Napoleon by Kubrick by Spielberg

The latest buzz in the movie world is Steven Spielberg's latest project: developing Stanley Kubrick's famously-aborted Napoleon project as a TV miniseries. Spielberg and Kubrick collaborated on A.I., with Spielberg finishing that movie after Kubrick's death. Kubrick's family have given their consent for this adaptation.

Spielberg and Kubrick's sensibilities don't really mesh, in this blogger's opinion. The screenplay is as an epic character study/period piece like Barry Lyndon, laced with Kubrick's customary cynicism, a far cry from Spielberg's mass. On the other hand, Lincoln recently showed Spielberg is capable of a cerebral biopic. Let's be cautiously optimistic.

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) is possibly the greatest film satire ever produced. With a mixture of acid wit and measured wackiness, Kubrick encapsulates the confusion, madness and terror of the Cold War, where global annihilation seemed a push-button away.

Lunatic Air Force General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) orders a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. In Washington, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) urges a follow-up strike on the Soviets, while President Muffley (Peter Sellers) looks for other means. The situation grows dire when the Russian Ambassador (Peter Bull) informs Muffley that the Soviets have a "Doomsday Device" which, if triggered by American bombs, will render the Earth uninhabitable. While RAF officer Mandrake (Sellers again) tries to reason with Ripper, a B-52 piloted by Major Kong (Slim Pickens) barrels on towards "nuclear combat, toe-to-toe with the Russkies," oblivious to attempts at recalling it.

Dr. Strangelove does a brilliant job of capturing the Cold War circa 1964. Kubrick and writers Terry Southern and Peter George exaggerate surprisingly little: Ripper's tirades about water fluordiation as a Communist plot echo the John Birch Society's rambling paranoia, while President Muffley is a dead ringer for Kennedy's UN Ambassador (and perennial Presidential candidate) Adlai Stevenson. The Cuban Missile Crisis gave substance to fears that a "mad dog" general like Curtis LeMay or Edwin Walker might start World War III on their own. Things weren't helped by the Soviets, who under Nikita Khrushchev's erratic leadership pushed America to the brink of war. With both sides stockpiling nuclear arms, Mutual Assured Destruction escalated into a mad game of chicken, with neither side daring to back down.

This material could easily have been played straight, but Kubrick finds the inherent humor and ridiculousness with little difficulty. "Topical" dramas dealing with similar issues (Seven Days in May, the almost-identical Fail-Safe) now play as musty period pieces, but Strangelove remains fresh and funny today. The script is laced with pointed barbs ("You can't fight here! This is the War Room!") and overt silliness, and yet none of it seems out of place. If nuclear Armageddon isn't funny, then what is?

Strangelove is Exhibit A for viewers who see Kubrick as a misanthrope. Not one person comes off well here. Ripper is a complete nut, Turgidson barely conceals his glee at the situation, and the B-52 pilots look forward to medals and promotions. Muffley is a pitch-perfect send-up of "do-gooder" liberals, trying too hard to prove he's a pal of the perfidious Soviets ("I'm just as capable of being sad as you!"). None-too-subtle sexual inneundo is crammed into every scene, from character names (Muffley, Turgidson, Strangelove) to sniggering dialogue ("Purity of essence") and visual symbols (the credits footage of planes refuelling), pointing up the psychosis of the Cold War. This collection of nutjobs, neurotics, wimps and morons deserves everything they get.

Kubrick's direction is straight-forward as usual, leaning heavily on dialogue, performances and art direction. Peter Murton creates some impressive sets, especially the cavernous "war room" and the cramped B-52 interior. Only the plane's exterior shots seem phony. The most influential scene is the army raid on Burpelson Air Force base. Filmed in grainy, handheld style, it achieves an effective "documentary" look used and abused by modern filmmakers.

Peter Sellers had already played multiple roles in The Mouse That Roared (1959), but transcends it with three inspired performances. Sellers's Mandrake is a spot-on spoof of Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai, an excessively British RAF officer with memories of a Japanese POW camp. For my money, the wimpy President Muffley is the funniest Sellers character, delivering grovelly phone calls to the Russian Premier ("Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello?") in perfect deadpan. But, of course, his most iconic turn is as the title character, an ex-Nazi "mad scientist" inspired by Herman Kahn and Edward Teller, nuclear scientists with a coldly impersonal view of human life. Sellers plays each role to perfection, cementing his status as comedy legend.

George C. Scott gives a hysterically over-the-top performance, complete with eye-bugging, gum-chewing, leering inneundo and even a pratfall. He's deliberately comedic here, but Scott's ostensibly serious performance in Patton was barely more restrained. Sterling Hayden (The Godfather) is the perfect personification of right-wing paranoia, ridiculous but chillingly credible. Slim Pickens (Major Dundee) has his most iconic role, riding an H-bomb to oblivion. Peter Bull (The Lavender Hill Mob) and Keenan Wynn (Once Upon a Time in the West) have key supporting roles, and a young James Earl Jones plays one of the bomber crew.

What more needs to be said? Dr. Strangelove has earned its place as one of the all-time great comedies, and Stanley Kubrick's finest work.

Paths of Glory

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) is a fine anti-war film. Broad in its dramatics and overemphatic in its speechmaking, it succeeds in its primary goal, indicting the madness and futility of warfare.

Two years into the First World War, the French Army is stalemated and desperate for a breakthrough. Ambitious General Mireau (George Macready) is goaded by his commanding officer, General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), into undertaking a suicidal attack on the German "anthill" with the promise of a promotion. The brunt of the offensive falls upon the 701st Regiment, led by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas). The attack fails disastrously, and General Mireau blames Dax's men for cowardice, choosing (with Broulard's consent) to execute three men (Ralph Meeker, Timothy Carey, Joe Terkel) as an "example" for the Army. Despite Dax's defense, the soldiers are convicted by a kangaroo court, and their only hope may be Dax's knowledge of Mireau's unbecoming conduct during the assault.

Working from Humphrey Cobb's novel, Paths of Glory is an angry film, a searing indictment of military incompetence. Kubrick and writers Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham create a powerful spectacle that transcends its somewhat hokey dramatics. It's a horrifying and unsettling film, with a decidedly unflattering of the French Army: Soldiers are callously thrown away like flies, with a choice between German bullets or friendly fire. Officers scheme for personal advancement, with backstabbing and pompous posturing second nature: Dax's vengeance on Mireau is perceived by Broulard as mere self-promotion! More ably than earlier films like Grand Illusion, Kubrick shows that crossing modern warfare, with indiscriminate, mechanized mass killing, and an engrained class system is a recipe for tragedy.

