Marya Murphy

I need to get into the habit of blogging before my brain disintegrates completely. Perhaps you’ve heard of “Mommy Brain?” Very real phenomenon. I’m working at about 12% thinkerage capacity. My current sickly disposition doesn’t help. Nor does the budding Vicodin addiction brought on by sacroiliac joint dysfunction brought on by pregnancy. Babies are destroying my life. As a plus, they’re also making it worth living. See previous post.

When my delightfully pushy spouse set up this blog for me as a Christmas present I requested that he give it the tag line, “Opening my web presents.” He opted instead, all-knowing as he is, for a play on my sometime anti-Kubrick sentiments. “100% Kubrick-free.” And now, four posts into my blog, I’m going to flout that advertised promise. Promised advertisement. My Christmas present to the aforementioned spouse (my other husbands received only gift cards) was the 2007 Warner Brothers Stanley Kubrick Collection, which includes (stingily): 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining and Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. It lacks Paths of Glory, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, Spartacus, The Killing and, most egregiously, Dr. Strangelove. Oh, and whatever he did before that.

Let me first explain that I never claimed Kubrick was anything but a genius. My problem is not with Kubrick (although he can be a bit draggy at times and I’m a theatrical girl at heart–give me a gun shot, thunder, scream or loud phone ringing every 12 minutes, please). My problem is with 18-26-year-old-white-male “film buffs” who worship Kubrick to the exclusion of all other filmmakers. You know the type. Cinema is emotional for me. Malick, Satyajit Ray, Wong Kar Wai, Preston Sturges, Orson Welles, Tarkovsky, Tsai Ming-Liang, Von Trier. They are all intellectual and playful, yes, but they feeeeeel. They’re soggy with feeling. I’ve always seen Kubrick films primarily as intellectual exercises. Fabulously so. I was wrong. I still maintain that the majority of the 18-26-year-old-white-male “film buffs” of the world are only appreciating him for his brain and are missing out on a world of imprecise, inexact, messy, dripping-with-heart cinema. But they’ll learn.

I’ve recently watched for the first time (and loved) Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket. I’d seen parts of 2001 before–it’s impossible not to. I’m not a big fan. This feels like a tedious exercise. Great beauty, though, and insanely ambitious and daring. But it doesn’t touch me and it doesn’t engage me enough intellectually.

I can’t watch Eyes Wide Shut again. It pained me too much the first time. Over-rehearsed-to-deadness dialogue and B-movie interludes. Dreamlike, sure. And some scenes remain vivid to me 10 years later (Leelee Sobieski). But I can’t do it.

Still, Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining are all amazing. I even liked Lolita. I’ve yet to see Barry Lyndon, Spartacus or The Killing.

The documentary in the collection was one of the best of its kind I’ve seen. And it would have persuaded me, if Paths and Full Metal Jackethad not already, to become a Kubrick completist. There is feeling in Kubrick’s films. It is buried in meticulousness, but there is warmth there. And there is beauty and bravery and innovation and savagery and morality.

I’m sorry, Stan. I done you wrong.

Oh, man. 100% Kubrick free is gone. The Hegemon must have removed it. For the best, I suppose. But this post has achieved some degree of mootness.