Stanley Kubrick as an Auteur
When I finally decided to make this project a piece of opinion journalism, I had to figure out how I would create something original and interesting. I had begun to explore film and auteur theory mostly through the works of American filmmakers. On the chronological journey backward through American cinema, I found that there was no one who had a greater degree of influence over American filmmaking than Stanley Kubrick. I had already seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, so I had a rough familiarity with his style. I had begun to think about his influence on modern culture in general after seeing countless references to his films in popular television and movies. A whole world of science fiction cinema was spawned after 2001 and some of the captivating films of the following decades owe a great deal to the film. Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, and more all incorporated not only the fantastical narrative elements of 2001, but also the production, wherein elaborate sets are created in a meticulous way to keep the story believable and compelling. There is also something to be said about the overwhelming debt The Simpsons and Futurama owe to Stanley, who might as well have credited him at the end of each episode for at least one reference. I grew up watching and loving these films and television, but my exposure to Kubrick himself was more prolonged. The first time I watched 2001 I said that it was dumb. Critics at the time of the film’s release had a similar response, see Variety from April 2, 1968:
“The plot, so-called, uses up almost two hours in exposition of scientific advances in space travel and communications, before anything happens. The surprisingly dull prolog deals with the “advancement of man,” centering on a group of apes (the makeup is amateurish compared to that in “Planet of the Apes”).” (Frederick Review: ‘2001: A Space Odyssey')
Woody Allen shared a similar sentiment to mine about the unfolding quality of Kubrick films: “When I first saw 2001 I didn’t like it, and I was very disappointed. And then three or four months later I was with some woman in California and she was telling me what a wonderful film it was and I went to see it again, and I liked it a lot more the second time I saw it. And then a couple of years later I saw it again and I thought: ‘Gee this is really a sensational movie,’ and it was one of the few times in my life that I realized that the artist was much ahead of me.”
After Kubrick’s death in 1999, his peers sat down to talk about him in a film to be released on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD extras. Among the interviewees was Steven Spielberg who recounted an experience at dinner with Stanley from 1980 just after the release of The Shining:
“He asked me, ‘How did you like my movie?’ and I had only seen it once, and I didn’t love The Shining the first time I saw it. I have since seen The Shining twenty-five times- it’s one of my favorite pictures. Kubrick films tend to grow on you — you have to see them more than once.” (Joyce Remembering Stanley Kubrick: Steven Spielberg)
My experience was identical to most others’ encounters with the works of Stanley Kubrick: the first viewings are vexing and wear your patience down, but a second chance rewards you with a confrontation with a piece of art with much more below its surface.
I knew that there was more to explore as I found more detail and author intent during second and third viewings. This made me think about the definition of an auteur in film. From Responding to Film: a Text Guide for Students of Cinema Art:
“An auteur (literally, an author) is a director who is considered the most important figure in the art of filmmaking, a creative person equivalent to the author of a novel or a play… Thus an auteur is any director whose distinct style has left a recognizable mark on his work.” (Santas, Responding to film: a text guide for students of cinema art)
Kubrick’s status as an auteur is immediately recognizable for a myriad of reasons. On an intuitive level, a Kubrick film feels like a Kubrick film, meaning the framing, style, color, and cinematography look similar, but unique in the totality of filmmaking. On a literary level, Kubrick’s movies often involve similar or equally existential themes that cut at the core of humanity through violence, humor, and sexuality. Given his status as an auteur, attempting to uncover some of the authorial intent poses deeper challenges.
