Humanity's Lens: Kubrick's B'nL

[JackRiddler]

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Well, the way this was started was as a riff on this board's biggest resident in-joke, and mildly annoying if clever, but I appreciate the chance to briefly say:

Saw it again recently, it is one of the greatest movies ever (we need a top 10 list for everyone else not including Kubrick). It is possibly Kubrick's most perfect (either this or Paths to Gloryl I won't argue which of the Master's works is best, these two are the most perfect in the formal, artisitic sense). Also probably his most humanist, warmly humorous with a sympathetic-yet-withering objectivity throughout. I love this movie and I do wish I had seen it on a big screen in 1975.

Also, it clearly does relate to the world in general, as does any work, but consciously so. As with Kubrick's films generally, it is clearly (among other things) about how war is the stupidest and most destructive of all conceivable human activities, and how men are always prone to become unwitting monsters, with redemption hardly assured in the Hollywood manner.

I still miss this man!

[compared2what?]

I saw it in the theater in 1975. But not since then. So I'd like to play, but don't have the chips to ante up.

[IanEye]

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As with Kubrick's films generally, it is clearly (among other things) about how war is the stupidest and most destructive of all conceivable human activities, and how men are always prone to become unwitting monsters, with redemption hardly assured in the Hollywood manner.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers. - Ronald Reagan 1964

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. - Gerald Ford 1974

Kubrick also changed the plot. The novel does not include a final duel. By adding this episode, Kubrick establishes dueling as the film’s central motif. The movie begins with a duel where Barry’s father is shot dead, and duels recur throughout the film.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Good topic, IanEye, and you've put some rich stuff on the historio-conceptual table.

I think what Ian's trying to do here is quite reasonable - discuss a Kubrick film in the political context of its time - and bears only superficial resemblance to what this board knows as "keyword hijacking."

Temporal CONTEXT is exactly what I analyze. ALWAYS.
Seems your understanding of keyword hijacking is superficial yet you contradict yourself by following with...

The name would have been evocative, and I doubt Kubrick would have been ignorant of that.

OMG. Now you are AGREEING with me when I state the obvious about keywords.
And after you wrote a posting rule JUST for me and have started deleting my posts.

I've been trying to tell you I'm positing nothing "idiosyncratic" and you are confusing things terribly, not me. WORDS matter. No kidding! Ask a writer!

ON TOPIC-
I've written already at length about Kubrick's films matching statist agendas.
I've written already about 'Barry Lyndon.'
...I'll hafta search'em up, I'm not going to start over...

Remember LBJ's gloomy last years? Growing his hair long?
Those last dangerous interviews where he blurted out "we were running a damned Murder Inc." that he then asked to have edited out?
Very dangerous stuff in a very dangerous time for spooks.

IanEye is on the right track with names (even homonyms like "bury") and male military themes. Kubrich bouncing from Napolean (famous powerful manly loser) to another arduous violent Duels of Life story? Vietnam? Historical catharsis?

sheesh. People really miss the contextual obvious.
Media is not made and released in a vacuum.
If you can't figure out contemporary context, you can't 'get it.'

JackRiddler, just because you enjoyed something doesn't mean it wasn't pysops. There's really good psyops well done and so most effective. People good at the craft tend to get channeled into this stuff, like Disney-Pollack-Kubrick-Lucas-Spielberg-.

Macruiskeen, perps have been recycling pre-existing stories as psyops forever.
So saying "it's an old book" does NOT mean making it a famous modern movie has no political meaning.

Peter Pan is an old book story but Spielberg turning it into the movie 'Hook' is an altogether other cultural event with a different audience and in a specific political context, the first Gulf War period.

I wish people would actually do research on this stuff.
So much is open source and yet not even looked at. Horse! Water! Drink!

[Jeff]

OMG. Now you are AGREEING with me when I state the obvious about keywords.

No.

When anyone states the obvious as I see it of course I'll agree. Your KWH theory is not it.

