Stanley Kubrick: Une vie en images

I saw this film April 26th at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign, Illinois. I found it to be a thorough and captivating overview of the life of a brilliant director. There is much in this documentary that is new, as many of the interviews were conducted following Kubrick's death in 1999.

While this documentary does present a fairly glowing portrayal of Kubrick, there is the occasional comment regarding his darker side (which, frankly, was not really all that dark). This film basically serves as a tribute to Kubrick from his family and friends. And what's wrong with that?

If you want to know something about this irreplaceable film maker, this is the documentary to watch.

Stanley Kubrick is a cinematic god, up there with Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa as one of the greatest directors to have ever walked the planet. Made by his brother-in-law shortly after his sudden death at age 70, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001) could have been quite sugary and light, with nothing but praise for the late filmmaker.

While there is a lot of praise on display, the documentary does portray a more even-handed view of Kubrick. The man could be difficult to work with, a trait most acutely displayed in his appalling treatment of Shelley Duvall during the making of The Shining (1980). However, he could also be warm and generous. He was, in short, perfectly human. I did wish some of his other collaborators could have been interviewed, but I'm perfectly happy with who did appear. Kubrick's career is covered in great detail, with the film itself clocking in at almost two and a half hours. Kubrick fans will definitely be interested.

Because of his reclusive nature, Stanley Kubrick was never the best choice of subject for a documentary, in life as well as in death. Then again, that depends on who's behind the camera - in this case, the late director's brother-in-law and collaborator Jan Harlan, who also appears as one of the interviewees.

Harlan's choice is very simple: skip any attempt to understand the man and just focus on what we have, namely the pictures (hence the film's title). Not just the movies, but also the photos he took in his youth, before discovering cinema. This aspect is covered through comments by friends and family members. Fans, however, are probably more interested in what people have to say about the films, and so we've got some of the key cast and crew of almost all of his movies (one notable exception is Dr. Strangelove, given Peter Sellers and George C. Scott died a long time before Harlan shot the documentary) describing their experiences. In addition, other filmmakers express their sincere admiration for Kubrick, with heaps of praise coming from Scorsese, Spielberg (who directed the Kubrick-inspired A.I.) and Woody Allen (the original choice for Sydney Pollack's role in Eyes Wide Shut).

All possible anecdotes surrounding the man and his methods are recounted with joy, and the effect his films had on culture and society are explored in detail. Hearing Allen's first impressions of 2001 is refreshing (he didn't like it at first), whilst Scorsese's reaction to Paths of Glory is a perfect tribute to that picture's power ("It was so honest, it was shocking!"). The most famous controversy remains that surrounding A Clockwork Orange, and it's almost touching when Kubrick's widow recalls his decision to withdraw it from theaters in England until his death. We don't learn anything new about the great director, but hearing it from those people completely justifies Harlan's effort.

That said, there is one little problem in the film, and that's the fact that everyone is completely incapable of saying anything bad about Kubrick. Okay, maybe his death has something to do with it, but after dozens of occasions during which both Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall berated him for how he treated them on the set of The Shining, hearing them say it was generally a positive experience is surprising to say the least. The closest anyone comes to a bit of criticism is when Malcolm McDowell, always the ultimate Kubrickian icon, describes their relationship like this: "I loved him one moment and wanted to kill him the next!".

Overall A Life in Pictures doesn't add much to what we knew about one of the world's best filmmakers, nor does it take anything away. But remembering him through his work and the people who appeared in his movies is the most appropriate way to make a chronicle of his eventful life.

Hollywood has often had a difficult time dealing with ambiguity and enigmas. And there have been very few directors who define those terms much better than the late Stanley Kubrick. That aspect, and many others, are the focus of the incredible intriguing 2001 documentary STANLEY KUBRICK: A LIFE IN PICTURES, directed by Kubrick's brother-in-law (and frequent co-producer) Jan Harlan.

In its 142-minute running time, the film, narrated by Tom Cruise, charts Kubrick's progress from his early days as a photographer in the Bronx to his earliest efforts at film-making (1953's FEAR AND DESIRE; 1955's KILLER'S KISS), and how each new film helped to revolutionize Hollywood at a time when the old studio system was now starting to crumble. But as even a successful big-budget effort like SPARTACUS shows, Kubrick was never one who could simply kowtow to the whims of studio executives. He needed complete creative control over every film he made from that point on, and he didn't feel that he could do that in Hollywood. In a radical move, he moved himself, his family, his life, and his work to England in 1960 and never set foot on American soil again, apart from a few scattered occasions. But he always considered himself an American filmmaker first and foremost.

Beginning with LOLITA in 1962, and continuing right up to the last film, EYES WIDE SHUT, in 1999, Kubrick chose material and subject matter that most other directors would never have thought of touching with a barge pole. His way of doing films, a process that often took years on end (hence the relatively small number of films to his credit), was often seen as cold, clinical, and detached, which tended to rub critics the wrong way. On other occasions, however, his films were often controversial. LOLITA was considered quite scandalous because of its depiction of forbidden love. The reviews for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY were initially extremely bad because of that film's revolutionary approach to science fiction. DOCTOR STRANGELOVE was frequently slammed for its savagely satirical approach to nuclear war and Cold War-era politics. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE spawned a firestorm because of its explicit and whimsical approach to sex, violence, and governmental brainwashing. And even THE SHINING, regarded as one of the great horror films of all times in most quarters now, still remains a bone of contention for others because of its ambiguities and the fact that it strayed so far from its Stephen King source material.

But Kubrick remained largely above it all by being deeply committed to his family and friends, as this documentary also shows, utilizing film footage that the outside world had never seen up to that point. Kubrick rarely gave interviews; he was an intensely private man (though not at the Howard Hughes level like so many pundits might claim); and he could be extremely exacting with the actors he worked with (witness Shelley Duvall's own trauma on THE SHINING). Directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Alex Cox, and Woody Allen all share their impressions of Kubrick's cinematic mastery; while actors like Malcolm McDowell, Sir Peter Ustinov, Jack Nicholson, and Matthew Modine share their impressions of working so closely with the man.

All of this adds up to a great film, one that can never answer all the questions about its subject simply because those questions may not have answers that will satisfy everyone, if anyone at all. But no matter how he was regarded by critics or audiences while he was alive, Stanley Kubrick remains one of the most important directors in cinematic history; and this documentary sets the case for that claim in solid stone.

Great documentary on a great film-maker. Not perfect: you're expected to know instinctively who the interviewees are - there are no captions. Tom Cruise's voice didn't have the gravitas necessary for the narration. Some of the interviews mostly consist of platitudes, but not much detail.

However, the detail is amazing. Whether you are familiar with Kubrick's history, or not, the information is very interesting. Despite the platitudes, the overall insight provided by the interviews and the observations of the narrator give you an excellent understanding of what made Stanley Kubrick a genius.