Kubrick’s Success

Stanley Kubrick was one of the most famous and most recognized film directors of modern cinema. His milestone works were also often subject to controversy. It was yet ironic that the academy ignored him despite the perfectly executed elements in his films such as cinematography, narrative, production design and casting. It would be impossible to pin point the exact contributor to his success, since the combined form of all those elements are the source of the beauty and depth in his movies. For example the movie ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ would not retain the atmospheric intensity of the ballade if the music playing was ascend, which was a reversed version of a Romanian Liturgy. However, there must be a key element that distinguishes Kubrick from his contemporaries. Perhaps a secret formula? In my opinion a pattern of his style can be observed throughout his movies which is essentially staging to both convey an ambiguous narrative through visuals and add an overall visual aesthetic and beauty. This can also be identified as mise-en-scene.

We can see that Kubrick was so keen on the on staging of the film that his movies took many shots until the perfect and satisfactory result was achieved by Kubrick. As one of the special photographic effects designer Douglas Trumbull in the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ indicates in his essay: “One of the most serious problem that plagued us throughout the production was simply keeping track of all the ideas, shots, and changes and constantly re-evaluating and updating designs, storyboards and script itself.” (158) Kubrick was so tedious and perfectionist in the production of his movies that his cast was often frustrated. The shooting of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ for example took four hundred days, which is an all-time high in the film history. This shows Kubrick’s dedication to the staging and performance of the cast. One of aims behind this masterful staging was to convey a narrative through visual representations of the things that are in the shot frame. This can be particularly observed in his movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey. The appearances of monoliths in the movie. The cut from the thrown bone to the airship. The depiction of human condition and helplessness in the void of space. The star-gate sequence. The convoluted time in the lonely room of Bowmen where the shots cut through his life until his death bed. And the following image of the floating ‘star child’ on the earth’s orbit. All these visually stunning shots that actually contain next to no conversation, are a way of Kubrick’s conveying of an ambiguous narrative that is very subjective. As he was quoted: “I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophical content… I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience. That reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does…” (Kagan 145) Indeed these visual experiences have a wide spectrum of subjective comprehension and theorizing. As was pointed out in the book about the Kubrick’s cinema by Norman Kagan, there is two major ways of understanding 2001, which are the scientific poetic and the new myth. (Kagan 159) Scientific poetic is an altered version of manipulative evolution of humanity from apes to interstellar species. The manipulation in stages of evolution comes from the alien interference via the appearance of the monoliths whenever humanity is either stuck in its instinctive carnal shallowness or in the mechanisation of human nature from all the technological advancements. This mechanisation can be a little too subtle to observe in the movie, but it can be detected in the contrast of emotional HAL 9000 and the other rather machine like astronauts. This interpretation is also present in Kagan’s understanding where he points out the humans that discover the monolith on moon have emptied themselves of vigor, wonder or even meaning by over-exploiting their tools and rationality. (Kagan 160) The second way of understanding the movies is via the new myth. This view sees everything in the movie as a representation of the fundamental truths about life. The characters and events supposed to imply the universal processes and principals. So the dawn of man is triggered by the first monolith which is a symbol for intelligence and the agency of discovery and curiosity. Then the second monolith symbolizing the end of humans without the sensation of awe and wonder since the pose in front of it like tourists posing on a beach. And since humans have become like machines and machines became like humans, hence HAL singing before dying, humans have to become something more. (Kagan 162) These two different interpretations of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey are derived for the biggest part from the visual queuing of events and, staging and the composition in the frame by Kubrick. This kind of narrative is a rarity in the film history. A movie containing such a small script, there is thousands of pages of meaning embedded in the mise-en-scene of this movies. Kubrick’s staging is so accurate, in fact, that when the viewer sees those shots the perception of something being wrong becomes inevitable or the everything fits so perfectly something bad is about to happen. The perfection within staging produces a symmetrical or balanced composition that it contributes generating anxiety within the viewer. This is especially apparent in the Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ where the camera follows the tricycle through the floors of the giant empty hotel for minutes without anything happening until to notorious left turn and the sudden encounter of the twin sisters. In Kubrick’s films we can find a relation between staging and singular composition, which creates a pattern in a lot of his shots that he made in his career. This composition is a making of a filling depth towards the middle of the frame. This affect is achieved by symmetrical directing of viewers perception to the center of the frame via the components in the screen. For example in the movie ‘Full Metal Jacket’ the arrangement of the beds in the barrack and the coherent stance of the soldiers convey a depth of field towards the center of the room. This is called one point perspective technique. What distinguishes Kubrick on this field is his ability to create a depth of field by the subtle arrangement of the composition of the frame not he perspective. Here is the true genius of Kubrick revealed, that he uses mise-en-scene to create depth of field and thus an overall harmony in his shots. He also incorporates the smooth camera movements or completely stationary camera where the components in the frame are motionless. This creates psychological apprehension in tension or anxiety yet again in the spectator, due to the prolonged expectation of something to happen. This technique is thoroughly used in ‘The Shining’ where there is quite a lot of motionless tension. Finally, I have shown a few examples of how Stanley Kubrick archives the grandiose and specific sensation and deepness through composition and not through perspective manipulation as many might think. For Kubrick the genre of the movie does matter very little when it comes to his talent of staging and one point perspective shots. The examples of such beautifully executed shots are evident no matter what movie Kubrick has created. We have seen the two sides of Kubrick’s mise-en-scene talent, which are his harmoniously contacted visual narrative and his composition arrangement to achieve astonishing one point perspective shots.

Works Cited
Kagan, Norman. The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick. New York: The Continium Publishing Group, 2000.
Trumbell, Douglas. Perspectives on Stanley Kubrick. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996.