Stanley Kubrick Film Festival

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999): Native New Yorker, underachieving student, chess master, intellectual, existential thinker, experimentalist, enigma, expatriate, recluse, cutting edge filmmaker. In spite of his relatively low output (16 films in 48 years), he is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. He regarded his craft as art and demanded excellence of cast and crew as much as he demanded it of himself. His work led to both critical and commercial success, a slew of major awards and a dedicated cult following - present company included. Here are synopses of my favorite Kubrick films:

Full Metal Jacket (1987)
"The dead are covered with lime. The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive."

This is just one of many poignant and memorable lines uttered in one of the best war movies ever made. The storyline follows a group of Marines from their harrowing basic training to the madness of street fighting and survival in Vietnam. Kubrick was known as a staunch researcher who paid very close attention to detail, and this film is a classic example of that fact. His depiction of boot camp on Paris Island was as authentic as it gets, led by the unforgettable R. Lee Erney as Sargeant Hartman. The entire film is overflowing with understated irony, from the peace sign on private Joker's (Matthew Modine) BDU jacket to the "born to kill" statement scrawled on his helmet, to the garbled purpose of the war, to the final haunting scene of the "jolly green giants with guns" marching through a ravaged landscape singing "The Mickey Mouse Theme."

Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) (1964)
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"

When this film was released the topic of nuclear annihilation was no laughing matter, particularly when considering that the fearful "Fail Safe" was released in the same year. Both films deal with a breakdown in military protocol that leads to an unauthorized nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, with retaliation being imminent. The difference is that Strangelove, which stars the incomparable Peter Sellers playing three different roles, is a side-splitting political satire, whereas "Fail Safe" (starring Henry Fonda) is a grim cautionary tale. Legend has it that Kubrick originally intended his to be a straight ahead drama, but when he took a closer look at the twists and turns in the story he was compelled to draw out the very obvious underlying humor. The comedic timing of Sellers and the rest of the cast is perfect, the authenticity is impressive, and the film makes a powerful statement about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction some 40 years before the phrase became chic.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
"How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001." - Stanley Kubrick

Even though "Lolita" (1960) and "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) were derided for their vivid portrayals of sex and violence, respectively, "2001" is probably the most widely debated of Kubrick's films. Some dismissed it as boring and meaningless, while others applauded its artistic merit, technical genius and spiritual significance. My view is that all of these positives and negatives are true. The storyline, which is as thin as a thread, involves a strange monolith that appears during three pivotal points in the evolution of humankind: The first is during prehistoric times, when cave men take a giant leap forward through the use of tools. The second segment involves a space bureaucrat who is investigating the presence of a similar (or the same) monolith on the moon's surface. It is during this segment that we witness the ingenious special effects that make this still one of the most remarkable science fiction films ever made. When this film was shot, man had never even been on the surface of the moon. But Kubrick, a voracious researcher and lifelong learner, was able to realistically portray the effects of zero gravity and other aspects of space travel in a manner that would have made Neil Armstrong proud.

The space walkers conclude that the monolith was intentionally buried on the moon to transmit information back to planet Jupiter. This discovery leads to the third segment of the film, in which a crew is traveling towards Jupiter in a ship that is manned by a sentient computer named HAL. The mission goes awry when the crew decides to shut HAL down and HAL resists. The sole surviving member of the crew follows the third monolith into deep space and experiences a metamorphosis that has confounded audiences ever since. Kubrick never fully explained his ambiguous ending, but my interpretation is that it represents humankind's next evolutionary leap: becoming a star child. To be sure, this film is very un-Hollywood; it's unconventional, slow and open-ended. But every film lover should see it at least once.

The Shining (1980)
"Heeeeere's Johnny!"

It could be argued that this was the film that really put Jack Nicholson on the map (with respect due to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.") Kubrick passed on an opportunity to shoot "The Exorcist II" in order to work on The Shining, and it capped a decade of classic horror movies (The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary's Baby). The story involves a writer (Nicholson) who goes mad while his family is house sitting a remote Colorado hotel for the winter. It's been said that Stephen King did not enjoy Kubrick's interpretation of his novel, and therefore rewrote the screenplay for a made for TV movie in 1997. Nonetheless, this remains one of the eeriest, weirdest psychological horror films in recent memory. It did, however, end Kubrick's string of four straight Oscar nominations for Best Director (Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon (1975).

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
"If you men only knew..."

There was a 12-year gap between Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut because Kubrick shelved a couple of projects that had similar themes to other releases, most notably Schindler's List. Kubrick claimed that Eyes Wide Shut (a composite of two other screenplays he was working on at the time) was the best of his films to date, but it may have been for sentimental as opposed to artistic reasons. The film contains all kinds of inside joke references that harken to Kubrick's other films, characters and cast members. (For example, in one scene, there is a stack of Kubrick's previous films, with Full Metal Jacket on top.) The direction is top notch, the story is compelling. Dr. Peter Harford (Tom Cruise), who has trust and fidelity issues with his wife (Nicole Kidman), finds himself pulled into a hedonistic underworld that ultimately jeopardizes his marriage and his life. The story takes Harford, a "vanilla" American by all accounts, into a downward spiral of sexual deviancy. Like most of Kubrick's films, this one received mixed critical reviews, which is a testament to his commitment to movies-as-art. No one views a poem or a painting in the same way, and Kubrick, to the very last, expected his films to have the same subjective effect on the audience. Due to the huge hype around the film (and the timing of his death), it was his first film to open #1 at the box office. He died four days after the final cut was submitted to Warner Brothers.

Stanley Kubrick had been working on AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) up to the time of his death, but his friend Stephen Spielberg ended up completing the project. We'll never know how this disappointing film might have been different under Kubrick's direction, but like the significance of the mysterious Star Child in "2001," we'll have to wonder for the rest of eternity. Somehow, I think that's the way he would have wanted it. good art, and a great artist, always leaves you wondering and wanting more.