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Kubrick: An Odyssey
The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey , The Shining , and A Clockwork Orange , presenting the most in-depth portrait yet of the groundbreaking film-maker.
The enigmatic and elusive filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has not been treated to a full-length biography in over twenty years.
Stanley An Odyssey fills that gap. This definitive book is based on access to the latest research, especially Kubrick's archive at the University of the Arts, London, as well as other private papers plus new interviews with family members and those who worked with him. It offers comprehensive and in-depth coverage of Kubrick’s personal, private, public, and working life. Stanley An Odyssey investigates not only the making of Kubrick's films, but also about those he wanted (but failed) to make like Burning Secret , Napoleon , Aryan Papers , and A.I.
Revealingly, this immersive biography will puncture the controversial myths about the reclusive filmmaker who created some of the most important works of art of the twentieth century
The enigmatic and elusive filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has not been treated to a full-length biography in over twenty years.
Stanley An Odyssey fills that gap. This definitive book is based on access to the latest research, especially Kubrick's archive at the University of the Arts, London, as well as other private papers plus new interviews with family members and those who worked with him. It offers comprehensive and in-depth coverage of Kubrick’s personal, private, public, and working life. Stanley An Odyssey investigates not only the making of Kubrick's films, but also about those he wanted (but failed) to make like Burning Secret , Napoleon , Aryan Papers , and A.I.
Revealingly, this immersive biography will puncture the controversial myths about the reclusive filmmaker who created some of the most important works of art of the twentieth century
656 pages, Hardcover
First published February 6, 2023
139 people are currently reading
1532 people want to read
About the author
Robert P. Kolker
23 books66 followersRobert Phillip Kolker, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, taught cinema studies for almost 50 years. He is author of A Cinema of Loneliness, The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and the Reimagining of Cinema, and editor of 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays and The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
February 6, 2025
"Our biography follows the arc of [director Stanley Kubrick's] life, from busy young man to the outwardly comfortable and inwardly driven maturity of an artist who had both nothing AND everything to prove, constantly searching for the perfect story to tell and always seeking the absolute right way to tell it. Sometimes this drive for perfection caused a project to fail to reach production, and the films that WERE made rarely met with unanimous critical or even commercial success on their first outing; but they grew in esteem, in effect outliving themselves and, ultimately, their creator." -- on page 12
Arguably, film director Stanley Kubrick belongs on that short list of auteurs - others includes Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, and Quentin Tarantino - who have a distinct sort of style that often makes their work near-instantly recognizable, almost like a signature. Although not especially prolific - only three short documentaries and thirteen features between 1952 and 1999 - portions of what he did leave viewers still make an impression. Kolker and Abrams' Kubrick: An Odyssey is one of those non-fiction works I cheekily refer to as 'exhaustive, and exhausting' as the reader is devoting 600 pages to a man who remains sort of a cipher. Kubrick is depicted as a really private man for the majority of his professional life, as he did not do televised / filmed interviews, and regularly seemed to desire to be a homebody - in other words, nothing too scandalous in here. However, the authors' deep exploration of Kurbrick's methodical if not outright obsessive work to ultimately bring his ideas for movies to actual silver screen fruition is likely the main selling point of this bio. The thirteen features (including 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut) receive the appropriate amount of page time, and sometimes even more interesting were those random projects that never made it past the proverbial drawing board . . . such as his supposed serious brief flirtation with making a major studio-funded pornographic flick featuring A-list performers (!!!). We can thank his third wife Christiane for threatening to divorce him if he ultimately moved forward with that crazily off-kilter scheme, resulting in its death knell.
Arguably, film director Stanley Kubrick belongs on that short list of auteurs - others includes Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, and Quentin Tarantino - who have a distinct sort of style that often makes their work near-instantly recognizable, almost like a signature. Although not especially prolific - only three short documentaries and thirteen features between 1952 and 1999 - portions of what he did leave viewers still make an impression. Kolker and Abrams' Kubrick: An Odyssey is one of those non-fiction works I cheekily refer to as 'exhaustive, and exhausting' as the reader is devoting 600 pages to a man who remains sort of a cipher. Kubrick is depicted as a really private man for the majority of his professional life, as he did not do televised / filmed interviews, and regularly seemed to desire to be a homebody - in other words, nothing too scandalous in here. However, the authors' deep exploration of Kurbrick's methodical if not outright obsessive work to ultimately bring his ideas for movies to actual silver screen fruition is likely the main selling point of this bio. The thirteen features (including 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut) receive the appropriate amount of page time, and sometimes even more interesting were those random projects that never made it past the proverbial drawing board . . . such as his supposed serious brief flirtation with making a major studio-funded pornographic flick featuring A-list performers (!!!). We can thank his third wife Christiane for threatening to divorce him if he ultimately moved forward with that crazily off-kilter scheme, resulting in its death knell.
January 31, 2024
The book serves as a decent biography of Kubrick but doesn’t detail his life in the one- to two-thousand page range that it would require. Each chapter drags from one film to another at a predictable pace. The basic biographical information with greater precision and tone can be found elsewhere—most being the sources for this. The book reads more like an oral history by quoting others at exhaustive length to do the characterization heavy-lifting. Speaking of which, the authors, most likely intentionally, prefer to keep Kubrick at arm’s length rather than performing the hard work of finding/expressing a more internalized character. It’s also a good example of how two authors cancel out each other’s unique style/specialization rather than unifying to craft a compelling singular vision of a character perpetually residing in film myth. Abrams especially randomly throws in way too many references to Kubrick’s jewishness, which is pedantic and something Kubrick almost never overtly expressed. Would have been much more interesting if they were to comment on Kubrick’s relationship with what it means being American, which finds perpetual renewal in his films and life.
January 26, 2024
I always know I have found a five star book when I’m sad it’s over. I did not want this book to end! I found myself dragging my feet for the last 10 hours to savor every bit! I don’t think I can say that about any other book. Kubrick: An Odyssey is a powerhouse of a book. It provides a very detailed history of Stanley Kubrick - the man, the myth, the legend. This book is 100% worth the 24+ hours and it is fantastically narrated by Perry Daniels.
I would classify Kolker and Abrams’ work as a “living book” because of the attention to detail and the ability it provides readers to vividly imagine Kubrick’s life.
Growing up I was exposed to Kubrick’s work early thanks to a few of my eccentric middle school teachers (we watched Spartacus in 6th grade and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 7th) as well as my love of horror. The Shining continues to stand as my favorite horror movie. I was enthralled by the documentary Room 237 and definitely made assumptions about Kubrick based off of it. He seemed very mysterious and intentional. Now I know he was!
In Kubrick: An Odyssey we learn about Kubrick’s start with photography and later his tendency towards privacy due to critical opinions about 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was interesting to learn how the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. gave Kubrick the time to make edits in this film after initial criticism. The times that Kubrick grew up in, being Jewish and avoiding the Vietnam draft all played heavily in his influence.
I loved learning about Kubrick’s obsession with psychoanalytic topics and Napoleon and how the conflict of the 70s set the right environment for A Clockwork Orange to be received. I would not have imagined that Kubrick faced threats and accusations of fascism after making A Clockwork Orange, but he did!
I loved learning so much about one of the most influential directors of all time. I especially loved how much Kubrick focused on his family and animals. I laughed out loud imagining the poor people trying to archive his belongings that were covered in cat urine. I suppose that was Stanley. I am grateful to have a better picture of what he was like outside of the classic assumption that he drove Shelley Duvall mad.
