Stanley Kubrick is overated. That’s right, I said it. Probably most of you are wondering who Stanley Kubrick is, but those who know of him are probably already skipping to the bottom to leave a scathing comment.
“How dare you, sir! Stanley Krubrick was the greatest visionary filmaker of the last century.”
No, he wasn’t. In fact, I can’t stand his movies. I feel so much better; I’ve been wanting to say that for years. In case you haven’t paused to Google it, here is a sampling of Stanley Krubrick’s films:
Among film critics, all of these are generally revered as some of the greatest films of all time. But none of them are. For time’s sake I’ll just touch on one, his so-called masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
2001 gets a 10 out of 10 from IMDB’s critic review average. According to the film world, it’s a perfect movie. It was indeed innovative for its time — for 1968, the visuals were more than impressive, they were ground breaking. But it’s boring, mind-numbingly boring. There is no character development. Zero. And that’s intentional, by the way. There is not a word of dialogue until the 25-minute mark, and out of two hours and nineteen minutes there is only forty minutes of total dialogue. It’s been described as a “non-verbal experience,” and if you managed to make it all the way through the film’s climactic Stargate sequence – a psychedelic, techno, acid trip – without fast forwarding past almost ten minutes of this:
then you probably vehemently disagree with my premise. I contend that 2001 is probably the most dramatic example in film of style overshadowing substance.
Now that I’ve spent the past hundred words hating on 2001: A Space Odyssey, let me offer up the point: 2001 is a bad movie.
But I’m also wrong. It’s a masterpiece. It’s art.
Normally, I’m a black and white kind of guy, and not just because two of my favorite films are You Can’t Take it With You and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. By black and white, I mean clear delineations about right and wrong — but art turns that on its head. Another of my favorite films is Saving Private Ryan. My wife hates that movie. Who is right?
Reality is another matter entirely. With math, eight plus two will always equal ten whether I think it does or not. From a physiology standpoint, a male will always be a male whether he thinks he is or not. Some things are not subject to interpretation. But art is.
Back to Kubrick. When I say The Shining is a bad movie, I don’t mean it’s garbage. Jack Nicholson is an amazing performer, but he can’t rescue a film that shows a man in a bear costume…well, let’s not go there. It’s bad.
Full Metal Jacket, on the other hand, can categorically be classified as a bad joke according to at least one Vietnam veteran I’ve met. When history is involved, the art vs. interpretation plot thickens.
And so we find ourselves in a rather tight corner. It’s correct to say art is subjective, but art which accentuates a larger story has a responsibility. When it is using a matter of truth as its inspiration, the art is either right or wrong in the manner of its presentation. Director Christopher Nolan is a good example.
When creating a Batman film, Nolan has full license to be creative. It’s a fictional character. My opinion of it is subjective. I can say The Dark Knight is a great film and Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin is awful, and you may agree, but that doesn’t make us right.
However, when Christopher Nolan set out to make a film about what history refers to as the Miracle of Dunkirk, he had a responsibility to honor the history. His art was his vision, but the story was not his own. Had he decided to make up events counter to the history, it would have been disrespectful, and thus wrong. His choice to leave out the miracle part of the Miracle at Dunkirk is annoying, but not necessarily wrong. His art, Dunkirk, was good in that it accurately told parts of a true story. Also, it was pretty darn impressive visually.
Contrary to Dunkirk is David Ayer’s Fury, a film which defecates all over the characters of the men it attempts to portray, American and German. For that reason — and many others — it was bad, just like Full Metal Jacket. Of course Kubrick was a product of his time, and hating on Vietnam veterans in film was practically a genre in itself in the 70’s and 80’s. That didn’t excuse it then, nor does it now. The Best Years of Our Lives is a great film; its Iraq War remake Home of the Brave is garbage. Same story, the difference is the manner of respect the filmmaker had for the individuals he was portraying.
There are greater questions at play here than which Batman costume was cooler, or whether A Clockwork Orange was depraved. There are many motivations behind an artist’s work and some of those motivations are vile. The Last Temptation of Christ and Mother! come to mind.
Our appreciation of art is always going to be subjective based upon our worldview. That is why I so rarely place stock in what critics, friends, or numbers on Rotten Tomatoes have to say about a film. Nor should you.
So the next time you hear the internet postulating about how amazing ____ was, just remember that American Beauty won an Oscar for best picture and Adam Sandler films routinely gross over $200 million dollars. There is no consensus with art, except for The Empire Strikes Back. If you think it’s not a masterpiece, you’re just plain wrong.
(Post image: The Connoisseur by Norman Rockwell. Saturday Evening Post cover January 13, 1962)