Well, to paraphrase the President in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove", I went and did a silly thing. I started another thread.

"2001 : A Space Odyssey" still seems ahead of its time. I know it often divides audiences who either have their minds blown, fall asleep or become completely frustrated by it. I fall into the mind-blown group. I wonder if anyone besides me ever noticed that every single star in the movie ( and there's hundreds for about two hours) keeps twinkling. I've never seen that anywhere else. Just one small hint at Kubrick's dedication to at least the visual details of the film.

When I was going to college, I remember two guys in one of my film classes praising the G-rated "2001" as pure genius while calling the X-rated "A Clockwork Orange" pornographic trash. Well, the latter movie is also still way ahead of its time and probably would never have been financed and released by a major studio now. The fact that Kubrick made them back-to-back, and just after "Strangelove" (the best of the three) seems astounding.

Does anyone have any comments or memories about these classics?

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Originally posted by mark f:
Does anyone have any comments or memories about these classics?

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It's funny. I was teaching a summer school class for middle-school kids at small private school during which we matched movies and the kids basically wrote a page about what they liked & disliked about the films. When I started playing "2001" for them, they freaked out that there was absolutely no dialogue for the first 30 minutes or so duing the "Dawn of Man" segment. They said such things as "The tape must be defective!" I of course responded, "But you hear the music and the grunting, don't you???" After they realized that this wasn't going to be your typical film, they got into it, and they actually realy enjoyed it. It helped that our screening room had a massive screen, stadium seats, etc. They had no idea what it all meant, not that I can claim to know what it all means. But several of them were pretty affected when Hal was pleading not to be turned off. I've always considered that to be one of the most haunting sequences in all of modern cinema, myself.

Clockwork Orange is a masterwork. The inegration of the classical music, and making Beethoven one of Alex's fetishes is incredibly cool. The absolute brutality is necessary as a backdrop for the discussion having the "choice" to do right and wrong. I LOVED the book (and actually created my own glossary for it), and I think Kubrick did a fine job adapting it. Rated X?? That's a laugh. The MPAA had their heads so far up their asses back in those days. They gave "Jaws" a PG rating, even though it showed people being ripped in half by sharks. I love it.

Seen both and enjoyed them immensely. Im really suprised at how rubbished A Clockwork Orange gets. Infact, its on TV here tonight. Ive been looking forward to it for about two weeks now.

Clockwork Orange is my favourite movie of all time, and both of the others (Strangelove and 2001) would fall into the top 10. Absolutely brilliant.

Clockwork Orange is my girlfriend's favorite movie of all time. The Kubrick DVD box set has seen much use in my home! I am a huge 2001 fan. I have the book but have not read it yet, although I have read A Clockwork Orange, and you are right, he did an excellent adaptation. Stanley Kubrick was one of the only directors I would call a genius, his attention to visual detail was unparalleled. His work will stand the test of time!

I'll admit I almost nodded off during the first time I saw 2001. I was younger and didn't really have an appreciation/attention for stuff like that. I've watched it a few times since and, while it is certainly a classic worthy of the praise it recieves, A Clockwork Orange remains my favorite Kubrick film. An excellent book too.

Kurbrick is probably my all-time favorite director, but I don't like ALL of his films, although the ones that I do like are so different from everything else (in a good way). Most of his films polarize...you either really like them, or you really don't.

I saw 2001 when I was a young teen, and it was one of the only films in my life that I walked out on. I saw it again in college, and while I appreciated it more, still didn't care very much for it.

A Clockwork Orange, on the other hand is one of the four films that I consider head and shoulders among anything else I have ever seen. Absolutely way ahead of it's time...I think if it came out now it would be ahead of it's time. Malcolm McDowell in one of the all-time greatest male performances of all-time. Kubrick's great visual style, the music, the nadsat slang...unbelievable. I could go on and on, but I shall stop right now.

A bit off topic perhaps, but would you guys consider "Full Metal Jacket" to be a canonical Kubrick work?

