Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket:’ Standing in the Shadow of ‘2001’

PJ Media ^ | 17 July 2021 | Ed Driscoll

[monkeyshine]

I get what you are saying, but that’s imo his genius. I think he was obsessed with conveying some or another message using technique.

For example: Path’s of Glory is perfection in sound design. Barry Lyndon is perfection in cinematography - shot entirely using natural light (though he did use cellophane and reflectors to give some tone to the light and shade). 2001 Space Odyssey is perfection in use of special effects (at the time). Dr. Strangelove is perfection in set design and sarcasm and irony. The B52 bomber was top secret but he and his crew were able to build a nearly perfect replication of it using 100s of various unclassified photos of gauges and knobs etc - rumor is that the US Military approached him after it was released (original release date happened to coincide with JFK assassination so it was delayed and slightly edited to remove a line that would offend the American audience) to figure out how he did it because they were concerned the Soviets might have done the same.

He used Peter Sellers in that, and in Lolita which was one I didn’t see until fairly recently and he got the absolute greatest performances out of Peter Sellers. I think that led him to develop techniques on how to get what he wanted out of his actors. The Shining is perfection in suspense; and from what I have read he instructed the staff and crew to treat Shelley Duvall with indifference and isolation during production in order to literally drive her mad so that her anguish would play sincere in her performance. Kind of cruel if you asked me but it worked.

His last film Eyes Wide Shut took almost 2 years to complete production. IMO widely misunderstood but so much nuance. A lot of people see the use of lens flare as some kind of mistake he made but a guy like Kubrick who used lens flare in several of his films, often as a symbol of sexual attraction between characters, knows how to avoid lens flare. He also was so involved, and took so long, some suggest the emotional energy expended destroyed the relationship between the two lead characters - who were deliberately chosen because they were husband and wife. He combined everything he knew about making movies to make that movie.

I could go on. One interesting thing is how there is so much lore around secondary meanings in his films. The rumor that he faked the moon landing, for example, for NASA, and how he hinted at that in his other films. Even more powerful, from Lolita to Eyes Wide Shut, there a running undercurrent of sexual abuse and exploitation. Some suggest Kubrick, an American who left the USA and never returned sometime after making Spartacus (with Kirk Douglas who was also, like Sellers, in 2 Kubrick films) in part never came back not just because he didn’t like the US Studio system control issues but because he had come to learn a few things about Hollywood he found abhorrent. To wit, Roman Polanski and his abuse of a teenager slipping a mickey into her drink at, of all places, Jack Nicholson’s house. Polanski got busted and fled the country to avoid justice.

[monkeyshine]

Paths of Glory was stupendous. It was a great story and great film making and often underrated, perhaps because it was Black & White in the age of color (and just before Spartacus which was beautifully shot in Technicolor). I think he deliberately chose B&W because he didn’t want to gloss over the subject matter or detract from the sound design. Clearly one of his themes is about the horrors of war and the sometimes foolishness that goes into decision making among the command structure. Either graphically depicted like in Paths of Glory and Spartacus and Full Metal Jacket; or sarcastically as seen in Dr. Strangelove.

[Hardastarboard]

+1 on that. Totally unrealistic