Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 111

Stanley Kubrick's
Calculated
Rebellion
In his life and in his work,
the filmmaker showed that insurgents
only win when they sweat the small stuff.
By Eric Cortellessa

I

n America, we are in a season of political rebellion. Throughout the country,
protests have become a part of everyday life. Some of them are righteous (the
Black Lives Matter movement wants to end police brutality and systemic racism); some of them are not (armed conservatives are pushing states to reopen
before it's safe). But they all suggest collective discontent, reflected in polling
that shows that Americans overwhelmingly feel the country is heading in the
wrong direction.
Of course, many people are still staying home because of the pandemic, trying to
make sense of the unrest by reading and watching the news. But the real world can
only take you so far. As with most mysteries of human motivation, fiction is a better guide to answering the question of why people and societies rebel. And perhaps
no artist has more frequently captured the essence of rebellion-whether personal
or collective in nature-than Stanley Kubrick.
Consider his body of work. Spartacus (1960) chronicles the eponymous Roman
gladiator who led a slave revolt. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) reaches its climax
when a sentient computer tries to kill off his crew once he learns that they plan
to disable him. Barry Lyndon (1975) tells the saga of an incorrigible 18th-century
trickster who rejects his family of Irish farmers to ingratiate himself in the British aristocracy. The Shining (1980) shows a man's descent into madness as he
plots to murder his wife and son. Full Metal Jacket (1987) takes its biggest turn
when a Parris Island Marine trainee shoots his draconian drill instructor.
It's fitting that Kubrick focused heavily on rebels. He was one. That's one of the
major takeaways from a new biography by David Mikics, Stanley Kubrick: American
Filmmaker. Kubrick did poorly in school-was simply "not interested," he said-
and didn't go to college, much to the chagrin of his New York Jewish middleclass parents, who owed their livelihoods to their education. Instead of college,
Kubrick spent his early 20s as a photographer and made extra cash by competing
in chess tournaments. He got his first serious recognition, while at Look magazine, for taking a picture of a solemn newspaper salesman staring at a stack of
front pages the day after Franklin Roosevelt died. By the time he became a filmmaker in the 1950s, he had already earned a measure of success as a renegade.
The rebellions of Kubrick's characters, however, almost always came up short.
In Spartacus, the revolt fails. In 2001, HAL's scheme falls apart. In Barry Lyndon,
the protagonist's story ends in terrible misfortune. In The Shining, Jack Torrance
freezes to death. In Full Metal Jacket, the Marine trainee, Leonard "Gomer Pyle"
Lawrence, kills himself.

Stanley Kubrick:
American Filmmaker
by David Mikics
Yale University Press, 242 pp.

Washington Monthly  111



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