THE BRILLIANCE OF STANLEY KUBRICK

"if it can be written or thought, it can be filmed"- Stanley Kubrick

He was a photographer, a writer, a filmmaker, a philosopher and above all a creative genius.
Born on the 26th of July 1928 in The Bronx, New York to his Jewish parents Jack Kubrick who
was a doctor and Sadie Kubrick. Though the family was Jewish they weren't any religious.
Kubrick's father bought him a camera which he would carry at all times during his childhood.
His Grades weren't any good and he was listed as below average. This didn't put him down in life
as much as getting good grades would have. During school he and his friends would spend time
developing pictures which they sold to other magazines for money. The first one he sold and got
recognition for was a picture of a newspaper seller on the day of Franklin Roosevelt's death, this
made Look magazine to hire him as an apprentice photographer, the first of its kind.

There he studied more about photography and how the camera works, he would play chess
(another obsession of his) in Central Park for money.

He made the contrary of what Hollywood demanded at that time and still made a name. His
subjects of film weren't liked by people and wasn't for the faint heart and the delusional. He
made the two opposite ends of a film meet with his gigantic career. And by gigantic career I
mean to say his quality and not the quantity as he always fought with himself for not making
more films. With his films he communicated to the world on how cruel it could be. Be it war,
horror, fantasy or a movie about sexual tension, he was brutal in depicting the forum. His
filmography is a mix of the weirdest genres, but WAR was his favourite turf. A war movie is
what every mediocre filmmaker dreams of, it is where a filmmaker comes out with his true self
and real character. Kubrick has made four war films and has come out as a sadist in the general
public view. His war films weren't only brutal like they were supposed to be, they were filled
with humour too.

To name his films:- Fear & 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(1972), Barry Lyndon(1975), The shining(1980), Full metal
Jacket(1987), Eyes Wide Shut(1999).

The placement of the camera is the most vital prospect a film needs, every filmmaker, repeatedly
asking the question to himself would be, "have I placed the camera in the right place?". The
mounting of the camera in a shot would give different perspectives for different scenes. For
Kubrick it wasn't the mounting of a camera it was more about the movement of the camera.
According to film analysts and film historians, Kubrick hated a still camera and preferred
movement and a dynamic flow. He considered the emotions of a camera more important than
that of the actors.

Kubrick was a late bloomer, there is not one film of his which released without any controversy.
He was the master of controversy, his films would terrify people and strike them with anxiety,
but give the film ten years or more, it was considered a masterpiece. He was always ahead on the
human intelligence race and his thoughts couldn't match to the slow paced people back at that
time. His arrogance of human emotions made him strive forward in his films, he made the films
which he thought he would enjoy watching them. His films were oozing with philosophical
queries while the rest of Hollywood wanted musicals and more of Disney princesses. All the
films of his had a strong influence of 'Nihilism'. All the more, Kubrick stands out and he was the
last lifeboat of philosophical cinema, all the "good" filmmakers now at the present are the
survivors of the Hollywood wreckage and are travelling on that lifeboat. All the style which
young filmmakers now impart are without doubt the remains of Kubrick.

The use of music in films are crucial too, but for Kubrick the music regarding the film would be
totally different and irrelevant. For A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick would have chosen the Ninth
symphony of Beethoven. The book by Anthony Burgess itself indicates the protagonist's love for
Beethoven but the film joins the visuals with the haunting eerie music. A Clockwork Orange is
set in a dystopian future and the Background score would delight the souls watching the film as a
brutal rape scene would go on the screen. He had a fetish for classical music run over images of
inhuman nature. All his films would have a Scene where classical music is either played in the
Background, sung or heard by the actor and a scene of animal nature would come up on screen.

The man was weird. People thought of him as a pain in the ass while a very few concurred that
he was a perfectionist and an Artist of higher intellect and views.

WAR : HIS HOME GROUND

Out of the four war films he has made, three are still considered un-beatable. To project war the
filmmaker should understand the absurdity of it and not the content. Kubrick managed to project
the absurdity with indelible plots. The wars which he emphasized on are the World wars,
Vietnam war and the Cold war.

Paths of Glory-
The war between the French and the German(WW1), the shots of the war are taken in trenches
and this film is where Kubrick would capture eyes of the world and the industry or at least the
artistic people inside the industry. The camera used reverse tracking shots for the first time and
dolly shots of a general walking inside the trench with it being bombed simultaneously. The film
is said to be philosophically Existentialistic, the French soldiers would be tried for cowardice and
will be executed. It holds one of the best trial scenes in film history but a normal minded person
wouldn't understand the depth of the scene and one needs to view it in a way sympathizing the
soldiers yet agreeing to their death as a part of war. It holds at the end a shocker, when a young
German girl comes up a stage on a bar full of drunk French soldiers! The end shouldn't be told
this way and I request you to watch the movie, it would make you cry.

