Kubrick: An Odyssey

Kolker (emeritus, cinema studies, Univ. of Maryland) and Abrams (film, Bangor Univ.), coauthors of Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of his Final Film, craft this in-depth biography about filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (1928–99). In a conversational yet authoritative tone, the book delivers a vast amount of detail about every aspect of Kubrick’s career, from his formative days as a Look magazine photographer, his early cinematic missteps, and his documentary shorts, to the years he devoted to unrealized projects—including Napoleon and A.I.—which are just as fascinating as the behind-the-scenes details of any of Kubrick’s 13 completed feature films. Traditional biographical digressions into the filmmaker’s personal life are rare and often provided only to contrast his work habits, deemed “obsessive” and presented as the book’s throughline; his cinematic vision was ironclad, and his main creative fault was a tendency to control too much of the process. The book portrays Kubrick as being as difficult on set as other directors of his era who’ve been taken to task for such demanding behavior, but the authors offer no commentary about that.