Tribeca Premieres Documentary 'Kubrick By Kubrick' -- the Cinematic Master In His Own Words

Gregory Monro's film is based on series of interviews Kubrick gave to a French critic and author 

Director Stanley Kubrick seldom granted requests from journalists to discuss his work. Fortunately for cinephiles he did consent to speak with French critic and Positif magazine editor Michel Ciment, not just once but multiple times over the course of a 30-year relationship. 

Those interviews, recorded on audiotape, are the basis for the new documentary Kubrick by Kubrick, offering unprecedented insight into the cinéaste's artistic outlook. Gregory Monro's film premiered as part of the virtual edition of the Tribeca Film Festival (the physical event has been postponed indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic).

"What is the point of making a new Kubrick film? That was my question. I think that's the question of a lot of people," the French-born Monro told me by Skype from his home in Paris. "This is the first film where you hear Kubrick himself, where you have his viewpoints not only on cinematography but also on man or on humanity. That's very important."

I wanted to humanize Stanley Kubrick. Not demystify, but humanize.

​--Kubrick by Kubrick director Gregory Monro to Nonfictionfilm.com

Kubrick remains an elusive figure, in part because he never repeated himself as a filmmaker. His films varied enormously in terms of genre: sword-and-sandal epic (Spartacus), black comedy (Dr. Strangelove), period drama (Barry Lyndon), science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey), futuristic dystopian (A Clockwork Orange), horror (The Shining), war movie (Full Metal Jacket), to cite some of his work. His films were not auteur-driven, with the possible exception of his last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, obscuring the director's hand.
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Ciment offers a psychological reading of the dynamic in many of Kubrick's films, between "surface civilization" and the "uncivilized subconscious." This is perhaps most evident in the character of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in The Shining. A related theme, violence -- both of the personal kind and its counterpart in state-sanctioned or state-organized brutality -- is seen in A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket and in The Shining, which gestures toward the genocide of Native Americans.  

"[Kubrick] talks about his general themes" in the documentary, Monro notes. "People say he was pessimistic but he would answer... that he had a realistic view -- of course maybe pessimistic -- but he wanted to be as realistic as possible in his movies about the world in which man was living. Of course, it's a dark vision of humanity." 

Director Stanley Kubrick, 1928-1999. Photo courtesy ARTE France/Temps Noirs

A great menace lurks in many of Kubrick's films, for instance in the eerily controlled though malevolent voice of Hal, the computer, in 2001; looming humiliation and portents of ritualistic sacrifice in Eyes Wide Shut, the threat of anarchic violence in A Clockwork Orange, the supernatural dread in The Shining; in a more comedic vein, the possibility of nuclear annihilation animates Dr. Strangelove.

"I don't know what led me to make any of the films I've made, really," Kubrick tells Ciment in the documentary.

"When we did the interviews, [Kubrick] would speak very candidly about his craft. But he never wanted to analyze himself, which I think is a characteristic he shared with many Central European Jewish directors I’ve met — from Fritz Lang to Otto Preminger to Milos Forman," Ciment notes in an interview released in conjunction with Kubrick by Kubrick. "There’s a refusal to go into self-analysis, even though I’m sure they’ve all read Freud and that Freud influenced their work. They preferred to talk about the films themselves, about actors and screenwriting and editing and photography, and that was certainly Kubrick’s case. What most struck me about him was how he never tried to obfuscate anything. He would always ask if his answers satisfied me, if he’d fully responded to my questions."

Kubrick is a satirist. One must never forget that.

--Kubrick by Kubrick director Gregory Monro to Nonfictionfilm.com

Kubrick by Kubrick examines the director's feelings about his most misunderstood film, A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick requested the film be withdrawn from distribution in his adopted United Kingdom, after he faced criticism from those who viewed it as an endorsement of violence. Those critics missed the point, Monro says.

"Kubrick is a satirist. One must never forget that. Dr. Strangelove or even A Clockwork Orange is a satirical film," he states. "That's why it wasn't very well praised at the time — people didn't see that. They only saw the violence. Of course, it's very violent, but it's not pro-violence at all. It's a satire of the society at that time and how you control violence and do you control violence by violence? That's still [a question] today. How do you control violence? It's very profound. It's a real Kubrick theme."

A still photo of the Louis XIV-style room that Gregory Monro recreated for "Kubrick by Kubrick." Courtesy ARTE France/Temps Noirs

To knit the film together, Monro recreated the evocative doorless Louis XIV-era bedroom seen at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, stocking it with props from Kubrick films including the typewriter from The Shining.