Kolker and Abrams’ bring this book to life, allowing you a very unique view into the life of Stanley Kubrick.
Thank you so much to Tantor Audio, RB Media, and NetGalley for and ALC of this audiobook.
I would classify Kolker and Abrams’ work as a “living book” because of the attention to detail and the ability it provides readers to vividly imagine Kubrick’s life.
Growing up I was exposed to Kubrick’s work early thanks to a few of my eccentric middle school teachers (we watched Spartacus in 6th grade and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 7th) as well as my love of horror. The Shining continues to stand as my favorite horror movie. I was enthralled by the documentary Room 237 and definitely made assumptions about Kubrick based off of it. He seemed very mysterious and intentional. Now I know he was!
In Kubrick: An Odyssey we learn about Kubrick’s start with photography and later his tendency towards privacy due to critical opinions about 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was interesting to learn how the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. gave Kubrick the time to make edits in this film after initial criticism. The times that Kubrick grew up in, being Jewish and avoiding the Vietnam draft all played heavily in his influence.
I loved learning about Kubrick’s obsession with psychoanalytic topics and Napoleon and how the conflict of the 70s set the right environment for A Clockwork Orange to be received. I would not have imagined that Kubrick faced threats and accusations of fascism after making A Clockwork Orange, but he did!
I loved learning so much about one of the most influential directors of all time. I especially loved how much Kubrick focused on his family and animals. I laughed out loud imagining the poor people trying to archive his belongings that were covered in cat urine. I suppose that was Stanley. I am grateful to have a better picture of what he was like outside of the classic assumption that he drove Shelley Duvall mad.
Kolker and Abrams’ bring this book to life, allowing you a very unique view into the life of Stanley Kubrick.
Thank you so much to Tantor Audio, RB Media, and NetGalley for and ALC of this audiobook.
Read
January 31, 2024Kubrick: An Odyssey is as you’d expect, information loaded and painstakingly researched, but I think you’ll still be surprised by how packed this book is with information relating to Stanley Kubrick’s life and work. It’s well-documented, and in parts mythologised, how detailed and focused the director could be on set, so maybe a lot of that info will not shock or surprise, but to have the events chronicled and timelined in this full work is a significant thing. The information in this book is not just well-researched in a “What happened on this set?” or a “How did this person fall out with Stanley?” kind of way, it’s also detailed to a level that clearly shows when these events took place, who was there, how did things pan out the way they did, opinions and comments from those surrounding the events thrown in for good measure, and together they paint what clearly comes across as an accurate picture of what it had been like to work and live with the distinguished director.
Myth surrounds Stanley Kubrick - widely regarded as a recluse for the final 10-or-so years of his life – and the book shows that outside of his work he was relatively normal with his family. He loved his pets, he was a family man at home, and quite plainly he just didn’t enjoy being in the limelight. He was averse to stepping in front of the camera, ironically, whether that be for an interview to promote his next film release, or just a lowly paparazzi shot lingering on the outskirts of his stately home. It’s clear that he wasn’t weirdly hiding himself away from the public in a fashion that the press aimed to drum up at the time. The crux of the matter, however, is that rarely would the work be separated enough for this side to come out. You’re not going to hear much about purely personal matters here. They flicker in the background of certain sections of the biography, but they’re never prominent enough to override the work that Stanley was doing. He was enfolded in his work and creative endeavours at every waking moment. Even during his well-documented hiatuses, he would be circling and looping on ideas that he’d carried since adolescence, in the hopes of just cracking the code on how to put his thoughts and ambitions to the screen. Reading the book, it’s impossible to not be in awe of how much effort and energy he gave to his art.
Particularly enjoyable reading came in the chapters that focused on the sets of his movies. Myth may surround the man, but his sets were always fiery. Rushing to meet deadlines, overrunning said deadlines, forcing a 123rd take, cutting sleep to a single hour per day, bringing five writers onto a script and not allowing any of them to have contact, nor even be aware of the others’ involvement, some of the tales that comes out of this book match, and even at times surpass, the many notorious stories that echo around the film world today.
For the most part, the book does well to refrain from any personal opinion, purely sticking to facts and first-hand accounts given by those around Kubrick. It’s only towards the end of the book, minus a littering of authorial voice in select chapters, that Kolker and Abrams add their own thoughts and feelings to what’s been documented. Here, the author/s allude to the reason for Kubrick’s behaviour, his ferocious personality, his commitment to completing things in a specific way, as being driven by a need “to make genuine works of honest art”. This does encapsulate Kubrick and his way of working in its totality but feels quick and easy to point out. I don’t believe anyone thinking clearly would not come to that ultimate and overarching opinion themselves, without having to read the book. What is rarely touched on, and is something that I felt could’ve been explored more, is Kubrick’s shyness and his personal aversion to public appearances. It is mentioned frequently in the book, but rarely is it explored beyond brief mentions and kooky anecdotes. This character trait seems to come from a deeply held insecurity, and while I don’t expect, nor want, a biography to mutate into pages upon pages of psychoanalysis, I feel said insecurity was a driving factor in why he treated certain individuals the way he did on set. He was so critical of himself, so perfectionist in nature, that the intense fault-finding side of Kubrick seeps out into his relationships on set. The actors seem to be the main hurdle to him reaching his artistic goals, and he can lash out and show a cutting nature when he feels that the actor isn’t performing to a level that matches his ideas.
Myth surrounds Stanley Kubrick - widely regarded as a recluse for the final 10-or-so years of his life – and the book shows that outside of his work he was relatively normal with his family. He loved his pets, he was a family man at home, and quite plainly he just didn’t enjoy being in the limelight. He was averse to stepping in front of the camera, ironically, whether that be for an interview to promote his next film release, or just a lowly paparazzi shot lingering on the outskirts of his stately home. It’s clear that he wasn’t weirdly hiding himself away from the public in a fashion that the press aimed to drum up at the time. The crux of the matter, however, is that rarely would the work be separated enough for this side to come out. You’re not going to hear much about purely personal matters here. They flicker in the background of certain sections of the biography, but they’re never prominent enough to override the work that Stanley was doing. He was enfolded in his work and creative endeavours at every waking moment. Even during his well-documented hiatuses, he would be circling and looping on ideas that he’d carried since adolescence, in the hopes of just cracking the code on how to put his thoughts and ambitions to the screen. Reading the book, it’s impossible to not be in awe of how much effort and energy he gave to his art.
Particularly enjoyable reading came in the chapters that focused on the sets of his movies. Myth may surround the man, but his sets were always fiery. Rushing to meet deadlines, overrunning said deadlines, forcing a 123rd take, cutting sleep to a single hour per day, bringing five writers onto a script and not allowing any of them to have contact, nor even be aware of the others’ involvement, some of the tales that comes out of this book match, and even at times surpass, the many notorious stories that echo around the film world today.
