The Stanley Kubrick movie that took Brendan Fraser’s mind in “a whole other direction”
It’s probably a lot easier – and would take less time – to name the notable actors and directors who weren’t influenced by Stanley Kubrick in one way or another, with the filmmaker’s shadow continuing to loom large over Hollywood.
Many of the greatest directors in history have celebrated the auteur for the way he continually pushed the boundaries of cinema and strove for perfection, while his filmography is regularly touted by on-camera performers when they’re pressed to name their own personal favourite movies of all time.
Brendan Fraser is no exception, with the resurgent Academy Award winner praising no less than three of Kubrick’s many masterpieces when quizzed by A.Frame on the titles that summed up his entire existence. Reflecting on his teenage years, the star was instantly won over by Kubrick’s impeccable back catalogue.
“In those years, I saw A Clockwork Orange, and that took my brain in a whole other direction,” Fraser said. “I read the book – it was required reading in English class – but to see the film, it opened my eyes to Kubrick”. A gateway had been opened for the young Fraser, and it was one that he was more than happy to walk through with open arms.
“I moved on to The Shining and Barry Lyndon. I loved Barry Lyndon because I heard that Kubrick created lenses so that they could leave the aperture open wide enough to capture candlelight, which I thought was very cool,” he continued. “It really felt like, ‘Wow, I guess we’re going to go back in time to see what it’s like in the Gilded Age!’ I loved that.”
Despite that, not a single Kubrickian classic made it onto the quartet of features Fraser plumped for when naming the four movies he would save “if I had to run from a burning house”. Instead, he opted for The Red Balloon, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Charlie Chaplin’s The General, and George Lucas’ Star Wars.
He wouldn’t rescue A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, or The Shining from a fiery abode, then, but it nonetheless marked a new dawn for Fraser as a fan of cinema. After all, this was somebody who’d been raised on a steady diet of Disney animation, fantasy classics, and sci-fi spectaculars, but that formative experience turned him on to the greatness of Kubrick and served as his introduction to the legend’s work.
That appreciation even extended into one of the first roles of his comeback, with Fraser boarding Steven Soderbergh’s noir thriller No Sudden Move because he’d “always been a fan of Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick, and this is not far removed from that world.” Decades on from A Clockwork Orange blowing his mind for the first time, the star was still channelling his fandom.