I really like the film, and despite it being quite different in a number of ways from his other films (though all of his films are unique), if I was to put a collection together of Kubrick's "best" works, then FMJ would be in it.

But I know a lot of people are highly critical of FMJ and label it one of his most "Un-Kubrick" works.

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Originally posted by asc85:

A Clockwork Orange, on the other hand is one of the four films that I consider head and shoulders among anything else I have ever seen. Absolutely way ahead of it's time...I think if it came out now it would be ahead of it's time.

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I think all Kubrick films have been really ahead of their time in their themes and ideas put forward. For example, "A Clockwork Orange" was pretty radical (perhaps even by today's standards) in the sympathy it showed towards criminals in the judicial and correctional process.

Kubrick's films, too, have a really timeless quality about them because he always invented his own rules and conventions to follow. People tried to copy Kubrick's film but never succeeded in doing do. His films exist in an isolated space instead of as a film from this or that decade of this or that genre. IMO anyway.

Well, I started this thread, and there's no way you can get off topic if you're discussing Kubrick, at least intelligently. The first chapter of "Full Metal Jacket" is AS GOOD as anything KUBRICK or ANYONE ELSE has EVER done! That's why I think it was a big improvement on "Barry Lyndon" and "The Shining". I think that those are GOOD, JUST NOT KUBRICK-GOOD.

R. Lee Ermey must give one of THE GREATEST performances EVER, basically playing himself, and I think that D'Onofrio and Modine are right up there.

Chapter 2 can't possibly be as intense, but it does establish all the characters we'll live with later.

However, Chapter 3 contains some of the most awesomely-unbelieveable footage of any film and presents what happened in Viet Nam in a nutshell. A young girl with nothing but her "patriotism" and a big gun completely plays with a stronger, larger force and therefore lowers an entire nation's morale. Of course, it was all right because Mickey Mouse was there for them at the end!

W, why in hell aren't you studying this before you make any more mistakes?

I liked "Full Metal Jacket", and think it's a very good film. The problem with this movie, in terms of stature, is that when it FINALLY came out, we had already seen "The Deerhunter" (which I strongly disliked) and "Apocalypse Now" (which I think is a "great" movie). So a lot of the impact of FMJ was muted because we had already seen this kind of movie already. That's one of my criticisms of Kubrick...he takes so damn long to "let go" of a movie. And it hurt FMJ upon release, IMHO. I truly believe that if Kubrick hadn't died, that it would have taken even longer for "Eyes Wide Shut" to have been released, if it had been released.

As for the criticism FMJ, I usually ignore it, as I ignore most of the criticism his films get, as many critics simply don't like him. I wait to see the film myself to decide whether it's "worthy" or not.

RayRay:

I'm not sure I would agree with your premise re Clockwork Orange: "The absolute brutality is necessary..." I think Krubrick made a judgement that Burgess never did - that hooliganism equates non-conformity. Americans tend to valorize rebellion and the rebal as the embodiment of individualism and freedom. In Clockwork, McDowell and his boys victimize and brutalize people who obviously are comfortable and have means, and this takes Krubrick off the hook, the demonization of the haves by the have nots. What if they victimized the type of people you find in Mike Leigh's films, would we feel the same way?

Or to put it another way, the home invasion, murder and rape of the wife while the husband watch in John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is the most graphic and violent I've ever seen, and there I think it is germane and legitimate in a moral sense. It is an important film that looks at violence in an unflinching way, so much so that Scorseses agreed to produced his next film on the basis of seeing Henry. There is no class agenda here, and there is no "non-conformity" to wrap the violence in. There is a scene in Clockwork much like it, but the way it was limned made it dishonest.

Test your emotions, rent Henry, or the more recent French film Irreversible, sit thru the violence of a man clubbed to a pulp in a gay leather bar and a 9 mins take of Monica Belluci being rape, and tell me what you think. Both Henry and Irreversible are honest, but barely watchable for most people. Even most of the critics here said so.

member 27:

Every Krubrick film is canonical, going back even to Paths of Glory, and distinctive with his sensibility, which is not to say that they're all likable or successful. I thought that Full Metal Jacket was good, one of the best film to come out of the 'Nam period, you can't accuse it of hipocracy like a lot of the others, or sentimentality. How much more honest can you be? I even like Eyes Wide Shut, but he should've released the European version here, put his money where his mouth is.

