Yes, he is a shining light of cinema, but he fits Listening Post like a virtual glove. He would have celebrated his 80th birthday on Sunday, if he had lived to witness the musical evolution of the form he fast-forwarded. His films irrevocably changed the relationship between film and music, from the juxtaposition of spaceship ballets and “The Blue Danube" to the destabilizing pairing of rape and “Singin' in the Rain." Sometimes it hurt to watch, but it was often impossible to turn your eyes, and ears, away from anything Stanley Kubrick made.
One exception was his final film Eyes Wide Shut, which featured a solitary piano note pounded into submission until expiration. A bold sonic metaphor for the film's bizarro exploration of sex and conspiracy, it nevertheless 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. And it did: Eyes Wide Shut is down the totem pole in the Kubrick canon, which includes classics like A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Killing, The Shining, Paths of Glory and more.
The medium of his message was usually music. He brutalized Anthony Burgess' dystopia A Clockwork Orange, mainlining Beethoven and ultraviolence into one hell of a hangover. He swiped “Singin' in the Rain" from an iconic musical of the same name, and repurposed it so shockingly that the copy nearly overwrote the original.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
