only clearly Jewish character in the piece--the "chosen people"), lays it on the line and orders Bill to stay away from this in the future...an expulsion.  Bill appears to be separated from everyone and everything which is familiar to him, especially after he confesses his transgression to Alice.  But just as the Fall of Man was paradoxically a glorious beginning, the very last scene confirms that Bill and Alice now share a realistic conception of love, sex, and marriage, and Bill knows that despite their urges and desires, Alice loves him as much as he loves her.  Their union is as strong as ever. The beauty of the story makes it easy to ignore how Cruise is a bit out of his depth, Kidman chooses to play her role as a cross between grand Sarah Bernhardt and immature teenage girl, and Kubrick and Raphael's script is annoying at times, with one scene repeating an entire conversation twice. A final bow worthy of the master.

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