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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
malcolm mcdowell's statement is easy to pick apart:
a) he raises the bar for genius (michelangelo yes, john ford maybe)
b) he didn't like kubrick personally
but the thing is, he didn't know michelangelo personally (don't know about him meeting john ford) so he's comparing apples to oranges. fucking ingrate got the best role of his life with kubrick-- what has he done since? bit parts in star trek movies and entourage?
the spielberg video was great-- i watched it whole. ends up with spielberg saying that in spite of all the accusations of not being human enough emotional enough etc kubrick was a man of deep feeling. i tend to agree with that if i judge by the work. was he an asshole in his personal life? probably true if we judge by the abundant accusations. who knows?
but the fact is, there are so many people who are great artists and terrible human beings of some kind. we tend to idealize artists and demand they be superhuman when in fact they are often hurt into art and at some level dysfunctional. i seriously doubt that michelangelo was some all-around supreme creature.
mcdowell was probably pissed with kubrick at the time.
oh wait wait here decades later he mentions him along with john ford and kurosawa ha ha ha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boQQRYMjLTc |
Yeah, McDowell's point is disingenuous, and you're right about what he did afterwards. I kind of agree with him in a different way but I don't think Kubrick's personal failings necessarily impact on whether he was a great artist. As if being nice or warm is any kind of pre-requisite for greatness. I've read things about Michelangelo that certainly don't make me think he was a nice man but who cares. The humility's in the work. Disney can make me cry on sight but he was the biggest cunt on earth.
None of that matters. It eventually just comes down to personal taste, based on what's up on the screen. My favourite directors tend to be those whose films show a real interest in and affection for people, regardless of their actual personalities. Fellini, Renoir, Cassavetes, Dreyer, Ford, DeSica, Tati, Pasolini, Scorsese, Almodovar, etc. They can border on sentimental but that's fine, cos I'm quite sentimental, too. So they're great filmmakers
to me. I do also like some 'colder' directors: Lang, Antonioni, Welles, Bergman, Bresson, Sirk, Tarkovsky, etc. Although with them, it's perhaps more of an admiration than a love. And I'd say, even they were still very interested in the human condition, just in a rather more distant, analytical way.
Kubrick, on the other hand, I see as a great technician, along with the likes of say Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Greenaway and Godard. Master filmmakers in a purist sense but ones that I struggle to connect with on any emotional level. But again, that's just me, and what matters to me. It's purely a matter of taste/personal psychology. Other people might not need or even want that emotional connection so might well find some Ford, for example, almost unbearably corny. Equally, they might find an emotional connection with say Hitchcock, that I just don't.
Then there are the anomalous filmmakers, like Kenneth Anger, Howard Hawks, Michael Mann, who, according to what I've just said, I shouldn't like at all but I somehow find myself loving, for reasons I still can't quite work out. Equally, I should love Chaplin but don't.
I agree with you that, objectively, Kubrick's attitude to people has no bearing on his standing as a director, but I can't agree with any attempt to humanise either him, or his work. It's not what he was or what he did. But none of that has anything to do with if he was a great filmmaker or not.
tldr? I love Steinbeck, hate Delillo, but wouldn't want to say who the better writer was/is.