Of all the directors that have walked the Earth, Stanley Kubrick is the one whose movies have had the most impact on me. Kubrick did movies which challanged your intellect, where each and every detail was worked to perfection. Even to this day I’ve yet to see movies with special effects that rival 2001 (which was done in 1968!), and 2001 is the only movie I’ve seen that felt like a completely different movie when I saw it a second time… and the third. There’s only a handful of directors I feel have made movies that are truly genius, and of those — Kubrick is the one that scores high in all aspects.

How many of today’s directors would retain the creative control and have the will to ban their own movie because it resulted in a few outbursts of copycat violence? That’s exactly what Kubrick did with A Clockwork Orange in the UK. After a few incidences of young adolescents imitating the violent lifestyle of Alex and his droogs, Kubrick banned distribution of the movie. Maintaining control of so many aspect of his film that he controlled it is a feat in itself.

I dug up a goldpiece of an interview with him from the book “Kubrick” by Michael Ciment (they are available online on The Kubrick Site), where he discusses A Clockwork Orange. Here’s a question and answer that I found particularly fantastic and eccho my oppinions:

Q:In your films the State is worse than the criminals but the scientists are worse than the State.

Kubrick: I wouldn’t put it that way. Modern science seems to be very dangerous because it has given us the power to destroy ourselves before we know how to handle it. On the other hand, it is foolish to blame science for its discoveries, and in any case, we cannot control science. Who would do it, anyway? Politicians are certainly not qualified to make the necessary technical decisions. Prior to the first atomic bomb tests at Los Alamos, a small group of physicists working on the project argued against the test because they thought there was a possibility that the detonation of the bomb might cause a chain reaction which would destroy the entire planet. But the majority of the physicists disagreed with them and recommended that the test be carried out. The decision to ignore this dire warning and proceed with the test was made by political and military minds who could certainly not understand the physics involved in either side of the argument. One would have thought that if even a minority of the physicians thought the test might destroy the Earth no sane men would decide to carry it out. The fact that the Earth is still here doesn’t alter the mind-boggling decision which was made at that time.

Incredibly well put. Kubrick is missed as a contributor to thinking world. And his work forever inspiring.

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