Visual Genius: Stanley Kubrick
When one analyses a film, or series of films by the same director, a good reviewer will have no choice but to take the subject matter chosen in to evaluation. The subject that a director chooses to capture on film can say a lot about that person. For example, when assessing a film using the psychoanalytical approach, or more specifically, Freudian criticism, a reviewer “believes that a movie is an expression of the filmmaker’s psyche and that a film’s meaning lies beneath the obvious images on the screen” (Boggs 381). Stanley Kubrick once wrote that “the most terrifying thing in the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” This central idea, that the universe is indifferent and we must make our own way, is reflected in all of Kubrick’s films.
The “dehumanization of men into machines and vice versa” (Rod, “The Kubrick Site”) is portrayed most excellently in two of his films, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket. In Full Metal Jacket, the young marines are subject to extreme mental and physical abuse at boot camp until they are stripped of their emotions. They are then raised up by the strength they share in each other. However, this is not a loving strength, it is more like a responsibility – it causes thoughts like “If I don’t fight my comrades will die.” All human life can then be protected by fighting off “the enemy.” Thus, violence becomes one of the most important things imaginable. The Marine Corp has now created soldiers that think the only path to peace, is war. Some soldiers’ helmets even have things like “Born to Kill” written on them; which further enhances the theme that Kubrick is pushing upon us. Similar in this ways is A Clockwork Orange, in which the main character Alex, is robbed of his free will. While this solves his violent behavior, it asks an equally sinister question: “Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the free-will choice between good and evil” (Dirks, “Clockwork Orange” 1)? Once again, this strongly enforces Kubrick’s idea that in this world, we must carve our own path.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, shows a variation on Kubrick’s theme about humanity: a “nightmarish, apocalyptic theme about how technology had gone haywire and had dominated humanity” (Dirks, “Dr. Strangelove” 1). In other words, the ultimate fail safe machine is actually possible of making errors. This is, of course, a paradox. How can a fail safe machine make a mistake? While Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange show people progressively turning in to machines, Dr. Strangelove takes the opposite approach by showing machines gaining more humanistic senses. In the film, the Russians have created a super-nuke which will destroy all life forms on Earth. This foolproof weapon will automatically trigger itself when Russia becomes seriously threatened by a nuclear attack. However, the super weapon can not be turned off because that could be a trick or even sabotage. In effect, mankind has endowed the power to kill upon machines which are guaranteed to be more reasonable than us. Kubrick is stating with this film that our trust in technology will eventually be our downfall. The film seems to give us an answer to this problem. Kubrick suggests that nothing is perfect, but that human emotion is perfect in its imperfection; thus saying that nothing can make decisions for us, that the only way to correct wrongs is to fall victim to our own destinies, which are anything but predefined.
A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket deal heavily with the struggle between good and evil. A Clockwork Orange shows evil as being inbred, suggesting that we are conceived evil by nature, and that it is our choice to be good, or more naturally, follow our born path. The film deals with what happens when you take away the choice to change, in somebody who has not made that decision. In the end, it portrays good v. evil in a very ironic sense by allowing Alex to return to his more natural ways. In doing this, the viewer is almost blinded by the blurred line between what is moral and what is sinister. Full Metal Jacket lets us follow Private Joker in to combat scenarios. Joker’s duality within himself is startling. He says things like, “I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them....,” and “They have to destroy the village in order to save it.” His helmet has “Born to Kill” written on it, and yet he wears a peace button on his uniform. Joker is quite obviously struggling internally between his nature as a killer, and his desire to be virtuous. In the end, Joker acknowledges that one can not exist without the other – which like A Clockwork Orange almost disintegrates that difference between the two.
Dr. Strangelove handles this theme of good versus evil on a special, satirical level. The movie was produced with black and white film, at a time when color was available. Black has classically represented evil, and white, purity. So before the film really starts, I already can see that good versus evil may be a premise. The fact that the movie revolves around nuclear war only enhances this idea. Dr. Strangelove abounds with sexual puns such as excessively large cigars, airplanes refueling (which looks like a mating ritual,) and “the orgasmic atomic bomb that Kong rides between his legs” (Dirks, “Dr. Strangelove” 1) at the end of the feature. Also, “many of the absurd, omnipresent names of the male, military characters have sexual connotations or allegorical references that suggest the connection between war, sexual obsession and the male sex drive” (Dirks, “Dr. Strangelove” 1). For instance, the base commander Jack D. Ripper named after the notorious murderer Jack the Ripper, and Major T.J. Kong, similar to the destructive giant ape King Kong. As Dirks has pointed out, men, sex, and war almost go hand-in-hand (“Dr. Strangelove” 1). Just like in A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket, the proposal that man is born with wickedness and war on the brain, and that it is only through a battle of free will that we are able to defeat it, is reaffirmed.
Stanley Kubrick, visual genius that he is, is able to reiterate his belief in “supplying our light” in the darkness by portraying characters who do exactly that. What makes Kubrick unique in this aspect is that he is able to do this in an entertaining, and thought provoking way that is as applicable in the 1960’s when some were made, as it is today, and as it has ever been. Kubrick’s immortal theme of finding our special niche in society, as exposed wonderfully in Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove, can give life, as he puts it, a “genuine meaning.”
Works Cited
Boggs, Joseph and Dennis Petrie. The Art of Watching Films. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Dirks, Tim. A Clockwork Orange (1971). 1996-2007. April 20, 2007. <http://www.filmsite.org/cloc.html>.
Dirks, Tim. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). 1996-2007. April 20, 2007. <http://www.filmsite.org/drst.html>.
Rod. The Kubrick Site. 6 Dec. 2005. April 20, 2007.
<http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/>.
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