Jack pulling faces, Shelly acting scared - then the weird science bit.

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2004)

I have a grand overall theory about music and film. Much popular music is the kind of music you can easily ignore because most people that buy music never listen to it in isolation. It is background noise. Easy listening - more like not really listening.
Growing up the biggest selling LP was Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. This was for me the perfect example, they even used it on the soundtrack of the Exorcist. You could even watch a feature film while it was playing!
In the same vein most blockbusters are not really proper films at all. Merely novelty rides or one trick ponies. Star Wars (video game), Jaws (man eating rubber shark), Superman (man that can fly) and Psycho (confidence trick) are four that I can throw up without thinking.
Nothing wrong with them - all well worth one sitting - what bugs me is that people think they can convert them in to art simply by throwing a lot of long words at them. They are fast food for the brain. You enjoy and move on - unless you are being paid to make them more than they really are!
Here is another perfect example of the thrill ride format. Nothing really happens that doesn't happen in a horror B, but it has one or two image ideas that it pulls off. But overall it is just a short ghost train ride in the snow.
Kubrick was a very rude man making this film. Indeed he showed himself to be a total pig. Treating Nicholson with only the greatest respect and dignity; while being utterly rude and ignorant to Duvall (Nicholson confirms this) to the point where she often broke down in to tears.
(The little boy was protected by minders from the perfectionist.)
Whether this was to help her performance I don't know - but I know that whether you are a star actor or tossing burgers at the local greasy spoon no one has the right to tear strips off you when you are trying your best.
Kubrick might well have been a genius - although this is not the best evidence - but as a human being he left a lot to be desired. We might not see his like again, but at least future film sets will not fall foul of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights.
As regards the film, watch and forget - although it might turn up in a few nightmares.