Humankind as Murderer

Audiences remain divided on 1981’s The Shining.

Despite cementing a place in our shared cultural memory, people are still uncertain about what to make of director Stanley Kubrick’s venture into genre filmmaking. Is The Shining a masterpiece of horror? A glorified art house film? A sly homage to gothic affectations? Or a mixed-up and muddled dud? Engage the most cursory search and you can find all three of these positions being defended vociferously in print and digital material.

Trapped in his own head...

Part of the room for such debate stems from the film itself.

Kubrick, fresh off the less-than-spectacular Barry Lyndon (which also divides critics), famously waded through piles of contemporary novels in search of a new film project before—and this, oddly in my opinion—settling on a popular novel by Stephen King that is essentially a page-turner of a haunted house story. Kubrick jettisoned much of the King novel, keeping only the setting and the bare fundamentals of the plot. The result is a complicated horror film that attempts to depict some frightening realities about humankind that King never addressed.

Kubrick invented the steadi-cam specifically for the film.

Specifically, by following the devolutionary arc of Jack Nicholson’s character from a flawed—and potentially abusive and alcoholic—husband and father to an outright murderer, Kubrick is trying to tell us that ultimately humanity is a violent species of animal that is quite capable of killing others of its own kind. Furthermore, if we consider that the family unit is the basic unit of society and society—or civilization writ large—is that which separates humanity from other animals, then the true horror of what Kubrick is showing us becomes even more clear, because by depicting a man who turns against his own family and attempts to murder it, Kubrick is giving his audience the ultimate depiction of how humanity’s dark tendencies can become unhinged and turned inward.

In avoiding King’s plot of a haunted house, Kubrick instead gives us haunted people, and a palpable theme throughout the film is that we are all standing on the shoulders of violence, so to speak, and that the evil done by other humans in days past somehow lingers and taints the present. As I have suggested, this is vastly different from the King novel. Whereas King viewed Nicholson’s character as being victimized by the external and supernatural forces of the haunted hotel, Kubrick clearly believes the evil Nicholson brought with him to the hotel is his own. In other words, Nicholson needed a space in which to go mad and act out his demons. The Overlook Hotel provides him with one.

However, at the same time, we cannot not say the hotel in the film is not in some way “evil” or “haunted” and therein lies the problem with reaching for an overarching analysis to describe the film.

The blood of past deeds?

In interviews given around the time The Shining was in production, Kubrick discusses ESP and psychic abilities in terms that clearly demonstrate that he believes in such powers and intended his audience to take them seriously in the film. At the same time, the “spirit” of the hotel and its ability to manipulate reality and communicate with the living is also “real,” in that Danny, with his psychic abilities, is not the only one who sees the gallons of blood gushing from the elevator. His mother sees it, too. Thus, we have to conclude that Overlook is in fact “haunted” in some way (all three characters experience it), and this haunting helps Nicholson slip further into the madness that always lurked within him. Keeping the hotel as a psychic force outside the characters with a will of its own also signals that Kubrick wanted The Shining to function as a film within the horror genre and we can therefore safely say that this is a gothic picture in the gothic tradition, albeit one with a heavy focus on the psychological.

I believe the film would have been better served if Kubrick had finished jettisoning King’s plot and gone more with his own instincts (I.E. – That the protagonist’s psychopathology is entirely internal and the place his ‘breakdown’ occurs inconsequential). However, Kubrick did not do this, and we are thus left to contend with the fact the film is partially haunted and partially psychological, an interesting duality in and of itself, but one which I believe has confused both audiences and critics for years. Maybe Kubrick could not make up his mind, maybe he wanted both? We cannot know. It is, however, worth reflecting that duality and partiality are referenced numerous times in the film through the use of mirrors, double images and codes, such as the famous, backwards REDRUM.

King famously hated The Shining and said that what was wrong with it is that it was made by a man who thinks too much and feels too little (film critic Pauline Kael feels this way about all of Kubrick’s efforts in cinema). The charge that Kubrick’s work can come across as cold and being more interested in aesthetics than emotions is not an easy one to deny. Writing about The Shining, Kael said Kubrick’s characters are dead on the screen, and what should be a family drama and homage to gothic horror instead becomes a rather robotic metaphysical examination of the timelessness of evil.  I think she comes closes to grasping what is happening in The Shining but misses its essential point: Jack cannot resist himself or the Overlook Hotel, but his wife and his son can and do, and therein lies hope—and some would say, the foundation for the entirety of civilization.

The "unfeeling" director made a film chronicling his disgust
with humanity's murderous tendency.

Exactly why Jack is different—that is, why he falls prey to the inner murderer all of us have—and why the others, such as Danny or his mother or the cook, who also has “The Shining,” do not is the important question raised by the film. Kubrick himself seems uncertain of the answer, but he does—rather grudgingly, I think—believe that murder in and of itself is one of the most human actions of them all, because it has been with us from the beginning of our existence and will be until the end of our days. But unfeeling? No, I cannot see that. In The Shining what Kubrick has given us is the grimmest portrait of murder possible, one that he leaves little doubt about its ultimate ugliness.

The Ten Essential American Classics

It is the end of the year and lists and countdowns abound.

Unable to sum up 2010 in any relevant fashion on this site, I have decided instead to post my Top 10 list of American classics. These are the essential pictures, the ones every living and breathing person on Earth should endeavor to see to better understand the cinematic art form, America as a nation … and to just sit back and enjoy great, old fashioned moviemaking.

1. Citizen Kane (1941) – Stands like a colossus over all American film. Orson Welles makes a legend out of himself by petulantly tugging an icon (William Randolph Hearst) from its pedestal. Well-known for its technical innovations and style of storytelling, audiences today often overlook how well the film works as a character study or a piece of social criticism. That Kane’s lifetime of enterprise and achievements cannot recapture the sanctity of his “Rosebud” is both tragic and profound. The American Dream has never been so cleverly explored, celebrated and then debunked.

2. Casablanca (1942) – My favorite film and possibly the greatest motion picture of all time. It cannot equal Citizen Kane for technical prowess or philosophical depth (nor is it as influential), but in every other way this film is its equal. The actors and actresses are all perfect in their roles, and every role is memorable and unique. By blending equal parts of adventure, romance and suspense with a timeless tale concerning sacrifice and moral imperatives, the film manages to have something for everyone. It also speaks to a great many eternal questions about the human condition without taking the easy turns to either sentimentality or sanctimony. Impossible to watch and not feel uplifted.

3. Rear Window (1954) – Unquestionably Hitchcock’s masterpiece, in which he deftly juggles ethics, psychology and suspense to titillate audiences. An even greater film when one considers it is largely set in one room and revolves around a wheelchair-bound protagonist who never leaves his apartment. Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly ooze stardom, practically float across the screen. The final 30 minutes stir up more tension and mood than any other movie I am aware of. A murder is discovered and exposed, but Hitchcock forces us to consider the cost of the exposure and to wonder if the protagonists are not as demented as the man who actually killed his wife.

4. The Godfather (1972) – A powerful exploration of the perversion of the American dream, an epic about the rise and fall of a family or just the best mafia film ever made? Take your pick. The Godfather is all of these things and more. Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo’s refashioning of the latter’s rather ordinary novel is perfectly executed. Each scene precisely conveys its intent, and when taken as a whole, this picture is one of the few films that successfully steers the audience through a host of conflicting emotions and moral conflicts that refuse easy characterization. There has never been a better movie made about the shades of gray that exist between the black and white of good and evil. This is why we root for Michael at the same time we shudder at what he is becoming.

5. Patton (1970) – There are many noteworthy war films, but Patton stands supreme. Released during the Vietnam War, the film’s creators envisioned this as an anti-war picture. They were horribly wrong. In addition to multiple White House screenings by Richard Nixon, the general populace took Patton into its bosom as a celebration of American tough-mindedness. Patton, whose famous temperament and lust for battle attracted admiration, loathing and fear during his lifetime, is played to perfection by George C. Scott (who famously refused his Oscar for this role). As a character study, the film’s nuanced portrayal of the general’s megalomania, gallantry and genius is unequaled.

6. Chinatown (1974) – Nothing is more American than film noir, and the genre never worked better than it does in Roman Polanski’s 1974 homage starring Jack Nicholson. Filled with seedy politicians, corrupt policemen and neurotic women this gothic tale about a private detective in California forces audiences to confront institutionalized injustice and ultimately accept our own powerlessness to remake every corner of the world. The last line of the film, which might be the best coda ever penned for the screen, says it all: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

7. Dr. Strangelove (1964) – Difficult to pick just one from Kubrick’s many great works, but this film is satire incarnated and it seems to grow better with age. Indeed, as the Cold War fades from modern memory, one can easily imagine a scenario where this film comes to stand as a kind of documentary – albeit one with a great deal of hyperbole – representing many of the attitudes born from that complex conflict. A virtuoso performance from Peter Sellers, who plays multiple roles, and a script infused with the kind of crass intelligence that coughs up endless one-liners, such as “Gentlemen, there’s no fighting in the war room,” ensures this picture’s Olympian status.

