Talk:Stanley Kubrick/sandbox

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Themes
Through his films, Kubrick often addressed concern with the over-mechanization of society which, in its attempt to create a safe environment, creates an artificial sterility that breeds the very evils it tries to exclude. Multiple critics have noted that Kubrick's earlier films have more straightforward linear narrative while the later films are moderately and subtly surreal reflecting a sense of social dislocation and confusion.

The emotional distance Kubrick maintains from many of his characters have caused critics to see Kubrick as a cold and detached rationalist, while the recurrence of strongly psychopathic characters from Alex DeLarge to Jack Torrance in his films have caused many to view Kubrick's outlook as deeply pessimistic. In his book Nihilism in Film and Television, Kevin L. Stoehr writes "If there is one film director whose movies express consistently, in terms of both form and content, the pervasive dangers and creative opportunities of nihilism in contemporary culture, that filmmaker is the late Stanley Kubrick". A frequently recurring observation on the Kubrick film that Spielberg completed A.I is that it uneasily meshes Spielberg's rosy optimistic outlook with Kubrick's pessimistic one, although one reviewer wrote “[Spielberg] has done a remarkable job in balancing Kubrick's pessimism with his optimism without having one overcrowd the other”.

Newspaper obituaries of Kubrick, the Encyclopædia Britannica and Vincent LoBrutto's biography of the director (which was spoken of approvingly by Kubrick's wife) all characterize Kubrick broadly as pessimistic. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: “if Mr. Kubrick's misanthropy prompted some critics to accuse him of coldness and inhumanity, others saw his pessimism as an uncompromisingly Swiftian vision of human absurdity.” So also did Kubrick's most severe critic, Pauline Kael. The charge was repeated in reviews of the multi-film DVD boxed set of his films in 2007, a New Jersey film critic writing “And yet preserved too – like an ugly insect trapped in amber – are some of the artist's most problematic qualities, including a bitter pessimism, a cruel humor and an almost godlike superiority that often viewed other people – and particularly women – as little more than impediments." A pessimistic streak was found in essays collected in The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick, one of which characterizes Eyes Wide Shut as “a kind of Sartrean pessimism about our inevitable dissatisfaction with romantic love.”

Not all critics agree with this assessment. Other essays in the same anthology find Eyes Wide Shut to be largely optimistic. James Naremore in On Kubrick characterizes Kubrick as a modernist in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka with their distrust of mass society. As such, Naremore notes that Kubrick's detachment from his subjects does not make him a dour pessimist, although Kubrick does often dwell on “the failure of scientific reasoning, and the fascistic impulses in masculine sexuality”. Peter Kramer's study of 2001 argues it is meant to counterweight the pessimism of Kubrick's previous Dr. Strangelove.

Some view Kubrick's pessimism as either at least overstated by others or even more apparent than real, an impression created by Kubrick's refusal of any bland or cheap optimism, refusal to make films that conform to conventional ideas of a spectacle, and a desire to employ films as a wake-up call to humanity to understand its capacity for evil. The editors of The Kubrick Site note that Kubrick avoids cinematically conventional ways of structuring stories. This does indeed create for many viewers a sense of emotionless detachment from the human subjects as noted above. For example, Kubrick often prefers lengthy dialogue scenes shot from one camera angle with no cutting. But the editors of TKS believe this is done in order to establish a life of characters beyond dialogue which "helps to reveal, in the spaces and silences, some of the emotional nature permeating the film's world" as well as a realistic sense of the characters' situatedness in time and society. Kubrick's focus is not just on individual characters but on the larger society around them and how it affects their motivation, often in negative ways. The authors also stress that however bleak Kubrick's outlook (intermittently) is, he is not a misanthrope.

A recent outspoken dissenter from pessimistic readings of Kubrick is literature and film critic Julian Rice. His book Kubrick's Hope argues that although there is a powerful vision of evil in Kubrick, there is vision of redemption and goodness in Kubrick's films stronger than often initially recognized, a vision focused both on family feeling and access to the sublime depths of the subconscious beyond superficial socialization. However, Rice has been alleged to misrepresent the work of prior Kubrick film scholars, particularly with reference to just how pessimistic or misanthropic they actually think Kubrick's films are.

