As a younger person I come to realize now that I was very poorly educated in the contextualization of film. I grew up on Disney movies and every corny superhero movie imaginable and as a kid of course I loved each and every one of them each and every second. When I go back to these films in my present state, I really can’t understand what it was that was so appealing to me as a child. I just remember the feeling of joy, curiosity and wonder as the protagonist was able to overcome sure destruction at the last possible minute by some incredible selfless act or demonstration of inhumane strength and courage. This surface fascination with the explosions and badass karate moves changed as I got older.

As I became older in my teens I basically lost quite a bit of those feelings of excitement and complete devotion to movies. They never felt quite the same as they did when I was a kid. It began to feel almost like an unhealthy addiction in which I was chasing the original high but never quite able to grasp that same feeling. I would re-watch the classic Disney films to see if there was a meaning as to why they were so impactful upon my emotional state as a kid but I was often left with nothing more than nostalgia for the music and quirky animation sequences. They began to feel like a waste of time, an escapists route for fleeing the daily existential dread that came with the teenage discovery of life’s tragedy and abundance of malevolence. It didn’t make sense to me why movies could be so impactful and why a multi-billion dollar industry spent so much time making moving images for adults and kids. These questions would soon haver their answer with the discovery of the world’s greatest director and artistic visionary ever to step foot on the face of the earth, Stanley Kubrick.

The first Kubrick film I got to enjoy was actually Eyes wide shut when I was a mere 10 years old. I had undergone some unfortunate circumstances when I was younger and introduced at a very early age to masturbation. I remember we had a bunch of video cassettes at our house in the Bronx NY and I had my very own VHS player in my room. This is before the era of internet porn and I was too young to buy adult magazines so I would fast forward through rated R movies to find erotic scenes in them to jack off to. It was a struggle back in the early 2,000’s to find fap worthy material but I was a very innovative kid. So I would jerk it to the scene in the mansion and the scene where Tom cruise is touching Nicole Kidman’s funbags. This was my first encounter with Kubrick and as a kid I tried to watch the movie a few times but found it EXTREMELY boring and unstimulating for my pee brain that only had boobs and WWE running through it 24/7. This went on to become my favorite film of all time and I am highly skeptical that any movie will ever surpass it as my personal selection for best work of art ever made.

Kubrick has a way with films that I cant seem to find in any other filmmaker. Some have come relatively close such as Christopher Nolan with interesting concepts and similar Themes in his vast arsenal of great films under his belt. Interstellar being my personal favorite of his alongside The Dark Knight and Inception. Martin Scorsese being an outspoken Kubrick admirer and possessing incredibly engaging storytelling as seen in Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and my personal Favorite movie of his being After Hours. Despite these examples, none of these movies come even close to a Kubrick masterpiece like 2001 a space odyssey or full metal jacket or even the comedic masterpiece of Dr. Strangelove. There is something fascinating to me about being able to enjoy a movie almost as an actual life experience. Where words become mere markers of intention and less meaningful than the underlying context and mental space. The movie is represented through ideas and symbols rather than explaining and baby-stepping every plot point to advance the movie forward. Kubrick assumes his audience to be intelligent and gives the viewer the power to decide just what the hell is going on and what we will walk away feeling from he experience.