Unfortunately, the film repeatedly falls back on stilted dramatics and blustery speechifying. The soldiers are unambiguously innocent and their officers either ruthlessly ambitious or simple-minded fools. Kubrick doesn't spare us the most obvious tropes: the generals dine, dance and sip wine in a luxurious mansion while their soldiers sweat it out in filthy trenches. Dax's speeches are improbably emphatic and on the nose, and a tacky coda provides an additional jolt of sappy sentimentality. Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant (1980) would cover the same ground in a much more ambiguous, less stilted manner. Beresford's Australian cavalrymen are victims of a dirty war with no clear moral boundaries; Kubrick's French soldiers are merely innocent pawns of a cruel system.

Kubrick's direction is brilliant. Made on a modest budget, Glory has the feel of a much more expensive film, and Kubrick's inventive use of German locations gives it the look of an epic, with its huge battlefield and oversized offices. Kubrick and photograph Georg Krause make repeated use of impressive tracking shots: through the trenches, an officer's ball, and most notably the attack on the Anthill, a gobsmacking, gritty spectacle that doesn't reach for grim effects. The movie retains a lean pace for the first half but sags a bit after the trial scenes; the powerfully-staged execution is counterbalanced by the lame finale. On the whole, though, the film is admirably economical and maintains a potent drive and dramatic force.

Kirk Douglas is perfectly cast as both upstanding liberal officer and avatar of righteous fury; this is definitely one of his signature roles. The rest of the cast is hit-and-miss. George Macready (Vera Cruz) and Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page) play over-the-top buffoons of the sort Kubrick would more successfully portray in Dr. Strangelove. Ralph Meeker (The Dirty Dozen), Timothy Carey (One-Eyed Jacks) and Joe Terkel (The Shining) give their all in rather one-dimensional parts. Kubrick's future wife, Christiane, is the German bar girl.

Paths of Glory certainly holds up as a potent anti-war message. For a more subtle and reflective film, I direct you again to Breaker Morant, but Kubrick's work is a fine - if flawed - effort.

Eyes Wide Shut

I have finally completed my overview of Stanley Kubrick's feature-length filmography. While Fear and Desire is a borderline atrocious glorified student film, his final effort, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), is a beautiful piece of work. Although flawed and occasionally hard to swallow, it's an engrossing film that manages to remain entertaining through its lengthy run-time.

Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) is a New York City Doctor living a comfortable life with his pretty wife Alice (Nicole Kidman). Though Harford is more than happy to flirt with pretty girls on his downtime, he is shocked - shocked! - when his wife expresses her own sexual yearnings. An unlikely series of events leads Bill to an encounter with a teenaged prostitute (Vinessa Shaw), and through his musician friend Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) winds up a masquerade ball/orgy full of powerful people. Afterwards, Harford finds himself possibly involved in a murder mystery (or two), seemingly stalked by the orgy's participants.

It must be said off the bat: Eyes Wide Shut's story is largely lacking. Based on the novel "Traumnovelle" by Arthur Schnitzler, it imparts Victorian sensibilities and views of sexuality onto the modern day. Thus, it takes a huge suspension of disbelief to buy that Bill could be so bewildered by his wife's sexual longings; especially someone as pretty and openly sensual as Alice. However, Kubrick manages to dodge this shortcoming by focusing the film elsewhere: on Bill's reaction to his wife's sexuality, and his own vulnerabilities.

Kubrick already showed a keen interest in the male sexual ego in Lolita (and Dr. Strangelove, in a more perverse, oblique way), and that is the focus of Eyes Wide Shut. It comes close to Hitchcock's Vertigo as one of the most interesting explorations of the male sexual ego and society's double-standards towards sexuality. Working girl-turned-housewife Alice is tormented by merely desiring sexuality; Bill, however, is affected even more strongly, not by his own flirtations with pretty girls, but by his wife's mental infidelity. When a routine housecall leads to a bizarre odyssey in the New York night, Bill finds the shoe on the other foot; he is merely a voyeur, and yet his exploits have the affect of actual adultery. The mirror between their "imagined" infidelities is brilliantly done; neither actually does anything wrong but both feel horrible regardless. The movie turns into a quasi-thriller after the orgy scene, with an unconvincing exposition scene involving Bill's industrialist friend (Sydney Pollack in actor mode) but remains interesting until the end due to Kubrick's sure direction and handling.

Kubrick's direction is beyond brilliant. His slow, langorous pace suits the film perfectly; though some material is arguably superfluous, not a frame of film seems wasted. He shows his usual eye for set design and excellent camera work. The orgy scene is too bizarre to be erotic, but the gorgeous costumes and art direction make it a fascinating sight to behold regardless. The film is closer to 2001 than Barry Lyndon; weaknesses in story aside, the gorgeous, rivetting direction makes it something truly engrossing. As usual, his use of classical and "found" music is exceptional - with Jocelyn Pook contributing some fine original music as well.

Tom Cruise gives a fine performance as Bill. It's not an all-time great performance but it's arguably the high point of Cruise's career; under Kubrick's direction Cruise's pretty boy star persona becomes something rivetting. Nicole Kidman is quite good although her character is unfortunately backgrounded for most of the film. The supporting cast is rather nondescript, however.

Eyes Wide Shut is a fitting capper on the career of a legendary director. For better or worse, it epitomizes everything in Kubrick's repertoire, and creates an original, mesmerizing (if occasionally frustrating) final work.

Another Look at Barry Lyndon

Well, I took another trip to the Kubrick Well today. Despite my initial lukewarm reception of Barry Lyndon I've been persuaded to rewatch the film as it supposedly improves with repeat viewings. Sadly, this was not the case with me. A lot of what I said will be redundant to those of you who read my earlier, scathing review back in November, though hopefully some stuff will be explored in more detail. This is a film I really want to like, but can't.

As before I really like the first half of the movie, at least through the Ireland and Seven Years' War scenes. They're full of caustic, dry humor, fine performances and great set-pieces (the duel, Arthur O'Sullivan as Captain Feeny, the battle scenes, Barry's encounter with Potzdorf, Barry's decoration, the intro to Lady Lyndon). The supporting cast is uniformly excellent, even those actors I overlooked last time I watched; it's too bad that the film's leads are a bewigged block of wood and a catatonic dress-up doll. The movie starts to slip a bit during the scenes with the Chevalier (the reason given for Barry's defection is horribly unconvincing and effectively marks where the film starts to go downhill), encountering narrative drift and the first of many well-composed but interminable scenes consisting of well-dressed people sitting around whilst beautiful music plays on the soundtrack, but it's still watchable, and the act ends on a high note with Frank Middlemass's great scene as Lord Lyndon. I'd give the first half a high 7/10; entertaining and interesting, not truly great perhaps, but worth my time.

