Against Kubrick 7
This is part 7 of my polemic against the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. My premise basically is that his great films had negative effects on the world and that Kubrick was anything but a humanist. I will go after his great films one at a time, continuing with part 3 of my discussion on…
A Clockwork Orange
In Part 1 I argued that A Clockwork Orange is a cruel, nasty film in which Stanley Kubrick uses “satire” and other intellectual ruses as an excuse for his near-pornographic interest in violence. I added up the minutes spent on violence and sex versus satire and found more than twice as many minutes dedicated to the former than to the latter. I also organized the film in chapters like so:
1) Ultra-violence (43.5 minutes)
2) Prison (24 minutes)
3) Ludovico Technique (where the satirical elements are introduced) (20 minutes)
4) Freedom and Fall (more ultra-violence) (33.5 minutes)
5) Hospital and Rebirth (more satire) (13 minutes)
In Part 2, I explored the quality of the filmmaking and assessed that Kubrick was most inspired when filming acts of cruelty and frankly uninspired when filming much of the satirical chapters. In this third and final installment, I will discuss the flawed nature of the satire itself, underscoring the premise that A Clockwork Orange is anti-humanist in its contempt for people and frankly dishonest for its intellectual pretensions.
At its very center, the film’s satire shows how in the face of endless corruption and weakness, pure evil becomes attractive, if not preferable to good. Purity becomes a virtue because it is a quality no one else in the film besides Alex shares. And the ending turns this already perverted notion on its head when even pure evil becomes corrupted. Remember Alex mugging triumphantly for the photographers in his hospital bed? After a moment, he looks up, suddenly struck by an idea. He realizes that he doesn’t have to resort to ultra-violence anymore to harm or take advantage of others. He can use the corrupt system that the government has invited him into to do that for him. After all, he is getting away with murder, right? If he plays his cards right, with the powerful friends he now has, he can do it again.
And that last line: “I was cured, all right.” Basically, Alex was cured of his cure, as illustrated here.
Against Kubrick 6
This is part 6 of my polemic against the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. My premise basically is that his great films had negative effects on the world and that Kubrick was anything but a humanist. I will go after his great films one at a time, continuing with part 2 of my discussion on…
A Clockwork Orange
In Part 1 I argued that A Clockwork Orange is a cruel, nasty film in which Stanley Kubrick uses “satire” and other intellectual ruses as an excuse for his near-pornographic interest in violence. My evidence thus far has been mathematical. I’ve added up the minutes spent on violence and sex, and on satire. There are more than twice as many minutes dedicated to the former than to the latter.
For convenience sake, I split the film into the following chapters.
1) Ultra-violence (43.5 minutes)
2) Prison (24 minutes)
3) Ludovico Technique (where the satirical elements are introduced) (20 minutes)
4) Freedom and Fall (more ultra-violence) (33.5 minutes)
5) Hospital and Rebirth (more satire) (13 minutes)
For more detail, please see my previous post Against Kubrick 5.
The second part of my argument is subjective: I argue that Stanley Kubrick is more inspired when someone is either doing harm to another or is about to do harm to another than he is when he is trying to be satirical. Further, in the satirical parts, he more often resorts to cheap tricks and shocking images. If I can prove this, then I think I can reasonably help strip away any notion that Kubrick is acting as some kind of humanist in A Clockwork Orange.
So to continue…
Against Kubrick 5
This is part 5 of my polemic against the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. My premise basically is that his great films had negative effects on the world and that Kubrick was anything but a humanist. I will go after his great films one at a time, continuing with…
A Clockwork Orange
If you had to pigeonhole 1971′s A Clockwork Orange, you can call it a dark comedy that is far darker than it is funny. In fact, it is a cruel, nasty piece of work that uses satire as a cover for its myriad sins. Kubrick’s usual brilliance and vision is on display here most of the time, and when he runs out of ideas he shamelessly stoops to the lurid and shocking to keep people interested. But the film is a satire, you see. We can overlook such lapses because we’re always trying to fit the film’s scenes, no matter how brutal or crude they are, into some bigger picture.
My big problem is that, after 40 years of overlooking Kubrick’s lapses, it seems that people have actually come to celebrate the horrific crimes that take place in the film and somehow believe the government or the political class are the real villains of the story. This really does seem like the intent of the film (accomplished as much by Malcolm McDowell’s riveting performance as Alex the film’s anti-hero as by anything done by Kubrick).
