Stanley Kubrick's name is widely recognizable; he is revered for making films that are entertaining and intellectually stimulating. This volume offers a detailed analysis of his major films beginning with The Killing (1956) and ending with Full Metal Jacket (1987). Students of film as well as the general public will be interested in learning new strategies for watching these extraordinary films, since there are few instructive books on this master filmmaker.
Kubrick's mastery of technique and the complexity of form in his films is impressive. This formal mastery is always at the service of intricate thematics and organizational coherence. Falsetto's contention in this volume is that Kubrick's work revolves around particular dualities of meaning: subjective/objective, classical/modernist, rational/irrational, and so forth. Despite the complexity of the films, they remain accessible because they are entertaining, while forceful, serious, and inventive. Kubrick is an artist who uses the medium of film to communicate many ideas about the world. He is unquestionably the individual with the greatest input into the final form of his films: a genuine auteur director.
