Trevor Hogg profiles the career of legendary director Stanley Kubrick in the second of a two-part feature… read the first part here!
“It’s not a question of my own satisfaction or lack of it,” answered Stanley Kubrick when questioned on why he was not drawn to contemporary stories or themes, “but of the basic purpose of a film, which I believe is one of illumination, of showing the viewer something he can’t see any other way. And I think at times this can be best accomplished by staying away from his own immediate environment. This is particularly true when you’re dealing in a primarily visual experience, and telling a story through the eyes. You don’t find reality only in your own backyard, you know — in fact, sometimes that’s the last place you find it. Another asset about dealing with themes that are either futuristic or historic is that it enables you to make a statement with which you’re not personally blinded; it removes the environmental blinkers, in a sense, and gives you a deeper and more objective perspective.”
Gathering enough archival and research material to make a librarian dizzy, Kubrick started to work on a biopic about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. “His life has been described as an epic poem of action,” remarked the filmmaker when explaining his attraction to the historical figure. “His sex life was worthy of Arthur Schnitzler. He was one of those rare men who move history and mold the destiny of their own times and of generations to come — in a very concrete sense, our own world is the result of Napoleon, just as the political and geographic map of postwar Europe is the result of World War II. And, of course, there has never been a good or accurate movie about him. Also, I find that all the issues with which it concerns itself are oddly contemporary — the responsibilities and abuses of power, the dynamics of social revolution, the relationship of the individual to the state, war, militarism, etc., so this will not be just a dusty historic pageant but a film about the basic questions of our own times, as well as Napoleon’s. But even apart from those aspects of the story, the sheer drama and force of Napoleon’s life is a fantastic subject for a film biography. Forgetting everything else and just taking Napoleon’s romantic involvement with Josephine, for example, here you have one of the great obsessional passions of all time.”
Like Napoleon, Kubrick’s grand ambitions were thwarted, not by the British Army, but by a lack of financing. He decided to film a smaller scale picture once again set in the future which would be as controversial as Lolita for its depiction of violence. A Clockwork Orange depicts a world where the state attempts to rehabilitate a vicious space-aged hooligan through surgical experimentation.
“I have always found it difficult to understand,” stated the director in reference to his 1971 movie, “how anyone could decide that the film presented violence sympathetically; I can only explain this as a view which arises from a prejudiced assessment of the film, ignoring everything else in the story but a few scenes. The distinguished film director Luis Bunuel suggested this in a way when he said in the New York Times, ‘A Clockwork Orange is my current favourite. I was very against the film. After seeing it, I realized it is the only movie about what the modern world really means.’ A Clockwork Orange has been widely acclaimed throughout the world as an important work of art. I don’t believe that anyone really sympathizes with Alex, and there is absolutely no evidence that anyone does. Alex clashes with some authority figures in the story who seem to be as bad as he is, if not worse in a different way. But this doesn’t excuse him. The story is satirical, and it is in the nature of satire to state the opposite of the truth as if it were the truth. I suppose you could misinterpret the film on this count, if you were determined to do so.” He went on to add, “The central idea of the film has to do with the question of free-will. Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become, as the title suggests, A Clockwork Orange? Recent experiments in conditioning and mind control on volunteer prisoners in America have taken this question out of the realm of science fiction. At the same time, I think the dramatic impact of the film has principally to do with the extraordinary character of Alex, as conceived by Anthony Burgess in his brilliant and original novel.”
A Clockwork Orange rose above being X-rated in the U.S. (Kubrick replaced 30 seconds of sexually-explicit footage to obtain an R rating) to garner four Oscar and seven BAFTA nominations. The acclaim and the popularity of the movie would have a serious consequence for the director; death threats to his family, not real life copycat attacks, caused him to withdraw it from distribution in the U.K.. When broached about the possibility of the picture encouraging anti-social behaviour, the American filmmaker observed, “There has always been violence in art. There is violence in the Bible, violence in Homer, violence in Shakespeare, and many psychiatrists believe that it serves as a catharsis rather than a model. I think the question of whether there has been an increase in screen violence and, if so, what effect this has had, is to a very great extent a media-defined issue.” He went on to say, “I don’t think that man is what he is because of an imperfectly structured society, but rather that society is imperfectly structured because of the nature of man.”
Four years later a far less contentious novel by William Makepeace Thackeray served as the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s next feature film. “As soon as I read Barry Lyndon I became very excited about it,” remembered Kubrick, “I loved the story and the characters, and it seemed possible to make the transition from novel to film without destroying it in the process. It also offered the opportunity to do one of the things that movies can do better than any other art form, and that is to present historical subject matter. Description is not one of the things that novels do best but it is something that movies do effortlessly, at least with respect to the effort required of the audience. This is equally true for science fiction and fantasy, which offer visual challenges and possibilities you don’t find in contemporary stories.”
