Lolita vs. Lolita

"2.75 stars out of 4"

So I got to see Kubrick's Lolita a few weeks back. I had seen Adrian Lyne's version several years ago. I just looked up to see his past career and noticed that without realizing it, I had seen many of his movies before. He is the man behind "Fatal Attraction", "Indecent Proposal" and more recently "Unfaithful" (hmmm...I can see a theme here).

When I saw Lyne's version, I remember at the beginning of movie he had a commentary where he was asking the audience to disregard the negative criticism on his "Lolita" and watch it with an open mind. I think the negative feedback he had gotten were from diehard fans of Kubrick and also because of pedophiliac imagery in his movie. I am so glad I did listen to him and had the privilege of not having seen Kubrick's at the time.

A few differences caught my attention that I thought I could share.

The first thing that catches your attention is the acting. I mean what movie would be boring with the mere presence of Peter Sellers in it?! He was a blast and I think Kubrick had him in his movies just for the sake of his own fun. Not that I want to dis his talent, because needless to say he was talented indeed. And the other notable acting in this movie was that of Shelley Winters'. Compared to Melanie Griffith, she did a better job of depicting a desperate widow. I can't believe that she wasn't even nominated for an Oscar. Probably because the Academy didn't approve of the movie's storyline back in the day. However, one advantage that the new Lolita had, in my opinion, was having Jeremy Irons as the main character. Maybe not many people would see the difference, but I don't know...I would add him and his deep melancholic voice to any movie!

The second difference is the theme. Kubrick's had a much more comic tone to it than Lyne's. Actually, I don't think Lyne's had any comic tone at all and I consider it a good thing because in Kubrick's you would get distracted from the main point and what was going on, to the point when the comedy stopped, you would get bored. I liked the gloomy theme that Lyne had added to his film and I think Nabokov would've approved as well.

And lastly, I found the main problem through a comment that my friend made after we left the theater. She turned to me and said, "was this movie made by the same guy who made 2001?! What was the point? They hadn't done a good job of covering who the school psychiatrist was (who was Sellers)." I said, "well, they wanted you to know who he was from the starts".  -"So what was the point?!"

You see, in Lyne's version, the identity of the guy who Lolita is seeing is kept a secret until the very end but in Kubrick's version, from the very start we know who he is and in fact, that's where the story begins!

I don't know why Kubrick decided to do it this way. It deprived his movie from the suspense. Actually, after Shelley Winters' character got killed off, not only the tempo of the movie fell dramatically, but you also had nothing to look forward to (which was the wit!). Whereas in Lyne's, you are hooked until the very end.

So I leave you with this: watch both. You will enjoy the storytelling and the sincerity of the newer version BUT you will definitely enjoy the acting you will find in the original version. I would recommend seeing the new version first, if you haven't already done so. Because although I spoiled it, but like I said earlier, I have the feeling that that's how Nabokov had intended it to be received and also the storytelling is much better. After you have found out about the story, then you can take a peek at what inserting Sellers in there (forcibly) would make it look like.

P.S.: The rating looks a bit weird. I first gave it 2.5 stars but then I remembered the laughs I had in the theater and I thought that deserves another 0.25 points! But to be fair to all the movies that I have rated 3, I wanted to keep it under 3. And to be fair to Kubrick, compared to the movies I have given 2 stars to, I had to keep it above 2.5 the least!

2001: a space odyssey

"4.5 starts out of 4!"

Well, it's been a while hasn't it? It's my own fault. Made myself and my schedule pretty busy this semester. And although I am enjoying it immensely (since I have been unemployed/unanything in the past), I really do miss this place. I feel like I am straying away from my goal of becoming a journalist. The proof for that is the fact that I applied for the PhD program in our own department, though I never had it in my future plans. But I had a couple of reasons for that. One might have been the fact that I am a coward...in taking risks. The other being that I don't feel like I am ready to be a "grown-up" and take responsibility. The third is the fact that the chance of getting an assistantship or an scholarship for the journalism program is really slim and neither do I have the money myself or want to put the load on my parents. The last and the most important one is that since my parents spent a lot of money to send me here and put themselves through trouble and many emotional strains (since they were sending their little kid to a far away land) so that I can have a better future, I felt like I owed them and that would make them happy. And I believe I was right. Because although they kept telling me do whatever makes you happy but when I told them that I had decided to continue my studies, I could see their faces light up!