The second half of the movie, however, is pretty much unbearable. It's like staring at a painting for seventy minutes and about as satisfying; the great music and visual splendor wears itself out before too long simply because there's nothing of interest going on. There's no emotional connection to the characters, no narrative drive, no interesting story (rather a treacly, insipid soap opera), none of the early parts' humor, no themes worth consideration (the aristocracy of Georgian England weren't nice people? Shocker), no reason at all to give a damn about what's going on onscreen really. Presumably we're supposed to be enraptured by the gorgeous art direction but this only works up to a point.

Not to mention, I find the narrator insufferable in the later passages of the film. I will grant I enjoy his snarky commentary on the early segments of the film, when the film functions on some level as a satire and such commentary is appropriate, but as Barry's life falls apart (and the story devolves into soap opera) it just seems cruel and mean-spirited to the extreme. This part of the film is perhaps the strongest argument for Kubrick as anti-humanist cynic. And even that wouldn't bother me that much (who says a filmmaker has to love the characters he portrays?) if something worthwhile were going on! But nothing is! It's redeemed a bit by the wonderful Barry-Bullingdon duel but it ends on as empty and uninteresting a note as it's been chugging along under for the past hour and a half or so.

I feel a need to raise a dissent on the issue of the film's cinematography and art direction. Certainly it's a beautiful film, but it's not a beauty I particularly like. It's an aesthetically distant type of beauty, flat, dull and uninteresting - very pretty to be sure, but to what end? Kubrick shoots the film with rote camera movements of the sort that the likes of Fred Zinnemann get routinely criticized for. It certainly looks nice but it doesn't amount to much because, not only is much done with it beyond producing an endless series of pretty pictures, for much of the film there's rarely anything interesting going on within the shots themselves. Compared to Lean or Leone or Hitchcock's films, or even Kubrick's own 2001, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, the cinematography is empty and uninteresting, the kind of stuff that we're supposed to appreciate and admire rather than enjoy. If you enjoy it, power to you, but that does not apply to me. In my opinion, truly great films are both artistically sound and entertaining. If I had to chose one or the other though, I'd generally choose the latter.

So yeah, I still don't like Barry Lyndon. It's a film of great individual scenes and moments but fails as a whole. I gave it another shot, and it appealed to me roughly as it did the first time around. I might be generous enough to give the film a bump from a 5 to 6, but that's about it, I fear.

As I did with my last review, though, I'll provide you with something to balance out my bitching: a nice interview with Kubrick on the film. Give it a look.

Full Metal Jacket

Now I will belatedly review Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam opus Full Metal Jacket (1987), for the simple reason that I was tired last week of reviewing Kubrick movies. Of the crop of Vietnam films that came out in the '70s and '80s (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Deer Hunter), and after a rewatch and many viewings of other Kubrick movies, I have to say that it is the best of both categories.

The film is divided into three distinct segments (not two, despite the common wisdom). The first segment is a high-intensity, darkly comic scene as a crop of Marine draftees - Private Joker (Matthew Modine), the cynical would-be writer, the Texan Private Cowboy (Arliss Howard), and Leonard Lawrence/"Gomer Pyle" (Vincent D'Onofrio), an overweight half-wit - arrive at Parris Island for their basic training, under the strict and bombastic guidance of the hardass Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey), leading to horrific results as Pyle's incompetence evolves into full-blown psychosis. The second segment focuses on Joker's travels as a journalist for Stars and Stripes in Vietnam, during and immediately after the Tet Offensive, as he ultimately falls in with Cowboy's squad, which includes the gung-ho, borderline crazy Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin). The final sequence finds Joker and Cowoby's squad pinned down in Danang by a sniper, suffering heavily as they painstakingly attempt to root out their assailant in the midst of a bombed-out city.

It's a conventional wisdom among critics that the film's first "half" on Parris Island is brilliant while the rest of the film. As Gunnery Sergeant Hartman might say, this is bullshit of the highest order. Despite its deliberately fragmented, almost episodic storyline, Full Metal Jacket remains consistently gripping throughout. It's fair to say that the later segments of the film miss the high-intensity stand-off between Pyle and Hartman, but that doesn't mean that the film as a whole suffers from their departure from the story.

Like most of Kubrick's works, the film is overtly satirical, not only of Vietnam and the miltiary but of human nature in general. The main focus of the film is the deliberately dehumanizing affect that the military has on its members - most overt in the Parris Island training sequence, and the brilliantly staged hair-shaving montage which opens the film, but present throughout. Among Hartman's more outlandish statements is his praise of Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald as examples of what Marine Corps training results in - except that he upholds them as role models rather than cautionary tales, causing Pyle to take very much the wrong lessons out of his training. While some films like Sands of Iwo Jima and The Wind and the Lion, with their cavalier and unabashedly positive view of war and the military, might convince a more gullible or gung-ho viewer to join the Marines, Full Metal Jacket is the counter-argument; no one who goes into this film will want to go out and enlist after finishing it. This is not meant as a complement in and of itself, merely as an observation; if it is to be taken as a complement, then I think that it's because Kubrick very much set out to achieve this reaction.

Despite this generally negative view of the military, Kubrick does allow for some examination of the positive aspects that the military does bring to the table. Hartman's graduation day speech about the brotherhood of the Marine Corps is presented straight-forward and without comment, seemingly odd given the cartoonish nature of the character in other scenes. Hartman is fairly well-rounded despite his bellicose exterior, showing a genuine pride in the Marines and his country that would make him admirable in other circumstances. The soldiers themselves react to the training and the war in different ways; while those like Pyle and Animal Mother become psychopaths, others like Joker and Cowboy learn how to become, and more importantly to survive in combat. It's all well and good to be against the Vietnam War, but the characters in the film accept that they don't have any control over national policy and don't spend a lot of time whining about it (nor are there any prominently displayed Nazi flags or other heavy-handed attempts to paint the soldiers as uniformly evil); Kubrick's grunts would certainly appreciate Colonel Matthieu's statement from Battle of Algiers, "We are soldiers! Our duty is to win!" Or, as this film might put it, to survive.