The moviemaker believed the novelist made a smart choice when he authored the period tale about the rise and fall of a devious Irish rogue in English society. “Barry Lyndon is a story,” remarked Kubrick, “which does not depend upon surprise. What is important is not what is going to happen, but how it will happen. I think Thackeray trades off the advantage of surprise to gain a greater sense of inevitability and a better integration of what might otherwise seem melodramatic or contrived.” In describing the title character, the director responded, “Thackeray referred to it as ‘a novel without a hero’. Barry is naive and uneducated. He is driven by a relentless ambition for wealth and social position. This proves to be an unfortunate combination of qualities which eventually lead to great misfortune and unhappiness for himself and those around him. Your feelings about Barry are mixed but he has charm and courage, and it is impossible not to like him despite his vanity, his insensitivity and his weaknesses. He is a very real character who is neither a conventional hero nor a conventional villain.”
When released in 1975 the slowly paced picture, which looked like a live action painting, was received with indifference by critics and movie audiences. This mixed reaction did not prevent it from being lauded with four Oscars and a Best Direction Award at the BAFTAS.
Known for his inclination to use classical music, Stanley Kubrick justified his aversion to modern compositions. “However good our best film composers may be,” he declared, “they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you’re editing a film, it’s very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene. This is not at all an uncommon practice. Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary music tracks can become the final score.”
Shifting to a more contemporary setting in 1980, the director entered into the realm of horror with Steven King’s The Shining. Jack Nicholson stars as a writer who takes his wife and son to a secluded hotel which turns out to be haunted. “I think the unconscious appeal of a ghost story,” remarked Kubrick, “lies in its promise of immortality. If you can be frightened by a ghost story, then you must accept the possibility that supernatural beings exist. If they do, then there is more than just oblivion waiting beyond the grave.” As for his reason for accepting the project, the moviemaker stated, “The manuscript of the novel was sent to me by John Calley of Warner Bros. I thought it was one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read. It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological, ‘Jack must be imagining these things because he’s crazy’. This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing.”
Filmed at the Timberline Lodge near Mount Hood in Oregon, the worrisome hotel manager asked Kubrick to change the room number of where the evil spirit lives from 217 to the nonexistent 237 out of fear that future patrons would never sleep in there. 5,000 boys were auditioned over six months for the key role of Danny, the young boy blessed with ESP. The role was given, oddly enough, to a five and half year old who was also named Danny. “I think his performance [Danny Lloyd] was wonderful — everything you could want from the role. He was a terrific boy. He had instinctive taste. He was very smart, very talented and very sensible.” When it came to Nicholson portraying the murderously-possessed writer turned carekeeper, Stanley Kubrick had nothing but praise for him, “I believe that Jack is one of the best actors in Hollywood, perhaps on a par with the greatest stars of the past like Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Cagney. I should think that he is on almost everyone’s first-choice list for any role which suits him. His work is always interesting, clearly conceived and has the X-factor, magic. Jack is particularly suited for roles which require intelligence. He is an intelligent and literate man, and these are qualities almost impossible to act. In The Shining, you believe he’s a writer, failed or otherwise.”
After the completion of the movie, Kubrick remarked, “I hope the audience has had a good fright, has believed the film while they were watching it, and retains some sense of it.” The picture opened to mixed reviews and moviegoers were slow to respond. Over time, The Shining has been accepted as a classic of the horror genre along with the line, “Here’s, Johnny!”.
Trading the supernatural mayhem for the chaos of the Vietnam War, Stanley Kubrick went about shooting The Short-Timers by novelist Gustav Hasford in 1987. “It’s a very short very beautifully and economically written book,” revealed the director of his source material for Full Metal Jacket, “which, like the film, leaves out all the mandatory scenes of character development: the scene where the guy talks about his father, who’s an alcoholic, his girlfriend — all that stuff that bogs down and seems so arbitrarily inserted into every war story.”
When it came to depicting military combat on the big screen, Kubrick had a set goal in mind. “One of the things I tried to do,” said the director, “was give you a sense of where you were, where everything else was. Which, in war movies, is something you frequently don’t get. The terrain of small-unit action is really the story of the action. And this is something we tried to make beautifully clear: there’s a low wall, there’s the building space. And once you get in there, everything is exactly where it actually was. No cutting away, no cheating. So it came down to where the sniper would be and where the marines were. When Cowboy is shot, they carry him around the corner — to the very most logical shelter. And there, in the background, was this thing, this monolith. I’m sure some people will think that there was some calculated reference to 2001, but honestly, it was just there.”
