Product Description

This expanded edition of Thomas Nelson's trenchant study of a master of film includes new chapters on "Full Metal Jacket" and "Eyes Wide Shut". In the wake of the director's death, Nelson reconsiders his body of work as a whole. By placing Kubrick in a historical and theoretical context, this study is a reliable guide into - and out of - Stanley Kubrick's cinematic maze. Stanley Kubrick ranks among the most important American film makers of his generation, but his work is often misunderstood because it is widely diverse in subject matter and seems to lack thematic and tonal consistency. Thomas Nelson's perceptive and comprehensive study of Kubrick rescues him from the hostility of auteurist critics and discovers the roots of a Kubrickian aesthetic, which Nelson defines as the "aesthetics of contingency." After analysing how this aesthetic develops and manifests itself in the early works, Nelson devotes individual chapters to "Lolita", "Dr. Stangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey", "A Clockwork Orange", "Barry Lyndon", and "The Shining".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #802650 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Library Journal
Though he hadn't made a film that was worth a damn in the 30 years leading up to his death, Kubrick continues to be the artsy darling of the film world, revered by students and critics alike. Nelson here updates his 1982 original to include Full Metal Jacket and the director's final work, Eyes Wide Shut, which flopped. In the advent of his subject's unfortunate demise, Allen also reconsiders the Kubrick canon. At the time of its debut, this title was dubbed "the best book written to date about Kubrick's films" by LJ's reviewer (LJ 4/15/82) and that no doubt remains true.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Only if you are a true Kubrick fan
I was so so offended by the slackness and cheekiness of this book that I absolutely had to write a review... The writing style is so bad it will make your head spin like a top. The sentences run on forever, and Professor Nelson can't seem to keep to a point at all. He spends most of his time impressing himself instead of trying to communicate with readers. Don't bother with this one unless you are a true Kubrick diehard.

Good scholarship, occasionally overwhelming
Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson ...is one of the best Kubrick books available. Nelson discusses all of the films, and devotes a chapter to each one beginning with Lolita. There are photographs, too, but the printing is so lousy for these that they are easily ignored. The text is the most important material here. Nelson is an astute critic, and his text is informed by a comprehensive knowledge of film history and the realist and formalist schools. Although he uses the term mise en scène more times that I would care to tell you, his prose is immediate, conversational, and engaging. Here's one example from his 30-page essay on The Shining:
Early in the film, for instance, they learn how to negotiate the corridors of the hotel ("to leave a trail of breadcrumbs," to quote Wendy), and in once scene Danny moves in a circle around the Colorado Lounge on his Big Wheel tricycle, while Jack tends to remain stationary within its center. Wendy and Danny explore the hedge maze and complete a circular journey that travels into and out of its diabolical design. Jack, on the other hand, imitates what Borges characterizes as the death-in-life of the "North" (that is, northern European intellectualism)-that yearning for a totally rationalized world without those crevices of unreason that arouse despair in some and imagination in others-rather than the "South's" desire to traverse the maze and engage its multiplicity, to confront fate and choice, and to outface oblivion in an act of creation.
Whew.

For Kubrick Fanatics Only
Did you ever wonder why the carpeting in Room 237 in "The Shining" was green and purple? Or why the camera moves on the dolly from left to right in "The Killing"? Or who that artist Ryan O'Neal was referring to during the art-room scene in "Barry Lyndon"? I never did, and I imagine most people don't either. Which is what makes this book so problematic. Stanley Kubrick was a legendary perfectionist, and his work seems to have inspired a similar level of meticulousness in authors who write about him. This book analyzes Kubrick's 10 feature films down to the minutest detail (his first two brief features and "Spartacus," in which he was a director for hire, have been wisely glossed over), and the effect can be a bit stultifying. To be sure, the author comes up with some interesting tid bits about the great filmmaker's work, but just how accurate is all this? Kubrick has been known to pooh-pooh this sort of treatment of his work, and it's easy to see why: In writing about "Full Metal Jacket," Nelson refers to a scene where the character named Cowboy is dying and there's a burning building in the background that looks like the monolith in "2001." The author says that is Kubrick's way of signalling an evolutionary moment. In fact, Kubrick said in a 1987 Rolling Stone interview that the structure's resemblance to the "2001" monolith is just a coincidence. Even more bizarre is the book's near-total absense of any criticism. It is almost entirely descriptive. He mentions in the postscript that "Eyes Wide Shut" is one of Kubrick's "finest achievements" and he criticizes parts of "The Shining" but otherwise fails to note what works and what doesn't in these films. There are some fun parts in this book, but it is weighed down by its leaden prose and heavy-handed academic style.