The Vietnam sequences, as seemingly sparse as they are, actually say a lot more about the war and the men who fight in it than the pseudo-profundities of crap like The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. The Colonel who lectures Joker on the necessity of the war - "Inside every gook is an American fighting to get out" - could very well be General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, and the banner flying in the Stars and Stripes field tent - "First to go, last to know" - makes this even more obvious. The scenes of the TV news crew interviewing Cowboy's squad are perhaps a bit too obvious and on-the-nose, but do a good job of showing the differing reactions of these individuals to the war: some don't understand why they're fighting or are frustrated, others are happy to be there, and some just don't care ("If I'm going to waste gooks for a word, that word is poontang!"). Kubrick eschews epic, showy battle sequences for a series of confused, bloody skirmishes amidst the rubble of bombed-out cities. harrowing, nightmarish final showdown with a VC sniper can be read as a reduced metaphor for the entire war itself: America is mislead into a bloody fight against a determined foe which their far superior firepower cannot defeat - a conflict which ultimately has no purpose but pride, vegeance and survival.

Needless to say, Kubrick does a brilliant job directing. He handles the film's abrupt shifts in tone perfectly, and does a great job with a seemingly minimalist budget of making the realities of the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War hit home. This is no historical epic, merely a portrait of Marines at war, and as such Kubrick does an excellent job, the intensity of the training scenes, the horror of Pyle and Hartman's confrontation, and the nightmarish combat sequences leaps off the screen with visceral intensity.

While Matthew Modine is a bit stiff and uninteresting as Private Joker, our nominal protagonist, the supporting cast is filled with memorable characters. The two obvious ones are Vincent D'Onofrio and R. Lee Ermey, whose high-intensity conflict in the first half leads to explosive results. Ermey in particular is nothing short of brilliant, giving a ferocious, full-throated, alternately hilarious and frightening performance as Hartman, though it may be a back-handed complement given that Ermey was a real-life DI and may well be playing himself. D'Onofrio does well showing Pyle's slow unravelling, and his performance of his character's seminal scene is absolutely chilling. Adam Baldwin steals all of his scenes as the gung-ho, equally psychotic Animal Mother, and Arliss Howard does fine work as the hapless Sergeant Cowboy.

Full Metal Jacket is among the best war films ever made, and if there's a better Vietnam film out there I've yet to see it (although Platoon places a respectable second, and Randall Wallace's unfairly maligned We Were Soldiers isn't far behind either). With only two Kubricks to go (Fear and Desire and Eyes Wide Shut), I have to say it's the best of his oeuvre as well. As unpopular as that opinion may be, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Rating: 9/10 - Highest Recommendation

The Shining

So, Stanley Kubrick again. My 11th Kubrick film (leaving only Fear and Desire and Eyes Wide Shut to see of his feature length work) is his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. I wasn't sure what to expect, not being a huge fan of the Horror genre (but you already know that) and having an ambivalent feeling towards Lord High Stanley (you definitely know that), but Kubrick delivers on all cylinders here, creating an unsettling, perfectly-crafted piece of work that's both beautiful to watch and highly entertaining.

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is a teacher-turned-writer who is hired to act as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a huge, swanky hotel high in the Colorado Rockies. Bringing along his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd), who has either mental problems or psychic powers that the Hotel's chef Dick Hollaran (Scatman Crothers) calls "Shining", Jack settles into the labrynthian hotel to work on a planned novel. But soon the madness and isolation begin to play havoc on the family; Danny starts seeing ghosts and visions of a family murdered at the hotel several years ago, while Jack seems to grow increasingly angry, frustrated, and isolated from his wife. The denouement comes when a huge snowstorm completely traps the family in the hotel; Jack completely unspools, being convinced by a group of malevolent spirits (or hallucinations) to do away with his wife and child.

The Shining was perhaps Kubrick's first strictly commercial film since Spartacus, made with a mass audience in mind rather than the critical and art crowd who lauded his later works of the late '60s and early '70s (2001, Barry Lyndon). This might well explain its largely mixed critical reputaitn, besides its supposed dissimilarity with the source novel, unread by me. Regardless, Kubrick is able to harness his creative powers, latch them onto a strong narrative with well-drawn (if somewhat over-the-top) characters, and create a fine piece of entertainment.

If the film isn't terribly frightening (but then it takes a lot from a movie to scare me), it's certainly an unsettling piece of work. There's some patter about an Indian burial ground early on, and the murders committed by a previous caretaker (Philip Stone) play a major part in the film's build-up, but mostly it's a psychological drama as much as a horror film. Jack doesn't seem to be all there to begin with (whether or not this is intentional, the casting of Nicholson certainly enhances this perception), and the isolation of the situation gradually drives him mad, forced quite literally to confront his demons. The touches of the supernatural are generally effective, with a few exceptions - the egregious, constantly repeated shots of a torrent of blood flowing from an elevator are something out of an Argento or Bava flick - but the phantasmagoria is secondary to the character interactions; Danny's "gift" is the starting point for the horror, the imprints of the previous murder shape it, but the film is as much about a group of people going crazy from "cabin fever" as a supernatural horror film. Not, mind you, that the film is any less horrific for it.

As always, Kubrick's direction is fabulous. Kubrick creates a perfect sense of entrapment throughout, that goes beyond claustrophobia; every scene is a labrynth, from the hallways and kitchens of the hotel to the gigantic hedge maze in the backyard. The snowed-in final sequences, with Jack chasing Danny through the endless hedge maze and the surreal visions of the hotel completely coated in snow and ice, are just are foreboding and inescapable as 2001's moonscape and vacuums of time-space. The music and sound score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind (with contributions from a variety of other composers) is eerie and effective, using plucking strings and moaning chorus to create a palpable sense of dread.

If there's any major criticism to be had of the film, it's that Kubrick allows his leads too much free rein to chew scenery and overact. Jack Nicholson, as one might expect, is the worst offender; he's clearly off his nut from the opening scene and degenerates to ravenous scenery chewing and ham acting by his final scenes. His performance is ultimately more comic than scary. Shelley Duvall is shrill and annoying throughout, preventing her character from gaining much empathy from the audience. Fortunately, the supporting cast picks up the slack: Danny Lloyd is suitably creepy and unsettling as the disturbed Danny, and Scatman Crothers, Joe Terkel, Philip Stone and Barry Nelson all give excellent supporting performances.

