Ruling class morality play

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 2002)

Stanley Kubrick is a master panoramic filmmaker in the tradition of Alexander Korda, David Lean, DeMille and Griffith only with philosophical and socially relevant depth. This film is basically about marital fidelity using the upper crust as its vehicle along with a genteel satanic-ritualistic pornography. One wants to know if Kubrick is adding lots of T & A and black hooded gatherings to shore up a weak dramatic plot structure or if he these are artistically valid motifs that make the point: if the ruling class can't keep its decadence in check, how can one expect the rest of us to
The use of satanic overtones to exemplify degeneracy in high places was refreshingly minus the usual paranoia generating evocations of Manson gang sociopaths in my neighborhood. These slasher film elements were yoked down hard to the service of the morality play. One would presumably be made better able to resist temptations of the flesh without converting to catholicism, not as much from Pavlovian programming but from identification with the protagonists, reflection and dramatic catharsis.
The one controversial element in the film was its sound track which I found to be brilliant.