For the most part, the book does well to refrain from any personal opinion, purely sticking to facts and first-hand accounts given by those around Kubrick. It’s only towards the end of the book, minus a littering of authorial voice in select chapters, that Kolker and Abrams add their own thoughts and feelings to what’s been documented. Here, the author/s allude to the reason for Kubrick’s behaviour, his ferocious personality, his commitment to completing things in a specific way, as being driven by a need “to make genuine works of honest art”. This does encapsulate Kubrick and his way of working in its totality but feels quick and easy to point out. I don’t believe anyone thinking clearly would not come to that ultimate and overarching opinion themselves, without having to read the book. What is rarely touched on, and is something that I felt could’ve been explored more, is Kubrick’s shyness and his personal aversion to public appearances. It is mentioned frequently in the book, but rarely is it explored beyond brief mentions and kooky anecdotes. This character trait seems to come from a deeply held insecurity, and while I don’t expect, nor want, a biography to mutate into pages upon pages of psychoanalysis, I feel said insecurity was a driving factor in why he treated certain individuals the way he did on set. He was so critical of himself, so perfectionist in nature, that the intense fault-finding side of Kubrick seeps out into his relationships on set. The actors seem to be the main hurdle to him reaching his artistic goals, and he can lash out and show a cutting nature when he feels that the actor isn’t performing to a level that matches his ideas.
September 2, 2025
Read while rewatching every film in order created a really personal trip through Kubricks singular approach to filmmaking. This is a very in the weeds about the work type of bio and not for those looking for the more salacious stuff.
May 9, 2024
Despite the authors' spin, Stanley Kubrick comes across as cheap, paranoid, unfair and selfish. He may indeed be genius, but i did not enjoy spending 600 pages with him.
The basic recipe is Kubrick gets a project, he reads everything, he photographs everything, he collects items, he engages writers and then stiffs them, works like a dog and obsesses over the final result. Then he thinks about Traumnovelle. Rinse and repeat.
The writing is amateriush and repetitive. I'm also baffled as to why they used British spellings throughout in an American book, even if one of the authors comes from Wales.
The basic recipe is Kubrick gets a project, he reads everything, he photographs everything, he collects items, he engages writers and then stiffs them, works like a dog and obsesses over the final result. Then he thinks about Traumnovelle. Rinse and repeat.
The writing is amateriush and repetitive. I'm also baffled as to why they used British spellings throughout in an American book, even if one of the authors comes from Wales.
May 7, 2025
Can't imagine plowing through this in print, but it was a great audiobook, if a bit repetitive and light on fresh insights. I enjoyed the A.I. goss but the section on Eyes Wide Shut felt pretty rushed, and it's interesting to hear more details about the many movies Kubrick didn't make.
November 21, 2025
Not the biography that such a man deserves - all you have to do is read the myriad of the other reviews on here to get a sense of just how poorly written it is.
The most tedious thing about this portrayal of Kubrick's life is the persistent repetition of vague facts/supposed motives behind Stanley's work. I don't care to go and find a specific example to demonstrate here but ultimately, this 'clockwork' analysis repeatedly leaves the reader feeling as if there isn't a more interesting, or sincerely probing account of the filmmaker's private life and directorial process that they could be reading instead...
Anyway, let the Summer 2026 Reading Renaissance begin!
The most tedious thing about this portrayal of Kubrick's life is the persistent repetition of vague facts/supposed motives behind Stanley's work. I don't care to go and find a specific example to demonstrate here but ultimately, this 'clockwork' analysis repeatedly leaves the reader feeling as if there isn't a more interesting, or sincerely probing account of the filmmaker's private life and directorial process that they could be reading instead...
Anyway, let the Summer 2026 Reading Renaissance begin!
March 23, 2024
Kubrick is one of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century. It’s very difficult to understand what he was trying to say with his movies. If you were to watch any scene at random from one of his movies it would take about 2 seconds to know it’s a Kubrick film, but it’s difficult to say exactly how you know.
There are some common threads in Kubrick’s work: the moral ambiguity, the complex psychologies, the way he makes you sympathize with or see the world from the perspective of deeply unsavory characters, the robotic coldness that defines the universe, the logical mixed with the absurd. The atmosphere in his films is best described in the book as a mixture between “a chess game and a seance.” Also revealing is that Kubrick wanted his movies to work mostly on a subconscious register ‘so they could be experience in the same way by a college professor and a truck driver.’
This book is incredibly well-researched, and gives a great play-by-play of how his films developed. It also gives a great overview of how a poor student who barely graduated high-school became one of the world’s leading filmmakers. Most impressive is that this book contains a great deal of what Kubrick was reading and researching during the development of his films. And Kubrick read A LOT. I came out of reading this book with a whole new reading list based on the massive number of stories Kubrick was inspired by.
This book also does a great job of highlighting Kubrick’s obsessive and meticulous drive to reach his artistic goals. The director often went through tens of thousands of photographs to choose set locations (the Kubrick archives have 302 boxes of photos and floor plans used as inspiration for Eyes Wide Shut sets alone), built tons of scale models of sets to test different lighting arrangements, would force his actors to spend months on a single scene, and came up with ingenious solutions to a vast array of technical problems.
This book does a great job on the what and the how of Stanley Kubrick, but not a great job on the WHY. I came away knowing little more about what vision drove him to create such great art. It isn’t any more clear exactly what he was trying to say, why he carries such a Rabbinical air of old secrets around him, or why all his films seem to have a coldness which masks an inner depth or turmoil. 600 well-researched pages later the man remains a complete mystery.
There are some common threads in Kubrick’s work: the moral ambiguity, the complex psychologies, the way he makes you sympathize with or see the world from the perspective of deeply unsavory characters, the robotic coldness that defines the universe, the logical mixed with the absurd. The atmosphere in his films is best described in the book as a mixture between “a chess game and a seance.” Also revealing is that Kubrick wanted his movies to work mostly on a subconscious register ‘so they could be experience in the same way by a college professor and a truck driver.’
This book is incredibly well-researched, and gives a great play-by-play of how his films developed. It also gives a great overview of how a poor student who barely graduated high-school became one of the world’s leading filmmakers. Most impressive is that this book contains a great deal of what Kubrick was reading and researching during the development of his films. And Kubrick read A LOT. I came out of reading this book with a whole new reading list based on the massive number of stories Kubrick was inspired by.
This book also does a great job of highlighting Kubrick’s obsessive and meticulous drive to reach his artistic goals. The director often went through tens of thousands of photographs to choose set locations (the Kubrick archives have 302 boxes of photos and floor plans used as inspiration for Eyes Wide Shut sets alone), built tons of scale models of sets to test different lighting arrangements, would force his actors to spend months on a single scene, and came up with ingenious solutions to a vast array of technical problems.
This book does a great job on the what and the how of Stanley Kubrick, but not a great job on the WHY. I came away knowing little more about what vision drove him to create such great art. It isn’t any more clear exactly what he was trying to say, why he carries such a Rabbinical air of old secrets around him, or why all his films seem to have a coldness which masks an inner depth or turmoil. 600 well-researched pages later the man remains a complete mystery.
April 4, 2024
An interesting contrast to the Jim Henson biography I just finished. Ultimately for all the respect Kubrick gets (and deserves) this book illustrated how obsessive Kubrick would be to get things exactly right (for instance, for Eyes Wide Shut he sent out teams of photographers to take photos of NYC and came back with 302 boxes worth of photos) and part of you thinks he could probably made another six or seven great films if he wasn’t so fixated on getting one Perfect one.
December 30, 2024
Wonderful. Loved every page. Exhaustive in detail yet, unsurprisingly, come the end Kubrick remains an absolute enigma.