The Shining ranks pretty high on my list of Kubrick works. With his self-indulgence mostly in check, and forced to focus on a narrative rather than a peacock display of pretty images, Kubrick delivers a solid horror film and a great work of cinema in its own right.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

Lolita

Today I visited another Stanley Kubrick "classic", his 1962 adaptation of Lolita, Vladimir Nobokov's hugely controverisal novel about pedophilia and sexual obsession. I've never read the novel, so all comments are based on the film's cinematic qualities rather than its virtues or flaws as an adaptation. As such, I find myself let down yet again by a Kubrick film.

Professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) moves to a small New England town en route to a college lecturing job in the Midwest. He takes a room with Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), a bored and needy widow - and immediately falls for her precocious, flirtatious and gorgeous teenaged daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon). Humbert immediately grows attached to Lolita, and marries her mother in order to be nearby - but trouble arises when Charlotte threatens to send Lolita away to boarding school. Charlotte dies in a freak accident, and Humbert claims Lolita as his own, taking her on a trip across country and struggling to maintain his hold over her - being stalked all the way by playwright and Haze family friend Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers).

The story of Lolita remains very racy even by modern standards, and there's certainly the potential for a very good film here. Kubrick assembled an A-list of acting and technical talent and hired Nobokov himself to adapt his own novel to the screen. As with much of Kubrick's work, however, the results aren't nearly as successful as the material, talent and reputation involved promise. Maybe it's me.

There are elements of the film which work very well. The portrayal of Humbert in particular is quite interesting. He plays simultaneously a lover and father figure to Lolita, aggressively protecting a girl who triggers an obsessive desire in him, and the film's portrayal of their relationship is, for the most part, well-drawn. The pestering, nagging, perhaps nymphomaniacal Charlotte is not of interest to Humbert; she's too easy and conventional a conquest, and too old besides. Many films and novel equate the overbearing father with repressed incestuousness, but Lolita makes it overt, and does so with a large degree of effectiveness.

However, the film stumbles in a number of important areas. The movie has an odd view of Lolita as a character. She is first introduced sunbathing in a revealing swimsuit, immediately catching Humbert's eye, but the movie doesn't know whether to portray her as a willingly flirtatious nymphette, an unwitting victim, or just a confused kid who doesn't know what she's doing. The third option seems most likely, all things considered. The scenes of her troubled relationship with her mother are quite well-done, and she seems an adolescent first entering the adult world, with the confusions and stresses inherent; but that's about as well as the film does with her characterization, and after her mother's death she becomes a fairly typical teenager, making her relationship with Humbert strangely unsatisfying dramatically. Even as the movie succeeds in its portrayal of Humbert, Lolita fails to develop as a character, until the somewhat implausible conclusion - and the quantum leap of three years' time prevents it from having a great deal of effect.

The absolute worst problem of the film, however, is the pacing and length. The movie is simply interminable at its 153-minute length; at least as portrayed on film, there isn't enough material of interest to make it worthy of such a byzantine length, and the stilted, sloth-like pacing makes it even harder to take. The last half hour or so in particular drags and drags beyond all reason. Most novels lose a great deal in their transition to screen, even the best adaptations, so it's perhaps understandable as such in this case; but as the film went on I found myself less and less involved in the story and characters. A film may be interesting and thoughtful in what it has to say, but if it has trouble maintaining interest as entertainment than the point is largely moot. Such is the case here.

Technically, Kubrick's direction is quite fine. After his gruelling experience on Spartacus (referenced in a lengthy gag by Quilty in the film's opening), he returns to a much smaller scale work, and his maintains the gritty, noir-ish look of his earlier films, suggesting the claustrophobia and entrapment of the central relationship, and the darkness and perversity lurking in the corners. Kubrick can rarely be faulted for his direction or the technical aspects of his work, but quite often, as we have seen, his story and characterization leave a lot to be desired.

The film's biggest saving grace is James Mason. Mason portrays a difficult character perfectly, adding the necessary combination of creepiness, perversity and prudish possessiveness to Humbert. He's not exactly a sympathetic character, but Mason makes him fascinating all the same - a man so trapped by his own disgusting fantasies and obsessions that he can't even contemplate that what he's doing is wrong, or that Lolita might be a human beings with feelings and desires all her own. Mason's portrayal of Humbert goes right up there with James Stewart in Vertigo as one of the most disturbing and honestly frank cinematic manifestations of the male sexual ego.

Other cast members don't fare nearly as well. Shelley Winters gives a strong supporting turn as the clingy, even nymphomanical Charlotte - almost the exact opposite of a seemingly like role in Night of the Hunter - but she's put out of the way early on. Sue Lyon starts off okay as Lolita but gradually grows more irritating and unlikeable as the film goes along. The rest of the supporting cast aren't really worthy of note. The worst offender is Peter Sellers, whose portrayal of Quilty is beyond annoying. Yes, Sellers is a master of disguise and, in the right role a great comic actor, but he's intensely irritating throughout, seemingly begging and even worse, his character seems at best tertiary to the storyline. Kubrick did much better work with Sellers in Doctor Strangelove a few years later, where giving Sellers' chameleon-like abilities free rein enhanced rather than hurt the film. Here, his shameless clowning and accents simply distract from the material.

Lolita goes in the same bin as Barry Lyndon and The Killing for Stanley Kubrick films that were rather a let-down. It was worth watching perhaps once, but it's not a film I'd care to return to any time soon. And for myself anyway, that epitaph adequately sums up much of Kubrick's oeuvre.

Rating: 6/10 - Use Your Own Discretion

2001: A Space Odyssey

Yes, I've finally seen Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). It's a film I've been putting off for ages, and finally had time in between finals and work to do so today. After all, I've never been a huge fan of Kubrick, though some of his films (Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket) are high on my list. Certainly my experience with his later "big" films has been mixed, with the interesting but obnoxious and muddled A Clockwork Orange and the painfully tedious Barry Lyndon, and given what I've read, seen and heard about this film I wasn't sure it would be my cup of tea. So, how did I react to Kubrick's film, widely lauded today as a cinematic masterpiece of cinematic masterpieces?

Well, my reaction was decidedly mixed. The film is certainly worth a look; it's a technical masterpiece for certain, and must be seen by any film buff for that reason alone. Put succinctly, it's just a fascinating film to behold and take in. However, if you're looking simply for a film that will entertain you in the traditional sense, you're advised to stay away. If it's the mark of a great film that can't be easily digested, and that it leaves you thinking (regardless of how you think about it), then 2001 is definitely a great film. But is it an enjoyable one? That's a harder question to answer.

