Kubrick on film

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

Stanley Kubrick

I think this is an interesting quote by Kubrick and representative of how his films irrevocably changed the relationship between film and music. The medium of his message was usually music. His final film Eyes Wide Shut, featured a solitary piano note pounded into submission until the end of the movie. It was a bold sonic metaphor for the film’s bizarre exploration of sex and conspiracy, and it felt like a rail spike to the brain.

But Kubrick was a perfectionist to the core, so it’s hard to imagine he didn’t plan for it to grate on your nerves. His other movies — A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Killing, The Shining, Paths of Glory, etc. — utilized music in meaningful ways. He brutalized Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, mainlining Beethoven and ultraviolence into one hell of a hurrah. He swiped “Singin’ in the Rain” from an iconic musical of the same name, and repurposed it so shockingly to a rape scene that the copy nearly overwrote the original. The list goes on.

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