Customer Reviews

Kubrick, New and Expanded Edition: Inside a Film Artist's Maze

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Probably the best study on Kubrick that is out right now. (And, yes, I have talked to Nelson. He is expanding the book to include FMJ and EWS. And I simply cannot wait until it comes out! Probably some time next spring). I've read the Walker book. And that comes close. But this book is certainly the most exhaustive and insightful piece of work you'll read on Kubrick. It will literally change the way you see movies period. You'll never look upon 'The Shining' the same way. Indeed, upon any of his films in the same way. I must say, it's like I felt my jaw dropping to the floor when I was reading this. This book will tell you EXACTLY why Kubrick is the film genius eveyone says he is. Only after reading Nelson's book will you find just how much can be said in a film. I was absolutely enthralled by every analysis. A must-read for any aspiring Kubrick fans. Or for any film buff anywhere.... who wants to learn something....

There can be no greater praise for a book about Kubrick than to say that it is worthy of its subject. This one is. The opening chapter gives the bare biographical facts, and attempts to dispel a few of the myths about Kubrick's personality - not least the idea that, for example, a man's real or journalistically endowed flying phobia should have the least relevance for a viewer or a critic of his films. The next chapter analyses the early films up to the first masterpiece, Paths of Glory; and each subsequent film (except for the compromised Spartacus) has a chapter to itself. Nelson's critiques are detailed, comprehensive, thoroughly readable and constructive - which is to say, favourable. He appreciates the films and wishes others to appreciate them too. This revised and expanded edition contains, in the first chapter, a charming tribute to the director and, in two new chapters, analyses of Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut which show that, in the intervening years between The Shining and the present, Nelson's abilities have diminished as little as Kubrick's. All the essays in the book can be read and enjoyed for their own sake - I was especially fond of the one on A Clockwork Orange, long before I was able to see the film itself - but they will also make you long to be back there in the dark, sharing the artist's vision with the eyes Nelson has widened for you.

I was a little surprised to surf to Amazon and read that Kubrick hadn't made a film worth a damn in the last 30 years of his life, so naturally I had to click on the link and see what was going on. I actually read this book several years ago when I was at the height of my fascination with Kubrick, and remember it being quite good if perhaps a little dense at times. The latter may have more to do with my own reading level at that point than any fault of Nelson's (it was around the end of middle school or start of high school for me). It's still on my shelf so I may give it another look sometime.

To say that Eyes Wide Shut was anything less than a stellar film, indeed one of Kubrick's very best, will be laughable in a few more years. The critical reappraisal continues, Kubrick's films always were late bloomers...

Did you ever wonder why the carpeting in Room 237 in "The Shining" was green and purple? Or why the camera moves on the dolly from left to right in "The Killing"? Or who that artist Ryan O'Neal was referring to during the art-room scene in "Barry Lyndon"? I never did, and I imagine most people don't either. Which is what makes this book so problematic. Stanley Kubrick was a legendary perfectionist, and his work seems to have inspired a similar level of meticulousness in authors who write about him. This book analyzes Kubrick's 10 feature films down to the minutest detail (his first two brief features and "Spartacus," in which he was a director for hire, have been wisely glossed over), and the effect can be a bit stultifying. To be sure, the author comes up with some interesting tid bits about the great filmmaker's work, but just how accurate is all this? Kubrick has been known to pooh-pooh this sort of treatment of his work, and it's easy to see why: In writing about "Full Metal Jacket," Nelson refers to a scene where the character named Cowboy is dying and there's a burning building in the background that looks like the monolith in "2001." The author says that is Kubrick's way of signalling an evolutionary moment. In fact, Kubrick said in a 1987 Rolling Stone interview that the structure's resemblance to the "2001" monolith is just a coincidence. Even more bizarre is the book's near-total absense of any criticism. It is almost entirely descriptive. He mentions in the postscript that "Eyes Wide Shut" is one of Kubrick's "finest achievements" and he criticizes parts of "The Shining" but otherwise fails to note what works and what doesn't in these films. There are some fun parts in this book, but it is weighed down by its leaden prose and heavy-handed academic style.

Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson ...is one of the best Kubrick books available. Nelson discusses all of the films, and devotes a chapter to each one beginning with Lolita. There are photographs, too, but the printing is so lousy for these that they are easily ignored. The text is the most important material here. Nelson is an astute critic, and his text is informed by a comprehensive knowledge of film history and the realist and formalist schools. Although he uses the term mise en scène more times that I would care to tell you, his prose is immediate, conversational, and engaging. Here's one example from his 30-page essay on The Shining:
Early in the film, for instance, they learn how to negotiate the corridors of the hotel ("to leave a trail of breadcrumbs," to quote Wendy), and in once scene Danny moves in a circle around the Colorado Lounge on his Big Wheel tricycle, while Jack tends to remain stationary within its center. Wendy and Danny explore the hedge maze and complete a circular journey that travels into and out of its diabolical design. Jack, on the other hand, imitates what Borges characterizes as the death-in-life of the "North" (that is, northern European intellectualism)-that yearning for a totally rationalized world without those crevices of unreason that arouse despair in some and imagination in others-rather than the "South's" desire to traverse the maze and engage its multiplicity, to confront fate and choice, and to outface oblivion in an act of creation.
Whew.

By far the finest book on Kubrick, and one of the best full-length studies of a single director. The new chapters on Full Metal Jacket and especially Eyes Wide Shut are fascinating.

I can't say I always agree with Mr. Nelson's take on some things. But the intelligence with which his ideas are set forth make the book more than worth the time and money.

According to Thomas Nelson himself, a new edition of his book is coming out in April, 2000.

I have been a student of T.A. Nelson at San Diego State University for the past year and a half, I can assure you that he does want to expand his book to include Kubrick's last two films, and when he does it will be a glorious treat indeed. His passion for film as an art is not only evident in his book, but in his teaching aswell. Thank you Dr. Nelson for your passion and love of film.

The book is satisfying, if you are looking for detailed, meticulously documented accounts of K.'s seminal films, but not at all indispensable from a theoretical standpoint if you have read the foundational Ciment, especially in its latest, modernized incarnations (the last of which, I believe, is the Definitive Edition, 2003). I also recommend John Baxter's biography, for those who crave a portrait of Kubrick the (enigmatic) man.

However, I believe that a compelling study on Kubrick's oeuvre has yet to be crafted (his genius would at least deserve as impressive an amount of intellectual verve as that lavished on David Lynch's work by McGowan's splendid book [the Impossible David Lynch], or by Michel Ciment and, passim, Slavoj Zizek).

On a different note, I feel one criticism needs to be articulated here in relation to this page. I find it unacceptable that the "editorial review" spot be reserved for the imbecilic remarks of a blatantly ignorant (and proud to be) scribbler. Kubrick "hadn't made a film that was worth a damn in the 30 years leading up to his death"? While I doubt that even a crash course in Cinema 101 would benefit someone so shamelessly bent on revealing his intellectual vacuity, the Amazon management, on the other hand, should relieve us of the discomfort of having to read the likes of him, and really strive to choose its representatives with more discernment.

I was a student in Dr. Nelson's film class at San Diego State several years ago. At that time, Nelson impressed me and others with his obvious love of the film medium. I recently purchased the 1982 edition of the book, and was again impressed. Yes, Nelson is a professional and at times his style can often seem pedantic and overly academic, but I will probably buy the updated version of the book with the analyses of "Full Metal Jacket" and "Eyes Wide Shut."