Lichtspieltheater: When images overtake words.

Completely calm, completely relaxed Stanly Kubrik looks at his cinematographer and says “Either you do what I tell you now, or you disappear from this set and don’t come back” after he put a 50mm lens on the camera and not, as Kubrik had ordered, a lens with a focal distance of 25mm. Wrongfully.



Genius and insanity: STANLEY KUBRICK (1928 - 1999)



  

Kubrik was a perfectionist. After making SPARTACUS, he never wanted to have anything to do with the way of working in Hollywood again, because he did not have full control over the project. So he disappeared to England and became the first independent filmmaker. Nobody, no studio, no producer, should influence his work, only the film was important to him. Exactly the way he had imagined it, without compromises. His films were and are labyrinths of eroticised horror, violence and fear, merciless, cynical and cold. They are beyond reality. When seeing a Kubrick, you can be sure: you experience a dream. And you will see, that here more can happen than you could ever imagine. When the film is over, you wake up. Fall back into the ‘real world’, try to grasp, to clarify what the film was trying to tell you. Yet the film is free of answers. There is no good, no evil. Only questions and the human being, that only changes a little. Kubrick holds a mirror in front of the face of this human being and exposes us, the viewer, as society’s voyeur.    FULL METAL JACKET (1987) They show us the eternal dualism, the eternal inconsistency of man kind and its actions, a mystery, bundled into an object, for example the helmet in FULL METALL JACKET, or the black monolith in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It is inscrutable. And we look for its meaning. In the film we fly to Jupiter, outside the film we discuss about it and realize we have reached the boundaries of words. What we wanted to say was shown by Kubrick. In pictures. And he needs 143 minutes (of which barely 43 minutes are spoken in). We discussed it. A movie night with friends and among others 2001: A Space Odyssey. The result of our discussion was somewhere between pathetic and hard to follow. And speechlessness .



Filmography

Fear and Desire (1953)

Killer's Kiss (1955)

The Killing (1956)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Spartacus (1960)

Lolita (1962)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned stopped worrying and love the Bomb (1964)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

 A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

The Shining (1980)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Marcus.