The author Stanley Kubrick called a “great master”
Throughout his career, it was often the case that the masterful film director Stanley Kubrick consulted the literary works of others in order to create his many masterpiece works of cinema. Of course, Kubrick possessed a genius of his own, but he frequently adapted other writers’ stories rather than create his own.
For instance, Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, was based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler, while his early movie, Lolita, had been adapted from the Vladimir Nabokov novel of the same name. Elsewhere, Kubrick used the writing of Anthony Burgess, Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke to help inform some of his best known movies.
Of course, that fact alone proves that not only was Kubrick one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but that he was also a keen reader, a man who loved to learn and experience narrative in the written form. Beyond that, Kubrick’s films had often resisted full explanation within the works themselves, preferring to leave matters open to interpretation.
In a 1980 interview with Vicente Molina Foix discussing his horror film The Shining, Kubrick had spoken of the imperative to resist explanation, especially in the horror genre. “You should not try to explain, to find neat explanations for what happens, and that the object of the thing is to produce a sense of the uncanny,” he said.
Kubrick proceeded to refer to the work of Sigmund Freud and his treatment of the uncanny, in which the founder of psychoanalysis argued that “the sense of the uncanny is the only emotion which is more powerfully expressed in art than in life”, an insight which Kubrick had found “illuminating”.
Freud was not the only figure that Kubrick had in mind when he was making The Shining, though, as he also spoke of the “great master” author H.P. Lovecraft and his understanding of the resistance of explanation. The director noted, “He said that you should never attempt to explain what happens, as long as what happens stimulates people’s imagination, their sense of the uncanny, their sense of anxiety and fear.”
“And as long as it doesn’t, within itself, have any obvious inner contradictions,” Kubrick added, “it is just a matter of, as it were, building on the imagination (imaginary ideas, surprises, etc.), working in this area of feeling.” This kind of description fits perfectly with the overall ethos of Lovecraft, who is known for his works in the weird, science, fantasy, and horror genres.
Lovecraft’s best-known work is aligned with cosmicism, which focuses on the belief in the insignificance of humanity in terms of the wider picture of the entire universe. Godlike creatures and aliens feature prominently in Lovecraft’s writings, but he, as Kubrick notes, resisted any direct explanation of their arrival or being, preferring to allow an audience to sit with their existence and experience the natural dread and fear and duly rise.
Relating to The Shining in light of Lovecraft, Kubrick said, “I think also that the ingeniousness of a story like this is something which the audience ultimately enjoys; they obviously wonder as the story goes on what’s going to happen.” In addition, Kubrick felt that his 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson delivered “satisfaction” to the audience in how the “major anticipated development” of the story is not realised at its conclusion, and yet they don’t feel “fooled or swindled”, much like perhaps the works of Lovecraft himself.
