Facets of Perception

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2003)

Spoilers herein.
Different things characterize a Kubrick film: cold style, a languorous deep camera, intellectual humor. But for me, all of these pale compared his primary concern: investigating who the narrator is.
He hated `Sparticus' and struck out to do intelligent work. His collaboration with Brando failed, so he bought `Lolita,' the most adventurous narrative literary experiment til then. It featured a narrator who is obsessed, possibly mad and surely not to be trusted. Kubric (rather radically) translated that layered presentation into the POV of Quimby, who assumes multiple characters, either driving or populating Humbert's worlds.
He would later hit paydirt in `2001' with the idea of three battling narrators (human, machine, alien) for control over what we see. And later with `Orange' about a film that indocrinates itself through film.
Along the way, he tried this: four narratives all provided by Sellers. The idea was that each man imposed or reported his own reality and you really wouldn't know which to trust. Our man Peter broke his leg though and the whole thing shifted, but it was changing character throughout based on other accidents as well. Yes, I know there is a story, but it really doesn't matter. In fact it matters so little it changed every day, and so did the tone of the film.
Scott turned out to be comically stronger than guessed. The president morphed into someone less fey, the pie scene (which was to be a Marx Brothers tipoff) failed.
So I see this as minor Kubrick, a failure of what he intended. It is a great Sellers film for the Von Braun/Ed Teller bit, and for that it is appreciated. But if you want to see a master succeeding at something only he seems to be able to do, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.