Spielberg, himself a noted cinematic optimist and close personal friend of Kubrick, expressed a similar view of Kubrick. Going against the grain of the view that Kubrick's films are misanthropic and pessimistic, Spielberg in a tribute to Kubrick at the 71st Academy awards said: "He dared us to have the courage of his convictions, and when we take that dare, we're transported directly to his world, and we're inside his vision. And in the whole history of movies, there has been nothing like that vision ever. It was a vision of hope and wonder, of grace and of mystery. It was a gift to us, and now it's a legacy." Kubrick himself denied that he was a pessimist, and summarized his views in a 1968 interview with Playboy: "The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with the indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 23:01, 9 February 2012 (UTC) }}

Trademark characteristics
Kubrick paid close attention to the releases of his films in other countries. Not only did he have complete control of the dubbing cast, but sometimes alternative material was shot for international releases—in The Shining, the text on the typewriter pages was re-shot for the countries in which the film was released; in Eyes Wide Shut, the newspaper headlines and paper notes were re-shot for different languages. Kubrick always personally supervised the foreign voice-dubbing and the actual script translation into foreign languages for all of his films. Since Kubrick's death, no new voice translations have been produced for any of the films he had control of; in countries where no authorized dubs exist, only subtitles are used for translation.

Beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey, all of his films except Full Metal Jacket used mostly pre-recorded classical music, in two cases electronically altered by Wendy Carlos. He also often used merry-sounding pop music in an ironic way during scenes depicting devastation and destruction, especially in the closing credits or end sequences of a film. Kubrick often employed the use of music as a "black joke" to achieve a chilling, ironic effect (one now often employed by Quentin Tarantino) by incongruously combining mismatched moods and styles. Igor Stravinsky was arguably the innovator of this musical technique during his Neo-Classic period (1920s to the 1950s), but it was Kubrick who extended this idea to the big screen. Brief examples of this include Vera Lynn singing We'll Meet Again in the final scene of Dr. Strangelove (during a nuclear holocaust), using some older classical music for the futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey, and using Gene Kelly's upbeat Singin’ in the Rain for the somewhat graphic rape scene of A Clockwork Orange, and the Trashmmen's catchy, poppy surf rock hit, "Surfin' Bird" in Full Metal Jacket.

More generally, Kubrick employed a lot of "black humor" especially in his two films with Peter Sellers, and to a lesser degree in A Clockwork Orange and The Shining

In his review of Full Metal Jacket, Roger Ebert noted that many Kubrick films have a facial closeup of an unraveling character in which the character's head is tilted down and his eyes are tilted up, although Ebert does not think there is any deep meaning to these shots. Lobrutto's biography of Kubrick notes that his director of photography, Doug Milsome, coined the phrase the "Kubrick crazy stare". The connection of this stare with psychoanalysis is often made through the concept of "The Gaze" and its implications in visual culture.

Kubrick also extensively employed wide angle shots, character tracking shots, zoom shots, and shots down tall parallel walls, which Kubrick biographer calls his "corridor" compositions, The use of long takes, while not an unknown technique before Kubrick, became known in the film community as a "Kubrickian" trademark—for instance the extended tricycle-riding sequence in The Shining or the long pullback from Alex's face at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange.

Stanley Kubrick was a passionate chess player, often playing on the set of his films. Chess appears as a motif or a plot device in three of his films, The Killing, Lolita, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mario Falsetto believes that the marble floor in the room of the prisoner's trial in Paths of Glory is deliberately chosen to represent a chess board, with prisoners as "pawns in the game".

Frequent and memorable collaborators
Four writers who co-authored screenplays with Kubrick subsequently wrote memoirs of their experience working with him. Arthur C. Clarke's The Lost Worlds of 2001 traces all the intermediate versions of the story from first draft to final project. Diane Johnson published an essay about her experience collaborating with Kubrick and has discussed it frequently in both lectures and interviews. Michael Herr, Kubrick's co-screenwriter on Full Metal Jacket wrote a book simply titled Kubrick which covers not only his collaboration on the film, but also his friendship with the director over the last 20 years of his life. Kubrick's co-screenwriter on Eyes Wide Shut, Frederic Raphael, wrote a notoriously unflattering memoir of Kubrick entitled Eyes Wide Open which has been denounced by Kubrick's family, notably on Christianne Kubrick's website. Similarly, Diane Johnson has stated

"I completely agreed with Michael Herr's assessment. I visited the Kubricks when Michael was there and Michael and I have talked about him a little bit since then. My Kubrick was very much like the Kubrick that Herr described. I think that Frederic Raphael must be a dangerous paranoid. I don't know what that was about."

Two authors of studies of Kubrick's films, Alexander Walker and Michel Ciment, worked closely with Kubrick on their books, with Kubrick personally providing the authors with many production photos and film stills and crucial information about the production of his films. Walker's book Stanley Kubrick, Director saw both a 1972 (entitled Stanley Kubrick Directs) and a 2000 edition, and Michel Ciment's book Stanley Kubrick saw both a 1980 and 2003 edition (the latter called Stanley Kubrick- The Definitive Edition)

Stanley Kubrick's daughter Vivian Kubrick directed a 30-minute BBC documentary on the making of The Shining and composed the musical soundtrack to his film Full Metal Jacket. His wife's paintings appear in two of his films A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut.

Influence on film industry
Leading directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, the Coen brothers, Ridley Scott, and George A. Romero, have cited Kubrick as a source of inspiration, and in the case of Spielberg, collaboration. On the DVD of Eyes Wide Shut, Steven Spielberg, in an interview, comments on Kubrick that "nobody could shoot a picture better in history" but the way that Kubrick "tells a story is antithetical to the way we are accustomed to receiving stories". Writing in the introduction to a recent edition of Michel Ciment's Kubrick, film director Martin Scorsese notes that most of Kubrick's films were misunderstood and under-appreciated when first released. Then came a dawning recognition that they were masterful works unlike any other films. Perhaps most notably, Orson Welles, one of Kubrick's greatest personal influences and all-time favorite directors, famously said that: "Among those whom I would call 'younger generation' Kubrick appears to me to be a giant." The directors Richard Linklater, Sam Mendes, Joel Schumacher, Taylor Hackford, and Darren Aronofsky have all mentioned Kubrick as having made one of their favorite films.

Kubrick continues to be cited as a major influence by many directors, including Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro, David Lynch, Lars Von Trier, Michael Mann, and Gaspar Noé. Many filmmakers imitate Kubrick's inventive and unique use of camera movement and framing. For example, several of Jonathan Glazer's music videos contain visual references to Kubrick. The Coen Brother's Barton Fink, in which the hotel itself seems malevolent, contains a hotel hallway Steadicam shot as an homage to The Shining. The storytelling style of their Hudsucker Proxy was influenced by Dr. Strangelove. Director Tim Burton has included a few visual homages to Kubrick in his work, notably using actual footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and modeling the look of Tweedledee and Tweedledum in his version of Alice in Wonderland on the Grady girls in The Shining. Film critic Roger Ebert also noted that Burton's Mars Attacks! was partially inspired by Dr. Strangelove. The video for The Killers song Bones (2006), Burton's only music video, includes clips from Kubrick's Lolita, as well as other films from the general era.

Paul Thomas Anderson (who was fond of Kubrick as a teenager) in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, stated "it's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It can all seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with." Reviewer William Arnold described Anderson's There Will Be Blood as being stylistically an homage to Kubrick "particularly "2001: A Space Odyssey" – opening with a similar prologue that jumps in stages over the years and using a soundtrack throughout that employs anachronistic music."

Although Michael Moore specializes in documentary filmmaking, at the beginning of shooting his only non-documentary feature film Canadian Bacon, he sat his cast and crew down to watch Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. He told them "What this movie was in the '60s, is what we should aspire to with this film." Moore had previously written Kubrick a letter telling him how much Bacon was inspired by Strangelove.

Film director Frank Darabont has been inspired by Kubrick's use of music. In an interview with The Telegraph, he states that 2001 took "the use of music in film" to absolute perfection, and one shot employing classical music in The Shawshank Redemption follows Kubrick's lead. On the other hand, while Darabont has followed Kubrick in directing two Stephen King adaptations, Darabont shares Stephen King's negative view of Kubrick's adaption of The Shining. In the same interview, Darabont said

"It completely misses the human element. Kubrick's work on screen tends to be the eye of a scientist examining humanity as if it were a paramecium under a microscope. Sometimes that worked brilliantly, and sometimes it took a really good book like The Shining and totally fucked it up. It's an utter failure as an adaptation of great material. However, it doesn't take away from his extraordinary achievements in his other films. And I think that 2001 is his crown jewel.""

