February 23, 2007

Film Director - Stanley Kubrick

When I was following my Film Studies A Level course I got the chance to brush up on my auteurs or authors. Kubrick is usually held up as the quintessential example of the auteur. An auteur or author is a concept developed by French critics to denote a director (usually) who is more than just the guy who makes sure the job gets done. They actually put their own unique and indelible stamp on a production. Typically, you can look at the body of work from an author director and see his signature whether it be in the form of recurring themes in the subject matter, visual style, etc. Stanley Kubrick is a great example because his films cross a whole range of genres. Just think of :

War films (Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket),
Sci Fi (2001 - A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange),
Horror (The Shining),
Historical Epic (Spartacus, Barry Lyndon),
Comedy/ Satire (Dr Strangelove)
Love and Sex (Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut).

With a Kubrick film you expect to see certain things like:

Controversy - a lot of his films entertained controversy at the time of their release. Lolita was about adaptation of a controversial novel about what we would now see as paedophilia; Paths of Glory portrayed the shocking treatment of French soldiers in the trenches by their generals; and, A Clockwork Orange was banned because of its graphic violence before Kubrick himself withdrew it from general circulation.
Arresting images - In each of Kubrick’s films there are images that linger on in the memory. The battle scenes in Spartacus, the balletic violence of the fight scenes in A Clockwork Orange, Slim Pickens final hurrah astride a nuclear warhead in Dr Strangelove…There are so many.
Technical Excellence and Innovation - For a great many of his later films Kubrick experimented with the latest technology to achieve originality on screen. Barry Lyndon is a good example. Kubrick and his cinematographer found a way to shoot scenes in candlelight and the results achieved provide a remarkable quality of picture. In 2001 - A Space Odyssey, a highly-engineered, circular, revolving stage with camera set up was built to simulate the scenes in a space station. In addition, some of the most sophisticated special effects of that time went into that movie.
Recurrent themes - Don’t expect a happy ending in a Kubrick film. Even the funniest (Dr Strangelove) ends with the world being destroyed by nuclear bombs! The stench of death is never very far away. Society brutalising the common man - the soldiers in Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket, the slaves in Spartacus, Alex in A Clockwork Orange (eventually). There always seems to be an objectivity or detachment in Kubrick’s work. There is always something that makes you think, some shock or contravention of the genre rules. The Shining was described by some critics as the first horror film with the lights on. Music is used in subtle ways to heighten the message being conveyed. Who can forget the spaceships in 2001 waltzing in space to the Blue Danube. Or the world ending in Dr Strangelove to the strains of Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again. And where music met controversy when Kubrick had the temerity to use electronic synthesiser versions of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in A Clockwork Orange.
Control - Ever since his early films up to and including Spartacus, Kubrick would always have total control over the output and finished product. This personal requirement meant that he did not work that often (only 16 films in over 48 years) as studios shyed away from giving a director that much control. He was a perfectionist and would only release a film when he was happy with it. That also meant painstaking and long shooting schedules. Obsessive might be one way of describing him.

As he is no longer with us we can only look back at the significant body of films he left rather than anticipating the next Kubrick controversy.

Stanley Kubrick and the Art of Adaptation: Three Novels