The film's story is divided into four distinct segments. The Dawn of Man shows a tribe of primitive Ape-Men as they first encounter the Monolith - a huge black rectangular object - and slowly begin to evolve. Then we cut to the distant future, as humanity has explored much of space and is attempting to locate intelligent life. Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) is called to investigate the discovery of a Monolith on the Moon. Eighteen months later, a small team of astronauts - including David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) - are sent to Jupiter to locate a similar structure, but soon find their supposedly-foolproof computer HAL (voice of Douglas Rain) malfunctioning with deadly results. In the final segment, Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite, Bowman encounters the effects of the monolith, is transported through a hallucinatory "stargate" - and, in effect, realizes the next stage of human evolution.

The movie has the faintest strand of a narrative plot, only a handful of recognizable characters and a cast of no-name actors. For these reasons, on the conventional level of entertainment it's largely a failure; only the primary sequence with HAL has much in the way of traditional characterization or conflict. This is largely deliberate on Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's part; the point is that humanity in its current state is sublimated, minimized and dwarfed by the vastness of the Universe and, ironically, by his own technology. Authorial intent is all well and good, but that hardly precludes a viewer, philistine or snob, from being unsatisfied with or frustrated by it.

The movie seems to present a message on the evolution and development of humanity, but does so in a most elliptical fashion. Kubrick shows primitive man learning how to use tools (presumably through inspiration of the Monolith) and then immediately developing into carnivores and waging war with another tribe. We have a hint of the still-pertinent Cold War when Dr. Floyd is confronted by a group of inquistive Russian scientists, but that's about the extent that events on Earth enter into the equation. This all fits very well into Kubrick's cynical and often acidic view of humanity; if HAL is the ultimate result of human technology, it's only natural that he's a killer, and progress simply means more weapons - "the more advanced war becomes, the more fascinating we find it." However, the film addresses this issue in a rather oblique way, choosing to focus on humanity's first contact with extraterrestrials, never seen except through the ever-present Monoliths, as the first step in evolving to a truly higher being, beyond even Nietzsche's contemplation - to achieve a purpose higher than killing other humans.

As mentioned above, however, none of the characters are developed beyond ciphers, and Kubrick maintains an aesthetic distance from his human subjects, using (until the very end) almost no close-ups or even medium shots, even in lengthy dialogue scenes. The only real attempts to humanize the characters come in oblique ways - Dr. Floyd's conversation with his daughter, Frank watching a recorded birthday message from his parents. If anything, HAL is the most human character in the film, and watching his slow "death" scene at the hands of Bowman is genuinely moving. If we're meant to mediate on the smallness of Man's place in the Universe, this is a fair depiction; but then, why the focus on the history of humanity? Are we intelligent creatures capable of shaping our own destiny, or merely pawns in a celestial game, our fates in the hands of an unseen alien intelligence (as implied by the Monolith and certainly by the conclusion)? Presumably, the film's surreal conclusion is meant to provide us with hope for the future of Man, but from what little we've seen of him, the method of evolution shown seems the ultimate deus ex machina.

However, its lack of strong narrative and perhaps garbled message aside, 2001 is undoubtedly an impressive achievement on a technical level. And unlike Barry Lyndon, which looked pretty but ended up as a bore, the film is driven and redeemed by its look, sound and feel. The movie makes ingenious use of green screen, matte paintings and miniatures, and the special effects are simply awe-inspiring; they've hardly dated a bit in the last forty years. One doesn't mind the lengthy scenes of planets in orbit or of space shuttles docking and landing because it's just so beautifully, perfectly done. Beautifully created star patterns and nebulae explode across the screen (including the simulation of a fetus shortly before the trip through the stargate), each more dazzling than the last. Even the spacious, futuristic interiors (which Kubrick would later expand on in A Clockwork Orange) have a strange, eerie and alien beauty to them. Kubrick's use of soundscape is similarly brilliant, using Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Blue Danube as recurring leitmotifs to show humanity's growing sense of discovery and the majesty of space, as well as an eerie mixture of electronic and choral music for the encounters with the Monoliths. The cumulative effect is one of utter awe; this is truly a spell-binding, overwhelming film on this level, and one is so seduced and absorbed by it that the film's shortcomings are mostly overcome.

In all, my feelings towards 2001: A Space Odyssey are mixed. I'm giving it a high rating because I found it interesting, perhaps even fascinating, and think it is simply on its own plane as a technical work of art. But on the other hand, it's a film that left me cold, left me with more questions than answers. That is perhaps the work of a great artist, but it makes for frustrating viewing, and certainly a frustrated critical analysis. I might need to see it again to fully "get it", but I'm not sure how eager I am to do so. After watching this and reading lots of George Bernard Shaw for class, I'm ready for a big dumb meaty action film to sink my philistine teeth into.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended (but mostly for the technical aspects)

Killer's Kiss

Kudos to TCM I was able to witness a very early Stanley Kubrick effort, the noir thriller Killer's Kiss (1955). Kubrick's second film, after Fear and Desire, it is very similar to his much more acclaimed The Killing - a straight-forward, low-budget kitchen sink crime film. It also shares with The Killing that it's rather dull and unremarkable - a film that could have been made by any cheap Hollywood hack. But since Kubrick was just starting out, I'm willing to give him some leeway - and there are certainly some worthwhile moments, that make this worth a look.

The film involves Davy Gordon (Jamie Smith), a New York City prizefighter who saves ne'er-do-well Gloria Price (Irene Kane) from small-time hood Vincent (Frank DaSilva). The two fall in love, while trying to avoid Vincent and his goons seeking retribution. That's really all that you need to know about the plot; it won't bear much more in-depth a description.

The movie was made on the most shoe-string budget imaginable - as low as $75,000 I believe - and it certainly looks it. The film has a kitchen sink cinema verite style that doesn't exactly allow for much directoral flair; most of the camera angles and direction are fairly straightforward. The film's length and plot allow for little story or character development, preventing a viewer from really becoming involved in the film. The cast is pretty wooden and the script consists of economic, generic tough guy dialogue. For most of the runtime, the film doesn't look any different from any number of B-List Hollywood films - a product of Roger Corman's schlock factory, perhaps.

Still, such a great talent as Kubrick can't keep his skills completely concealed, even in such uninspiring material. He makes some creative use of cinematography and editing, which, while obviously not as impressive as his later work, show early signs of genius - most notably the scene where Davy's manager (Jerry Jarrett) is killed by Vincent's thugs in a shadowy alley, and the imaginative negative-image dream sequence. The movie really earns its spurs in the final fifteen minutes, as Davy has to save Gloria from Vincent and his goons. The final hand-to-hand fight in the mannequin-store is a powerful, intense sequence, and the scene of Davy and Vincent grappling with tools strangely predates the Kirk Douglas-Woody Strode duel in Spartacus.

