Emma Stone names her favourite Stanley Kubrick movie: “It feels the most impactful”
With the rise of Letterboxd and the Criterion closet tour, nosy cinephiles can now snoop on and appreciate the film taste of actors and filmmakers alike, with endless streams of discussion on Gena Rowlands, Stanley Kubrick and Bill Hader’s lasting love for House.
During the press junkets and interviews for each upcoming release, we’re often given an insight into the films that inspired and influenced the creative team, sometimes with some surprising choices that offer a new lens through which to view the work. Because who would’ve guessed that Eric Rohmer was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock? Or that Euphoria was partly inspired by Pink Flamingos? And during the press tour for Kinds of Kindness, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe gushed about their love for one filmmaker in particular.
After starring alongside each other in Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, Dafoe and Stone have explored every corner and crevice of creativity, leaving no stone unturned as they dive into the strange surrealism of Yorgos Lanthimos’ story worlds. And when talking about the films that inspired their work with Lanthimos, both actors highlighted the enduring impact of Stanley Kubrick.
Kubrick is a creative genius known for his ability to seamlessly adapt to a sprawling range of genres and still maintain a clear voice within each piece of work, honing a bold cinematic language in which he moulds his style to compliment each story world.
With work that spans from period pieces such as Barry Lyndon, post-modern organised chaos in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the manic misbehaviour in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick a master of immersive storytelling. And when asked about her favourite Kubrick film, Stone said, “I have to choose The Shining because it was such a resonant movie for me in the moment that the impact that it had on me when I watched it feels the most impactful. Now you watch it, and you go, like, ‘Oh, look at the film, blah, blah’, but I was younger when I saw that, and, I don’t know, that kind of feeling sticks with you. But I love all of them”.
Funnily enough, The Shining shares some interesting commonalities with Kinds of Kindness, with both films expressing a cynicism towards traditional family units and romantic relationships, showing people who are driven to extreme acts as a way of demonstrating their love and commitment towards each other, but ultimately becoming a self-serving act that only exists as a form of validation and control.
The slow descent into madness is something that we also see reflected in Stone’s character in Kinds of Kindness, someone who becomes disillusioned by their goals to the extent that they’d sacrifice their own family. There is no doubt that Lanthimos has been inspired by Kubrick, embodying a similar quality in which each of his films becomes its own standalone work but thematically resonates with the others when compared as a whole, with all films existing in tandem with each other as they explore the many facets of love and family.
Stone is starring in Lanthimos’ next film, Bugonia, which recently went into production. Given the ever-evolving nature of Lanthimos’ style, who knows what this story will entail, but when working with actors who have such a deep knowledge of the medium and the possibilities it offers, we can be sure that it will contain layers of references that add a whole new level of meaning to the performances.