That an artist perhaps finds a character's name evocative is not exactly the same as your micro-managing, obsessive-compulsive CIA, producing Don Knotts' comedies to make Americans forget about an aspect of the Gulf of Tonkin most wouldn't have known in the first place - is it?

[kelley]

an interesting sub-plot in this film involves the double-agent lyndon, his relationship with the chevalier, and the subsequent ruses the pair enact as they gamble their way through the courts of europe. and i agree, it seems the greatest and most human of kubrick's films. i believe the painterly aspects of the production have alot to do with that quality, as shown to great effect in the previous still.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

OMG. Now you are AGREEING with me when I state the obvious about keywords.

No.

When anyone states the obvious as I see it of course I'll agree. Your KWH theory is not it.

That an artist perhaps finds a character's name evocative is not exactly the same as your micro-managing, obsessive-compulsive CIA,

Guess you haven't researched the "micro-managing, obsessive-compulsive" CIA very much. Or the basics of propaganda.

Of COURSE the CIA is "micro-managing, obsessive-compulsive!"
Your acting as if I'm making up that psyops even exists.
I'm quite sure you don't read what I write.

"The idea of using language. Absurd! Just because humans use language?
Gee, why would the CIA with their decades of media management, social science, and billions of dollars?
Silly!"

Ever heard of...pre-emptive measures? Counterinsurgency? Preparation propaganda?
Look'em up. I did.

You're still missing that counterpropaganda cognitive measures are taken to PREVENT and MINIMIZE contamination by hostile information IN CASE it happens and has value after it happens, too.

Look up "inoculation theory" and "interference theory" and "the dynamics of rumor" and "conditioning" etc.

So saying "who knew so why bother?" is totally ...well, just not right.

.. producing Don Knotts' comedies to make Americans forget about an aspect of the Gulf of Tonkin most wouldn't have known in the first place - is it?

Loooong before the Gulf of Tonkin. That's why, too.

CONTEXT. Post-Bay of Pigs disaster Cold War. White-knuckled psyops culture. Keeping a hinky public supporting possible nuclear annihilation. Many counterinsurgency wars being waged, many in losing positions.

You even HAVE a child. You know NOTHING about forming attitudes and beliefs in kidz? Then you might consider putting up for adoption, poor child. (joke)

Children get TONS of psyops "micro-managing" their minds. And their parents, too.
So they get pre-biased with safe counterpropaganda IN CASE they might - slim possibility - ever hear from the Commies that US terrorists were captured and put on show trial by eeeevil commies in 1962 when Americans think their government is too virtuous for that kind of thing.

[Jeff]

I'm quite sure you don't read what I write.

If I didn't, I wouldn't have an opinion about it.

But I don't want this thread to be about your Theory of Everything or our disagreement. Let's return it to Barry Lyndon.

[thegovernmentflu]

Kubrick was a maniacal perfectionist who routinely inserted deep subtexts into his films without providing the audience with any explanation. He's also infamous for re-shooting the most basic scenes an inordinate number of times. When you watch a Kubrick film, you have to be aware that a sequence of only a few seconds could represent a week of meticulous set arrangement and constant re-shooting. Anything that you see in the background of any given shot was probably put there for a reason.

That said, I've seen Barry Lyndon once and I didn't pick up on any esoteric subtext, unlike some of his other films. I'm sure everyone is aware of Eyes Wide Shut, but other films like the Shining have lots of really fascinating undertones. I read an essay years ago which convincingly pointed out that Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's novel was partially an allegory on race relations.

[vigilant]

The thrusting branch on the fourth tree from the left is a subtle tribute to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

That is the only one I didn't understand. Can someone clarify that one for me?

[IanEye]

I think what Ian's trying to do here is quite reasonable - discuss a Kubrick film in the political context of its time - The name would have been evocative, and I doubt Kubrick would have been ignorant of that.

stumbled across this when looking for "Spy vs. Spy" imagery for Nordic.

