THEMES AND ISSUES

Information I have gathered from the Pocket Essentials film book by Paul Duncan has given me amazing insight to themes, audio, and visual ideas that run throughout all Kubrick's films.

THEME 1    Hand-to-hand...
In 2001, the apes fight in the opening of the film and at one point HAL controls a the pod and makes it hit Poole.
In Clockwork Orange, Alex and his droogs fight their rival gang in the theatre; they attack Frank Alexander and rape his wife, and Alex beats up Georgie and Dim.
Interestingly in The Shining, despite being husband and wife, Wendy and Jack never show any affection towards each other and don't ever touch; they frequently argue and as the film goes on Jack becomes more and more violent - he tries to attack Wendy, chases Danny, and kills Dick.
Full Metal Jacket presents more obvious hand-to-hand action; they fight each other during training and this is replaced by rifles in Vietnam.

Much of hand-to-hand action presented in Kubrick's films are very intense due to hand-held filming; this is particularly clear in Clockwork Orange during the fight with the rival gang. Unfortunately, after the invention of the steadicam, Kubrick replaced his hand held camera with this, thus losing the edge and documentary style. Having said this, the steadicam was used to perfection in The Shining especially when following Danny on his car.

Having themes that can be seen in all productions is beneficial as they incorporate similar visual styles and ideas to each theme, thus a specific visual style is established within his films.

All three images below show traits of "the beast in man". The hand-to-hand action in Clockwork Orange shows visuals of Alex crouching with a stick in his hand; this refers to the ape with the bone in 2001 and Spartacus' many fights with a sword.

Viewers can easily relate the frame of Alex to the two other frames; the benefit of this revolves around the fact Kubrick wants to make you think about how you feel. The scene of Alex beating Georgie and Dim is in slow motion allowing more time for the spectator to think about similar frames from Spartacus and 2001 and the emotions felt when watching these; a combination of tensity and the want to understand motives of the characters builds up in the spectator (it did for me anyway), thus heightening to mood of the film.