Tributes to a master: five perfect homages to Stanley Kubrick
Thanks to the monumental legacy he left behind, it would take a lot less time to rattle off the acclaimed auteurs who haven’t celebrated the influence of Stanley Kubrick at least a handful of times during their own careers. He was a pioneer of so much that he has become a fixture of modern cinema.
In fact, there aren’t many filmmakers to have made such an impact on the medium, either, with Kubrick’s meticulously-composed masterpieces raising the bar for what was visually and technologically possible on-screen and instilling the belief in multiple generations that cinema has the potential to achieve anything the mind can conceive.
There have been plenty of movies and TV shows to proudly display their Kubrickian fan club membership on the sleeve for all to see, but it’s a lot easier to mount an uninspiring facsimile than it is a genuinely inspired homage, something the following five didn’t forget.
Kubrick has been referenced and acknowledged a thousand different ways by a thousand different filmmakers, but this quintet stood out by doing it in a way that felt familiar and loving, but still stood on their own two feet.
Five perfect homages to Stanley Kubrick:
5. Hannibal (David Slade, 2013)
Bryan Fuller’s darkly delicious twist on pop culture’s favourite cannibal remains one of the most aesthetically pleasing TV shows in recent memory, with the very first episode of Hannibal paying an homage to Kubrick that many viewers wouldn’t even have noticed.
In David Slade’s premiere ‘Apéritif’, Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham and Laurence Fishburne’s Jack Crawford converse in a bathroom, which is an almost identical replica of the set where Jack Torrance and Delbert Grady have their first conversation in The Shining.
The showrunner doubled down by comparing the entire show to The Shining, telling Entertainment Weekly how “we are telling the story of a man who makes his living with his imagination who slowly loses his mind over the course of the season,” with additional caveat of “except the guy is not an alcoholic.”
4. Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
Kubrick was a massive influence on David Bowie, so it was only fair that Duncan Jones, the musician’s son, kept that theme of a lifetime going when he made his feature-length directorial debut on Moon.
As well as being a sci-fi story, the Kevin Spacey-voiced GERTY is a clear and obvious parallel of HAL, sharing human names and unassuming voices that are ill-at-ease with the revelations and bombshells they’ve respectively been tasked to drop.
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it came to the Bowie clan homaging Kubrick, but Moon does so in a way that doesn’t detract from its own qualities as a genuine 21st century science fiction great.
3. Barton Fink (Joel Coen, 1991)
The Coen brothers are no strangers to homaging Kubrick, so it was inevitable that it was going to happen when they made a movie where a great deal of the story unfolds within the cavernous confines of an ominous hotel.
Barton Fink and The Shining are set in foreboding establishments, revolve around writers struggling to unleash their inner wordsmith, and there are several Steadicam shots that are almost beat-for-beat recreations of Kubrick’s luxurious extended takes.
There’s even room for a sight gag, too, with several rooms in Barton Fink spotted with highly polished shoes lying outside. Shoes? Shiny? Shoe-shining? The Shining? It’s hardly an elite-level joke, but it’s there nonetheless.
2. Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014)
Kubrickian fanboys don’t come much more famous than Christopher Nolan, and while he’s hardly averse to tipping his hat towards the maestro, Interstellar made it more pronounced than ever before.
There are countless nods, winks, parallels, and homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey contained within Interstellar, but it never comes across as distracting hero worship. Instead, it’s subtly integrated into a story that’s distinctly Nolan’s, but completely aware of the shadow being cast.
The visual and narrative references range from TARS and CASE evoking the spirit of HAL, with the rectangular design of the robots echoing 2001‘s monolith, while both Kubrick’s classic and Interstellar culminate in a reality-bending abstraction of the human experience.
1. The Simpsons (Matt Groening, 1989-present)
Pop culture is rife with Kubrick homages, but there hasn’t been a movie or TV show to pack in as many over a longer period of time than The Simpsons, with the show’s peak years rife with top-notch references.
Treehouse of Horror segment ‘The Shinning’ might be the best, even if a solid case can be made for Homer eating crisps to the sounds of the 2001 soundtrack in ‘Deep Space Homer’, Bart grasping for a pair of cupcakes like Alex DeLarge in a shot ripped right from A Clockwork Orange in ‘Duffless’, or Mr. Burns subjecting family dog Santa’s Little Helper to the Ludovico Technique.
It was clear that the writing staff who propelled The Simpsons to greatness during its early years were all huge Kubrick fans, with the repeated riffs on the auteur’s back catalogue always coming directly from the heart.
