Cold ambition against cold selfishness

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2007)

An old film that has aged tremendously. The rhythm is slow, too slow, and it lacks any kind of feeling or sympathy or compassion. It is cold, very cold. This is the portrait of a social climber who is blocked and rejected when he has finally reached the top. Then it becomes the story of his downfall. He has a lot of luck in his life, but he essentially is a coward who uses the army to get out and away, a deserter who shifts from one side to the other, a spy who double-cross everyone, a gambler who cheats all the time, and a gross ruthless and uncouth person who uses every means at his disposal to get to his ends, even women of course. But the film shows how he is then defeated more by misfortune than by any real plan. He is defeated by the young lord whose mother he has conquered, and the details show that this young lord is even worse than the one he gets rid of, his stepfather, a vomiting retching little coward who takes advantage of the very only moment of generosity his stepfather actually demonstrates in his whole life, and this only one time towards him. He surely recovers his estate and gets rid of his stepfather but he recovers no honour, and yet Kubrick does not go that far. He stops short of saying that, though he shows it with the very last images of a sad, selfish, embittered young man who has suddenly gotten older than his age. What could have attracted Kubrick in such a story ? I can only see one answer : the deep cruelty of human beings and the unfathomable inhumanity of human society, aristocratic or not. That may explain the whole career of Stanley Kubrick : human society is nothing but a computer gone berserk.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne