Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick is known for many iconic films that he’s made: 2001: a space Odyssey, Dr.Strangelove: Or how I

learned to stop worrying & love the bomb, full Metal Jacket, A clockwork orange, Eyes wide shut, The

shinning, & Barry Lyndon. Although he has made other films, these are his greatest work as he learned &

mastered film the more he made films. It is the films listed above, that are talked about & known by the

majority of people. Stanley Kubrick is known for his characters that often are pawns of greater forces (or,

characters who are prisoners of their own devices) & who end tragically. Another way to word this, is that

Kubrick’s characters are being controlled or manipulated as puppets by the greater forces & powers that

“run the world”. He is also known for his intense amount of hidden symbolism, & the Kubrick stare.

The killing

Kubrick’s 1956 film the killing is about Johnny Clay who hires a group of people for a hiest on a horse

race for around $2 million. before he goes away with his wife Fay. The film follows the lives & struggles

of each of the characters along the way with it’s fast-paced & witty dialogue & melodramatic scenes.

Georage Peatty, is an anxious & emasculated person who struggles to keep his marriage fullfilled with his

wife who is implied to cheat on him regularly with another man. Much of the problems in their marriage

are because of money. A crooked cop who needs to desperatly pay off loans is also tied to the hiest. A

bartender by the name of Mike O’Reily who works at the horsetrack lives with his sick wife. All the

characters are in some way or another, need or want money. When it comes time for the race, all the

characters play their part & the money is successfully stolen. The main character Johnny Clay is one of 2

members of the heist alive. He runs away with the money & his wife but is caught in the end.
In this film, I noticed that because all the characters attempting or involved with the heist, they can all be

considered prisoners at the mercy of the greater forces, but most are their own prisoners. Ultimately, this

is what gets them killed.

2001: A space Odessey

Kubrick’s ‘68 film is about humanity. It first starts off with prehistoric humans living in ancient times.

They evolve into modern day humans. Now, humans have moved onto space but are still living on Earth

mainly. An ancient artifact is discovered on the moon. A group of astronauts go to investigate the

mysterious object, & then it starts sending radio frequencies to Jupiter. 18 months later, another group of

astronauts is sent to Jupiter to investigate the signal. After the computer A.I. system kills all but 1

astronaut named David Bowman, he erases the computer’s memory & finishes the journey to Jupiter, only

to then be taken by unknown cosmic entities & kept by them for the rest of his life.

This film also has characters that are at the mercy of greater forces. This time however, these characters

are literally pawns of the greater forces. The obelisk’s shape, existence, & meaning is open to

interpretation. I interpreted it to be a device made by far-future humans to “enlighten” prehistoric human

ancestors (the apes). The obelisk is framed so it is “looking down” the ancestors who don’t understand it

& are frightened by it. Millions of years later, David Bowman, Poole, & the scientists that are in

hibernation are all pretty much at HAL900’s mercy. & later, when Bowman is captured by cosmic

entities, he is as stated before, kept & observed by them until death.

There is also a strong presence of symbolism in shapes, numbers, & colors. While Dr.Strangelove is

prominent with triangles (the board room is shaped like a triangle), 2001 is filled with circles. They are on

the shapes & architecture of many of the spacecraft in the film, HAL9000 is a circle with a red dot at the

center (probably made to resemble an eye). The forcefield of the obelisk is circular, of course the planets

themselves, & when David turns reincarnates as a starchild at the end, he is surrounded by a circular
membrane. When Bowman reincarnates into a starchild & is parralled next to Earth, I interpreted this as

him returning to Earth with the outward appearance of the obelisk (but he still keeps his starchild form) to

help human ancestors evolve & become self-aware. Thus, the entire film itself comes around full circle.