Stanley Kubrick
Arancia Meccanica

Overrated.

Kubrick, but much more mediocrely like Spielberg and the odious Zemeckis (with Tom "Boiled Fish" Hanks playing the role he would deserve in life, that of Forrest "Battered Shrimp" Gump), directed films with commendable accountant-like sobriety all his life. It's always the same trick, even in music we have counterparts: Queen, for instance.

It works like this, you insert something blatantly off-key into the commercial circuit amidst the prevailing crap, and this, with a mathematical chemical reaction, will make every young person on the planet mumble the dreaded word "Masterpiece." You have something of zero level clogging every existing cinema and radio, and as soon as there's a vaguely introspective and curated stimulus: it assumes macro proportions and gains the blind praise of every naive person. The problem with Kubrick is that he's not a mental fanatic; each of his films lacks the "Klaus Kinski syndrome": that magical inflow of hysteria, persecution complex, deconstruction, and unconscious desecration. It's no coincidence there are so many youngsters flaunting Clockwork Orange t-shirts on their chests, precisely because he has become the unconventional popular director. He's the god of bankers, people in power, socially engaged youth, adults, and critics. He is your fake stylistic superstar.

What is Full Metal Jacket compared to "The Deer Hunter"? At most, a fly speck. And the vision of Shining compared to Eraserhead (Lynch) or Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog)? A platypus dropping. Kubrick is a pure mannerist distorter of literary texts (Lolita - A Clockwork Orange), positioning himself in that artistic limbo infinitely above the steaming daily crap yet infinitely below the golden quality of true Genius. With an Allen, a Chaplin, an Abel Ferrara, a Herzog, a Pasolini, and many others, he can't even afford an informal breakfast at the bar. His defenders chorusing "he spanned every genre, he’s the greatest blah blah blah," yes, he spanned with sobriety or apparent visionary quality in every genre and used masterful performances (Shining, A Clockwork Orange) that decidedly uplift the fate of his films.

Unfortunately, my aphorism "You never stop unlearning" is something Kubrick ignored, many are better than him: our locals Aldo Lado, Elio Petri, or Claudio Caligari (Toxic Love is immortal) to name a few.

Rating to A Clockwork Orange 2.5 stars (sufficient).