By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 12, 2021)

For those unfamiliar with Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre, a cursory glance at the director’s catalog (13 movies over a 46-year span) might prompt head-scratching as to all the fuss concerning his impact on the medium. But great artists are defined by the quality, not the quantity of their work. Kubrick was notoriously averse to granting interviews, so it has been largely left up to film scholars to mull over the ultimate “meaning” of 2001: a Space Odyssey or Eyes Wide Shut.

Writer-director Gregory Monro had access to rare audio-only interviews Kubrick granted to French film critic Michael Ciment over a 10-year period. He cleverly incorporates Kubrickian visual language, rounded off by archival interviews with creative collaborators. Not a definitive portrait of the artist, but likely the closest we will ever get to Kubrick “in his own words”.