I keep saying that the only two directors that have never made a bad movie, are Stanley Kubrick and Luc Besson (as a director!). But I haven’t seen everything from Kubrick, so I’ve lately set about seeing the missing movies (Lolita, Spartacus and Full Metal Jacket).

So the first movie I ordered from DVDHype was Lolita (1964). At the start it seemed like a much more dated movie than we were originally expected (it’s in black and white, and all the credits seem to be at the beginning). However, we were quickly amazed at how skillfully the story is told, compared to the in-your-face way everything seems to be explained in contemporary film, as if the average audience was unable to decipher subtlety in anything.

The movie deals with a very controversial topic even for today (pedophilia), and it did so at a relatively puritanical era. Thus, everything is implied, instead of being completely explicit, underscored with huge music and repeated four times in case you didn’t get it, as is the norm nowadays (cf. The Patriot, Reign of Fire, etc). The result is something much more realistic, absorbing and entertaining, as it resembles much more what people are truly like. You fully understand what the characters are feeling, even if nothing is actually said.

You know, you don’t need a PhD nor any culture to be quite good at reading subtle hints in others. We live our lives doing that, it’s one of the most essential social survival skills we possess. Why does Hollywood assume we cannot possibly grasp that someone is secretly elated, or uncomfortable, unless the music tells us so? Has the quality of acting dropped that sharply since the sixties? I doubt it.

Another thing I really liked about the movie relates to this, and it’s the fact that Kubrick let his actors *act*. Scenes aren’t just a series of a thousand talking-head shots, where you know every actor said every line 40 times and the editor chose his favorite for each one. The scenes in Lolita are often shot as long, master shots, putting on the actors the task of supporting the scenes. And they pull it off splendidly.

Despite a kind of anticlimatic ending, I have to chalk that one up as another great success from Kubrick. Il est très fort, ce Stanley.

(other movies by SK include Barry Lindon, 2001, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove)