Reviews for Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze

The average rating for Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-10 00:00:00 Janet Scheetz If you're looking for insight into Kubrick's mind, I doubt you'll find anything that will give you an accurate assessment on that. Nelson lays out an ingenuous analysis of Kubrick's body of work giving erudite insights using Kubrick's noted influences and techniques. I picked this up on the way to see The Shining at the TIFF lightbox in Toronto. I flipped over to the chapter on The Shining, titled "A Remembrance Of Things Forgotten" which is an interesting play of words from Chris Marker's visual essay on photographer Denise Bellon (which I saw that same week). It seems it was the right place to start the book from for me since that's where the Kubrick maze is fully exposed, literally and figuratively. There are a few things in here I hadn't picked up on and Nelson makes note of Kubrick's intrinsic knowledge of cinema's origins and how he builds upon it. Circumventing any of the familiar conspiracy theories by keeping morphology in literature and film grounds, Nelson dives in frame by frame, transposing philosophical ideals that were used to create some of the most iconic moments in film. I especially liked reading things that I had not paid attention to, and have now become crucial to my re-watching of said films. Formula, formula, formula Bunuel! I'm a stickler for film devices and Kubrick soared above the established ones.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-28 00:00:00 Scott Jamieson An excellent analysis of Kubrick"s work. There are eight Kubrick films which I've seen more times than I can count, but I still discovered quite a few things that Nelson pointed out about them which I hadn't noticed. A serious albeit somewhat stiffly academic work that looks carefully and analytically at Kubrick's films, almost frame by frame at times. This book will give you a new deeper appreciation for 2001, Full Metal Jacket, etc. Even Eyes Wide Shut. One wonders if the publisher was paying Nelson for every time he said "temporal" or "mise-en-sine", though, ha ha.