Dr.Strangelove: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb-

This is considered as the best of Kubrick and best of any war film which has come and which is
to come. The plot - A group of B-52 Bombers airborne 24 hours a day get a false order from a
lunatic General of the American Army to release the bombs in Moscow and other places inside
Russia, the story surrounds around the Army officials and the US president trying to figure out a
way to stop the attack. This is the first of its kind which is a Satire on the Cold war. This war
film didn't have any violence but it goes to the extent of making you laugh on an awful incident.
The best unimaginable wonder which he did is to cast Peter Sellers in three different characters
and make the audience believe that those are three different people.

Peter sellers :

The individuality of the three characters in the film and difference in the accent and body
emotions would be done by Sellers with ease or it would just seem so. Dr.Strangelove is one of
the structures which people can't question, like religion where each man has their own
perspective of his own god, the meaning of the film can be taken in many ways. Come to think
of it, the movie makes you laugh with your lungs aching while you watch it and will make you
think with immense depth of humanity after watching the movie. As of how Martin Scorcese
would put it- "It is the coldest war film ever! But I couldn't stop laughing". Stanley Kubrick
adapted it from a book known as 'red alert' which was actually a serious novel, but whenever he
wrote the script he would laugh at how it would have appeared in his mind. His motive behind
the film was to scare the general people with this ridiculously sadistic story. The film had opened
up during the height of the cold war and didn't serve well on the list of the common movie platter
which the people wanted then. The last thing they would want to see is the annihilation of the
human race or at least the end of USA in the hands of the Soviet. It was considered as a sick joke
at that time of John F. Kennedy being assassinated but a few years later the film was considered
as a cinematic masterpiece.

The score of music in the film also helps the sarcasm of the story, the use of the American folk
'Johhny marches home' during the B-52 Bombers airborne on the sky and the song 'We meet
again...' by Vera Lynn indulges in the ribald and horror of nuclear warfare.

I wouldn't want many people to watch this film as the ones who watched it feel special and the
ones who ignored are just pretentious and ignorant, it is to be selfish for this film.

Full Metal Jacket-

No one could figure out Kubrick's stance about the Veitnam War, the film is purely anti-war
though. The films first 30 minutes is centric on a sloppy soldier and his failures to camouflage in
the US army. Sergeant Gunnery Hartman is a trainer in the US Army who treats his soldiers like
they were slaves and pass on racist comments on them regardless of Religion,Gender and
Colour. The first story ends by the soldier killing the Sergeant and committing suicide. The sub-
plot (hysterically the main plot) shows the plight of other soldiers in Vietnam. Albert Camus:
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is
or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."-The Myth
of Sisyphus. Albert Camus is also a staunch follower of Nietzsche, who was the implanter of
'Existentialism'. Camus' philosophy comes alive in the Film where the soldier kills himself, he
sees "a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying."

The film is hard to explain and might be a thousand theories to it, but Kubrick ends it in such a
way that the viewer can choose to support either the US Army or the people in Vietnam. The
film ends where the Protagonist American soldier is put in a position where he has to kill a
teenage girl fighting for her country.

Many existential writers consider existentialism as the answer to nihilism or an escape from
nihilism. The film shows one person killing himself through despair and another living through
the despair. Though his other films were nihilistic, Kubrick paths away with existentialism on
this one.

The end should be seen rather than heard...

2001: A Space Odyssey-

Anyone who watches this film for the first time would bet that the movie was made during the
21st century. The film has scenes which would confuse the viewer and put them in a dilemma of
thought, whether they were done with Computer Graphics or the set. The film is a treat also for
the incapable people. A film can be enjoyed only by people whose both eye sight and ears work,
but not this film. This film would be a dessert for the blind and deaf too. The deaf would have
watched the film and its breathtaking visuals and the blind would have enjoyed the music like
they would have never experienced before.
If people parade around Christopher Nolan as the best Visual Artist/Filmmaker they clearly don't
have a clue about Kubrick. The scenes of zero gravity were installed in the history of cinema by
Kubrick in 1968. If only Kubrick had been given an opportunity to make films in the 21st
century!

Not to brag about but while USA and USSR were having space wars/space race as they would
appear before Neil Armstrong had quoted "It is a small step for man and a giant leap for
mankind", Kubrick had even before man set foot on the moon, already leapt the leap and moved
to his next movie.

The film has hidden brutality in it, he shows the dawn of Apes and indicates that violence and
war has evolved through time by territorial disputes between Apes even before there was human
inhabitation. In the movie he shows the beginning of the world and also doubts the possible end
of the world. The end according to Kubrick is the taking over of computers over human
emotions.

Ultimately many movies have been influenced since then, all of the similar plot where machines
take over human beings... namely The Terminator, iRobot or even the Indian film Endhiran.

The film was and is a primer for science fictions and also fits every postulates of the auteur
theory.

(AUTEUR THEORY - " In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director reflects his own
personal creative vision, which is not bombarded by the studio for alterations.")