Stanley Kubrick Marathon

After the David Lynch marathon, I had to follow up with an equally prolific director.  Stanley Kubrick is one of my favorites and made perfect sense as a sequel.  We watched, in this order:

The Killing (1956)

Dr. Strangelove and How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Total run-time: 8.9 hours

I specifically chose these movies to span Kubrick’s career and showcase his style.  I also tried to avoid redundant themes and genres.  Let’s see how I did.

The Killing

B/W 1956 Starring: Sterling Hayden

The Killing is hailed as a masterpiece heist movie.  Much like his later movies, Kubrick defined a genre with his take.  Movie critics often reference The Killing as Tarantino’s influence for Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.  An auspicious beginning to his career and our marathon.

The Killing is divided into two acts: the heist set-up, and the execution, centered on Johnny Clay.

In the first act, he brings together normal men with talents or positions vital for pulling off a $2 million robbery of a racetrack.  Heavy dialogue carries the plot and the characters reveal themselves and their flaws- a jealous husband, a meticulous planner, a gold-digging wench, and so on.  Johnny personifies Kubrick for his mechanical attention to detail and intensity.  Little wonder he was drawn to the project.

The narrator carries the second act.  In a deadpan voice, he announces the time and location for each player in the heist.  Even as the characters meet tragedy, the narrator plows on.  The juxtaposition of structured story telling over the derailment of the plotted plan is excellent.

Seeing as film noir was going out of fashion, Kubrick took a small chance with the The Killing.  Nevertheless, the film performed well, kicking his career off to a good start.  Most importantly for the marathon, many of his signatures are present:

            -Dialogue driven plot

            -Narrator

            -Two acts

            -Using “The End” before the credits roll

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (-omb)

B/W 1964  Starring: Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden

I chose this film because it’s one of my favorites and shows off Kubrick’s sense of humor.  He employs Peter Seller’s acting talents to play three wildly different characters, much like he did in Lolita. 

Tyler Perry, eat your heart out

For those who don’t know storyline behind Dr. Strangelove, it explores the possibility of nuclear war.  Sterling Hayden (from The Killing) orders an attack on the Russians.  The situation is ludicrous- the attack can't be called off because of the bureaucracy set in place, but if the planes drop their payload the Doomsday machine will be triggered and destroy most of human life.  The president of the U.S.A. and prime minister of Russia discuss the issue and agree to shoot down the planes.  Of course, one plane gets through and the desperately manages to reach the target.  The finale is a series of nuclear explosions set to “We’ll Meet Again”.  Brilliant.  Kubrick certainly had some balls to make this movie.  He satirizes commie paranoia and makes war into a sad joke, during the time of LBJ and Vietnam propaganda.

Eyes Wide Shut

1999 Starring: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman

This is actually the last movie Stanley Kubrick did before he died.  It’s also one of the sexiest movies he ever worked on and there’s a reason the movie was placed in this rotation- we had to wait for a certain younger sibling to leave the house.

Eyes Wide Shut is a “psycho-sexual” adventure.  Tom goes on a dark seedy adventure after his wife, Nicole, confesses her lecherous feelings for another man.  Each encounter is a contained exploration of the sexual mind, and in the end, we are forced to consider what really gets us hot and bothered.  Does gender matter?  Is sex something to be open about, or a dark mysterious subject?  How much does context play a role?  And of course, the topic of fidelity in marriage plays a major role.  Eyes Wide Shut is long, methodical and makes you think and even after six viewings it still feels fresh.

Plus, I had a surprise for my guests- the unedited international version, released stateside in 2007.  When it was first released in 1999, much of the cultish orgy mansion was obscured by digital silouhettes.  The orgy scene is interesting.  It’s pornographic, no doubt, but choreographed Kubrick style.  It’s classy and seems planned.  The actors are clearly not improvising, but following their scheduled humping (humphink?) with a mechanical rhythm.  I wonder if Kubrick intended the viewer to make this observation.  In other scenes the sex is passionate and organic, but in the mansion it is distant.  The exhibitionists also wear masks, hiding both their identities and their organic (orgasmic?) reactions, making the whole act even more removed from humanity.

Without dragging this into an essay on sexuality.  Eyes Wide Shut takes you on an anxious thrilling ride.  See it.  Especially if you like Nicole Kidman.

2001: A Space Odyssey
1968


I'll start with the spoilers and work backwards for this one.  Here's what happened at the end:

Okay, so that big black monolith in the beginning?  Yeah, that was created by aliens some millions and billions of years ago and it influenced the monkeys to start evolving into modern man.  In the end, when the astronaut sees all the crazy colors, the monolith is present again.  The colors represent the astronaut's transformation into an alien being.  The crazy shit is all the brilliance of the universe.
When he comes to in a weird bedroom, that's the visualization of his transformation and aging.  The fetus at the end is his rebirth as an alien, or a higher being.

Got it?  Good.  'Cause I don't have much else to write about this movie.  It's the quintessential sci-fi movie by one of the best directors/visionaries/awesome guys of all time.

Stanley Kubrick is a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything.  Open the pod bay doors, HAL.