Figures I was channeling Mad Magazine the whole time.



lah dee dah dee dee
lah dee dah dee dah...


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[MinM]

@robtrench Jun 30

Kubrick marathon on @tcm this Sunday (03 July 2016): BARRY LYNDON, 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and PATHS OF GLORY. Starts at 8pm EST.

People are free to discuss whatever aspects of the film they want on this thread. I happen to think there is a lot in the film that serves as a mirror for the previous 10 years (65-75) in American Politics.

Those that do not share this viewpoint are free to disagree and give their take on the film and the context of the times in which it was initially released.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_Berenson

Berinthia "Berry" Berenson-Perkins (April 14, 1948 – September 11, 2001) was an American photographer, actress, and model. Perkins, who was the widow of actor Anthony Perkins (known for Psycho (1960), died in the September 11 attacks as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11.

Early life
Berenson was born in Murray Hill, Manhattan. Her father, Robert Lawrence Berenson, was an American career diplomat turned shipping executive; he was of Lithuanian Jewish descent, and his family's original surname was Valvrojenski.[1][2][3] Her mother was born Maria-Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor, better known as Gogo Schiaparelli, a socialite of Italian, Swiss, French, and Egyptian ancestry.[4]

Her maternal grandmother was the Italian-born fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli,[5] and her maternal grandfather was Wilhelm de Wendt de Kerlor, a Theosophist and psychic medium.[4][6][7] Her elder sister, Marisa Berenson, became a well-known model and actress. She also was a great-grandniece of Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer who believed he had discovered the supposed canals of Mars, and a second cousin, once removed, of art expert Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) and his sister Senda Berenson (1868–1954), an athlete and educator who was one of the first two women elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marisa_Berenson

Personal life
In the early 1970s, Berenson was the companion of the French banking heir Baron David René de Rothschild, the younger son of Baron Guy de Rothschild.[12] She was also in a relationship with Austrian actor Helmut Berger.[13]
...
On September 11, 2001, her younger sister and sole sibling, Berry Perkins, widow of actor Anthony Perkins, was killed in the first flight to hit the World Trade Center. Marisa was also in an airplane during the terrorist attacks, flying from Paris to New York. In an interview with CBS, she told of the experience and how hours later she landed in Newfoundland (flights were diverted to Canada), and was told of her sister's death by a phone call with her daughter. Said Berenson: "I have hope and tremendous faith. I think that's what gets you through life ... through tragedies is when you have faith."[20]

Of her practice of Transcendental Meditation she said:

India changed my life, because I was searching for my spiritual path, and I ended up in an ashram in Rishikesh with Maharishi and the Beatles. We’d sit on the floor at night, and George and Ringo would play the guitar, and we’d meditate all day, and have meals together, and become vegetarians, and live in huts. But it was just normal. It wasn’t like, "Oh, here are the Beatles." The most important thing was my transcendental meditation.[21]

[Nordic]

I'd say those sisters qualify for the title of "elites". For what it's worth.

[Cordelia]

I saw Barry Lyndon on the big screen in 1975, but was too young to appreciate it (and it was too long to keep me awake), so the experience escaped me. Twenty years later, I bought a vhs copy for $1 and it's a film I'll always keep, truly a masterpiece, created well before computerized, digitized filming.

For me, following Ryan O'Neal's Redmond Barry is like viewing a blank canvas on which Kubrick paints colorful (and often comically outrageous) portraits & scenes during the rise and downfall of his multi-dimensional poseur and rake. (A memorable scene is when Lord Bullingdon confronts & challenges his step-father to a duel--the characters in the background look like they are painted.)



fwiw....Reference to Marisa Berenson reminded me also of her picture at the ultra-bizarre 'Rothschild Surrealist Ball' https://www.crestandco.com/journal/rothschild/, held not long before she appeared in B.L. (but a long time before Kubrick made E.W.S):



Baron Guy de Rothschild & Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild at their ball: