by Leon Rainey

Created on: May 26, 2007

Although widely respected and greatly influential Stanley Kubrick is also

reviled in some quarters for his technical approach to filmmaking.

He had has a varied and well known back catalogue of work but he was

accused of never engaging with his work or his characters.

His films often had a dark wit to them and presented characters that weren't

necessarily likeable or good.

In contrast to most films where the protagonist is the good guy and he will

win in some way by the end of the film Kubrick never did this.

This is the thing that critics of Kubrick disliked but is it really true that he

didn't engage fully with his films and what made him make the films he did

the way he did?

If we look at his body of work from Dr Strangelove up to Eyes wide shut I

would say that the argument against Kubrick is understandable but inaccurate.

When he made a film he always paid particular attention to the respective

genre in terms of what went before and what he thought would be a great

way of advancing it. He always tried to enhance what a genre could be.

A good example of Kubrick trying to break out of a genre would be the

science fiction film 2001 a space odyssey.

He secured a major amount of money from MGM to make the film and set

out to aim a long way above the audiences' heads, a risk that MGM didn't

appreciate.

The film had barely any dialogue and actually began with a half an hour

sequence using no dialogue at all.

The representation of space was a fantastical swirling rotating entity, famously

represented with Strauss waltz music. Later films such as the star wars trilogy

were much more fantastical in the way they described space travel.

He tapped into the hype surrounding the exploration of space but presented a

vision that was unheard of in earlier sci-fi films. For many years science

fiction consisted of bug eyed green Martians attacking a very white middle

class version of earth.

Critics didn't warm to this film at first but audiences loved it, this film

positioned Kubrick far above his peers in terms of ambition and execution

this was in some ways a curse. The film had a style that has rarely been

matched decades later and is considered by some the film that DVD was

invented for. After this film Kubrick never made another film on the same scale.

From here Kubrick didn't have the backing of MGM and for his next film

Clockwork Orange he worked with a paltry budget.

It was a huge success and improved Kubricks standing massively, certainly

amongst British film directors.

The contribution this film made

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