Watched The Shining today.

Reaffirmed my general dislike of the directoral efforts of Stanley Kubrick. His cinematography is excellent. But I find his direction and his movies to be cold and lacking from an emotional standpoint. I love the staging of his shots, but there’s rarely a time where I like any of his characters or where the action on screen inspires me to care and feel. His movies just feel cold and distant.

The one real exception is Spartacus. Spartacus is unique in the Kubrick oeuvre in not really being typical of his style. The charisma and the emotion of his stars is visible and it is crudely shot in comparison to Kubrick’s other works. But it is a Kirk Douglas movie. It showcases the machismo and the aura that Kirk Douglas brings to all his roles and more reflects his style than anything else.

Even what should have been a dream pairing of a real life couple in Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise for the movie Eyes Wide Shut was incapable of bringing warmth and emotion to a Kubrickian work. It is cold and distant and there’s no chemistry to the scenes where real¹ spouses interact and work together. Kidman has proven to be a gifted actress over the years, and Cruise, while a limited actor, is good at communicating his charisma and very good at playing himself to the camera. We, as viewers, should watch and be inspired to feel something. Instead, you might enjoy the scenery and the way parts are shot, but the performances and the emotional content isn’t there.

I don’t believe it’s a waste of time to watch Kubrick’s movies, but it’s a shame that his movies fail to inspire me to feel and care. And I’m unlikely to rewatch any of them besides Spartacus. I would watch The Shining if only to see the way things are shot and framed and to see the classic moments people recognize, but it is imbued with Kubrick’s gifts and failings.