Lolita is not Nabokov, for that you have to see Lynne's remake, and it is better. Strangelove is great satire. 2001 is a great set-piece, like a LaMont Young composition, no more, no less, it uses the conventions and tropes of science fiction without itself being science fiction. Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, with it's HP Lovecraft nonsense, is more science fiction. Barry Lyndon can be a companion piece to it. Shining is overwaugh and silly.

The killing is a great heist noir, proving Krubrick can do it if he wants to.

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Originally posted by asc85:
I liked "Full Metal Jacket", and think it's a very good film. The problem with this movie, in terms of stature, is that when it FINALLY came out, we had already seen "The Deerhunter" (which I strongly disliked) and "Apocalypse Now" (which I think is a "great" movie). So a lot of the impact of FMJ was muted because we had already seen this kind of movie already.

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I agree with what you're saying, even if I don't necessarily agree with your opinions about the two 70s Vietnam films. My main point in addressing this post is that "Platoon" came out the year before "Full Metal Jacket" and that's the main reason that "FMJ" was "overlooked." One more thing though, "we had" not "already seen this movie before." The boot camp stuff may have been in Jack Webb's "The D.I." and "An Officer and a Gentleman" (at least very sanitized) and the dark comedy may have been in parts of "Apocalypse Now", but overall, there has never been a film anything like this, EVER.

wong828, much of this isn't too significant, but the guy's name is KUBRICK. I see that you have a vast knowledge of sci-fi literature which I don't; I never read Burgess' novel, but based on the film (which is what this thread is about), why exactly do you think that Alex is a have-not? True, he seems to live in a wasted building, but he has nice things, a nice car, etc. He also is supposed to be some teenager. The students I teach, who drive nice cars, I don't consider them have-nots even if they live in a so-called "lower-class neighborhood." Also I think you forgot that Alex and his little droogs kicked the shit out of the old drunk, a Mike Leigh-type character. Kubrick was making his film, long, long before any of these other more "honest" films that you're talking about "stole" some of the shock value. Besides, I'm under the impression that Kubrick was trying to make a social satire in an artistic and entertaining way. If you believe that it's more "honest" to show violence in a drab, "realistic" way, then maybe you're right. The fact that Kubrick can't help but light, shoot and score his films artistically should not be held against him (and I realize that you DO think he was a genius.)

One last thing, as asc85 noted, Kubrick didn't release "Eyes Wide Shut" at all, since he was dead. Supposedly, he wanted the "camoulflaged" version released in the U.S. although I'm not so sure about that. I do know that he would want his film to be seen by the masses, and Cruise and Kidman probably weren't ready to be in an NC-17 flick, but who knows?

mark f:

I stand corrected on the spelling of his name. Some issues:

Are you suggesting that unless we live in Mexico City or Bogotá the distinction between the haves and the have-not wouldn’t be obvious? There are people who live in parts of London and the outskirts of Paris who would have no problem telling you which they are, black and white. In Chicago, too. Or Los Angeles. Students in their high schools, some have high-end Nikes and nice cars, yes, and they wear stylish hip outfits and you want to tell me they feel like they’re from Highland Park or Winnetka? And yes, there are children of the affluent who listen to hip hop, talk trash, dress down and will end up in Ivy League placement, and they know who they are too. So let’s skip the semantics…

In Burgess, the droogs are roving bands of disaffected youth who predate on whoever happens to be in their way - a much more democratic reading. His society appears to be advanced socialism, and from the way the state punished Alex later on, fairly totalitarian. Writ Orwell, writ Koestler. In the thematic of Clockwork, the marginalized and their violence was arguably the only expression of freedom in a total society. In Clockwork, even this was wiped clean in Alex. In Chapter 21, Alex was rehabilitated.

