Can’t argue with that although I’d substitute Spielberg or Lucas or Peter Jackson (nowadays) for Michael Bay.
The way certain people have deified Kubrick has obviously only aggravated what may have otherwise remained relatively ambivalent feelings on the man and his work. Most negative opinions I read tend to contain disgust at his misanthropy, which may well be justified. I’m something of a misanthrope myself, so I empathize. I also respect intelligence probably too much.
Unfortunately, User, your quote sounds accurate to me. Kubrick was my first love. All I know is that I’ve returned to him as I’ve aged and I still am impressed – unlike, say, Kurosawa, whom I hadn’t expected to ‘get over.’
I will say that if you’re looking for tangible reasons to deify Kubrick, the deal that Warner Brothers gave him remains pretty darned unprecedented. But who’d want to do that?
It makes no sense. Kubrick was never a Fanboy type filmmaker.
It´s a bit more complex than that, and has to do with the media manipulation high school kids have to endure in general. The celebration of superficial values makes it difficult for those who grow up to get confronted with and comprehend the artistic and metaphysical concerns of films like “2001”, so that the only aspects they get to appreciate are the most striking ones, in particular violence. I don´t think that Michael Bay or the fanboy effect is to blame, but rather the almost complete abscence of appreciation of art in our societies, and a nonsense education system that destroys young people´s access to art. As long as kids are not prepared to appreciated art in general, only a few individuals will be able to go the path for themselves, while most will remain victims of superficial entertainment, no matter what films they get to watch.
Never saw Kubrick as a popular or fanboy director. Maybe the statement applies for Tim Burton or Tarantino.
Not that they are major directors like Kubrick but they are certainly part of excellent cinema. At the same time the are popular and that’s distracting for some.
Well put Apursanasar. As a Junior in high school and a former Bay-lover, I know this better than anybody.
Well put Apursansar.
The original statement is valid, although I would say Kubrick is several more degrees removed from Michael Bay in the popular imagination; a little more respectable big spectacle filmmakers like Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson would be more accurate to say. Its a little exaggerated, because most fanboys, while certainly aware of Kubrick, and maybe will cite him from time to time for cool points, are not sitting around having showings of Barry Lyndon or Eyes Wide Shut in between marathons of Spider Man and Tarantino films. True, he is deified in the public consciousness, and I think that distracts some people from the real quality of his works, but his deification came pretty early on, partly because of his amazing deal with Warners, and mostly just from being around at his height at the right time in history, when the studios were falling apart and more willing to give free reign to an artist like him. He got real lucky.
My impression these days is that his name is much more famous than most of his actual films. Most fanboys today do not have the patience, let alone the comprehension, to really sit through and immerse themselves in something as cerebral as 2001 or Eyes Wide Shut. But I do tend to have more hope when I meet young fanboy types who are genuinely interested in Kubrick, but who otherwise have pretty crude taste (my little brother comes to mind).- maybe he can be considered a “gateway drug” to greater exposure to more artistic cinema!
However, for me at least, his work stands up no matter how much I get immersed in more obscure cinema, and actually keeps growing with time and repeat viewings. He has few films, but so, so much within those films.
“It makes no sense. Kubrick was never a Fanboy type filmmaker.”
Thank you, David. Totally agree. I remember it even baffled me during high school (before I dug film and back when I thought Kubrick was BO-RING!) why my peers were fanboys of FULL METAL JACKET and CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Hell, we didn’t even have Michael Bay back in those days (maybe BAD BOYS 1). Maybe all those jocks on the football team had better taste than me all along.
Perhaps “fanboy” is the wrong word but you must admit that the clinical precision of most of his work makes him more accessible for a young viewer who is interested in expanding their cinematic horizons but wary of films and filmmakers whose work is more elliptical and ambiguous. Even 2001 is pretty rigorously edited.
No, I don’t agree with it at all.
“A Clockwork Orange” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” make you think differently about what a movie can, and perhaps should, be.
I discovered Kubrick when I was 16 (about 10 years ago), and I knew then that a person could have their stamp on a fully realized cinema work.
I think it might also have to do with high schoolers being really stoned a lot of the time.
no, i dont agree either, do not think that somebody who appreciates michael bay, can get to like kubrick (who s that mister bay to be put in a same sentence with Spielberg or peter jackson, even less kubrick)
Um, we’re talking about high school kids. It’s pretty normal for a high school kid to like films like the ones Bay makes. Some folks tastes grow more than others.
i work in a high school and not a quarter of our students likes mr bay films, they enjoy the hype but once its over they dosent returns to the films, (which i myself have not seen at all)
Kubrick is a big name, and accessible. The leap is hardly ever from Michael Bay to Kubrick—most people who like Michael Bay movies don’t even know them as “Michael Bay movies”, they know them as “The new movie from the guy who brought you The Rock and Armageddon.” They know Transformers. Kubrick is an easily accessible name to anyone who looks up what the word “director” means, and from there want to see examples of ways in which a single “director” can make a body of work with their stamp on it (the Auteur theory, but from a much less academic and theoretical stand-point). Any site in the world that deals with “directors” will have Kubrick, Spielberg, and Hitchcock on it, whether the website in general has positive or negative opinions of that director. But everybody knows Spielberg and Hitchcock as names, whereas Kubrick still has that sense of discovery. “Oh, I just discovered Kubrick. My god, have you SEEN 2001: A Space Odyssey? I mean, really watched it?”
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
—PolarisDiB
> “I think it might also have to do with high schoolers being really stoned a lot of the time.” <—-
“i work in a high school and not a quarter of our students likes mr bay films, they enjoy the hype but once its over they dosent returns to the films, (which i myself have not seen at all)”
That sounds pretty unusual but I’ll take your word for it. Nevertheless, I watched a lot of shitty movies when I was in high school and eventually started watching better films like some of Kubrick’s. I’d be willing to wager that that is a common story on this site and with cinephiles in general.
^ Guilty.
i dont think kubrick suffers from anything. his canonical status is set in stone. he’ll always be a cinematic god, and that will never change. ive never noticed him to get a critical backlash just because of his status as a film god.
I find dismissing a film (or director) due to their popularity with the regular movie-going crowd to be ridiculous.
What makes a film good isn’t the sophistication of its audience, and the same goes for bad. If Kurosawa said “The Hotte and the Nottie” was a masterpiece would you change your mind about it?
Kubrick doesn’t suffer “from being one of the first major directors high school kids discover when they’re ready to graduate from Michael Bay”. He’s dead. The only thing to suffer is his reputation with the most pretentious of cinephile clowns, which I don’t think would bother him if he were alive.
If somebody can’t appreciate a film because they don’t associate with the audience who enjoys it, then their opinion is horribly biased and of little real value.
“If somebody can’t appreciate a film because they don’t associate with the audience who enjoys it, then their opinion is horribly biased and of little real value.”
It is virtually impossible to separate anything from its context. One might say that he can judge a film independently, but he probably never truly does that. I think film criticism is largely phenomenological – there are honestly no objective ways to measure cinema at all, and if the experience is diminished for one by the context of a certain film, then he is bound to like the film less (horribly biased: yes. all opinions are horribly biased).
I think that it’s too simplistic to state that high school students discover Kubrick as a result of trying to breakaway from the tentacles of film makers like Bay or Lucas. I’ll agree that I’ve noticed more and more of my peers talking about “A Clockwork Orange,” but outside of that it’s somewhat rare to hear any of them talk about other Kubrick films. Unfortunately for “A Clockwork Orange,” it has become sort of “hipster fodder.” Hopefully the cinephiles are able to take that one back.
If anything I noticed much more talk about directors like Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and from time to time, even John Waters. I think the apparent emergence of Kubrick fandom is largely held to individual films, but the directors I just listed seem to have more of the 16-22 age group’s attention.
This is an issue that really frustrates me. First of all, its saddening when someone says they are a Kubrick fan and instead of a good discussion, I get them telling me how awesome Alex is, or how cool the first half of FMJ is but that the rest is kind of stupid.
The second reason this irritates me, is because for some reason as a Kubrick fan I am associated with the people above. I like Kubrick’s films, because I think they wonderfully balance beauty, ideas, entertainment, and emotion. I don’t like them just cause they’re cool.
I feel like being a Kubrick fan is treated as a phase that everyone goes through before they watch films from much better directors, but at least for me he remains one of my top three directors. And the other two are not Tarantino and Spielberg, but Bergman and Kieslowski.
I think Drew nails it.
@ Law, I can appreciate that all opinions are biased. And when I say a “good” film, the word itself is definitely disputable. But it really takes it to another level when somebody disregards a film because he has a problem with people who enjoy it.
Like the saying goes, a wise man can entertain an idea without accepting it. If someone dismisses an idea (or film in this case) because they can’t put their personal feelings into perspective, then their opinion is limited.
Nobody can argue that we all share universal qualities that go beyond biology, and knowing the name of 100 directors doesn’t make anyone a different creature. At the core of every “good film” is something that everyone can appreciate regardless of our social groupings or cultural sophistication.
To be fair, I’m not a huge fan of Full Metal Jacket past the boot camp section, but I do appreciate the Vietnam section for the well-crafted piece of film making that it is.
In some ways I feel that people treat Kubrick in a similar way that the modern psychological community treats Sigmund Freud. Freud’s ideas have been for the most part universally panned at this point in history, but he’s still given credit for inspiring other psychologists to come up with great ideas. Kubrick is not Freud. He didn’t just inspire people to make great films, but was a master of cinema himself.
By the way Drew, great pick on Kieslowski.
“At the core of every “good film” is something that everyone can appreciate regardless of our social groupings or cultural sophistication.”
Is this true? I don’t think so. A lot of times we act under social and cultural lenses and like or dislike a film extensively because of the associations we gain or lose from doing so, even if we might refuse to admit. It truly depends on the experience instead of the work – not that we should judge films solely based on context, but we must admit, they do have a large effect on our judgments.
For example, if I see Toute une nuit when my life is going well romantically in an air-conditioned room on a Saturday night and then 2 months later see Jeanne Dielman on a cold Welsh day amidst great allienation, I will probably like Toute un nuit more than Jeanne Dielman, but it doesn’t say anything about the film – it just says how I experienced it and thus how receptive I am to it.
Thus in this case, engagement and enjoyment can truly be deterred by cultural and social associations – one might feel more detached from let’s say Donnie Darko, because he feels like he’s watching the film with fifty-three teenagers who think it is the height of surrealism as opposed to how one might feel if he goes in knowing nothing about the film at all – when he would still be at a marked phase, but one marked by a sense of discovery.
We as filmmakers should throw out the idea of deifying filmmakers. We really don’t owe Kubrick or anyone else anything… It’s fine to appreciate or be influenced by someone, but that kind of worship is silly and ultimately is destructive towards one’s own creativity- so I say- fuck Kubrick….
User de Faux-Fuyants
Kubrick suffers from being one of the first major directors high school kids discover when they’re ready to graduate from Michael Bay, and the resulting fanboy effect. Oftentimes I think negative attitudes about his work are coming from negative attitudes about the people who love his work but who otherwise aren’t broadly exposed to film. He’s judged in part by his status among the average movie-going public as a film god.