February 25, 2024
I already have a small collection of books on Kubrick. I was hoping this bio would offer something a little different and avoid the myth building that seems so prevelant. Frankly, seeing that the bio was co-written I was a bit skeptical of the books potential, as I am sure Mr. Kurbick would have been. I was pleasantly surprised. This bio is well written and well constructed. Much of the book naturally flows in the path of his film projects. The focus is not so much a critique of his films but rather the process and his internal challenges he faced completing his art. This is a nice addition to the Kubrick literature.
February 12, 2024
I've read a lot of Kubrick literature, and I was surprised by how much new information I got from this one.
August 11, 2025
This is a 600 page biography on Stanley Kubrick - despite the man’s standing as the maker of two of my top movies of all time (2001 and Barry Lyndon), to say nothing of his other masterpieces, I was skeptical at first if this was going to be worth the time spent reading. It admittedly starts out a bit slow, namely because I am much less familiar with his earliest films. By the time you reach the 1960s in the chronology, this is a highly addictive read with revelatory anecdotes about each of the film classics he realized (and the handful he didn’t). The authors expertly walk the line between bringing down to earth the almost mythological Kubrick, without fully robbing the reader of the tastier morsels of his lore: the obsessive retakes and attention to detail, the ambiguous themes and endings, and the conspiracy theories that emerge as a result.
October 1, 2024
Kubrick: An Odyssey tackles one of film’s most notable directors (a large task, given the intimidating curation of his “genius” reputation). Kolker and Abrams do outstanding work, presenting a definitive history of his filmmaking that—thanks to the variety of his filmography—never loses itself among the massive scope. Though the focus on Kubrick the human is less finite than that of Kubrick the artist, Kolker and Abrams allow themselves to make contextual inferences (all in good faith) that give a rare glimpse at his humanity. This is a must-read for cinephiles.
July 21, 2024
Not nearly as in depth as I thought it was gonna be. That being said, what’s presented here is a very good book.
This isn’t necessarily as much biography as it is analysis of why he made the movies he made and what they mean. I feel like people watch Kubrick’s films and want a hard explanation of what it all means. I like the way he doesn’t explain anything and makes you interpret it however you do.
If you love Stanley Kubrick’s films as much as I do then I’d strongly recommend this book (it’s the only book I’ve been able to find that’s not a dissertation on 2001 😂) but if you don’t like them then may I ask?, why are you reading this review?
4/5
This isn’t necessarily as much biography as it is analysis of why he made the movies he made and what they mean. I feel like people watch Kubrick’s films and want a hard explanation of what it all means. I like the way he doesn’t explain anything and makes you interpret it however you do.
If you love Stanley Kubrick’s films as much as I do then I’d strongly recommend this book (it’s the only book I’ve been able to find that’s not a dissertation on 2001 😂) but if you don’t like them then may I ask?, why are you reading this review?
4/5
April 15, 2024
A decent biography of Kubrick containing a few gems of information not readily available elsewhere. Ultimately though, we already have all his published interviews and the remaining detail comes from known sources. Which means there is little in terms of revelations but then that’s what we expected.
April 29, 2025
Fantastic. Well sourced and well written. Kubrick was a gifted and often puzzling dude. The book is long but never drags. When detailing Kubrick's... quirks, the author often gives him a little too much leeway but always acknowledges the alternate (and more likely true) interpretations.
May 5, 2024
Kind of a chore to get through, but thorough and informative on the life and work of Kubrick. The pre-Lolita section of the book is most interesting, because you really get a feel for Kubrick's tenacity and balls out approach to filmmaking, and his inherent business savy decisions. Afterwards the book gets repetitive as Kubrick settles into his legendary status, but it's still interesting to learn a lot about the movies I love.
My favorite aspect of Kubrick's films is the conspiratorial angle, and I wish the book went into that a little more. There's only 2 pages about the Eyes Wide Shut conspiracy!
My favorite aspect of Kubrick's films is the conspiratorial angle, and I wish the book went into that a little more. There's only 2 pages about the Eyes Wide Shut conspiracy!
June 18, 2024
Consistently kind of surprised by the pretty poor quality writing in this. This whole biography felt written in a very "book-report" style, there were moments when my jaw dropped because there were basic errors, such as words repeated multiple times in the same sentence. I kept imagining Stanley Kubrick himself pounding his desk upon reading some of these passages. But what it sincerely lacks in any kind of authorial style (do all biographies feel the need to underline basic things about a person's life over and over?) it does make up for in a presentation of honest facts. The book doesn't shy away from the fact that Kubrick was probably an absolute NIGHTMARE to work with, but also does prove the scruples of his genius time and time again. For every inane or borderline goofy editorial statement (in lieu of just basic prose), there was a collected presentation of fairly fascinating facts about Stanley Kubrick. And more subtle ones that genuinely highlight his humanity. I would have always pinned the Pinnochio stuff in A.I. on Spielberg had I not read this. I would have never suspected that EYES WIDE SHUT was a movie he'd been struggling to make his whole career. Nor would I have suspected that he barely escaped political assassination for the act of filming BARRY LYNDON in Ireland at the height of The Troubles. Much more satisfying as a repository of facts than any kind of rich explanation for the man, Mr. K, The Big Dawg, this is a biography I can recommend for anyone who likes a nice gathering of trivia on a bed of interesting dressing. But wow, it's hard to excuse the writing.
August 30, 2024
I read John Baxter’s excellent biography in the 90s, but this one is superior. For one thing, it has the benefit of hindsight, having appeared 25 years after Stanley’s passing. “Odyssey” is able to encompass his entire filmography (including Eyes Wide Shut and even A.I.), his life, death, and continuing legacy. Certain insights (similarities between the Epstein conspiracy and Eyes Wide Shut, for example) are only accessible now, and this book is all the better for it.
Meticulously researched, this book gives us access to the master’s private thoughts, conversations, home life and work habits. Stanley was a world-class autodidact, and the book provides aspiring autodidacts with a long syllabus of Stanley’s influences and respected peers — plenty of novelists, film directors, painters, photographers, nonfiction writers and historians to keep you busy for the rest of your life, if that’s your thing.
I don’t see this one being outdone for another fifty years, at least. A must for every serious Kubrick scholar!
Meticulously researched, this book gives us access to the master’s private thoughts, conversations, home life and work habits. Stanley was a world-class autodidact, and the book provides aspiring autodidacts with a long syllabus of Stanley’s influences and respected peers — plenty of novelists, film directors, painters, photographers, nonfiction writers and historians to keep you busy for the rest of your life, if that’s your thing.
I don’t see this one being outdone for another fifty years, at least. A must for every serious Kubrick scholar!
August 14, 2024
Now almost a quarter into the 21st Century, the films of Stanley Kubrick continue to captivate and provoke. The latest biography of Kubrick, written by two film scholars who've written extensively on Kubrick in previous works, Robert F. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, is both comprehensive and engaging. With access to Kubrick's archives, the authors compiled a detailed narrative of their subject, objective in both approach and tone.
The vast scope of the biography covers the many lives Kubrick led. He took to photography and was hired by Look magazine when still a teenager, gaining a reputation for his artful photos of scenes and people from all walks of life. While he would eventually leave the city and become an expat in England, he often longed to return. Feeling limited by the standards of the magazine, he set off to become a filmmaker, starting out with short documentaries and eventually a low budget war film Fear and Desire.
He spent the 1950s as a fledgling filmmaker, paying the bills by playing chess and poker in between projects. His low budget film noir Killer's Kiss was mostly ignored but showed promise. Then came The Killing, a more sophisticated noir made for a studio. His follow up, Paths of Glory, was an early masterpiece. Now based in Hollywood, he continued developing scripts and hustling around the studios. At the request of Kirk Douglas, Kubrick was hired to direct the Roman epic Spartacus. A droll adaptation of Nabokov's Lolita followed, then the quotable Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove.
