Although most of his movies are underground, Stanley Kubrick remains a legend in the film industry. His way of working is one that is found unique among other film directors like Stephen Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, or Martin Scorsese. He takes every single shot seriously like it’s a painting and forms a work of art in the process.
The Shining
Saying that The Shining is “a work of art” would be an understatement to the brilliance that came along with this motion picture. Although the original author, Stephen King, didn’t appreciate how Kubrick interpreted his novel, audiences fell in love with this classic. It has been told that the famous scene in which Wendy is swinging a bat took a hundred and twenty seven takes making The Guinness Book of World Records. On top of that, the film also took five years to make which shooting approximately lasting an entire year. Kubrick stated:
“There is a wonderful suggestive timeliness of making a movie imposes on your life. I’m doing exactly the same as I was doing when I was eighteen and making my first movie. It frees you from any other sense of time.”
Eyes Wide Shut
Starring the famous Tom Cruise, Eyes Wide Shut is one of Kubrick’s least known films. Dr. William Harford goes on a spree of sexual fantasies after his wife admits to pursuing an affair at a time in the past. He discovers and underground orgy in the heart of New York City and is warned to never come back. With production time taking a total of four hundred days, setting yet another Guinness World Record.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The classic movie has remained a staple in most of abstract American movie making. The story is about the evolution of man, what the act of murdering can really mean, and what the future can hold. In an extremely strange and different way, Kubrick achieves this story with astronauts traveling through space. With no dialogue in the first twenty five minutes of the movie, the strange set design, and obscure transitions, it’s hard to understand the meat that is behind this film. Yet, it is still a classic because of it’s symbolism of mankind as a whole.
