Spartacus

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Spartacus had been, for a while now, the notable gap in my knowledge of Stanley Kubrick. Having now seen it, it is a fairly entertaining, handsomely shot, mainstream epic costume drama / sword and sandals movie. It also doesn't feel like a Stanley Kubrick movie in any way shape or form.

Apparently, Kubrick was more of a hired gun on this one, brought in after the original director was fired, and therefore didn't develop it as closely as he did his other films. The studio had most of the control. So that explains that. Unlike what Scorsese did with The Aviator, and what Kubrick himself would later do with Barry Lyndon, Kubrick makes a genre film competently, but fails to make it his own, or feel of a piece with his body of work.

Still, it's interesting to know that he's capable of successfully making a mainstream genre film. There are plenty of directors, good ones, who I think would fail to make both a personal/auteur-theory-confirming film or a competent genre entry. And more directors that would make a film with their stamp on it, but that still sucks. Yeah, I'm glad the vast majority of Kubrick's films were ones he had a tighter control on, but regardless I find it interesting to watch him work within the boundries of a genre, within the studio system, and at least succeed in making an OK movie.

I like directors working outside of their private zone on occassion. It gives the viewer/fan a better sense of their particular skills and attributes outside of the director's normal style and obsessions. IE: I love Richard Linklater's smaller passion projects, but I also love that he did School of Rock. Starman may not be John Carpenter's best film, but it's a really good, very different film for him that may be the most emotionally resonant of his filmography. And half of Robert Altman's career was him taking on genres he was less familiar with. They aren't always great, but they're pretty much always interesting.

And so on.