By the mid-1960s, Kubrick's star was on the rise. The amount of research and preparation he put into his films was already becoming the stuff of legend. For Dr. Strangelove, he read hundreds of books on nuclear strategy and geopolitics, consulting with experts to make sure every detail was right. Initially conceived as a thriller, with writer Terry Southern the script was refashioned as a dark comedy.
A dedication to details and ambitious ideas served him well for 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that would take on cosmic questions on the origins and fate of humanity. Working closely with Sci-Fi author Arthur C. Clarke to develop the script, Kubrick assembled the technicians whose job was to make space travel look realistic. After four years working on the project Kubrick was aghast when audiences initially rejected it, so he cut 18 minutes after it was released. Soon enough 2001 became a cultural phenomenon, it captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s like few other films.
The success of 2001 earned Kubrick a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers and complete creative control over his films. He settled permanently in England at an estate outside of London, building his own kingdom, leaving only on special occasions. He then began work on Napoleon, which he planned to film in Yugoslavia with the full cooperation of its army! But the funding fell through at the last minute. Instead, he adapted the Alex Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, still controversial over 50 years later. He pulled the film from distribution in the United Kingdom after a string of copycat crimes were allegedly inspired by the movie.
With Napoleon still on the backburner, Kubrick spent the next few years on Barry Lyndon, based on the William Thackeray novel set in 18th Century Europe. While filming in Ireland, threats from the IRA forced the production to flee. The book describes the extended shooting schedule as sometimes chaotic with egos running rampant. Kubrick's unrelenting perfectionism took a toll on everyone. A three-hour costume drama was not what audiences wanted in 1975, but critics were knocked out by its historical accuracy and Kubrick's further exploration of humanity's self-destructive tendencies.
In a pivot towards more popular entertainment, Kubrick set out to make the scariest movie ever made. Kubrick was fascinated with horror movies of the '70s, repeatedly screening Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining fascinated him on many levels, drawing upon many recurring themes in his oeuvre. Despite its cool reception by critics and horror fans in 1980, The Shining transcended genre. Stanley's daughter Vivian filmed him at work on the set, notoriously browbeating Shelley Duvall, setting up shots and joking with the crew.
Kubrick would make two more films, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, but many more projects were in various stages of development through the 1980s and 1990s. The Second World War always interested him, and he considered making a film about the airdrops preceding D-Day. The Holocaust was another subject he obsessed over. He was prepared to adapt the Louis Begely novel Wartime Lies in the early 1990s. With casting and location scouting in Europe nearly complete he canceled at the last minute. Steven Spielberg's own holocaust film Schindler's List had come out and Kubrick felt he could not make a better film on the subject, especially since his script was more cynical. He also feared for his own sanity, being away from home for a year and making by far his most depressing film was too daunting.
His daily life during the 1980s and 1990s was consumed by his projects. Despite his reputation as a recluse, Kubrick was constantly communicating with other directors and always entertaining guests. He indulged his fascination with technical gadgets, poured through books, screened movies, compulsively watched CNN, and spent hours on the telephone. He also developed a passion for cooking for family and staff, he would often be seen doing the laundry. An animal lover as well, he devoted hours to his dogs and cats. With such a vibrant home life, he hated being away for just a few hours. He ran the estate like a benevolent emperor, although he could also be quite the taskmaster.
His domestic life was mostly harmonious. His wife Christina, an artist in her own right, and relationship with his daughters were warm. A falling out with his daughter Vivian, who showed early promise as a filmmaker and composer, added a tragic dimension to his last years. She cut her family off after falling into Scientology, in recent years she's made social media posts endorsing Qanon conspiracy theories.
A friendship with Steven Spielberg also shaped the later years, even collaborating with him on A.I. Kubrick fell in and out with several writers in his Sci-Fi tale he called Pinocchio, a fairy tale/dystopia about a robot boy destined to become a messianic figure. Eventually, he passed it on to Spielberg, believing it was more to his sensibility. One gets the sense he was both in awe and a little envious of Spielberg's gift for connecting with audiences - and for cranking out so many movies.
Kubrick would pass away during post-production on Eyes Wide Shut, another story he'd been working on since the 1960s. The dreamlike tale about marriage and infidelity, among other things, was perhaps his most personal. Shooting took over a year and many noticed Kubrick was aging. A lack of sleep and unhealthy dieting contributed to his decline. Ominous rumors also swirled around the production about marital tensions between the two stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to salacious details of orgy scenes. Once released the film was hardly the erotic thriller everyone expected, but a Kubrickian odyssey into the depths of the human soul. Predictably, the film's reputation has skyrocketed since 1999.
Kubrick got lost in labyrinths of his own making in the later years, always agonizing over how and when to proceed. His attention to detail and craft left behind movies that will always be watched and debated. The book did a fantastic job of bringing the reader close to the subject. Many who worked with him spoke of the experience as life-changing, some walked away ambivalent. There's no doubt his outer world reflected the inner world, and it's in his movies we continue to find a rich landscape.
February 2, 2024
Given that Stanley Kubrick remains one of the most written about film directors in the history of western cinema, it is no small venture to embark on another biography of a man who was often as vexing as the films he made. 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of Kubrick's death, and authors Robert Kolker and Nathan Abrams have taken the opportunity to revisit this monolith of film makers, adding much context to the times in which Kubrick worked and the relatively fresh approach to his Jewish identity which was often shrouded or ignored. While chronological in aspect, given that many of Kubrick's projects gestated over years and even decades, the ebb and flow of projects is recounted against the cultural and socio-political changes in America and the world of cinema from the 1950s to the end of the 20th Century. This is particularly resonant when discussing zeitgeist films such as Dr Strangelove, 2001 and Full Metal Jacket, given their emergence at times of global events - the nuclear arms race, the Apollo programme and arguably America's greatest waste of both money and youth, the Vietnam war. Kubrick's hyperactive personality, never one for kicking back and relaxing when there were so many great ideas bouncing around his head, led to a career CV littered with some of the greatest films ever made but also *not* made. On a personal level, a sense of neglect and declining health would ultimately rob the world of more than the 13 films on his CV. Kolker and Abrams document with equal depth and insight the films that Kubrick never got round to making as much as the ones he did; notably the long gestating Napoleon biopic, the science fiction AI, and Aryan Papers. In at least two of these cases Kubrick's fellow director and friend Steven Spielberg would play both an enabling and a disabling role, taking over the AI project at a time when CGI technology once impossible during Kubrick's heyday was now commonplace, and beating him to the punch with Schindler's List. Arguably the film that most cemented Spielberg as a director of artistic credence as well as technical guile, his own take on the Holocaust did unfortunately gazump Kubrick's own project at a time it was arguably at its closest to being made. While Schindler's List brought Spielberg awards and prestige, its focus on the microscopic amount of survivors over the horrific scale of victims of the Holocaust did leave something of a hole within the kind of docudramatic cinema Kubrick himself would have filled. Napoleon was more a victim of studio politics than anything else.