Anyway...I wanted to give a little update on myself and where I am standing right now in life. But the fact is that I was too busy to even watch a movie for the past month or so. The lovely Amherst cinema had a Kubrick festival for September and their Lynch festival has started since last week. So I got to see Kubrick's Space Odyssey and Lolita a couple of weeks back and I took notes for the first one but as you can see hadn't gotten a chance to write it here. I hope my memory serves me well in transcribing my emotions and thoughts from those movies.

Let me start with this, me and my friend went to see this movie and our jaws were literally dropped! And the main reason for that (other than the fact that it was an amazing, thought-provoking movie), was when you brought into consideration the time of the making of the film. How could anyone come up with such an idea 45 years ago?! When you compare this movie to the movies that were made in Iran back then, or even in Hollywood...I think I can rest my case now! Of course, it's a shame that it is more than 10 years past the year 2001 and we still don't have the technology to send people to Jupiter (or maybe we do but don't have the reason yet! I'm not sure).

I loved how Kubrick played with the sound to play with your mind. The shots he got from the very beginning...oh man! The scenery itself seemed to be an important character in the movie.

Let me tell you right off the bat what my take on this movie was, because my view was completely different from my friend's and it might save you some time on not reading the rest of this post. What she thought was that it was something like "War of the Worlds" where aliens had planted something on earth way before there was life on earth and all of a sudden it had unraveled. And that was what gave them the power to overcome their enemies and to drive them out. While my take was that it was a sign of how we are connected to after life and what there is and where we go when we die. And what happened with the competition was I thought just the evolution. Since I hadn't looked it up to see what others have had to say about this, so I put it up to debate. And since I don't have any comment-ors yet, I think it will continue to be an inner-debate with myself!

Speaking of War of the Worlds,  I realized where the idea of how machines and computer can take over us has come from, which is pretty amazing. How it has influenced many movies and books to come...the after life, the computer/human conflicts,...from Star Wars to Contact...he had (and still has) opened a new chapter into the life in cinema.

My friend thought that the ape part at the beginning was irrelevant and could've been cut out of the movie. But I thought that it was actually quite important for the flow of it. It was a mental cue for us to see how even among the same species the survival instinct could lead to horrendous things, let alone when a computer wants to take over human kind! And how disturbingly true it was.

This movie would shake you to the very core. Stimulate every living cell that there is left in your brain! (Of course, in my case, the beer that I had while watching it at the theater might have helped! I mean in stimulating, not killing the cells!) The end was predictable (probably due to many adaptations from this movie that I have seen since this one was released) but you will gasp and be engaged in the story from the very beginning. It also involves some issues that are pertinent to that era, like the cold war. But it doesn't defy the fact that you will find it interesting.

Here's a summary: the movie starts by showing images of the earth, back when there was almost no life and there were apes living in colonies and trying to survive and who had competition with other groups of apes. Then a group comes across a giant black thing that's stuck out of the ground. It radiates a noise.
Then the movie cuts into the future. It's the year 2001. There are stations in the moon and people can travel as if they were traveling on earth. But there is a top secret mission. They have found a new thing on the moon. The same giant black thing. But this time they have the technology to detect where the radiation comes from. It is from somewhere near Jupiter. So they start a plan to send a few scientists over there to check what is going on. And they have this computer, an intelligent machine, built into the spaceship who is in charge of the technical support of the scientists. But he is not in on the secret. He tries to find out and take over since he thinks humans are stupid and might mess it up. But things go wrong...

September/October in Amherst Cinema

Again, Amherst cinema has a great two months scheduled, this time for movies by Kubrick (for September) and David Lynch (for October). I am going to try to catch as many as I can. I suggest you do the same. Here is the list of the movies and the date of their showtimes:

Dr Strangelove 9/8
2001: A Space Odyssey 9/15
Lolita 9/22
A clockwork orange 9/29

Wild at heart 10/13
Twin peaks: fire walk with me 10/20
Lost highway 10/27
Eraserhead 11/10
Blue velvet 10/6

A Clockwork Orange

"4 stars out of 4"

Yes, I know I had said in my previous post that my next post was going to be about Mean Streets, but since I just watched the one at hand and took comprehensive notes of it, it is more doable to write about it than Mean Streets, which needs more tweaks...or better yet to say "actually writing something" rather than edits!

I also watched Raging Bull last week at Amherst Cinema, which made it to the top of my list of favorite Scorsese movies...but I'll leave that to another post as well.

I had never watched a Kubrick movie, for the sake of it being a "Kubrick" movie before or hadn't paid attention to the director as a matter of fact. I had seen Full Metal Jacket when I was a kid and my brother was watching it and as you would agree it's not a kids movie! I just have images of soldiers training and singing while running (vividly remember a trivia I learned that day by my brother or dad explaining it has a motivational or kind of a regulatory effect in their training!) and some violent scenes here and there, namely...well...the one you probably know if you have seen the movie!

And then there was Shining...well, it was SHINING! And it had Jack Nicholson in it which is just another reason for watching it. I believe that there is a "Zidane" in every category in art, and in life for that matter. Let me elaborate. There is a Gold Standard if you will. No one can dispute the fact that they were great or they didn't enjoy them. For example, in this case, I am almost 100% positive that you wouldn't find one person in this world who hasn't enjoyed watching Zidane play. Then there are other players who you can discuss on being a fan of. Or take Azerbaijani singers for instance. There is Reshid Behbudov, then there are others! So is the case with Nicholson.

Anyway! Me and my digression, right?! I am fighting the urge of rambling on about things dancing in my mind, making their way into my fingers.

So, as I was saying I had yet to discover the works of Kubrick, namely A Clockwork Orange and 2001 (which is in my to-watch list...how shameful!).

The movie starts by showing the face that went on to be one of the iconic images of the movie world. The leader of a neo-Nazi-like, justice-making, not-so-law-abiding, outlaws (whose costumes reminded me of Stormtroopers!). As I wrote down these descriptions while watching the movie, kept wondering whether I was right or was suffering of ignorance. But mid-movie found out that me calling them to neo-Nazis shouldn't be out of place as they were wearing armbands, resembling that of Nazis.

This is an unconventional film of a very familiar issue that has persisted over time and has become more and more intolerable and has taken over the world, accelerating in the second half of the 20^th century and getting more and more powerful, well into the 21^st. But probably started by the time this movie was made (when I compare it with the Iranian revolution back then and how people react now).

Although the movie has been made over 40 years ago but I could relate to it. It has become a part of our culture hasn’t it? It is a global culture but I witness it more in Iranians…sitting in our couches (now with the digital age), slouched behind our computers, having criticizing everyone and everything out there as our indisputable right, and yet not doing one positive thing about it. And that’s not the main issue…our biggest problem is that these people think they are right…which is a horrifying fact!

I think there is probably no other director who has broken the taboos and stomped upon the conventions of the society, and in a bigger picture that of life’s, as much as Kubrick.

As for acting, a neurotic, unrestrained performance was exactly what this movie needed and the lead actor was able to deliver it to perfection. So I praise Kubrick in wisely choosing him to play this role.

My favorite part of this movie was the scene where he was arrested and now that I think about it, all the scenes where he spent time in prison.

He tells the officer his crime with a smirk on his face and another horrifying reality is how the officer reacts to it, the same as all the officers of the world...acknowledging it without any reaction…it has become a ritual! And yet giving attention to the details that don’t really matter compared with other things, like how he puts his belongings in front of the official. Or where the thing that catches the patrol's eyes is not the row of pictures of naked women on the wall but the picture of Beethoven where he gives it a curious look. Or they decide to punish the not-so-guilty and reward the guilty to save face.

I just watched a documentary called Propaganda, made in North Korea apparently, showing how imperialism and capitalism try to distract us from the issues that our societies face (of course as one of my friends mentioned, is ironic coming from North Koreans!).

One of the other prison scenes that I found interesting was where he talked about his interest in the old book and while he tells this you think to yourself that he must be repenting, but then we find out that a soul is not that easy to change, not with a rather short time in prison listening to preaches, as we find out that he had been picturing himself as a Roman soldier torturing Jesus, rather than being Jesus himself.

Or where he tells him "sign it, don't read it!", when they are having him sign a consent form...nothing has changed, has it?! I was reading an article a few days back about how no one reads the "I agree to terms and conditions" part of anything nowadays (who would, with the long list of liability consents!), and they can sneak in terms that would benefit them without anyone knowing. Again...propaganda-like situation hear...they want dumb, deaf, blind, obedient citizens who they can control. Having a Matrix-like society where they feed you but are unaware of what is REALLY happening.

This movie mocks the judiciary system. The way they try to discipline inmates through ineffective ways mainly because they are inanimate, apathetic, so called humans, calling them by numbers instead of using their names...they have turned to machines, trying every inhuman means to discipline and bring justice, that is doomed to fail, unless they find the "human" within themselves first.

Again, changing the mindset and soul is not easy. Where they show him the movies and they assume that it would make him reflect on the crimes he's committed, he was paying attention to the technical aspects of the movie rather than the morals. Because, say beating, was what normal in his eyes...what needed to be changed.

Where the priest (angel) was on his right shoulder and the doctor (evil) on his left, the long debated matter of "moral choice" is discussed. Is conditioning the way to do it? How effective would it be? What difference would it make when you take out the ability to sin out of the picture? Yes, you would probably lower the rate of crime but what value is there in not sinning then? Resisting the temptation is what's rewarding.

There is no black and white in this movie. It's not like Alex (the main character) is the ultimate "bad" guy and the society is good and he is doing them wrong. Everyone in this movie is guilty to the same extent, as we can all be wrong-doers, given the "right" circumstances. In a way it keeps bringing And Justice for All and Seven to mind! But does he know he's done anything wrong...how he keeps referring to himself as "humble" narrator?

By the way, the scene where the priest was preaching brought the memory of The Prince in Waiting (by John Christopher) to my mind, for some reason! In that book the world had suffered a massive apocalypse-like incidence, caused by machines and they had church-like organizations where they would demonstrate a connection with the dead and after life by...get this...machines! Without people knowing (sounded more interesting when I first wanted to right about it, now seems more confusing! So I left it for those of you who have read the books before, in case you find it interesting too!).

This was an unconventional review which I think suits the movie best. As this movie wasn't released recently and I am sure many of you, my dear followers, have seen it before, it didn't make sense to write one of my usual ones...you know, give a summary of the story, give a yea/nay to directing or acting or say how well it was made...so I decided to write the thoughts that it provoked in me and how it made sense to me.

Can't wait to read its screenplay! The movie had really funny moments which makes it ever more interesting.

P.S.: If you have been my Facebook friend for the past year, you might remember one of the "Culture Shock" statuses I had where I talked about how I had told my American roommate about us getting butt-shots in Iran which she had found really odd, as they get arm shots over here! So, it was good to know that they used to give butt-shots in the first world too! Wouldn't have been much of a culture shock, had I come to the US back in the 70's! Of course, my culture shock back then might have been "what the hell is a shot"?!

[I hope I have written everything that I needed to say in the right order...this is no good excuse but I am really sleepy and am in no mood to go over the post and edit it! I am sure you'll find it in your hearts to have me excused.]