Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by halfnote (A) on September 11, 2005 at 20:34:49

In Reply to: Re: Would like to add Kubrick's The Shining... posted by Jim Campilongo on September 11, 2005 at 03:39:29:

I would have to agree that 2001 is the more important of the 2 films, and even the better. But EWS is a movie that can be viewed and understood from so many different perspectives -- husband versus wife, masculine versus feminine, emotional versus pyshiologicial, culture versus nature, dream versus reality. It is about the nebulousness of ideals like love and marriage, what conjures them up in the mind, and to what degree we allow them to control us. Ultimately, it's a film about free will. It's a film in which reality takes on a dream like dimension, and in which the most rational of men, a doctor, becomes overwhelmed by fantasy. It's a harder film to like than some of Kubrick's others. But it's a film that continues to haunt long after its viewing. It is like the Shining in that respect -- a movie that was booed an laughed at in the theater I saw during its first run, as a young man. But 20 years of marriage and three children of my own have totally transformed it into a completely different, and much more harrowing experience. EWS has that way of growing on you, I think.

Almost all of Kubrick's masterpieces were greeted with very mixed reviews -- 2001, Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, even Barry Lyndon. They have all grown in stature, steadily, over the years.