Killer's Kiss is a worthwhile watch (and at 67 minutes it isn't exactly excrutiating to sit through), and certainly the wonderful last fifteen minutes makes with worth a look if nothing else. It's better than The Killing, but there's only scant sign of the filmmaker Kubrick would become. Still, there's something to be said for the climax.

Rating: 6/10 - Use Your Own Discretion

Your Classic Movie SUCKS! #2: Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon Bashing:

In Which I Tear Stanley Kubrick's Film A New Ass

"Corporal Barry, you are nice-looking, but boring, stiff, wooden, empty, and dull. And the movie you're in sucks too. I fear that you will achieve nothing more than putting your viewers to sleep. At least you play a mean Schubert."


(Self promotion:Check this out.)

It's taken two weeks, but I'm finally getting around to bashing that much-beloved Stanley Kubrick "masterpiece" Barry Lyndon. It's very convenient for me that this film bears so much resemblance to the other entry in this, the equally tedious piece of drek Amadeus. Both films were set in the 18th Century, both visually stunning and ornate, with lots of great classical music, and both are stultifyingly, indescribably dull.

Stanley Kubrick is generally regarded as one of the greatest directors in cinema history - just ask the bloviating dweebs on IMDB. Perhaps the most misanthropic of the "great" directors, his movies tend to have a decidedly cynical view of humanity as a bunch of violent, selfish, amoral, pathetic and all-around horrible, with few redeeming features and worthy only of contempt. There's no small degree of truth to this characterization, and it's led to a number of great films, but Kubrick's apparent contempt for his characters occasionally gets a bit tiresome and grating, leading to a sense that the director is trying to convince us he's better than the slobs he's showing - and, by implication, us as well.

Of course, of the seven or eight Kubricks I've seen, I have a few I love. I have a great affection for Spartacus, even though it's not a "real" Kubrick film, and I find Full Metal Jacket and Dr. Strangelove to be masterpieces - movies where Kubrick's vision of the human race plays brilliantly with the material. Then there's The Killing, a dull and derivative formula crime caper, and Paths of Glory, a stiff, solemn and didactic (but well-made and occasionally powerful) anti-war sermon. There's A Clockwork Orange, a curious film that I enjoyed while watching it, but have no great desire to see again, perhaps due to its overweening, self-conscious smarminess (an IMDBer once called it "A smartass kid's vision of an adult book", and I think there's something to that). I'm not denying Kubrick's talent, or that he was a great director. (Nor am I claiming to be an expert on the issue; I'm merely commenting on what I've seen.) I'm merely pointing out that on occasion, his misantrhopy could be a bit much to swallow. Such is the case with Barry Lyndon.

Barry Lyndon tells the story of Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), an ambitious but poor Irish lad who dreams of growing up rich and famous. After a duel with a British officer (Leonard Rossiter) over the affection of his cousin (Gay Hamilton), he flees, penniless, to Dublin, where he joins the British Army. He deserts during the Seven Years' War, only to be conscripted in the Prussian Army by Captain Potzdorf (Hardy Kruger). Cited for gallantry, Barry becomes an intelligence officer, spying on the gambler the Chevalier (Patrick Magee), and through him falls in love with Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson), the pretty wife of a dying aristocrat (Frank Middlemass). After his death, they marry, lead to soap operatic inter-family tensions, as Barry ignores his wife for the sake of his political connections and his son and stepson quarrel and bicker and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It's pretty obvious that Kubrick wants to take the piss out of historical romance novels and stories with this film, by giving us a stately, handsome but empty with an amoral dullard as our protagonist. That may be fine and good on an intellectual level, as I've heard many praise the film for doing just that. It's not a bad idea in theory, but in practice, it makes for a dreadful bore of a movie.

What does the film get right? Everything technical, which is a very back-handed complement. Every single frame is composed like a painting, leading to some of the most beautiful images ever captured on film. The climactic duel, Lady Lyndon's dissent into isolation, Barry's travels through war-torn Europe, all utilize striking images and cinematography, creating. The art direction is without peer throughout, with fabulous costumes and set design. Kubrick makes fabulous use of music, too, collection an assortment of classical pieces by Handel, Schubert, Vivalid, Mozart and others and using them brilliantly. But what is the point of all this jabberwocky? What is it in service of?

The movie is simply excrutiating to sit through. It's slow, stately, and generally dull. It grows really old, really fast, and at 184 minutes it's nothing short of painful. The first half of the story has some interest, with its anti-heroic adventure gone awry, but the second half is absolutely dull, retreating to the most treachly, hackneyed soap opera narrative imaginable. How are pictures supposed to make this bearable? The film does have a few glimmers of humor which shine through - Arthur O'Sullivan's courteous Irish highwayman, Barry's short-lived affair with a German woman (Diana Koermer) who "has been stormed and occupied many times", Lord Lyndon's confrontation wtih Barry - but the satirical intent of the film is largely stultified by its overall dullness. How can you laugh when you're asleep? Everything is meticulously shot and carefully orchestrated, but the film generates no interest in the events on screen. The movie seems completely empty; there's very little point to much anything that goes on, beyond subverting the old cliches of the Romantic novel, which granted are done well - but not in an entertaining fashion. The story progression is also somewhat spotty and suspect; key moments like Barry's defection to the Chevalier seem to happen for no reason at all, the pacing is stilted, and the narrative flows like a squeeze. It's a handsome piece of work, but it would seem simply for the sake of being handsome. People criticize David Lean for being stiff and sacrificing characters for pretty pictures and spectacle? I guess they slept through Barry Lyndon and were thus unable to apply that criticism to Kubrick.

Perhaps the best way to criticize the film is to go after its protagonist. Barry isn't sympathetic, which isn't surprising - he's supposed to be the amoral mirror image of the romantic hero of Georgian literature, who engages in a variety of adventures while remaining a selfish rogue. But Barry isn't even an interesting character. He's completely passive, doing nothing but allowing himself to be manipulated by events around him, and as such he's a complete bore. His wife remains a non-entity, almost never speaking, remaining in the background, her face an empty, catatonic gaze which registers nothing and says even less. If we got to know her at all it might be effective, but as it is she's simply a wax dummy staring at us from the periphery of the story. The supporting characters are broad caricatures or pencil sketches, confirming it would seem my above suppositions about Mr. Kubrick. When your viewers don't care a pile of goose poop about the story or the characters, you have a problem, regardless of how artistic you are.

