Stanley Kubrick: The creative genius

A character in a movie is usually defined with reference to the script; it does not exist beyond the confines of the script. The character exists because the story needs to progress. There may be some film-makers who try to flesh-out the character by mulling over the likely responses to a designed situation. But a rare few seem to think of the characters as actual entities beyond the action–response cycle. The peculiarities of the character are pre-defined, and it does not usually grow, it does not evolve into a more violent, a more loving or a more disgusting person as the story progresses. His mannerisms, his gait, his eccentricities, his dialects, the people he loves or hates, are all decided by someone else for him. Stanley Kubrick, however, evolved characters rather than just defining them. Consider the way his characters from different movies referred to the act of sex. For the marines in the Full Metal Jacket, it was the bellicose, martial ‘boom-boom’. For the deranged and vulgar Alex DeLarge and his bunch of drooges from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ it was the ‘ol’ in-out in-out’. Professor Humbert Humbert, the step-father-cum-lover of Lolita, with all his erudite ambivalence and the meandering ways of the small town, referred to it as ‘getting a cavity filled’. The estranged couple of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ had lost its allure and could only describe it as the ‘physical act of love’. Just by referring to a single apparently insignificant event in the film, the characters here are establishing their unique identities and acquainting the audience with their mind-sets and milieu. Even if these may be ideas from the screen-writer or anyone else associated with the films, I’d give credit to the film maker for having provided the room, the urge, for the stimulation of such creativity.For Stanley Kubrick, the character was a lot more beyond someone who took the script to its logical culmination. For him, the character was a story by itself. In Dr. Strangelove, Jack Ripper was not just one militant, Russian-communist-hating maniac; he was also a failed lover who somehow managed to attribute even his inability in bed to the Russians. Even the complexity of HAL in 2001: A space odyssey was dictated by an innate ‘logical’ intent to make sure that the mission succeeds, which according to it, was possible only when the rest of the crew was eliminated. The violent streak of Jack Torrance in Shining was not out-of-the-blue. It was just an exaggerated manifestation of his minor irritations at his wife and son.Just by the way of their expressions, the characters in Stanley Kubrick’s movies establish themselves as individuals with distinctive personalities. Each expression, each step, each action and each word uttered went towards strengthening that personality, to such an extent that they would start appearing like the natural behavioral traits of the individual. At these times, we forget that what we perceive as being personality traits are all contrived and manufactured; we tend to ignore the fact that the personality itself is a figment of someone’s imagination, so how can the traits be inherent. We fail to realize that there is no Dr. Strangelove out there who has this extraordinary figurative hand running out of control, we never dwell upon the fact that there have been no historical records which tell us how the ape-man from the 'dawn of man' felt that surge of all-conquering power when it devised it’s first ‘weapon’. Once we realize that this is all a result of the creative imagination of an individual, of course, abetted by a few others, but largely, a single individual, we realize the enormity of the brilliance that we behold. Such meticulousness, the remarkable eye for details and a razor sharp mind, were only some of the things which established Kubrick among the world’s most imaginative and exalted film-makers. Kubrick’s penchant for authenticity was so extraordinary that he his replica of the B-52 bomber he used in Dr. Strangelove had the US Air Force questioning him on how he managed to shoot in a USAF bomber. Everything, right from the controls to the survival kit contents was precise and accurate. At times, his meticulousness went to absurd proportions. Like, in 2001: A space odyssey; for a sequence in a space station when the toilet is shown, there is a reference to a printed ‘instructions for using a zero-gravity toilet’ put up near the toilet, which the protagonist is unable to read because of the small text size. Thereafter, there’s no further reference to the zero-gravity toilet or the instructions. Many year later, the actual instruction booklet was exhibited, which was actually five-page long, and when you go through it, you’ll realize that it actually tries very hard to simplify using a toilet in a zero-gravity situation describing numerous contraptions and their functions. In another such instance, in clockwork orange, when Alex is shown in a record store, flirting with a girl, one of the records on display is that of 2001: A space odyssey. What was this? Advertising? An idiosyncrasy of an eccentric genius? Or a ploy to play with fans? We’ll never know for sure.