Kubrick rode the zeitgeist of his times by essentially subverting the zeitgeist - films like Dr Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket eviscerated American foreign policy and colonial thinking with both dark humour and brutal imagery. Kubrick's formative career as a photojournalist continued throughout his film career as a curator of images that tell a story as much as any written narrative. His adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange - examining state sanctioned mind control as a palatable means for dealing with the extremities of society - came just as the western world was leaving behind the hope and optimism of the counter-cultural 1960s, as much an epitaph to those times as the Manson murders or Watergate. It was Kubrick's most personally vexing film, leading him to withdraw its distribution following a number of copycat killings that if anything only underlined the cautious morality tale it was telling. And as America went into full-on therapy in the decade following the end of the Vietnam war - with both the flag-waving triumphalism of Rambo and the PTSD fused Platoon and Hamburger Hill - Kubrick once again provided the definitive take on a war of attrition that became as mad as any scenario of mutually assured destruction or the kangaroo courts of World War I (which he examined in one of his earliest features Paths of Glory).
As the book dips in and out of the films that did and didn't reach the screen, the looming presence of Kubrick's final endeavour Eyes Wide Shut is threaded throughout his filmmaking years, finally reaching culmination in the mid to late 90s and proving to be Kubrick's last magnum opus. Clearly the strain of the longest filming shoot in history took a huge toll on an artist for whom downtime and relaxation were aleady foreign concepts; as well as being a passion project throughout his life, Eyes Wide Shut also became Kubrick's epitaph.
Elsewhere Kolker and Abrams grasp as much as anybody possibly could the man behind the enigma, removing much of the hype that Kubrick's choice to avoid the limelight and tread his own path had generated in a mass media frustrated by his reluctance to open up about either himself or his work. Clearly most content as a workaholic family man, the twice-married director found contentment away from the camera in his adopted London home and a third wife equally driven by artistic fulfilment. Sadly, whilst Kubrick was surrounded by the children and grandchildren of passing times, his daughter Vivian became estranged and ultimately lost to first scientology and then any number of conspiracy-fuelled rhetoric which remained unresolved beyond her father's death. For a man with several dangling threads in a creative sense, this was clearly the biggest regret and most painful loss of his personal life.
My praise for this work stems simply from my growing desire as the pages turned for the book to never end, but sadly its 600 pages still feel as truncated as Kubrick's own life was when so much was left to be made. As time passes and Kubrick's films become more and more embedded in the cinematic foundations of 20th century cinema, this consuming biography will only make you want to revisit each and every one of his films, again and again and again. Like the monolith of 2001, Stanley Kubrick and his work has been transformative on the cinematic landscape of not just generations gone but generations yet to come. This biography is the latest and best testament to that.
Kubrick rode the zeitgeist of his times by essentially subverting the zeitgeist - films like Dr Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket eviscerated American foreign policy and colonial thinking with both dark humour and brutal imagery. Kubrick's formative career as a photojournalist continued throughout his film career as a curator of images that tell a story as much as any written narrative. His adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange - examining state sanctioned mind control as a palatable means for dealing with the extremities of society - came just as the western world was leaving behind the hope and optimism of the counter-cultural 1960s, as much an epitaph to those times as the Manson murders or Watergate. It was Kubrick's most personally vexing film, leading him to withdraw its distribution following a number of copycat killings that if anything only underlined the cautious morality tale it was telling. And as America went into full-on therapy in the decade following the end of the Vietnam war - with both the flag-waving triumphalism of Rambo and the PTSD fused Platoon and Hamburger Hill - Kubrick once again provided the definitive take on a war of attrition that became as mad as any scenario of mutually assured destruction or the kangaroo courts of World War I (which he examined in one of his earliest features Paths of Glory).
As the book dips in and out of the films that did and didn't reach the screen, the looming presence of Kubrick's final endeavour Eyes Wide Shut is threaded throughout his filmmaking years, finally reaching culmination in the mid to late 90s and proving to be Kubrick's last magnum opus. Clearly the strain of the longest filming shoot in history took a huge toll on an artist for whom downtime and relaxation were aleady foreign concepts; as well as being a passion project throughout his life, Eyes Wide Shut also became Kubrick's epitaph.
Elsewhere Kolker and Abrams grasp as much as anybody possibly could the man behind the enigma, removing much of the hype that Kubrick's choice to avoid the limelight and tread his own path had generated in a mass media frustrated by his reluctance to open up about either himself or his work. Clearly most content as a workaholic family man, the twice-married director found contentment away from the camera in his adopted London home and a third wife equally driven by artistic fulfilment. Sadly, whilst Kubrick was surrounded by the children and grandchildren of passing times, his daughter Vivian became estranged and ultimately lost to first scientology and then any number of conspiracy-fuelled rhetoric which remained unresolved beyond her father's death. For a man with several dangling threads in a creative sense, this was clearly the biggest regret and most painful loss of his personal life.
My praise for this work stems simply from my growing desire as the pages turned for the book to never end, but sadly its 600 pages still feel as truncated as Kubrick's own life was when so much was left to be made. As time passes and Kubrick's films become more and more embedded in the cinematic foundations of 20th century cinema, this consuming biography will only make you want to revisit each and every one of his films, again and again and again. Like the monolith of 2001, Stanley Kubrick and his work has been transformative on the cinematic landscape of not just generations gone but generations yet to come. This biography is the latest and best testament to that.
February 12, 2024
By any objective criteria, Stanley Kubrick was one of the great filmmakers of all time, so a biography of his work is certainly welcome. It is obvious the authors had access to a ton of material to add depth and context, and they admire his work. The problem is that they like it a little too much. Most of Kubrick's movies are a little chilly and emotionally distant, but the authors are quite uninterested in addressing this issue and brush it aside on numerous films. They also pay little credence to the claims about the way Kubrick treated people on his sets, often just responding to those claims with something along the lines of "Hey, he was a genius. They were lucky to be in his presence." So, the book is valuable, but it is lacking as a fully-rounded portrait of the man and his work.
January 11, 2025
There are an awful lot of books about Stanley Kubrick. Indeed the authors Kolker and Abrams include a Bibliographic Essay at the end of their fabulously-well researched biography, citing the sources for each chapter.
Kubrick: An Odyssey follows a strictly linear path, with each chapter covering a period of years in his career, delineated by whichever movie he was either researching, making or, as in the early 1990s, not really focusing on sufficiently to get off-the-ground.
Rather than concentrate on the movies themselves, Abrams and Kolker (and Englishman and American respectively) keep their biography constrained to Kubrick himself - who he was, how he worked, how he got on with others, both in his personal life and his professional life. Kubrick was a master of collaborator, recognising his own shortcomings as a screenwriter.
Throughout, across decades, Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle dominates, eventually becoming Kubrick's last work Eyes Wide Shut which for me personally was his weakest release, only because I've never rightly been able to muster-up any empathy with its core storyline. Other than that, it's only Barry Lyndon I've not seen in one sitting, though I reckon I've seen that entire movie in in entirety through snapshots of different lengths. I watched his first proper release The Killing only last year.
Kubrick of course, even more so than Jimi Hendrix, was an American who became an Englishman, and did so quite early in his career. His fear-of-flying extended to an unwillingness to travel far beyond England (Dublin for some of Barry Lyndon and that was about it). The hotel in The Shining - for me the greatest horror movie of all time? Built on British film studio lots. Saigon for Full Metal Jacket? A condemned gasworks on The Thames. New York for Eyes Wide Shut? British film studio lot again.