Casting Ryan O'Neal as our lead character is another huge mistake. Perhaps the worst big-name actor in cinema history (he's up there with Keanu Reeves and Orlando Bloom in my book), casting him as an Irishman-turned-aristocrat is laughable. It may serve a purpose and is appropriate for the dull stateliness of the affair, but O'Neal is simply dead weight. The rest of the cast barely even rates a mention, in my book; Harry Kruger, Frank Middlemass, Arthur O'Sullivan, and Marie Kean (the bigoted Irish couple in Ryan's Daughter) are the only cast members who contribute anything of value in my book. When all of the characters are cyphers, it's not surprising that the equivalent performances are weak.

So, is Barry Lyndon worth watching? Depends. Do you enjoy torturing yourself with three hours of boredom? Are you, like so many on IMDB, a Kubrick cultist who does nothing but grovel at the feet of Stanley and decapitates anyone who dares disagree? Maybe if you like pretty pictures, and want to hear some bitching classical music, you'll love this one. But the rest of you have been warned.

(In the interest of fairness, here is an excellent counter-argument to my rantings. More intelligent and better-written, if undoubtedly wrong.)

Rating: 5/10 - Mediocre (and Disappointing)

Spartacus: The Thinking Man's Epic

"Oh, FUCK!"

In Rome circa 55 BC, Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) is a Thracian slave who is purchased as a gladiator by the sniveling Lanista Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), and along with his colleagues is trained in the art of killing. Falling for a slave girl, Varinia (Jean Simmons), and motivated by the death of one of his colleagues, Draba (Woody Strode), for refusing to kill him in a duel, Spartacus leads a bloody slave uprising that spreads throughout Italy. In Rome, political rivals Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier), a Patrician with dictatorial ambitions, and Gracchus (Charles Laughton), a Republican "man of the people", along with their subordinates Glabrus (John Dall) and Julius Caesar (John Gavin), manipulate the rebellion for their own gains. As army after army is defeated by Spartacus, the situation grows more desperate - until Crassus is given the ultimate authority to deal with Spartacus, and leads three huge Roman armies to trap him in a final showdown.

The stories behind the making of "Spartacus" are legendary. The firing of director Anthony Mann, the clash of ideas between screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, novelist Howard Fast, director Stanley Kubrick, and producer/star Kirk Douglas, and the attempts of various right-wing groups in Hollywood to block the film's release, are as interesting as the film itself. With all these troubles, it's hard to believe that "Spartacus" is such a good film. It's flawed, yes, but nonetheless several notches above most films of its type.

Most historical epics of the '40s and '50s were superficial spectacles which relied on casts of thousands, huge sets and scenery, giant battles, and star-power to (hopefully) overlook poor period writing and ridiculously formulaic stories. In 1959, William Wyler's "Ben-Hur" began to elevate the epic above mere shallow entertainment; in 1962, David Lean would take the genre to its pinnacle with "Lawrence of Arabia". "Spartacus" is very much in the mold of these films, rather than the empty spectacle of C.B. DeMille Biblical epics.

The film contains plenty of spectacle, with its use of gorgeous Spanish scenery (offset by the occasional back-lot scene), and the giant marching armies of Rome and Spartacus, whose army becomes so large that it literally blots out the screen. The film contains a few duels and fights (particularly the memorable trident-vs.-sword fight between Spartacus and Draba), but only one major battle scene: the climactic defeat of the slave army. The prelude to the final battle features one of the most awe-inspiring spectacles ever filmed, as the enormous Roman Army maneuvers into attack formation; this scene is so impressive that the failure to represent Spartacus's earlier victories is easily forgotten. Combined with Alex North's rousing musical score, this scene is one of the most memorable in film history.

But it's the much-debated political aspect of the film which propels it to classic status. The film manages to preserve most of Dalton Trumbo's notion that Spartacus is a genuine people's hero; he is motivated by the cruelty that he sees, the love of Varinia, and goes from an almost animalistic brute to a humanist who genuinely loves his followers. At one point, he refuses a request from his turncoat ally, Cilician pirate leader Tigranus Levantus (Herbert Lom), to evacuate Spartacus and his family to a life of luxury for themselves. The revolt may be futile from the beginning, but Spartacus feels that "just by opposing Rome, we may have won a victory." This is definitely a liberal point-of-view, but I don't see it as particularly offensive; then again, it was released in the aftermath of the McCarthy era, with a previously blacklisted screenwriter, so it was definitely more sensitive at the time.

Even more interesting than Spartacus himself is the intricately woven chess match between Gracchus and Crassus. Gracchus is old, crooked, and venal, and yet he recognizes the threat that Crassus poses to Rome: "I'd rather have a little Republican corruption, with a little Republican freedom, than rule by Crassus and no freedom at all!" Crassus, as written by Trumbo and portrayed by the great Laurence Olivier, is a fascinating character. At first glance he is simply a power-hungry egomaniac, but upon examination he is a much more complex character. Unsure of himself, and of his abilities, he feels threatened personally by Spartacus's rebellion and wants to gain power, we suspect, more to assuage his personal insecurities than for power's sake. Even after his victory, purging Rome of its enemies ("Lists of the disloyal have been compiled" - a line which must have really resonated in 1960) and marrying Varinia, Crassus is still unable to feel secure.

The acting is generally top-notch. Kirk Douglas gives a sterling portrait of Spartacus as a man who grows to have deeply-held convictions. He is more than a simple rock-jawed, noble hero; he is a complex character who grows over the course of the story. Laurence Olivier proves himself the brilliant actor he was with his wonderfully subtle and layered performance as Crassus, with Charles Laughton, in one of his last roles, a brilliant counterpart as his ultra-pragmatic rival. Tony Curtis is also fine as Antoninus, the romantic slave who becomes Spartacus's right hand man, and Peter Ustinov does a fine job as the sleazy Batiatus, who cares not a wit about politics, viewing the whole situation as a mere inconvenience to him. Smaller parts are ably handled by John Ireland, Herbert Lom, Charles McGraw, and Woody Strode. On the other hand, Jean Simmons, while gorgeous, is rather one-note as Varinia, while John Dall and John Gavin are given one-dimensional characters and play them accordingly.

Despite some flaws in its execution (too long, poor pacing, leaving out important battle scenes, undeveloped subplots involving supporting characters), "Spartacus"'s reputation as the "thinking-man's epic" is well-deserved. Skillfully weaving a tapestry of complicated political messages, well-rounded characters, and the usual pomp and spectacle expected of the genre, Kubrick's film, if not a masterpiece, is still a classic.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended