The question isn’t whether or not Stanley Kubrick is overrated, Mandrake; the question is whether or not it is even possible for Stanley Kubrick to be overrated.
We might as well ask if Peter Sellers is overrated. Which, of course, he is not.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Heh….Jonah is just adding to the list of things about which he is demonstrably ignorant.
Be grateful that it’s just a tweet. Can you imagine the horror of a full-length critique?
I don’t like Kubrick. I watched film upon film of his…and I just don’t get him
Not Dr. Strangelove?
Well, Kubrick was a photographer first, and it shows in the composed beauty or force of his shots, but the cool emotional tone of his work isn’t for everyone.
Noted, though, that while you say Kubrick isn’t for you, you don’t opine on the place in cinematic history his films deserve. You must not have the feeling of invincible authority that comes with being the exemplar of gold-plated nepotism.
Whenever Jonah types “IMHO,” a wise reader will put down the coffee before proceeding, for the sake of the computer screen.
Thanks a bunch. Now I’ll never be able to write anything about Jonah Goldberg again. You just finished the topic permanently.
“the exemplar of gold-plated nepotism” — You are a word lathe, you know how to turn a phrase. Excellent word-working, sir.
Yep, I can see how someone might not like him. Besides Dr. Strangelove, I don’t rewatch his stuff. Shining should never be on any ‘best’ list, whether ‘best horror’ or other. It’s not terrible. Just overdone.
And once you start talking about what an auteur a director is………
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2001 was perhaps the first movie I (and many people at the time) went back to see again and again at the local movie house. Figgerin out that ending was only part of it. It was the big screen highly advanced for its time special effects, the unsettling mood he created, the sense we were watching something well above and beyond the typical sci fi movie.
I also saw 2001 at the local theatre. It stunned everyone, but it was a time of movies that stunned. I think The Graduate and The Wild Bunch had more of an impact on me. A friend and I left the theatre after watching The Graduate going ‘holy f#%k!’.
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Kubrick certainly has a unique tone. I’m not really hopeful of capturing it here, but his sensibility seems to be that of pure aesthetics without being bound by traditional dramatic forms or traditional morality. I think that’s why so many of his movies were shocking in their day, and why he has forayed into (and changed) more genres than anyone I can think of. But there’s no character one can identify with in any of his movies from the mid-60s on, and most people would find that to be a problem. It’s a tribute to his genius that people watch his movies over and over again anyway.
Jonah Goldberg is not a heretic, as claimed by the Free Beacon writer. Hell, expressing contrarian opinions of the work of a famous artist is the expected opinion of a doctrinaire conservative.
No, Jonah is stupid. I avoid using that adjective to describe the vast majority of people with whom I disagree, but Jonah is really, really stupid. It’s the 800-pound dummy in the room.
Like a lot of columnists, he says stuff sometimes to be provocative and get blowback, probably to prove he exists.
In my opinion, there’s a sense in which he’s right. Kubrick is great; no doubt about it. But is he greater than Kazan? Than Hitchcock? Than Bergman? Than Polanski? Than Coppola? Those five are at the top of my list.
There are many great directors. Some are great in odd and wonderful ways, such as Walt Disney, Woody Allen, Buster Keating, Charlie Chaplain. There are some who might rightly be considered great but I may not appreciate as much as others, such as, for instance, Spielberg (too overblown) and Capra (too corny, except for “It’s a Wonderful Life” which is most surely corny and yet touches into something truthful. Tarantino isn’t one of my very favorites but I think “Pulp Fiction” was pure genius and many of his films are quite interesting, so for me he’s probably a bit higher than maybe he deserves to be overall. This is all very personal and subjective. Some might say John Huston was great. I’d put him a notch down from Kubric, who I’d put a notch down from Kazan and Hitchcock. Then there are so many great foreign directors. And so many who had one or two great films, like Robert Redford and those who created their own genre, such as Ang Lee (and perhaps Huston, if you consider him the father of Film Noir).
I’m not usually inclined to rank them. I do like considering the best, though.
