Masks

Kubrick's near-documentary precision in the preparation of his films and concern for giving a faithful, lucid account of reality, whether it be the re-creation of the 18th century, the evocation of a journey in space or the war in Vietnam, are accompanied by a refusal of naturalism. Black humour runs throughout his oeuvre with a sense of the grotesque in which fright blends with the comic. Exemplary in this regard is his use of masks, which appear beginning with The Killing, where Johnny Clay dons a clown mask during the hold-up he co-ordinates at the racetrack. The thugs in Clockwork Orange wear phallic noses when they go to rape the writer's wife. In Eyes Wide Shut, the Japanese clients of a purveyor of Carnival costumes and nymphets parade around in wigs and bikinis whereas the participants in an orgy, in the same film, hide their faces with Venetian masks like decadent aristocrats of the Italian Renaissance. In The Shining, Wendy, wandering panicked through the corridors of Hotel Overlook, notices a disturbing creature with a pig's face performing fellatio. The outrageous makeup of Chevalier de Balibari and other characters in Barry Lyndon give them the wan look of spectres in a realm of shades.

Kubrick's tastes for wide-angle close-ups of faces deformed by an excess of passions evokes the grins of the "character heads" sculpted by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an Austrian artist of the 18th century (1).

The filmmaker always opted for two categories of actor: on the one hand, those whose features he exaggerated, pushing them towards an expressionistic acting style, like Peter Sellers in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden in the latter film, Malcolm McDowell and Patrick Magee in Clockwork Orange, Jack Nicholson in The Shining or Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket; on the other hand, in the opposite sense, he would also choose actors with a neutral style, on the very borderline of inexpressiveness: Keir Dullea in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon, Matthew Modine in Full Metal Jacket and Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. These two opposites betray the same refusal of melodrama and sentimentality, the same concern for distance. This strategy aims at "de-familiarising" daily life, revealing the absurdity of life, establishing tension between laughter and fear, and disconnecting and destabilising the viewer who is placed in the impossibility of identifying with the protagonist, a practice highly atypical in Hollywood...

This trouble introduced at the heart of shown reality is also found in the combination, once again conflictual, of the mechanical and the living, which can even be expressed in an oxymoronic title: A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut and Full Metal Jacket, where the hardness of metal is associated with the softness of a jacket. Strangelove, the mad scientist, half-human half-puppet; the human robot of A.I.; HAL 9000, the computer with the human voice in 2001... all are figures that create anguish and anxiety. Similarly, the grotesque masks worn by Alex and his Droogs in A Clockwork Orange correspond to Carnival masks, expressing an abandonment of civilisation in favour of animal pleasure, the panicked mind that turns into destructive rage.

Michel Ciment