Grand Master
Kubrick and the Kotov Syndrome
In chess, the dreaded “Kotov Syndrome” applies to that hapless player who panics under pressure and executes a stupid,sloppy play unworthy of his talent. It was first described by one Alexander Kotov and presumably never afflicted his own game. But it appears to always be just one wrong move away from those characters who inhabit director Stanley Kubrick’s universe.
Kubrick’s on my mind—and those of many others—because of the massive declaration of love for the man that the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art exhibits through June 30, 2013. (Curiously, LACMA is the final stop; the show originated in Europe.)
FDR died when Kubrick was just 17. The lad grabbed his camera and went out into the streets. There he saw an elderly newspaper vendor leaning in tears against his stall. Kubrick got the shot, sold it to Look magazine for $25, and soon became their youngest photographer.
He stayed with Look for five years, shooting thousands of black and whites and indulging in that near-forgotten pleasure, the photo essay. His subjects were boxers,circus performers, and women of all ages caught in all poses. He shot people in the streets, doing something as ordinary as changing a car tire, and singed their homely light with beauty. He had always been a chess player; along the way, it appears that he also learned how to be a filmmaker.
Seeing his photo essays so luxuriously arrayed in the LACMA exhibit, one begins to understand one of Kubrick’s underlying themes: That mankind, no matter how hard we try to do good, will always mess it up. Kotov will have his due.
Cinematic artifacts, of course, dot the show: the inhuman floating fetus from 2001: A Space Odyssey; the terrifying codpiece outfits from A Clockwork Orange; that menacing typewriter from The Shining. And there are surprises, as well, including a plaintive letter from the original nymphette herself, Sue Lyon, just 14 when she starred in Lolita but writing him as a married woman with the normal dowdy aspects of early middle age who had long ago and thankfully retired from the camera’s glare. (Lolita’s infamy haunted Lyon long past puberty.)
And there’s the surprising labyrinth of Kubrick’s career, a weaving investigation of mankind’s weaknesses that takes him from the boxer’s ring (Killer’s Kiss) to war (Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket) to unwanted desire (Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut), to horror (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining) to even . . . Barry Lyndon.
My sweetie and I left the museum determined to host our own private Kubrick Fest, a home screening that began with his roiling documentary The Seafarers (1953) and has taken us so far, perhaps even tonight, to Spartacus.
To date, everything we’ve seen in Kubrick’s chronology has been created in luxuriant creamy whites and charcoal blacks, so handsome that they almost belie the sadness we’ve witnessed. But black and white it’s been: The bad guys have been very bad indeed, and the good guys understandable. We’re even rekindling a love affair with Kirk Douglas, who is the only voice of reason in the WWI filmic novella, Paths of Glory. Sure, we know what’s coming. The titillation of Lolita, the grit and shame and stomach sucking ache of Clockwork and Jacket and The Shining and oh lordy me.
But what I’ve already learned along the way is that regardless of how good mankind tries to be, they always panic and screw it up.
Mea culpa, Mr. Kotov.
