Ears Wide Open

by Joe Sikoryak

Note: The 44th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival concluded its program with the U.S. premiere of Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Including a showing at the Berlin Film Festival, and another in Illinois, there have only been four public screenings to date. In addition to providing a rare glimpse of the director at work, and a parade of the usual suspects (Flash: Martin Scorsese likes Kubrick's movies!), there's a considerable amount of talk about Kubrick's use of music (hence this review for readers of FSM.)

In an era of DVDs brimming with outtakes and tons of promotional, behind-the scenes info glutting TV shows, there's been precious little information about the methods and motives of director Stanley Kubrick. Aside from reams of speculation, and a few insider commentaries (like Frederic Raphael's book on the writing of Eyes Wide Shut, and Michael Herr's about Full Metal Jacket) there's been little to see or hear. When Warner Bros. released a boxed set of Kubrick's films in 1999, they were noticeably short of supplements. But of course -- this set was produced under the close scrutiny of the director himself -- who scrurtinized every detail, down to the use of his beloved Futura Extra Bold typeface. Do we detect a control freak at work?

Director Jan Harlan comes clean right from the start. The film starts with a montage of terrifically direct and very amusing newspaper and magazine quotes from articles about Kubrick. OBSESSIVE, RECLUSIVE, INSANE, screams the type, 25 feet tall. Did you hear the story about the director chasing trespassers with a shotgun? Or maybe the story of his fear of flying? Or his relentless pursuit of perfection with 187 takes of a single line? It's all here, and more.

Harlan, who was both a collaborator and in-law of Kubrick, begins with home movies showing an impish, energetic kid constantly upstaging (and upsetting) his kid sister. Kubrick dances, sings, even plays the piano! He runs around the playground knocking down his sibling, intently engaging the camera with those dark eyes that would become his trademark. It's as if young Stanley could barely contain his impatience, waiting for his turn at the viewfinder. There's a wealth of stills, both portraits of Kubrick as well as examples of his magazine photography that gave him his professional start.

A Life in Pictures unspools chonologically, with a generous helping of clips from all of Kubrick's work, including early films like Day of the Fight and Fear and Desire. The only opportunity to hear the director speak at length comes in a short interview recorded in the the late '50s after the release of Paths of Glory. For me, this was the big moment. I've never had a chance to hear this legendary creator say word one. So what do we hear when he opens his mouth?

Kubrick sounds like Merkin Muffley, the Peter Sellers' character in Dr. Strangelove.

Kubrick loved Sellers' performances, and was always a hugely enthusiastic fan. Sellers repeatedIy broke up his director on both Lolita and Strangelove. I can't help wondering if Sellers didn't mimic his director for his portrayal of the American president. In the brief interview excerpt, and in snippets of on-the-set footage, Kubrick can be heard intoning in his clipped Bronx accent, which he never lost after 40 years in England. So much for the imperious auteur --he sounds like my uncle Dave.

If anything, the documentary paints a sympathetic portrait of a troubled creator, struggling with his limitations even as he suceeded beyond most filmmaker's wildest dreams. He wished he wasn't so slow, he wished that he could have made more films...but as Scorsese points out, each film was richer with ideas and concepts than other people's entire careers. And there are delightful glimpses of his life at home, bouncing his girls on his knee and bossing them around in front of the home movie camera. Stanley Kubrick the doting dad? Impossible...but true.

The film devotes a significant amount of discussion to Kubrick's use of music after his break with original scores in 2001. British film director Tony Palmer suggests that the traditional use of music in Hollywood films was either "decorative, or to heighten the emotion of a particular scene," but always in the background. Kubrick's innovation was to thrust music to the foreground and use it as a full part of the intellectual statement. Again and again, Kubrick takes a familiar, even tired piece of music like The Blue Danube Waltz, and completely reinvents it, sometimes blotting out its original meaning through the power of his images. (Ironically, Harlan uses music in the documentary in a somewhat sentimental fashion, which only serves to highlight Kubrick's break with tradition.)

The appearance of Gyorgi Ligeti provided one of the film's most pleasant surprises. The Hungarian composer seemed quite delighted by the new life his work had been given by its inclusion in 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. Admittedly, he had sued MGM over the use of "Atmospheres" in 2001, but that was because of a poorly written contract, permitting the composition's use as "background music." Anyone who travelled through the Star Gate with Dave Bowman has to admit that the music took on a more prominent role than a source cue (but maybe the extraterrestrials have a wild jukebox up there...) Ligeti said that in the film's context, his music "validated Einstein's theory of the speed of light."

He was especially happy with the use of his obsessive Musica Ricercata, II, from Eyes Wide Shut. Composed in the fifties after the Communist absorbsion of his homeland, Lygeti intended the piano composition to be "a knife in the heart of Stalin." As always, Kubrick knows a strong piece of music when he heard it, although the translation of a didactic political statement into the pinheaded pursuit of poontang is pretty funny. Kubrick was nothing if not misanthropic when it comes to the weakness of his fellow human beings.

Wendy Carlos gets a shorter amount of screen time, surprisingly, given that she was a collaborator wth Kubrick on the music for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. She expressed frustration with the latter project, saying that "It was difficult to write music that matched the degree of stylization Kubrick used in The Shining. Instead, he resorted to a combination of Ligeti, Penderecki and electronic buzzing...to get the effects that he wanted."

In anticipation of this summer's hotly anticipated science fiction film, we learn that Kubrick wanted to produce A.I., with Spielberg directing. After his own production of The Aryan Papers was upstaged by Schindler's List, Kubrick began corresponding with Spielberg, sending him a draft of his screenplay along with a mockup of the credits suggesting their potential collaboration ("A Stanley Kubrick Production of a Film by Steven Spielberg"). The publicity for A. I. promises that the film will reflect a considerable amount of the late director's vision. But with a traditional underscore by John Williams, one wonders how the sound of the picture will compare to anything Kubrick might have heard. Before you dismiss it, however, ask yourself what would Close Encounters of the Third Kind have sounded like without the example of 2001? Kubrick's legacy no doubt will endure.

After the screening, director Harlan answered a few questions from the audience. There will be no outtakes or other discarded materials in future releases of Kubrick's films. "If he wanted us to see them, they would have been in the films." When asked why his documentary included no interviews with Kubrick, Harlan admitted that "...that was impossible. This film would have been impossible while Stanley was alive. He would not have permitted it." But he hoped, "If Stanley can see this, or if I am to answer for it somewhere in some future life, I hope that he would approve."

Portions of this review appeared previously in my review column "Ears Wide Open" on the Intrada website. Intrada is a soundtrack label and online store and can be found at http://www.intrada.com  -J.S.

Ed's note: There is one other place you can glimpse Kubrick at work and speaking: in the 20-minute documentary by Vivian Kubrick, the director's daughter, about the making of The Shining and included on the recent DVD of the film. (Vivian Kubrick also scored Full Metal Jacket, using the alias Abigail Mead.) -L.K.

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