To add to authenticity to the story an actual marine drill instructor was recruited for the role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. “I’d say fifty percent of Lee’s dialogue, specifically the insult stuff, came from Lee,” said Kubrick of R. Lee Ermey’s foul-mouth performance. “Aside from the insults though virtually every serious thing he [Ermey] says is basically true. When he says, ‘A rifle is only a tool, it’s a hard heart that kills,’ you know it’s true. Unless you’re living in a world that doesn’t need fighting men, you can’t fault him. Except maybe for a certain lack of subtlety in his behavior. And I don’t think the United States Marine Corps is in the market for subtle drill instructors.”
As for his being a perfectionist, Kubrick stated, “If I did a hundred takes on every scene, I’d never finish a film. Lee Ermey, for instance, would spend every spare second with the dialogue coach, and he always knew his lines. I suppose Lee averaged eight or nine takes. He sometimes did it in three, because he was prepared.”
Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards and the Writers Guild of America, Full Metal Jacket was declared by Variety to be an “intense, schematic, superbly made” drama, while renowned film critic Roger Ebert was far less enamored by the “strangely shapeless” movie.
For those wishing to pursue a career in the movie industry, the independently-minded filmmaker advised, “The best education in film is to make one. I would advise any neophyte director to try to make a film by himself. A three-minute short will teach him a lot. I know that all the things I did at the beginning were, in microcosm, the things I’m doing now as a director and producer. There are a lot of noncreative aspects to filmmaking which have to be overcome, and you will experience them all when you make even the simplest film: business, organization, taxes, etc., etc. It is rare to be able to have an uncluttered artistic environment when you make a film, and being able to accept this is essential.”
After a twelve year absence Stanley Kubrick returned in 1999 with Eyes Wide Shut, which was inspired by a 1926 novella called Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler. Tom Cruise plays Dr. Bill Harford who, after learning that his wife considered having an affair years ago, embarks on a series of all-night sexual escapades. The erotic thriller had two contentious issues: an orgy scene (which resulted in a NC-17 rating) and the use of a chant which the American Hindus Against Defamation thought to be a shloka (scriptural recitation).
Actor Todd Field (In The Bedroom), who had the role of Nick Nightingale, refutes claims that Kubrick was distraught over what would become of the picture, “Stanley was absolutely thrilled with the film. He was still working on the film when he died. And he probably died because he finally relaxed. It was one of the happiest weekends in his life, right before he died, after he had shown the first cut to Terry, Tom, and Nicole [Kidman]. He would have kept working on it, like he did with all of his films.”
Acclaimed American filmmaker Martin Scorsese (The Departed, Goodfellas) wrote, “When Eyes Wide Shut came out a few months after Stanley Kubrick’s death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise. If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the early ones), you’ll see that all his films were initially misunderstood. Then, after four or ten years [people] came to the realization that 2001 or Barry Lyndon or The Shining was like nothing else before or since.”
Appropriately, a project developed by Stanley Kubrick since the early 1970s was screened to the public in 2001. Under the renowned direction of Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark), A.I. Artificial Intelligence was based on a short story by Brian Aldiss called Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. In the futuristic tale a child-like android named David has the ability to love. With rumours persisting that Spielberg had toned down Kubrick’s dark vision, he responded, “Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I’ve done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I’ve been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact, it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I’m the guy in the dark centre of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else.”
The movie proved to be a moderate success with A.I. earning twice as much overseas as it did in North America. At the Academy Awards the picture was nominated for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score.
“I can’t honestly say what led me to make any of my films,” reflected Kubrick, “The best I can do is to say I just fell in love with the stories.” He went on to clarified his answer, “You can say a lot of “architectural” things about what a film story should have: a strong plot, interesting characters, possibilities for cinematic development, good opportunities for the actors to display emotion, and the presentation of its thematic ideas truthfully and intelligently. But, of course, that still doesn’t really explain why you finally chose something, nor does it lead you to a story. You can only say that you probably wouldn’t choose a story that doesn’t have most of those qualities.”
As for what he hoped to achieve with his movies, Stanley Kubrick replied, “Ultimately, the most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection they have for it.” One can just imagine HAL drably saying to the director, “Mission accomplished, Stanley.”
Be sure to check out The Kubrick Site, along with Kubrick’s unproduced screenplays for The German Lieutenant and Napoleon.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
