Sin #44: Kubrick: Master and Commander

A man raises his eyebrow and stares directly into the camera. He is sitting down in the Korova Milk Bar next to his chums while he gives a monologue about rape and a little bit of the ultra-violence.

A little boy drives his tricycle through the open halls of an ominous hotel as he encounters twin sisters; suddenly an overwhelming wave of blood comes pouring in. At the same time, his father starts seeing ghosts.

Dr. Strangelove begins explaining the dire consequences of a nuclear strike by the Russians who are ready to deploy their weapons after an insane American military commander has disrupted protocol and initiated an invasion.

An intelligent machine named HAL is responsible for taking a couple of astronauts on a secret mission to uncover a distress signal. HAL begins to boycott the mission and one of the astronauts decides to shut him down. As he drifts off he begins to sing: daisy, daisy…give me you answer do…

All these classic scenes come from the same imagination; the imagination of Stanley Kubrick, a filmmaker who brought us some of the most powerful images on the screen. He began his career as a photographer and turned to feature films after his fascination with the mechanics of film technique. To his co-workers he was a perfectionist who oversaw every aspect of the production and endlessly repeated takes until he found the perfect moment (which drove many of his actors insane, especially Shelley Duvall on the set of “The Shining”) but he usually delivered works of art that became part of popular culture. With each movie Kubrick began to consolidate himself as one of cinema’s great masters and one of the essential film auteurs.

Every time he released a movie, it became an event; that is until he passed away on March 1999, days before the premier of his last movie “Eyes Wide Shut”. In the documentary “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures” he is remembered by family and friends as a cold, detached and obsessive artist but also as a loving and caring husband and father. The impact of his films was undeniable (some to the point of controversy, like with “A Clockwork Orange” which was held responsible for a wave of crimes that emulated the characters in the film).

Today, his movies are seen as classics; works that pushed the boundaries of each genre and colonized a new place in the subconscious of audiences. As an artist, few directors were as influential as Kubrick and few were as beloved; his brilliance echoes in the works of today’s talents (like Darren Aronosfky or Paul Thomas Anderson) and will, undoubtedly, carry on.