8. From Here to Eternity (1953) – Long before the hardheaded contrarians in Coolhand Luke or Rebel Without a Cause, there was Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt in From Here to Eternity. Prewitt’s inability to be broken by an institution he loves – the U.S. Army – is an aggressive examination of individualism and personality. Each of the soldier’s flirtations with depravity is sharpened by the audience’s awareness that the film is ticking down to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. These are the men and women who would become the Greatest Generation and in the film we learn about their strong sense of self, their categorical dismissal of weakness and pedantry.

9. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) – Selected just ahead of Leone’s other masterpiece, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as the best exemplar of the American Western. Why? Manifest Destiny, the cruelty and injustice of the West, the rugged individualism it inspired, the complex code of the survivors who journeyed there for a fresh start, the notion that to achieve the moral end, a person may have to do some immoral things along the way – it is all here, in this often overlooked film. So, too, is a great performance by Henry Fonda.

10. The Graduate (1967) – No other film captures the pivot between the America of the 1950s and the America that emerges from the crucible of the 1960s as well as The Graduate. The story of Benjamin Braddock’s inability to orient himself within the environment created by his parents is not just another retelling of a timeless crisis faced by all adolescents, but a powerful metaphor for a country that was clearly restless about its future. Braddock’s sordid journey through the boozy, adulterous world of Mrs. Robinson ends with a frantic escape – undertaken with Mrs. R’s daughter – from the limited possibilities setup by the previous generation. Or does it? The final expression on Ben and Elaine’s faces is one of the most enigmatic in film. Are they happy? Sad? Relieved? Or simply resigned to eventually recreating the kind of world they just escaped from?

The Bottom of the Barrel Never Looked So Good

The only reason anyone still watches The Killing – a 1956 film noir revolving around a clever heist at a California horse track – is because Stanley Kubrick directed it, and at some point, the dedicated will peruse the auteur’s less known works in much the same way a Shakespearean scholar eventually reads the bard’s mediocre plays (and there are plenty of them).

Invested in Kubrick’s greatness as they are, some of the film world’s literati have attempted to inject a sense of austerity into The Killing that is just not there. These fans will typically argue that it offers a tantalizing preview to the filmmaker’s future greatness, while others note it served as the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs – the latter being a dubious honor, from my perspective, as it rests uncomfortably on the far from certain proposition that Tarantino is a great filmmaker and Reservoir Dogs a great film.

Kubrick’s pervasive cynicism is remarkably potent in The Killing, but little else of the visionary man is on display. There are a few visual shots – such as the long tracking sequence that follows the galloping race horses – that feel like Kubrick’s better known work, but the subject matter here is hardly the sort suited for his talents. Watching – as we all are – from the mighty wake of Kubrick’s career, it is easy to imagine the great director somehow subjugated his usual flair to the demands of the film noir genre, but this is really little more than an excuse for some of the more unimaginative aspects of the movie.

Indeed, for passionate Kubrick fans, the relative simplicity of film noir, along with the uncomplicated nature of The Killing’s conflict, is its ultimate undoing. This is not a film that demands repeat viewings – nor should we expect it to. A plot revolving around a heist and its fallout cannot possibly hope to comment on society and the human condition with the grandeur and scope Kubrick reached for in other films. Still, for all its ordinariness, The Killing is far from an average film.

For starters, not many heist films have the courage to allow their plots to deal so brutally with the plotters themselves. Most of the protagonists in The Killing wind up dead on a floor in a cheap motel (and if you doubt this kind of twist does not take guts, ask yourself if today’s Ocean’s 11 remake could ever end this way). Even the money – quite literally – is scattered in the wind.

What is most remarkable about the film's conclusion is that it is set in motion by an expected source – a dour and disgruntled husband, played with precise foolishness by Elisha Cook Jr. – in the most unexpected of fashions. Marie Windsor, called “Queen of B’s” on account of her proclivity for appearing in B-movies, augments Cook’s standout performance with a delightful turn as a lurid and manipulative femme fatale.