"We had a Polish co-producer and we went to Warsaw to a studio there and built the set," Monro reveals. "We shot it there last September."

Periodically throughout the documentary Monro takes us back into that room; sometimes  posters of Kubrick films hang on the walls, or a vintage TV set plays archival material.

"I needed to find a way, okay, how am I going to symbolize Kubrick's mind or spirit? And the 2001 room really popped up very quickly," Monro explains. "Because it's a real mystery in the history of cinema, of movies, the 2001 room has really been questioned by millions of people, 'What is the meaning of that room?' It's very secret, it's very mysterious. So I said to myself, why not set up my narrative in that room as if the room was coming up again to life and it also symbolizes to me Kubrick's psyche... You enter that room, you're into his mind, you hear what he has to say."

Stanley Kubrick on set. Photo courtesy ARTE France/Temps Noirs

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Related: 
>Kubrick's chief aide Leon Vitali on working with the master: 'It's a huge adventure, the whole thing' [Video]
​>Filmworker directors on Leon Vitali: 'He learned to take his self and merge it with Kubrick's creativity' 

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Kubrick brought extraordinary rigor to his work, heavily researching the subject matter for each of his films. In Kubrick by Kubrick we learn the costumes for the 18th century-set Barry Lyndon were all copied from paintings the director studied.

To bring verisimilitude to that film, Kubrick used special lenses to shoot night scenes by candlelight, just as rooms would have been lit in the time period depicted. The low f-stop settings, necessary to admit as much light as possible, made it a challenge to keep the actors in focus.

"There were days when we would just sit there and be lit all day, literally," actress Marisa Berenson, who played Lady Honoria Lyndon, recalls in the documentary.

Anyone who has seen the documentary Filmworker, about Kubrick's aide-de-camp Leon Vitali, knows how exacting the director could be. He was famous for shooting an extraordinary number of takes, exasperating some actors (although in Kubrick by Kubrick Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy Torrance in The Shining, praises Kubrick for that  approach). Monro told me Kubrick once called up Ciment in Paris to ask him whether the posters for Full Metal Jacket could be seen properly from the Champs-Élysées. Despite these and many other stories, Monro thinks the filmmaker has been wrongly maligned as obsessive. 

"It's not about someone who wanted to be a control freak," Monro maintains. "I don't see him like that. He wanted to be an absolute artist."

Stanley Kubrick on the set of "Barry Lyndon" (1975). Night scenes were shot by candlelight. Photo courtesy ARTE France/Temps Noirs

Kubrick's piercing eyes and keen intelligence lent him an intimidating air, but the audiotapes in Kubrick by Kubrick suggest he was not a frightening character at all.

"People kept going on, 'He's Jack Nicholson in The Shining.' No, he's not," Monro says. "He was very friendly, very open, as you hear... People who saw pictures of Stanley Kubrick, he looks really tough and tyrannical, but when you hear him... his voice sounds so very different, he sounds so very calm, peaceful, very gentle, very generous, a casual guy and he was like that actually."

​Monro sees his film as offering a more realistic view of the man.

"I wanted to humanize Stanley Kubrick. Not demystify, but humanize. When you hear him you forget that it's Kubrick almost," he observes. "He's very pragmatic, he's very conscious about his art and sometimes he feels uncomfortable talking about some subjects because it's very touchy -- talking about violence or the Vietnam War. That's really what I wanted to do with that film."

​Along with relevant Kubrick film clips, there are also home movies of the young Kubrick and images from his early career as a photographer for Look magazine. Monro secured permission from Kubrick's family to make his documentary.

"It's Kubrick's words," he emphasizes. "That will be the only film [of its kind] because we had a contract with the Kubrick Trust, with the family. It went very well. There won't be another film like it."

The set of "A Clockwork Orange" (1971). Photo courtesy ARTE France/Temps Noirs

Negotiations are underway for distribution of Kubrick by Kubrick in the U.S.

"It's in talks... There's a lot of festivals interested, a few [streaming] platforms too," Monro tells me. "I'm very excited to see it on the big screen with an audience and to see the reaction... Even for young people I think that's a good start to get a sense of who was that guy, what he did and how he did it. I know there's a lot of people interested, either broadcasters or maybe theaters, festivals for sure. The film will have a life soon, as soon as we get out of this [coronavirus] mess."