The movies themselves are studied with respect to the immense research Kubrick performed, and all before the Internet came into modern usage. Kubrick's organisation and the trust he placed in chosen individuals was legendary and they, without fail, always maintained their loyalty to Kubrick.
Not focusing on the movies themselves is probably a good thing. The years covering 2001 get the largest amount of coverage, but that movie, which I regard as the greatest of the 20th century, is well-documented elsewhere. Indeed I regard Jerome Agel's The Making of Kubrick's 2001 which I was gifted as a young teenager, and which I still have (though in two halfs, with the cover missing) as being the definitive account of the movie that even now, defies the comprehension that it was made in 1967.
In addition to a longstanding obsession with Traumnovelle, Kubrick's long-running saga in trying to get Brian Aldiss' Supertoys (Last All Summer Long) filmed is well-documented. Trying to get a working script for the story, at times involving British science fiction writers Bob Shaw, Ian Watson, and even Arthur C Clarke again, were always going to be doomed, not least because before his death in 1999, CGI was never capable of delivering the believability required to match his vision. Which of course makes even greater nonsense of conspiracy theorists claiming he filmed Apollo 11's Moon Landing. The timing was close though, having handed-over the project to Spielberg, his protege drove F/X industry to solve the problems, resulting in A.I Artificial Intelligence in 2001, one of Spielberg's greatest movies, but one with more than a bit of Kubrick influence in it.
Immensely readable, with a bit of humour (the 'I am Spartacus' moment with the extras on the set of Full Metal Jacket being a notable one) I was left with an impression that seems to be universal; Kubrick was a genius, and not a 'flawed genius at that. His only failing, if there was one, was not finding that final glorious movie to sign-off with, preferably into a quiet retirement, rather than early death. Nonetheless, I think Kubrick left us with the greatest satire of all time (Dr. Strangelove) the greatest horror movie of all time (The Shining) and the greatest movie of the entire 20th century (2001). That's not a bad legacy.
Kubrick: An Odyssey follows a strictly linear path, with each chapter covering a period of years in his career, delineated by whichever movie he was either researching, making or, as in the early 1990s, not really focusing on sufficiently to get off-the-ground.
Rather than concentrate on the movies themselves, Abrams and Kolker (and Englishman and American respectively) keep their biography constrained to Kubrick himself - who he was, how he worked, how he got on with others, both in his personal life and his professional life. Kubrick was a master of collaborator, recognising his own shortcomings as a screenwriter.
Throughout, across decades, Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle dominates, eventually becoming Kubrick's last work Eyes Wide Shut which for me personally was his weakest release, only because I've never rightly been able to muster-up any empathy with its core storyline. Other than that, it's only Barry Lyndon I've not seen in one sitting, though I reckon I've seen that entire movie in in entirety through snapshots of different lengths. I watched his first proper release The Killing only last year.
Kubrick of course, even more so than Jimi Hendrix, was an American who became an Englishman, and did so quite early in his career. His fear-of-flying extended to an unwillingness to travel far beyond England (Dublin for some of Barry Lyndon and that was about it). The hotel in The Shining - for me the greatest horror movie of all time? Built on British film studio lots. Saigon for Full Metal Jacket? A condemned gasworks on The Thames. New York for Eyes Wide Shut? British film studio lot again.
The movies themselves are studied with respect to the immense research Kubrick performed, and all before the Internet came into modern usage. Kubrick's organisation and the trust he placed in chosen individuals was legendary and they, without fail, always maintained their loyalty to Kubrick.
Not focusing on the movies themselves is probably a good thing. The years covering 2001 get the largest amount of coverage, but that movie, which I regard as the greatest of the 20th century, is well-documented elsewhere. Indeed I regard Jerome Agel's The Making of Kubrick's 2001 which I was gifted as a young teenager, and which I still have (though in two halfs, with the cover missing) as being the definitive account of the movie that even now, defies the comprehension that it was made in 1967.
In addition to a longstanding obsession with Traumnovelle, Kubrick's long-running saga in trying to get Brian Aldiss' Supertoys (Last All Summer Long) filmed is well-documented. Trying to get a working script for the story, at times involving British science fiction writers Bob Shaw, Ian Watson, and even Arthur C Clarke again, were always going to be doomed, not least because before his death in 1999, CGI was never capable of delivering the believability required to match his vision. Which of course makes even greater nonsense of conspiracy theorists claiming he filmed Apollo 11's Moon Landing. The timing was close though, having handed-over the project to Spielberg, his protege drove F/X industry to solve the problems, resulting in A.I Artificial Intelligence in 2001, one of Spielberg's greatest movies, but one with more than a bit of Kubrick influence in it.
Immensely readable, with a bit of humour (the 'I am Spartacus' moment with the extras on the set of Full Metal Jacket being a notable one) I was left with an impression that seems to be universal; Kubrick was a genius, and not a 'flawed genius at that. His only failing, if there was one, was not finding that final glorious movie to sign-off with, preferably into a quiet retirement, rather than early death. Nonetheless, I think Kubrick left us with the greatest satire of all time (Dr. Strangelove) the greatest horror movie of all time (The Shining) and the greatest movie of the entire 20th century (2001). That's not a bad legacy.
November 18, 2024
Having watched four Kubrick films prior to reading this biography, I consider myself a novice to his work and life. Kolker and Abrams did a brilliant and thorough job providing the surrounding elements of his genesis, progression, and final years as an artist (filmmaker) and man. The book has multiple perspectives from colleagues, staff, and family, and critiques from all ends of the opinionated spectrum. It kept my interest as a fan, an artist, and a non-fiction enthusiast. It's a read that can find itself in the land of academia and likewise a Stanley Kubrick fan club, or someone who enjoys learning about polarizing figures in pop culture, past and present. This comes from the story of a man whose aura has been littered with various conspiracy theories, rumors, and misconceptions (also in this book) it fulfills the purpose that it presents, and that is a celebration and deep look into the life of one of the world's greatest artists.
No information felt like filler. The repetition was frequent, however, I can appreciate it with such an extensive read. One example was how his Jewish background affected his process and the stories he chose to pursue. As mentioned by the authors and known to the public, Kubrick did not like to do interviews. Seeing multiple viewpoints from interviews (that he did), and quotes from actors, staff, and family members felt like I was getting a “the making of” documentary on all the films mentioned.
Perhaps the most impressive research was about the films that were not brought to light. I felt like I received more information on Aryan plans, Napoleon, and AI than films brought to life. It successfully pulled back the curtain to how much work an artist can, and often does, put in behind the scenes on projects we will never see. It can make one wonder what could have been or appreciate the filmography we were graced with.
As mentioned before I believe this should fall into academia. It is thoroughly researched and all the right people are involved. It allows the reader to have an opinion while making sure the facts are there and debunking rumors instead of the outlook of his critics. The personal aspects of his life were handled with care and transparency. The two most important aspects of his life were his filmmaking and family. The text provided the necessary context for the interwoven relationship.
There’s humor, drama, education, and insight based on one of the greatest artists of our time. I highly recommend it to filmmakers, enthusiasts, and pop culture fans. Kubrick is a great read I’m sure I will come back to.
No information felt like filler. The repetition was frequent, however, I can appreciate it with such an extensive read. One example was how his Jewish background affected his process and the stories he chose to pursue. As mentioned by the authors and known to the public, Kubrick did not like to do interviews. Seeing multiple viewpoints from interviews (that he did), and quotes from actors, staff, and family members felt like I was getting a “the making of” documentary on all the films mentioned.