I’d add Scorsese, Wilder, Ford and Wyler to the ones you listed. Nick Ray was disturbingly great at his peak, as was Welles. David O. Russell is putting up quite a long streak of artistically outstanding and deeply entertaining movies, as has Soderbergh. Alexander Payne isn’t versatile, but he does great things within his chosen genre. Malick, Lumet and Sturges are other favorites of mine. But good Lord, there’s so many greats.
Kubrick is among the many greats who never won an Academy Award.
Second Billy Wilder.
Fred Zinnemann too.
Third vote for Wilder — if he gave us nothing other than “Some Like It Hot,” he’d go on the list.
John Schlesinger
David Lean
Joel Cohen (“Fargo” and “Inside Llewyn Davis” are perfect movies IMHO.)
Yeah, the Coen Brothers belong among the greats.
“Some Like It Hot” is my favorite comedy, and Wilder got astoundingly great performances, particularly by Jack Lemmon. Billy and I.A.L. Diamond also brought us the wonderful wordplay of their terrific screenplay.
For a movie which satirized newspapers as cuttingly as “Network” satirized television, see Wilder’s “Ace In The Hole.” There were so many parts from that film which just left me gobsmacked. Some of the lines didn’t just cut to the bone, they sawed into it, and Kirk Douglas in particular bit into those lines with gusto.
“Some Like It Hot” is probably my favorite comedy as well. Was Jack Lemmon ever not wonderful in any movie? Agree on the screenplay, but I only give the highest marks to movies that have great screenplays. (It frustrated the hell out of me that Daniel Day-Lewis’ sublime performance in “Lincoln” was trapped in mediocre screenplay. He apparently wrote much of his dialogue.)
Thanks for the tip on “Ace in the Hole.”
Not getting your appreciation for David O Russell. Didn’t like either “Silver Linings Playbook” or “American Hustle.” While I didn’t care for “The Descendants,” Payne’s other work has been quite good.
Russell takes big risks, which is in my view an admirable trait from a Hollywood director working with major stars and budgets, and has plenty of liberal political commentary inserted in his manic dramatic comedies.
“The Fighter” was successful and packed with great performances. Two others I enjoyed are “Two Kings” and “I Heart Huckabees.” The last is a real wild card and highly discursive, but it worked great for me.
Hitchcock ranks way up there, but he really cranked ‘me out, and a number of his films were either mediocre, turkeys or what he might have considered “stillborn”, dull and lifeless. Kubrick made far fewer films, and only one or two might reasonably be deemed very subpar. I would put The Shining in the near-great category, flawed as it is.
George Stevens I would also put in the great category, at least for his long stretch of high quality movies in the 40s and 50s. Howard Hawks possibly too. John Ford — tad overrated but still among the immortals.
How would you describe Ang Lee’s genre?
Other than being extremely well made movies, can’t see any common thread, much less a genre, in “Sense and Sensibility,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and “Life of Pi.”
I like Stanley Kubrick and I’ve watched FMJ and Dr. Strangelove until my eyeballs fell out, but I don’t think he’s perfect. I think that The Shining wasn’t as good as it could’ve been and Jack Nicholson had to carry most of the movie. And I don’t get the pop cultural fascination with 2001, which I think was a thoroughly mediocre and even boring movie.
The Shining has always been a bit of a quantry to me. The book was pretty much a perfect horror story. Kubrick botched that story, but he wasn’t trying to tell that story, he just had to tell his own. OK, I guess, if your story is about a rather crazy person who becomes an ax murderer. From the first frame Nicholson is in, you know he wants to kill someone.
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I was named after Keir Dullea so I’m totally biased about 2001 being an essential document of mankind.
But that’s just me.
So, not to break up this open thread, but you should say something about the PA transit strike.
In terms of movies, I wonder if the Stanley Kubrick thing is related to the “White People Like Michael Gondry” thing.
Umm, Paths TO Glory?
Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, Jonah, is it too much to ask for you to use the Google machine once in a while?
Paths of Glory is excellent, and compare the classic, The Grand Illusion.