The American publisher thought that was a weak ending, and ditched the last chapter. Kubrick did likewise. Without the last chapter, Burgess commented, “A vindication of free will had become an exaltation of the urge to sin. I was worried. The British version of the book shows Alex growing up and putting violence by as a childish toy; Kubrick confessed that he did not know this version: an American, though settled in England, he had followed the only version that Americans were permitted to know. I cursed Eric Swenson of W.W. Norton."

For Burgess, Clockwork was a descriptive sociology of this totalitarian state from the point of view of Alex, one of its denizens, even down to a concocted language that was a patois of working class Brit vernacular and Russian syntax. Kubrick schematicized the thematic to a simple opposition of the outlaw against conventional society, a much more simple-minded reading, and the way he chose to film it, he equates hooliganism with freedom. Alex and his affects, rakish in his outfits and demeanor, possessed of hipness and street cred, were valorized; his victims were demonized, the couple particularly, portrayed as disdainful, self-satisfied, people you would love to hate. Kubrick wants you to identify with Alex; tacitly, Kubrick justifies Alex’s brutality with the brutality of the state when it punished him later on.

I don’t think this is moral reasoning. It is corrupt. It is corrupt in much the same way that De Sade is corrupt when he defends the practices in his novels. You said Kubrick was making “a social satire in an artistic and entertaining way.” Are Kubrick and De Sade artful? Sure, they bring their craft and vision to their work. Is it entertainment? You tell me.

When you were teaching Clockwork in high school, leaving aside for the moment your responsibility as a teacher to your students, some of whom “live in a so-called ‘lower-class neighborhoods,’” why not consider the source? Weren’t you interested?

More later...

Well, I recently saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the first time in many years, and I never appreciated it until now.
Mark, I am definately in the "mind blown" group. Everything about the movie was absolute brilliance. I was left staring in awe.
I didn't think it was boring at all. Everything was just PERFECT! I especially love the "Dawn Of Man" sequence. It's absolute genius.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is the only movie I would give a "100" if I controlled the reviews of all the metacritic critics. This movie easily slips onto my TOP 10 list.
OH MY GOD! I could almost cry. You can't even begin to understand how much I loved 2001. Anyone who doesn't appreciate it's COMPLETE GREATNESS is not trying hard enough.

krafty, I'm glad you love it so much. Go ahead and cry. It's good for the soul.

I feel as if I need to start new threads to get people goin', but I spent some time this afternoon looking at our old threads and noticing how they've been put out to pasture, yet so many newer members haven't looked at/ considered them. Maybe, when you have some free time, you could check out some of our old threads and comment (including going back to earlier pages within topics.) There's some buried treasure in there you may not have noticed.

P.S.- Feel free to start new threads. It's also good for the soul.

I haven't watched the movie, but I will agree that there is a lot of good stuff in many of the older threads. I try to bring a couple back every now and then myself. Usually, my new threads don't get much reply, so I think I will start just reviving old ones.

I'm not sure what you're talkin' about, Miguel. "Friendly Talk About Religion" and "Christmas" have been pretty much kickin' ass. Keep adding new ones because maybe a few months from now, somebody will discover YOUR "buried treasure."

P.S.- If anyone hasn't seen them, watch "2001:A Space Odyssey", "A Clockwork Orange", "Dr. Strangelove", "Paths of Glory", "Spartacus", "Full Metal Jacket" or any other Kubrick flicks ASAP. Something good might happen to your soul!

I heard on the news this morning that today is the birthday of the writer of 2001 A Space Odyssey, the book.

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As posted by mark f

I wonder if anyone besides me ever noticed that every single star in the movie ( and there's hundreds for about two hours) keeps twinkling. I've never seen that anywhere else. Just one small hint at Kubrick's dedication to at least the visual details of the film.

If you're right about 2001: A Space Odyssey where stars twinkling on the time, then it would be a minor tragic flaw in the movie if I'm correct that twinkling stars really reflected the atmospheric turbulence and of course in space there's only a vacuum, so I'm assuming then that the stars in 2001 better not always be twinkling all the time, especially during and after the Space Station scene.