Oscar's irrelevance and remembering one of my heroes

The academy awards show has come and gone and like every other year I missed it. I know it's a show that attracts a large audience who want to see if there favorite films and actors take home the Oscar but for me it is something I could care less about. I'm sure tomorrow I will find out who won in their respective categories and by the end of the week will forget all about it. There are many reasons why I don't see the purpose in putting on a 3 and a half hour show to see actors, producers and directors give long winded boring speeches and one reason is that my favorite director, the late Stanley Kubrick never won an academy award for best director. It was 11 years ago today that Stanley Kubrick, who in my opinion was the best filmmaker ever, passed away at the age of 70. Below is what I wrote about him the day after I heard he had died.

March 7, 1999 had to be one of the saddest and most reflective days of my life. When I heard the news that Stanley Kubrick had died I was deeply saddended and as the day went by I began to look back to the days when I learned about him. That was when I was in college and at that time the only reason for me to see a movie was to be entertained or to watch actors like Nicholson, Deniro and Pacino command the screen with their star power. Thanks to the advent of cable T.V. and VCR's I would come across a few movies that make me see films in a completely different way. The first film I saw was "2001 A Space Odyssey". At first I thought the movie was too slow and hard to follow but the special effects along with the graceful way the movie was shot and the music made it impossible for me to look away from it. Then I had heard about a movie from a friend called "A Clockwork Orange". I was told it was a movie set in the future with violence. What I saw I didn't expect. There was violence in the movies but I had seen other films with twice the amout of violence . Despite that, the distburing scenes of the movie I could not get out of my mind. Scenes like Alex (played brilliantly by Malcom McDowell) and his Droogs torturing a writer and raping his wife while Alex was singing and dancing to "Singing in the Rain" and Alex being "cured" by the government by having to watch images on film in a straight jacket created lasting images in my mind. I didn't know what to make of the film but I knew I was seeing something unlike I'd ever seen before. Shortly thereafter an instinct I had at the video store would end up being the final step in my discovery of a genius. I was there without a clue on what what I wanted to see and spotted a movie with a unique title. Of course I'm talking about "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learne to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. On the cover of the video showed Peter Sellers which made me curious about the movie since I was a fan of Sellers in "The Pink Panther" movies. I also noticed though that the movie was in black and white which was a cause for concern. At that time I thought that movies in black and white were for an earlier generation and that no matter how well they were done, they would be films I would never understand. Shorlty into my viewing of the movie, I knew I was in for something special. I remember laughing out loud when Sterling Hayden's character Colonel Jack D Ripper said "we must not allow communists to infiltrate our precious bodily fluids". I was thouroughly entertained with George C Scott's over the top perfomance as General Buck Turgidson and Peter Sellers blew me away playing three characters in the movie. But what impressed me most was the way the movie was made and how it impacted me. How in the world could a black and white movie shot in 1964 create an impression to someone like me who hadn't even been born when the movie was done and had a very limited knowledge of movies. It is impossible to put it into words but when watching the movie it was never in my mind that I was watching a black and white movie and the film's dark humor I completely understood. After seeing the now legendary scene of Slim Pickens riding the atomic bomb to the point of impact, I knew there was someone with a unique vision behind the camera.
The best critic of a film is time. The fact that a film made 30 years prior to when I saw it could make that much of an impact on me made me understand the true value of movies. If a filmmaker knows his craft, is passionate about it, and is willing to take movies into areas previously unexplored, the viewer will realize the great potential in films as an art form and maybe even the potential in themselves. Stanley Kubrick showed this to me and from then on I never looked at a movie in the same way again. I was no longer interested in who was starring in the movie. I wanted to know who was directing the film and what vision they wanted to show. It would come as no surprise to me that the man who was directed "Dr Strangelove" also directed "2001 A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange" and I would then go on to see all of Kubrick's other movies. With the exception of "Spartacus" which was too long and "Barry Lyndon" which was a little to stoic, I found all his movies to be fascinating. They were movies I absorbed, thought about and ultimately cherished. I hope his his upcoming film this year "Eyes Wide Shut" lives up to the quality of his best films but however it turns out it will not affect how I feel about him.
Stanley Kubrick is gone now and while I'm saddened by that it provides me great comfort to know that his movies will carry on for future generations to see. I hope that through his death people unfamiliar with his work will see his films and realize his brilliance and that current directors and directors to be will learn something from his work as well. While there have been great films made recently it always disturbs me to hear that a current thriller is in the tradition of Alfred Hitchkock, a current drama is in the tradition of Frank Capra or a current comedy is in the tradition of Woody Allen. Stanley Kubrick movies were in the tradition of Stanley Kubrick. He respected other directors but never imitated them and single handedly redefined the way we look at the movies. He lived and died exploring all the possibilities that films have to offer and that should be his lasting legacy.
Rest in peace Stanley!