srah blah blah

Among the people I would kick in the gulliver...

I thought that I had blogged about this before, but a quick search of my archives turns up nothing before Monday on "Kubrick". So I must have just ranted aloud. This simply will not do! I cannot go on without recording for the public and for my future self, how much I hate the films of Stanley Kubrick.

I saw Dr Strangelove years ago and it scared me. All in all, I found it disjointed and mostly a waste of Peter Sellers. It doesn't seem to me to add much to the genre of bomb-movies. Thus, it is one of Kubrick's best, in my opinion.

The Shining was my freshman-year-roommate Stephanie's favorite movie. It was very thought-provoking, provoking such thoughts as How many men in a bear suit can give that guy a blow job while having nothing to do with the movie?. At the time, I thought it was the movie that was weird, little suspecting the director.

Later that year, in my Film class, I told Dr Loukides that Singin' in the Rain was one of my favorite movies. So he very thoughtfully showed us the beginning of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex and his droogs beat up and rape a couple while singing "Singin' in the Rain". "You'll never think of that movie the same way again," cackled my evil professor.

My sophomore year, a little Kubrick-festival took place at Albion, organized by a History professor whose class I happened to be taking at the time. So he made mandatory the viewing of Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory, and Dr Strangelove (again) and attendance at a lecture on Kubrick's career. All I remember of Barry Lyndon was that it was long and I couldn't leave to go to the bathroom because whatever I missed would undoubtedly be discussed in class the next day. There was something else, too, like I had the hiccups or I was starving or dying of the Albion Death Plague. I just remember suffering.

Paths of Glory, on the other hand, was the best Kubrick film I have ever seen, by which I mean the least bizarre. It's the only one I've seen where you can forget who directed it because there are no bears giving oral sex or monkeys beating each other up.

Speaking of monkeys... 2001: A Space Odyssey was rereleased - surprisingly enough - in 2001, when I was studying in Grenoble. As you may know, I had nothing to do in Grenoble so I saw something like 75 movies over the course of the year. I decided that, because it was a "classic", it was time to give Kubrick another chance.

You know how the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour makes no sense at all, but it must when you're high? I got the same impression from 2001, except that unlike the time I tried to watch MMT, there was no eject button and I had paid to see it, rather than checking it out of Albion's enabling library. I also wanted to see the ending, where all of the mess that came before would be explained. Which explains why I am writing to you from the Club cinéma in Grenoble right now, because I refuse to leave until someone tells me what the hell that was, with the monkeys and the Big Black Box. Every time I thought I got it, I was wrong.

And now we come to the last one. WHY? I am seriously asking this, because I can't explain it myself. WHY? Why did I watch Eyes Wide Shut, a movie I had no interest in seeing after the previews, a movie which, in addition to being directed by Stanley Kubrick, starred both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Why why why? Orgy orgy blah blah blah. I think I fell asleep. I hope I fell asleep.

I can't believe I've seen seven. I don't know if there's another director in the world (maybe Steven Spielberg) who has made seven movies I've seen. How much of my life has been wasted by watching Stanley Kubrick movies?

So all in all - in case you hadn't caught on - my opinion of ol' Stan is not very good. But, like Woody Allen, someone out there must like him, because he just kept making movies that were, for some reason, considered classics. I blame the French.

srah - Tuesday, 22 October 2002 - 4:54 PM
Tags: assistantship, movies, stanley kubrick

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