Forgotten amid grand satire, of course, is the suffering of the story’s many victims. But don’t be surprised. With Kubrick, feeling compassion for your fellow man is usually kind of beside the point, is it not?
And this, my brothers and only friends, cannot possibly be the work of a humanist.
Against Kubrick 4: Grooming the Stupid
This is part 4 of my polemic against the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. My premise basically is that his great films had negative effects on the world and that Kubrick was anything but a humanist. I will go after his great films one at a time, with this post being a continuation of…
2001: A Space Odyssey
This will be a relatively short post because the spirit with which I present my criticisms this time will be less kind than before. So far in my Against Kubrick series, I have focused on what I would call “guilty mistakes”, or flaws in Kubrick’s work that reveal a certain nastiness and misanthropy on the part of the director. And these flaws become all the more malignant when couched within an aura of intellectualism. As such, we have what I call “the Kubrick Effect”: large numbers of people taking on an artist’s cynicism and misanthropy as their own and coming across as smart, or, even worse, cool.
This post will not be about the Kubrick Effect.
This post will point out a very innocent (but important) sin in 2001 for the sole purpose of satisfying my (and hopefully, by now, your) need for schadenfreude with regards to Stanley Kubrick. In other words, I caught Kubrick being sloppy in 2001 and I really, really want to tell you about it. Keep in mind that Kubrick’s sloppiness is another director’s finest hour. Still, Kubrick sets his standards very high, and it is against these standards we should all judge him.
The sin, put briefly, is what I call “grooming the stupid”.
Against Kubrick 3
This is part 3 of my polemic against the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. My premise basically is that his great films had negative effects on the world and that Kubrick was anything but a humanist. I will go after his great films one at a time, continuing with…
2001: A Space Odyssey
Full disclosure: this is my second favorite Kubrick film next to Paths of Glory. The vision and imagination of 2001 are so singular I truly believe that had Kubrick not made it, no other filmmaker would have thought to produce anything remotely similar to it. It is sui generis in the film world.
Kubrick’s genius here is twofold. On a technical level he incorporates big cinematic ideas without seeming like he is incorporating big cinematic ideas. In other words, as impressive ideas and images unfold, the hand of the director remains unseen. This is exactly as it should be. On a deeper level, Kubrick reflects on The Human Condition. Our origins, our future, what’s known, what’s knowable, what’s unknowable. 2001 is a real heavyweight of a film, perhaps even one of the great artistic accomplishments of 20th Century. That said, I feel I should proffer a few reasons for the film’s greatness before delving into its unfortunate shortcomings.
Against Kubrick 2
This is part 2 of my polemic against the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. My premise basically is that his great films had negative effects on the world and that Kubrick was anything but a humanist. I will go after his great films one at a time, starting with…
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
In this film, Stanley Kubrick commits the sin of making his protagonist Mandrake the only sane and intelligent person in the story and at the same time a stuttering and ineffectual twerp. But that’s okay, you say. The film satirizes the Cold War. It takes aim at things like McCarthyism, the military-industrial complex, the arms race, and certain military gaming concepts such “Deterrence” and “Mutually Assured Destruction”. You can’t expect such a film to play it straight like Fail-Safe, do you?
Fair enough. But to satirize well, you have to really nail what you’re satirizing. Further, if you’re going to conclude the film with the End of the World you sure as heck better satirize the things that most need satirizing. After all, the fate of the world lies in the balance.
Let’s look at the remainder of the characters:
Against Kubrick 1
A dear friend of mine, with whom I have shared countless discussions and arguments over art, literature, and film, once referred to filmmaker Stanley Kubrick as a humanist.
My first and only thought: I will NOT let him get away with this.
I imagine that your first thought after hearing this is: Why should I care? Well, here’s why.
Stanley Kubrick was a genius, perhaps one of three or four most gifted filmmakers who ever lived. The following films of his are almost universally considered great works of art: Dr Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1972), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). These films are considered great (aside from their technical brilliance) because they ultimately represent things beyond themselves. Important things. Kubrick’s intellectual scope was as broad as history, and his films make us reflect on who we are, not only as inheritors of Western Civilization, but as human beings. To literate cineastes, academics, and critics everywhere, Stanley Kubrick is The Man. He has changed us all. And it’s true. He has.
My argument is that A) he changed us for the worse, and B) he did it by being anything but a humanist.