Kubrick: Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Act II
One thing I neglected to mention the other day regarding Kubrick’s screenplays is his propensity for long scenes. This wonderfully cinematic director has, paradoxically, a yen for long scenes, very long in some cases, another preference he shares with Tarantino. Generally in Kubrick movies, he’ll present a long scene, and then there will be a big leap forward in time where a bunch of stuff happens we don’t see, and then there be another long scene. The most famous of these cuts is in 2001, where we jump cut a few million years from an ape using a bone as a tool to satellites orbiting in space, but they occur in most of Kubrick’s work. Act I of Dr. Strangelove has a total of eight scenes, eight (a typical screenplay would have at least twenty, and probably more) and Act II has even fewer. There are seven actual scenes, but the bulk of the act is actually two scenes broken up into six sections.
Nota bene!
Attention all Wadpaw readers!
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‘ s long-aborning book, Masterpiece Comics, is now in stores and at your favorite online retailers. Purchase of this volume is mandatory. Do not go back to school without it, it will mark you with the badge of cool. It is a collection of comics/literature mash-ups that illuminate both the comics and the literature in the process. Sikoryak finds striking parallels between high culture and low, and you will never look at Crime and Punishment again, assuming of course that you’ve looked at Crime and Punishment at least once in the first place.
Kubrick: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Act I
Stanley Kubrick is lauded, justifiably, for his uncanny eye for composition and his chilly way of setting up a shot. But for me, Kubrick’s genius, like Tarantino’s, begins long before the cameras roll. It begins with his understanding of character and his approach to narrative, both of which were mind-bending for their times and still arresting today.