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[Craven Moorehead]

Kubrick certainly stands out in the pantheon of great Western directors, but his clinical approach to all things sexual renders films such as Lolita and Eyes Wide Shut as just that: clinical studies that lack a depth of passion. Humbert Humbert, while a deeply disturbed individual, comes across as bloodless and cold in James Mason's portrayal. Kubrick's weakest films have always had sexuality at their core, and the director maintained a focal length distance from tapping into the passion of his main characters. In these instances, I picture Kubrick giving direction in a voice eerily reminiscent of HAL 9000. And frankly speaking, while The Shining had moments of genuine creepiness, the film does not hang together that well as a whole but is continually and bombastically hailed as a "horror masterpiece", mostly because it had his name attached. However, films such as Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange and The Killing are true classics in the canon of Western filmmaking.

[BreakfastInBed]

Strangely, what had kept me from appreciating Kubrick for a long time is the same thing that may be the source of my admiration for him now: what Craven Moorehead calls "his clinical approach" (though I would extend it to more than just his sexual themes). I couldn't understand the Kubrick cult of genius before, and I'm not totally confident I do now, but after seeing more of his work and rewatching what I'd seen when I was younger, I do stand in awe of him. The clinical detachment I feel as a viewer of Kubrick's films used to leave me cold, but now I feel it is a sign of respect toward the audience and often engenders a host of otherwise undetetectable ironies. Forgive me for sounding pompous and not giving examples; let me pick up the box set in the next few months and watch everything again and I'll happily geek out about it in more specific detail.

But back to Kubrick, I get the sense of a sour disposition from behind these ironies, and that's what continues to prevent me from revering him the way I do a number of other iconic directors. Perhaps this sourness is my own, but I have trouble accepting that Kubrick's films are nothing more than elaborate Rorschach tests. His detachment can be enigmatic, but it isn't meaningless, and the meanings I find I most frequently take from his films are tinged with disgust. I refuse to call this negative criticism, I think his films are brilliant and the consistency of quality found in his work may well be unmatched, but I can't love him as I love many other filmmakers in whose body of work can be found many lesser films.

I love exuberance, hence my love of Fellini, the most exuberant of directors (arguably indulgently so at times). Take a film like La Dolce Vita, by no means a happy, life-affirming tale. Its story and themes are decidedly pessimistic, yet it resists its own pessism. The whole negative experience of the film for me is undermined by the sheer exuberance of the filmmaking. Even if this is intellectually another irony, another layer of sweetness on something corrupt, pragmatically what I'm left with is a sense of immense joy in art and film and, indeed, life, and I find it infectious.

[Craven Moorehead]

I think part of what makes Kubrick so deserved of icon status is his amazing sense of shot composition and vivid use of mise en scene. While I find Eyes Wide Shut and Lolita largely passionless in the sexual sense, Kubrick's eye for the shot elevates this material above the rest of the pack. For example, Adrian Lyne's Lolita with Jeremy Irons is extremely faithful to the source material, unlike Kubrick, but Lyne certainly is nowhere near the auteur Kubrick was.

I am a huge fan of Fellini as well, BIB, and your ideas of his exuberance in filmmaking undermining otherwise pessimistic takes on life are manifest in something like La Strada. His casting of Giuliana Masini was a masterstroke. Anthony Quinn's realization of his love for her when it is too late is heartbreaking. I love how all of his films incorporate so much of his life and personality in direct contrast to Kubrick's work. 8 1/2 is a prime example of this idea, even if the life of the director played by Marcello Mastroianni as Fellini's doppleganger is largely romanticized.

[itaewonguy]

watch Kubricks life story in the movie
MY LIFE IN PICTURES..

this will help you all to understand the man...

[On the other hand]

[BreakfastInBed]