At that moment, I stared and thought, “Oh…”Īnd while not a very profound observation, I think it’s safe to say that on almost every occasion that I’ve seen a Stanley Kubrick film for the first time, my initial thought amounted to little more than an entranced “Oh…” His are films that open us to worlds beyond our reach, make us reconsider and think more deeply about the world we do inhabit, and, above all, rarely fail to stretch our imaginations to new and richer lengths. Forget all that comes after that initial image. I will never forget seeing that opening shot in the Korova Milkbar for the first time: that demonic, glassy-eyed close-up Hell’s own synths acting as ventilation and the Nadsat slovos dripping from our humble narrator’s tongue like knives falling on marble tiles.
That was Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. However, that journey from being a young child watching a pre-movie cartoon alongside a parent to bingeing a director’s entire filmography deep into the wee hours of the night follows a basic developmental path: hundreds of treks up and down sticky, popcorn-speckled aisles (often alone) thousands of late-night rentals (also often alone) and a growing, insuppressible urge to tell others about what you’ve seen (it helps if you’re not alone - or at least have a pet).īut there’s one more moment that I think all film lovers share: the very first time we watch a movie and come away thinking, “Oh, so that’s FILM” or “I didn’t know a movie could do that.” I can rattle off dozens of movies that have, to borrow a phrase, shifted the cargo in my haul - from a courtroom drama like 12 Angry Men to a coming-of-age plunge like The Graduate to a perfectly paced thriller like Jaws - but one came before them. Nobody’s born an arts writer, film critic, or movie buff. The time, we explore the work of one of cinema’s true great auteurs. It’s exact science by way of a few beers.
Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract.
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