Film noirs cannot keep from moralizing (it is part of what makes them film noirs), but the only message Kubrick and company are able to impart with this script is how the best laid plans can fail for the strangest and most unforeseen reasons. This is something quite different than today’s heist films, which all seem designed to show how clever the characters are – and, by silent extension, how much cleverer the writer’s that dreamed up these criminal plots are…

Kubrick and his cast did about as much as possible with the material they had to work with in The Killing. The film is sharp in all the right places, even though it has some unavoidable dull edges. The last half hour, when a great deal of tension builds expertly toward the frantic and grim conclusion, is particularly edge of the seat stuff. If Kubrick’s name were not on the masthead, this film would paradoxically be judged more enjoyable and less important by those who stumbled across it. Since his name is on it, the best and least we can say is that there are plenty of other directors who would love to have their "worst" movie be something along the lines of The Killing.

On Learning to Live with the Machine

What did audiences in 1957 think of Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory?

The film is incredibly dark and moody, nearly every scene oozes with overt cynicism about the absurdity of war and the shallowness of patriotism. Such sentiments seem out of place with our image of the 1950s as safe and sterile. After all, people still believed then. There was no Vietnam, no cultural upheaval and the gradual unraveling of the public trust in officialdom that accompanied both had not yet begun.

Of course, the notion that cynicism was invented in the 1960s is little more than an oft repeated untruth. The requisite horrors of the First World War produced a decade of commentators and artists who ruefully referred to the Great Lie that lay behind the conflict (Gertrude Stein would famously call some of them the “Lost Generation”).

Kubrick could have chosen the easy route with Paths of Glory and simply added his voice to an already impressive chorus with yet another anti-war missive about an armed conflict that seems to make less sense the further time advances from it. Instead, he decided to utilize the incredible lethality of the war – in which there were more than 38 million combat casualties – to present a simple but powerful tale that explores the mathematical ruthlessness of bureaucracy and the ways in which power dehumanizes many of the men who possess it.

This last point is made clear when a pair of French generals meet in the film’s first scene to discuss the possibility of a new offensive. At first, Gen. Mireau resists his commanding officer’s entreaties to attack a German fortification known as the Anthill, saying that he cares too much for his men and will not order them to lose their lives making such a pointless attack. However, when the possibility of promotion is dangled in front of Mireau, he quickly loses sight of the men as anything other than a means to an end and agrees to the attack.  

Kirk Douglas plays Colonel Dax, frontline commander caught between Mireau and the other clueless generals and France’s brave but dispirited soldiers in the trenches. Dax knows Mireau’s order to take the Anthill is a non-starter, but he also knows resisting the order is futile. When the subsequent attack is predictably driven back by heavy German machinegun fire, an enraged Mireau blames the offensive’s failure on group cowardice and orders 100 of Dax’s men to be hauled in front of a firing squad and shot.

Eventually, Mireau is forced to accept a deal in which one soldier from each of the division’s companies will be randomly selected and tried for cowardice. At the trial, Dax does his best to defend the trio of unlucky men, but the hopelessness of resisting the gears of a military bureaucracy that believes more in chugging toward a conclusion than it does in contemplating the character of its actions leads to a verdict that is never really in doubt.

In the film’s penultimate scene, a captured German girl is forced to sing to the French troops. At first, the French jeer her and shout obscenities, but as the girl continues to sing “The Faithful Hussar,” the men slowly are cowed into silence by the sweetness of her voice and eventually they begin to hum the tune, not knowing the words. Equally disturbing and moving, the scene reminds us that for all the pessimism present in Kubrick’s films, he understands the universality of beauty and believes that it transcends nationality and ideology. That it takes a scared refugee to remind the soldiers of their own humanity – and indeed, the humanity of the Huns on the other side of no man’s land – is perhaps the film’s most ironic and subtle moment.

Much of the rest of Paths of Glory suffers from obviousness: Its heroes and villains are far too easy to identify and the complete lack of unexpected choices in the plot places the audience in the awkward position of constantly knowing more about what will happen than the characters do. Even so, one cannot deny the power of the injustice documented in this film. And I am not sure we will ever see a more frightening depiction of the heartless efficiency present in large, bureaucratic administrations.

Kubrick, of course, would go on to make better films, but no one can deny that this effort remains an authoritative opening argument from an artist who uses the medium of cinema to ask his audiences essential questions about the human condition.