Critics occasionally detect a Kubrickian influence when the actual filmmaker acknowledges none. Critics have noticed the influence of Stanley Kubrick on Danish independent director Nicolas Winding Refn. Jim Pappas suggests this comes from Refn's employment of Kubrick's cinematographer for The Shining and Barry Lyndon in his film Fear X, suggesting "it is the Kubrick influence that leaves us asking ourselves what we believe we should know is true". The apparent influence of Kubrick on his film Bronson was noted by the Los Angeles Times and the French publication Evene However, when asked by Twitch about the very frequent comparisons by critics of the film Bronson to A Clockwork Orange, Refn denied the influence. Refn stated

"Of course if you put violence with classical music, people think it's obvious that's Clockwork Orange, because Kubrick used it very well and you always look at it as a reference. There are similarities between my Bronson and the Alex character from Clockwork Orange. There is kind of anti-authoritarian popculture iconish quality, but I stole every single thing from Kenneth Anger.Bronson is a mixture of [Anger's] Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) and Scorpio Rising (1964)."

TOC revision ideas
I guess this is the best place to list some ideas in visual form on how to create a reasonable TOC. I'll go ahead and give one to start based mostly on my 1st idea. The basic premise is that none of the "Other film projects" should warrant an equal TOC listing to his major feature films: ";Career
 * Short films
 * Fear and Desire (1953); Killer's Kiss (1955); The Killing (1956)
 * Paths of Glory (1957)
 * Spartacus (1960)
 * Lolita (1962)
 * Dr. Strangelove (1964)
 * 2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968)
 * A Clockwork Orange (1971)
 * Barry Lyndon (1975)
 * The Shining (1980)
 * Full Metal Jacket (1987)
 * Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
 * Other film projects
 * One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
 * Napoleon
 * Aryan Papers
 * A.I.

--Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 04:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)"

-- Comments:

Another layout by WickerGuy moved here:
 * Career
 * Short films
 * Early features up to Spartacus
 * Lolita (1962)
 * Dr. Strangelove (1964)
 * 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
 * A Clockwork Orange (1971)
 * Barry Lyndon (1975)
 * The Shining (1980)
 * Full Metal Jacket (1987)
 * Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
 * Work on A. I
 * Unrealized projects

--
 * Comment: I don't think demoting Paths of Glory and Spartacus beneath "work on A.I." is logical since those two were both major and significant films.--Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 05:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It seems then that consensus is towards the first version.--WickerGuy (talk) 05:34, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

--
 * Career
 * Short films
 * Fear and Desire (1953); Killer's Kiss (1955); The Killing (1956)
 * Paths of Glory (1957)
 * Spartacus (1960)
 * Lolita (1962)
 * Dr. Strangelove (1964)
 * 2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968)
 * A Clockwork Orange (1971)
 * Barry Lyndon (1975)
 * The Shining (1980)
 * Full Metal Jacket (1987)
 * Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
 * Work on A. I.
 * Other film projects
 * One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
 * Napoleon
 * Aryan Papers

- Gothicfilm (talk) 05:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I think we'd first need to verify that his contribution or work on A.I. was significantly more than Napoleon.  My guess is he worked more on Napoleon. He did a ton of research, and Jack Nicholson was ready to take the part, which Kubrick began discussing with him after Easy Rider in 1969. United Artists were ready to back it, but lost too much money on some films and had to back out. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 06:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * One has nothing to do with the other. From everything we know, he did tons of research and development on all his made and unmade films. A. I. stands distinct because it was actually made, by the man he wanted to make it. - Gothicfilm (talk) 06:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * True, it was actually made, and I agree that distinguishes it from the others. But I'm not sure that because he wanted Spielberg to make it should be a major factor unless the text in that section goes into more detail. It should explain what the "work" consisted of. As written now, even after I added some material, it's very light on the "work" aspect. Maybe someone can add some key "work" details from the film's article. In the meantime, I'm OK with your layout.--Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 06:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Very good. Among other things, according to reports, Kubrick even did numerous storyboards for A. I., even though he didn't have a finished script, and Spielberg stayed loyal to at least some of them. - Gothicfilm (talk) 07:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The TOC is currently enormous, I think there needs to be a couple of films per section, to help narrow it down. Similar to how it used to be (grouped by decades). And I definitely think "Other projects" should stay separated, they'll all be such short sections that I can't see the point in giving them one each. I feel like a lot of the "Influences" stuff could be merged as well. -- Lobo (talk) 07:51, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Grouping it by decades is useless to a reader who doesn't know which film goes where, or even what films he made. If it's long, it's long. And better to take this to the talk page - keep it in one place. - Gothicfilm (talk) 07:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)