Perhaps the most impressive research was about the films that were not brought to light. I felt like I received more information on Aryan plans, Napoleon, and AI than films brought to life. It successfully pulled back the curtain to how much work an artist can, and often does, put in behind the scenes on projects we will never see. It can make one wonder what could have been or appreciate the filmography we were graced with.
As mentioned before I believe this should fall into academia. It is thoroughly researched and all the right people are involved. It allows the reader to have an opinion while making sure the facts are there and debunking rumors instead of the outlook of his critics. The personal aspects of his life were handled with care and transparency. The two most important aspects of his life were his filmmaking and family. The text provided the necessary context for the interwoven relationship.
There’s humor, drama, education, and insight based on one of the greatest artists of our time. I highly recommend it to filmmakers, enthusiasts, and pop culture fans. Kubrick is a great read I’m sure I will come back to.
July 16, 2024
Overall, I really enjoyed this book but there were two points that bothered me or I disagreed with.
First and most importantly, the writing style of the book shifted significantly during the chapter about The Shining. In once sentence, the voice of the author began talking to the reader directly using phrases such as "as we talked about before" rather than "as previously stated in the text" or "as mentioned earlier". It may not sound like much, but it was a strange and jarring shift.
Furthermore, it was profoundly obvious that the writers have absolutely no love for horror or horror films at all. Which in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. However, the background they provided on The Shining and the landscape of horror leading up to its release made things abundantly clear to the reader that they wouldn't even pretend to be democratic about it. They hate horror, thank you very much. Even going so far as to refer to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as "torture porn" which, the obvious literal backhand aside, is equivalent to calling Out of the Past "neo-noir". It's patently wrong. The genre didn't even exist when The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released, not to mention it doesn't even fit into the genre.
Lastly, there is a narrative that runs through the entire book concerning Kubrick's Jewish heritage, that basically states that every artistic choice Kubrick made was somehow fueled or influenced by the fact that he was Jewish. I found this odd on the authors' part. To draw another parallel, it would be equivalent to saying the reason Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver is because he is Italian, the reason Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was set and filmed in Arizona is because he is Italian and the reason Shutter Island had the ending it did and dealt the with characters and subject matter it did is due to his Italian heritage. It seemed a stretch. I have no doubt that Kubrick's heritage played into his art and some of his artistic decisions, but to imply that his entire career was a shadowy game of Semitic subterfuge seemed more of an agenda on the part of the authors than the reality of Kubrick's life and career.
All in all, I did enjoy the book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the life of Stanley Kubrick. It's something I will carry with me for a long time.
First and most importantly, the writing style of the book shifted significantly during the chapter about The Shining. In once sentence, the voice of the author began talking to the reader directly using phrases such as "as we talked about before" rather than "as previously stated in the text" or "as mentioned earlier". It may not sound like much, but it was a strange and jarring shift.
Furthermore, it was profoundly obvious that the writers have absolutely no love for horror or horror films at all. Which in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. However, the background they provided on The Shining and the landscape of horror leading up to its release made things abundantly clear to the reader that they wouldn't even pretend to be democratic about it. They hate horror, thank you very much. Even going so far as to refer to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as "torture porn" which, the obvious literal backhand aside, is equivalent to calling Out of the Past "neo-noir". It's patently wrong. The genre didn't even exist when The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released, not to mention it doesn't even fit into the genre.
Lastly, there is a narrative that runs through the entire book concerning Kubrick's Jewish heritage, that basically states that every artistic choice Kubrick made was somehow fueled or influenced by the fact that he was Jewish. I found this odd on the authors' part. To draw another parallel, it would be equivalent to saying the reason Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver is because he is Italian, the reason Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was set and filmed in Arizona is because he is Italian and the reason Shutter Island had the ending it did and dealt the with characters and subject matter it did is due to his Italian heritage. It seemed a stretch. I have no doubt that Kubrick's heritage played into his art and some of his artistic decisions, but to imply that his entire career was a shadowy game of Semitic subterfuge seemed more of an agenda on the part of the authors than the reality of Kubrick's life and career.
All in all, I did enjoy the book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the life of Stanley Kubrick. It's something I will carry with me for a long time.
February 4, 2025
Robert P. Kolker's massive biography of Stanley Kubrick is about as comprehensive as you would like, taking us from Kubrick's childhood and emergence as a photographer through the culmination of his life's work with Eyes Wide Shut. Kolker offers detailed accounts of the preproduction and making of all of Kubrick's films and makes a good effort to situate Kubrick's work in film history, presenting larger themes and narratives in his work. This is a very good book that may fall just short of greatness because Kolker allows his admiration for Kubrick to get in the way of his historical objectivity.
To get the big nitpick out of the way, Kolker has a tendency to hand wave or justify Kubrick's shortcomings. Of course, he was vociferously anti-union because of his strong work ethic! Of course he wasn't a misogynist but rather he was fascinated by misogyny. When he wrote that an actress should have big boobs he was joking! In particular, the author's view of why Kubrick chose to make "Lolita" really falls short. Conversely, when the author teases out a positive quality of Kubrick's such as his tenacity, his erudition, or his love for his family, he is willing to examine it from every angle.
But, setting that aside, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" is a pretty valuable text for any film lover, not just the Kubrick fanatic. My favorite aspect of the book is Kolker's ability to draw a line between Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut, identifying Kubrick as a striving New Yorker chafing against the class system of his adopted England while also being a daring filmmaker chafing against the studio system, and how these conflicts, in some ways, are the story of his life.
Kolker is equally adept at examining Spartacus as a compromised work that taught Kubrick lessons about control and compromise, at looking at 2001 as the culmination of a brief and bright obsession with certain ideas about the future, and at viewing The Shining as a mix of commercial ambition and meticulous craftsmanship.
Even if Kolker doesn't quite paint a full picture of Kubrick because he is afraid to linger too much on negative colors, the author does present an excellent summation of each one of his films. And, at the end of the day, isn't that what the reclusive Kubrick might have preferred? For all his faults, the movies both speak for themselves and invite endless conversation.
To get the big nitpick out of the way, Kolker has a tendency to hand wave or justify Kubrick's shortcomings. Of course, he was vociferously anti-union because of his strong work ethic! Of course he wasn't a misogynist but rather he was fascinated by misogyny. When he wrote that an actress should have big boobs he was joking! In particular, the author's view of why Kubrick chose to make "Lolita" really falls short. Conversely, when the author teases out a positive quality of Kubrick's such as his tenacity, his erudition, or his love for his family, he is willing to examine it from every angle.
But, setting that aside, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" is a pretty valuable text for any film lover, not just the Kubrick fanatic. My favorite aspect of the book is Kolker's ability to draw a line between Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut, identifying Kubrick as a striving New Yorker chafing against the class system of his adopted England while also being a daring filmmaker chafing against the studio system, and how these conflicts, in some ways, are the story of his life.
Kolker is equally adept at examining Spartacus as a compromised work that taught Kubrick lessons about control and compromise, at looking at 2001 as the culmination of a brief and bright obsession with certain ideas about the future, and at viewing The Shining as a mix of commercial ambition and meticulous craftsmanship.
Even if Kolker doesn't quite paint a full picture of Kubrick because he is afraid to linger too much on negative colors, the author does present an excellent summation of each one of his films. And, at the end of the day, isn't that what the reclusive Kubrick might have preferred? For all his faults, the movies both speak for themselves and invite endless conversation.
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