Lolita is Kubrick's greatest film.
I have an uneasy relationship with Stanley Kubrick. Which is not that surprising if you consider that my first Kubrick experience was a scene at the beginning of Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman's character is sitting on the toilet bowl. For someone who was no more than ten years of age at the time (and who was deifying Kidman after the nail-biting escape in Bangkok Hilton), this was too much to take. That scene, however, was just the start of Eyes Wide Shut, the film that traumatised my virginity way before the first sexual encounter.
To me, Kubrick was unsettling, and A Clockwork Orange did little to alleviate the sense of discomfort from having the Kubrick Stare permanently fixed on me (Malcolm McDowell is one evil actor). I found Kubrick's adaptation overly theatrical and deeply unpleasant - but equally, I thought he came up with a better ending than Burgess, and there was just no getting away from the sense of witnessing a true visionary at work. The scope was overwhelming. The style, too, was a whale's kiss.
Respect, then, and not much love. I could extol the virtues of Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket all you want, but there was never any emotional connection. The Shining is genius but its genius is cold and calculated. Spartacus is a fine spectacle but is it even a Kubrick movie?.. I found the Dr. Strangelove satire too smug (while certainly enjoyable), and I do believe that 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most overrated films of all time. Aside from the opening scenes, it does not hold up well. This is not about dated technologies of 1968, mind you. I have recently watched Tarkovsky's Solaris again and found it as mesmerising as ever. A Space Odyssey, however, is style over substance, and boredom sets in very quickly.
Of the ones that are left, I am quite partial to Kubrick's two mid-50s noir stylisations (Killer's Kiss and The Killing), his powerful anti-war classic (Paths of Glory) and, yes, the notorious adaptation of Lolita. To me, the latter has the kind of warmth and humour I do not find in any of his other works. It was, I believe, a stroke of true genius not to do a serious take on Nabokov's novel and create something playful instead. Knowing the writer's hatred of cinema, I believe Nabokov's politeness about the movie was not sincere. Having said that, I cannot imagine a better adaptation. Lolita has the lightness of touch while being subtle and mildly seductive (this was 1962, remember). It is a different work of art, granted, but that is the power of Stanley Kubrick's vision. It could never be contained.
