English
The Visual Poet
Prelude of the book 'Stanley Kubrick. Visual Poet 1928-1999', by Paul Duncan
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Early in his life Stanley Kubrick realised: "We are capable of the greatest good and the greatest evil, and the problem is that we often can't distinguish between them when it suits our purpose." This was one of his major themes, a riff he played in all of his films. Good and evil. Love and hate. Sex and violence. Desire and fear. Fidelity and betrayal. Each of the central characters in his movies wrestled with these forces within them, and their external circumstances (a war, an affair, a crime) helped to focus that struggle for the benefit of the audience.
Kubrick reiterated this idea when he talked about his horror movie The Shining: "There's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly." In his biography of Kubrick, John Baxter wrote that this attitude towards the story and characters can be applied to all of Kubrick's films - it is a Manichaean view of the universe which says that the world is not created by God but by the powers of good and evil wrestling for control. For example, in Kubrick's first film, Fear and Desire, the 'good' soldiers who crash behind enemy lines confront and kill the 'bad' soldiers who were played by the same actors. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex may be a brutal, thuggish adolescent who loves sex and violence, but he also loves the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig Van Beethoven. At the end of the story, Alex's uncontrollable vices are returned to him, but so too is his love of the Ninth Symphony. The plot of Full Metal Jacket, in some ways a reworking of Fear and Desire, can be seen as Joker's Odyssey to find his evil self - he may be a sensitive writer, an intellectual, but occasionally he has to find and unleash the animal inside him. As they said in Vietnam, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no Evil, for I am the Evil." Kubrick showed this dichotomy on the Full Metal Jacket poster in which a soldier's helmet has both a peace symbol and the words 'Born To Kill' on it.
With each of Kubrick's films, the inner struggle is examined from a different perspective. Sometimes it is seen from the point of view of a character whose nature comes into conflict with society, as is the case with Alex in A Clockwork Orange and Humbert Humbert in Lolita. In other films, the characters' experiences or training make them act the way they do, as with Redmond Barry in Barry Lyndon and Dr Bill Harford in Eyes Wide Shut. In many cases, the duality within the character is shown through the symbolism of mirrors, or through the actions of other people in the narrative.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Early in his life Stanley Kubrick realised: "We are capable of the greatest good and the greatest evil, and the problem is that we often can't distinguish between them when it suits our purpose." This was one of his major themes, a riff he played in all of his films. Good and evil. Love and hate. Sex and violence. Desire and fear. Fidelity and betrayal. Each of the central characters in his movies wrestled with these forces within them, and their external circumstances (a war, an affair, a crime) helped to focus that struggle for the benefit of the audience.
Kubrick reiterated this idea when he talked about his horror movie The Shining: "There's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly." In his biography of Kubrick, John Baxter wrote that this attitude towards the story and characters can be applied to all of Kubrick's films - it is a Manichaean view of the universe which says that the world is not created by God but by the powers of good and evil wrestling for control. For example, in Kubrick's first film, Fear and Desire, the 'good' soldiers who crash behind enemy lines confront and kill the 'bad' soldiers who were played by the same actors. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex may be a brutal, thuggish adolescent who loves sex and violence, but he also loves the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig Van Beethoven. At the end of the story, Alex's uncontrollable vices are returned to him, but so too is his love of the Ninth Symphony. The plot of Full Metal Jacket, in some ways a reworking of Fear and Desire, can be seen as Joker's Odyssey to find his evil self - he may be a sensitive writer, an intellectual, but occasionally he has to find and unleash the animal inside him. As they said in Vietnam, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no Evil, for I am the Evil." Kubrick showed this dichotomy on the Full Metal Jacket poster in which a soldier's helmet has both a peace symbol and the words 'Born To Kill' on it.
With each of Kubrick's films, the inner struggle is examined from a different perspective. Sometimes it is seen from the point of view of a character whose nature comes into conflict with society, as is the case with Alex in A Clockwork Orange and Humbert Humbert in Lolita. In other films, the characters' experiences or training make them act the way they do, as with Redmond Barry in Barry Lyndon and Dr Bill Harford in Eyes Wide Shut. In many cases, the duality within the character is shown through the symbolism of mirrors, or through the actions of other people in the narrative.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Stanley Kubrick
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"I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel." -Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick. On the set of 'Spartacus' (1960)