Stanley Kubrick

My friend Kowsik has written an article on Kubrick and his films.

I was introduced to Kubrick by Amazon when I was searching for DVDs. Since I was also a reader of King the connection was complete with 'The Shining'.

Before I could watch 'The Shining' I had the oppurtunity to watch 'Amytiville Horror' and I could see a close resemblence to the book 'The Shining' by King. So I postponed watching 'The Shining'.

Amazon led me through the other works by Kubrick. The first work by him I watched was 'Full Metal Jacket', being an avid fan of movies which had themes of Military training I was easily impressed by the work. The movie was great. Then I was lured to 'Eyes wide shut'. This movie had an very eerie atmosphere through out. All the characters will look suspicious of something. Lot of weird stuffs happening. The only disappointment with this movie was it ended abruptly. Though I liked the movie I was not satisfied.

Then through some friend I atlast got the oppurtunity to watch 'The Shining'. He kept saying 'thalaiva this scene will be ultimate', 'in this scene music will be fantastic'. The movie had Kubrick stamp with all characters looking suspicious and moving around in slow motion. I didnt watch it fully but I watched 3/4th of the movie and I could say it was above average.

Atlast few days back I got the oppurtunity to watch the most controversial movie (claimed by the media) of Kubrick which is 'The clockwork orange'. Though I came to know about this movie long time back I got the oppurtunity to watch it only recently. So there was too much expectations. I could never figure out the meaning of the movie title until I read a detailed review in the net after watching the movie.

The movie has some controversial settings. Considering it was a movie of 70's it has a different colour and different look. The dialogues and accents are very weird. The story is very straight forward. There is a heartless bad guy. He does all nonsense and doesnt care for friends or parents. He commits a murder and is taken to prison. The government gives him a treatment such that he will never be able to commit any more crimes. He is then released and he encounters all those people against whom he commited crime. They pay him back in double and that includes his parents and his friends. Finally his case becomes a subject of controversy as people question the government saying he has been treated inhumanly. He is then cured back.

I was reminded of 'Puthiya Paathai' in tamil. This is the closes Tamil movie I can compare to clockwork orange. Parthiban does all bad things to people and when he is in need everybody ditches him.

Coming back to clockwork orange its a very different movie but were my expectations met? That still remains unanswered.

As for me Full Metal Jacket will remain as my favorite Kubrick movie.