In concert with what I said previously, as with any rich piece of art, one needs multiple confrontations with the piece in order to get a grasp of the intent. In my experience, Stanley Kubrick’s authorial intent is only present after, at least, a second, thorough encounter with his films. The first viewing is primarily to get an idea of the story, its structure and its messaging. Subsequent viewings can become as specific as you wish with a filmmaker like Kubrick, or any other auteur, really. A rewatch of Barry Lyndon (1975) purely to appreciate the lighting is absolutely justifiable due to the fantastic quality of the lighting team on the film. A late-18th century period piece, Kubrick wanted Barry Lyndon to break the mold of contemporary Hollywood by creating historical sets and using candlelight. The director of photography on the picture was John Alcott who earned an Oscar for the feat of shooting a film in candlelight. The production used Carl Zeiss Planar lenses (at 50mm/f-stop-0.7), some of the fastest lenses in photography history. The lenses were made for NASA’s 1966 Apollo program to document the dark side of the moon, understandably the lens is made to take in as much light as possible. Edmund Giulio, former President of Cinema Products Corp., wrote about his experience working with Kubrick in his search:
“As a technician and not a creative artist, I asked Kubrick the obvious question: ‘Why were we going to all this trouble when the scene could be easily photographed with the high-quality super-speed lenses available today (such as those manufactured by Canon and Zeiss) with the addition of some fill light?’ He replied that he was not doing this just as a gimmick, but because he wanted to preserve the natural patina and feeling of these old castles at night as they actually were. The addition of any fill light would have added an artificiality to the scene that he did not want. To achieve the amount of light he actually needed in the candlelight scenes, and in order to make the whole movie balance out properly, Kubrick went ahead and push-developed the entire film one stop — outdoor and indoor scenes alike. I am sure that everyone who has seen the results on the screen must agree that Kubrick has succeeded in achieving some of the most unique and beautiful imagery in the cinematic art.” (DiGiulio Two Special Lenses for “Barry Lyndon”)
The beauty contained in the cinematography of Barry Lyndon is but one reason to view it and understand it as a piece of art. The genius of Kubrick’s auteur style is that every aspect of the film can be subject to intense scrutiny and there will always be an explanation for its raison d’etre; there is a conscious decision being made in every detail that contributes to the final masterpiece. As a result, the lighting team on Barry Lyndon can be extrapolated to every aspect of filmmaking in a Kubrick picture, such as editing, acting and direction, cinematography, sound design, set design, etc. In fact, I view this as another way of defining a director as an auteur. If the film merits several viewings just to engage with one facet of the art form that is film, the picture was clearly carefully sculpted from the ground up, coming from a singular vision. In the other piece, I attempted to argue for another aspect of Kubrick’s art that I felt most unique: his screenwriting. His works all stem from existing literature, but his ability to interpret the work and translate it to film was unparalleled, in my opinion. I also described his unique relationship with the literary world in his collaborations with excellent writers from the 20th century, including Arthur C. Clarke on 2001, Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita, Peter George on Strangelove, and Michael Herr and Gustav Hadsford on Full Metal Jacket.
These collaborations do not exclude Kubrick from being an auteur, but reinforce his status as a director who is chiefly in control of the creative aspects of the film. Quoting once again from Responding to Film: a Text Guide for Students of Cinema Art: “A student of film, however, must not forget our basic premise that film is a collaborative art. Thus, though the auteur theory cannot be discounted, the contributions of other agents in film production must be given full credit. Cinematographers, lighting experts, costume designers, art directors — all must be acknowledged as essential contributors to the design and production of film.”
Kubrick’s authorial intent is cloudy, and all aspects of the film must be taken into account in order to uncover what the films mean. By this I do not wish to dive into the shallow waters of movie theories, but I aim to understand the thematic underpinnings of the film. This proves difficult, however, as the filmmaker himself gives little in attempting to explain his art. In an interview from 1987, Kubrick sat down with Tim Cahill of Rolling Stone to talk about Full Metal Jacket, his artistic process, and more. The interview starts with Kubrick stifling any ideas of getting at what the films mean:
KUBRICK : “I’m not going to be asked any conceptualizing questions, am I?”
CAHILL : “God damn! That’s all the books I’ve read, all they are is conceptualizing!”
KUBRICK : “Yeah, but not by me…I’ve always felt trapped and pinned down, and sort of harried by them, and forced, sometimes, to make up or write, or let other people write these answers, but I think the most difficult thing to deal with, when you’re so inside something, especially as soon as its finished, is to be asked to this this sort of five-line capsule summary that you’d read in a magazine reading, ‘this is a story about blah, blah blah.” (Cahill The Rolling Stone Interview: Stanley Kubrick in 1987)
In 1987, Kubrick had already released most of his catalogue, and had experienced his fair share of press-nightmares fueled by film interpretations (see Lolita and A Clockwork Orange). His reluctance to explain meaning behind every frame is shared among other artists like some songwriters, who refuse to reveal intent on the grounds that it sacrifices individual interpretation. Artists alike discount the views of critics on the most part, for several reasons, but chiefly that the criticisms are levied without enough time with the art to truly understand it. From that same interview, Kubrick is asked about claims he dehumanizes his characters:
KUBRICK:“Obviously I don’t think that’s true, but I mean the critical opinion on my films has always more or less been settled by what I call subsequent critical opinion. I mean, the initial reactions to most of the films are usually wrong, or a lot of them are wrong, whether they don’t get a handle on it immediately, or they don’t know how to deal with it in the hour and a half they have left to write the review, or what, but somehow, with most of the films, the subsequent critical opinion is the one establishes it as an important film, where if you read some of the initial reviews.” (Cahill The Rolling Stone Interview: Stanley Kubrick in 1987)
Given this incongruity between the reviews and the films, the general recourse for engaging with a Stanley Kubrick film is to go in fresh, and to go in often. Importantly, the viewer can experience the film on plot and thematic messaging alone or the viewer can engage careful analysis of the picture and its process on its own terms. The films of Kubrick are accessible on multiple levels and cement him as one of the greatest auteurs to grace the silver screen.