The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick

This post contains my notes from the book, “The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick” by Norman Kagan. Here, I have tried to sum up those important plus interesting ideas from the book which concern Kubrick’s overall approach to filmmaking. I will take further references from this book as and when I happen to talk about his individual movies. The bolded parts of this post contain words taken from the book. The non-bolded parts contain my take on ideas expressed in the book, mostly in context of my current knowledge of his films. This post may not seem to be of much value to those readers who havent watched his films yet, but I think it still could provide some introduction to his genius & also perhaps motivate some of you to see his work.

Stanley Kubrick once said that writers or painters or filmmakers dont do what they do because they have something particular to say. Instead, they have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, smell of paint, photographic images or just working with actors. “I dont think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was”, He said.

I think the quote above most accurately sums up his motivation or motivation of any great artist. They do what they do because they have no other option; they have to do it. I feel that all intellectual justifications for their genius and their art are just an attempt to cover a simple basic instinct in them.

Since the age of nineteen, Kubrick became obsessed with watching all kinds of films. He used to watch atleast one movie everyday during weekdays and 4-5 movies  during the weekend. He later noted that those trips to movies were the finest training sessions in directing he had. Paying extremely close attention to very few good films had much greater value to him. He also said that watching even crappy movies encouraged him because he thought that he cant do worse than that. Few of the many books he read during his formative years were, “Film Technique” and Nikolai’s “Stanisslavski directs”.

He once said that “editing is the basis of film art”.

I think his obsession with perfect editing explains why he choose to edit most of his movies himself. That also explains to me that not even a single scene in any of his movies looks more than enough or not required.

Kubrick’s ideas on what makes an interesting plot:

“The best plot to me is the one which has no apparent plot. I like a slow start that goes under audience’s skin and involves them so that they can appreciate grace notes and soft tones and dont have to be pounded over the head with plot points and suspense hooks”

I think there is no better example of that than in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Those silent first 25-30 minutes of the movie prepare you so well for the abstract and metaphysical dimension of the story ahead that you wonder if there was any other possible way Kubrick could have done it better. This dimension of his technique was quite evident in Lolita and Barry Lyndon too.

A real film, a film that deals with characters and a sense of life is particularly difficult to end successfully, Kubrick believed. Most endings seem to be false, and the audience can sense the gratuitousness of an unhappy ending. Alternately, if a character triumphs, Kubrick feels the ending has a kind of incompleteness about it because that seems to really be the beginning of another story. He very much enjoyed the anticlimactic endings of John Ford’s films. He said, “Anticlimax upon anticlimax and you just get a feeling that you are seeing life and you accept the thing”

His ideas on characterization:

Kubrick, in terms of his characters, is not interested in Freudian theory, nor does he believe in romantic heroism. For instance, the true case histories of Prof. Humbert in Lolita and General Ripper in Dr Strangelove are never really given. Kubrick puts it this way  “I think it is essential if a man is good to know where he is bad and to show it, or if he is strong, to decide what the moments are when he is weak and to show it. And I think that you must never try to explain how he got that way or why he did what he did.”

His views on directing actors:

In directing actors, Kubrick states his task is always to know the emotional statement he wants, then to use taste and judgement to get that performance. The real center of his job is to keep asking himself: Is it believable? Is it meaningful? Is it interesting? hundred of times a day.

Kubrick’s views on adapting a novel and story’s point of view:

Nearly all of Kubrick’s films began as adaptations of novels. Their subject matter and quality have differed enormously. Kubrick’s ideas about adaptations were very unorthodox. He once commented, “The perfect novel from which to make a movie is the novel which is mainly concerned with the inner life of it’s characters. It will give the adaptor an absolute compass bearing…..on what a character is thinking or feeling at any given moment…. from this he can invent actions which will be an objective correlative of the book’s psychological content, and will accurately dramatize this”. In contrast, many  filmmakers adapt only plotty, scriptlike novels.

Kubrick feels a movie must make it’s point obliquely, the viewer’s conclusion derived from the sense of life that the film conveys. Even more to the point is his comment that a great book’s quality is “really a result of the quality of the writer’s obsession with his subject, with a theme and a concept and a view of life and an understanding of character. Style is what an artist uses to fascinate the beholder in order to convey to him his feelings and emotions and thoughts. These are what has to be dramatized”

These two qualities, obsessiveness and extreme stylization, increase in each film Kubrick has made. Kubrick discusses a third factor which has become more and more prevalent in his later works- intellectual detachment, a disinterested concern with ideas and form over dramatic content: “I think director’s duty is to totally faithful to the author’s meaning and to not sacrifice it for the sake of climax or effect”

Finally, his views on execution of an idea:

“Any art form properly practiced involves a to and fro between conception and execution, the original intention being constantly modified as one tries to give it objective realization…in making a movie that goes on between people”

According to author, Norman Kegan, there were five prominent themes which appeared in all Kubrick’s movies. They are:

The Imaginary worlds, Futility of intelligence & errors of emotion, Homicide-suicides, Triumph of obsessive hero and, finally, Journey to freedom.

Iam not sure if Kubrick, while making his movies, was conscious of exploring these themes or it just happened all the time without he realizing it. I suspect it must be latter because even if all his movies were completely different from each other, both in terms of genres and form, they were still made by the same person.

The bold parts are, Courtesy :The cinema of Stanley Kubrick by Norman Kagan

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