Assignment 16: Hooray for Hollywood--Amir Abou-Jaoude

Stanley Kubrick made only eleven films in his lifetime, but many of them are landmarks of the cinema--Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and A Clockwork Orange (1971) to name a few. In the 1980s, Kubrick turned his attention to two very different stories. One was an anti-war film, set in the wilds of Vietnam, while the other, an enigmatic tale of a dysfunctional family, set in the imposing, remote Overlook Hotel. Full Metal Jacket (1987) and The Shining (1980) expose us to different sides of Kubrick's genius. While both films are of genres familiar to moviegoers, Kubrick experiments with the way these common stories are told. I will illustrate what sets these films apart from others of the genre.

I will discuss Full Metal Jacket first, although it was made after The Shining. Kubrick splits his treatise on the futile nature of warfare roughly down the middle. The first part of the film deals with the brutal training of Marines on a South Carolina island, while the second part takes place in the Vietnamese war zone. Both deal with the dehumanization of war. The "message" of the film so to speak, can be seen in the juxtaposition of the "born to kill" maxim etched on the main character's helmet and the peace sign he has pinned on his jacket. Kubrick pokes fun at our commitment to bringing peace to all the world. Our method of accomplishing this task is to slaughter as many enemy soldiers as we can. The irony of warfare is further expressed when an American soldier listlessly tells about how twenty North Vietnamese were killed in a single battle. The main character, a journalist, is supposed to mourn the death of every American killed in combat while celebrating the death of twenty enemy soldiers.

If this message is far from new or revolutionary in the cinema, Kubrick nonetheless experiments with different ways of telling this story. In the first half, all Marine recruits are lined up during training. All are dressed in white, and they form two identical rows. A rough, battle-hardened Marine sergeant, played by R. Lee Ermey, paces between the rows, calling the recruits "maggots" among other insults. Kubrick uses a tracking shot to follow Sergeant Hartman as he moves through the rows. The Marine recruits cease to be people. Rather, they are robots, all controlled by this sergeant. The sergeant wears beige, in a sharp contrast with the recruits, dressed in white. Kubrick does not need dialogue, explaining how the characters feel downtrodden. He does not even need the harmful words of Sergeant Hartman. Instead, he relies on this visual. Kubrick was supposed to make A.I.: Artificial Intelligence before he died, a movie that would have ostensibly been about robots. But in a way, he did not need to make that movie, because Full Metal Jacket is about characters that turn from lively individuals into numbers on an army roster.

Kubrick's war film is not realistic. It is not meant to put the viewer through what Marine training is like or what it was like to be in the jungles of Vietnam. In fact, Kubrick recreated "Vietnam" in an abandoned British chemical factory. But beyond that, throughout the film, Kubrick relies on lucid, dream-like images. For example, about thirty minutes into the film, the Marines decide to punish a fellow recruit, the obese Private Pyle, for a mistake he made during training. They beat him while he is sleeping in bed. Kubrick's camera floats over the bed of the private as we watch the fellow Marines carry out these deeds. The light is ghostly, and at first it is not clear whether this incident is real or if it is a fantasy.

Kubrick uses a similar type of imagery, when Private Pyle, fed up with the dehumanization of training, shoots Sergeant Hartman and then himself. When Pyle blows his brains out, there is only a small smattering of blood on the wall behind him. Again, this scene is shrouded in darkness, creating a discombobulating effect. A director who was aiming for realism might have had blood spatter throughout the room. But Kubrick wants us to focus on why Pyle is blowing is brains out rather than how it is happening, and this scene is the most powerful in the film. The effect of these dream-like images is to detach the film from Vietnam. Kubrick knows that he cannot recreate Vietnam (he seems to acknowledge this in the film, when he shows two characters filming dead bodies carried in on stretchers.) He does not want to recreate Vietnam, because Full Metal Jacket is supposed to be about all wars. Imagery also reoccurs throughout the film. When a sniper shoots an American soldier, blood is shown in a similar way as when Private Pyle dies. This suggests a link between the two scenes--both characters may not have been killed in Vietnam, but they were both killed by Vietnam.

The Shining, made earlier in 1980 and based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, is a very different film. It is a horror movie, but it is not a "things jumping out at you" horror movie. Kubrick does not adhere to the conventions of the genre. The first shot is of a car, driving down a winding road. We've seen this in horror films before, as the car drives at night in the rain. Alfred Hitchcock has such as scene in Psycho (1960), when Janet Leigh first comes upon the Bates Motel. But Kubrick's car is driving in broad daylight. The skies are clear, allowing us to glimpse the breathtaking Colorado scenery. Like Janet Leigh, Kubrick's character, Jack Torrence, played by Jack Nicholson, is about to come upon a haunted house.

Still, this haunted house, the Overlook Hotel, is unlike those that appear frequently in horror films. People usually run into problems when they get to a haunted house--Janet Leigh, for example, runs into a serial killer on her trip to the Bates Motel. In The Shining, the Overlook Hotel only magnifies problems that are already present. Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer, lives with his wife, Wendy, and his son, Danny, and he is a recovering alcoholic. He broke Danny's arm in a fit of rage, and even after he recovers from his alcoholism, he is verbally abusive to his wife. The sour relationships between Jack, Wendy, and Danny surface in the hotel. Kubrick does not settle for huge set pieces like the shower scene in Psycho. Rather, he finds horror in the quiet moments. At one point, Danny goes to get his toy fire truck from Jack's room. Jack asks his son to come closer, and we fully expect him to rip Danny's arm off. Instead, he pulls him closer and asks him how he likes the hotel. This moment is full of suspense. There is no screaming and there is no thundering music in the background, but it is quietly horrific. To be fair, Kubrick does indulge in one set piece--when Jack hacks down the bathroom door with an axe and shouts "Here's Johnny!" But the conservation between Jack and Danny is just as frightening as the famous "Here's Johnny!"

There are multiple ways to read The Shining. One could say that it is fundamentally about the writing process. Wendy and Danny could represent Jack's "darlings," people preventing him from reaching his full creative potential. Therefore, he must very literally "kill his darlings" as William Faulkner stated. It could be about broken families. The husband may not go at his wife and children with an axe, but with alcohol and lies, he chops the family to pieces. This is a very didactic reading of the film, but nonetheless, the movie is not meant to send a message. It is an enigma. The characters do not really matter, with the exception of one character--the Overlook Hotel. The hotel itself is a labyrinth, and in showing it, Kubrick seems to be indebted to Alain Resnais's equally mysterious Last Year at Marienbad (1961). There is dream-like imagery associated with the hotel, the most notable image being of the hotel lobby filling with blood, and at the end of the movie, Jack seems to be absorbed into his hotel.

Full Metal Jacket is an anti-war film, and The Shining is a horror film. Both show trademarks of Kubrick's style--the tracking shots, the impersonalized wide shots, the dream-like imagery. But ultimately, both films are not about tracking shots, or wide shots, or dream-like imagery. They are about reinterpreting cinematic tradition to fit Kubrick's sensibilities. This is what makes Kubrick unique among directors. One could see all of his career in this light--Dr. Strangelove could be his attempt at a comedy, and 2001: A Space Odyssey his version of a science fiction film. His ability to work in and reinterpret familiar genres allowed him to tell powerful stories and push the limits of the cinema.