“I wanted to show how society can drive a person to madness” – Weekend
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Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928 – the author of cult films, who explored the territory on the border of the reasonable and the insane. On the occasion of the 95th anniversary of the great director, we re-read his interview and collected arguments about whether there is still a meaning in human life and why it is so easy to lose it.
1
If man were to simply sit back and think about his inevitable end, his horrific insignificance and loneliness in space, he would surely go insane or succumb to an overwhelming sense of futility. Why should he bother writing a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even love another, when he is nothing more than a fleeting microbe on a mote of dust swirling in the unimaginable immensity of the cosmos?
2
Our ability, unlike other animals, to comprehend our own life creates an enormous mental tension within us; whether we want to admit it or not, in every man’s chest a tiny sense of fear of this final knowledge gnaws at his ego and obscures the goal.
3
The crushing recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists realize.
4
In a sense, we are lucky that our body and the satisfaction of its needs and functions play such an important role in our life; this physical shell creates a buffer between us and the mind-numbing realization that only a few years of existence separate birth from death.
5
The very meaninglessness of life compels man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought out, it could make a movie.
6
The scariest fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent.
7
In an infinite, eternal universe, everything is possible, and it is unlikely that we will be able to even touch the surface of the full spectrum of these possibilities.
8
There are very few things in this world that have an undeniable, non-negotiable value, and the family is one of them.
9
I think that as fewer and fewer people find comfort in religion, they unconsciously take a kind of perverse comfort in the thought that in the event of a nuclear war, the world will die with them. God is dead, but the bomb still exists, and thus they are no longer alone in their terrible vulnerability to their own mortality.
10
The destruction of this planet would make no difference on a cosmic scale; to an observer in the Andromeda nebulae, our disappearance would look like a match lit for a second in the heavens.
eleven
I think we tend to be a little hypocritical about ourselves. It’s very easy for us not to see our own shortcomings, and I don’t just mean minor shortcomings. I suspect that quite a few people, having done something bad, did not try to rationally reconsider their act, shifting the blame to those they harmed.
12
We are capable of the greatest good and the greatest evil, the problem is that we often cannot distinguish one from the other when it suits us.
13
Children, of course, begin life with a sense of wonder and the ability to experience absolute joy from such simple things as the greenness of a leaf, but as they grow older, death and decay begin to gradually creep into their minds and imperceptibly undermine cheerfulness.
14
Psychiatrists tell us that the unconscious has no conscience. Perhaps in our unconscious we are all potential Alexs.
15
I wanted to show how society can drive a person to madness. And also how society can use insanity as a tool to control people.
16
Full Metal Jacket Marines are driven to the brink of insanity by brutal training and the horrors of war. This is a commentary on how society can turn people into killing machines.
17
With The Shining, I wanted to create a sense of ambiguity as to whether the madness comes from within the character or from their environment. It’s like a feedback loop where madness feeds on itself and becomes self-perpetuating.
18
The recognition of insanity does not imply its glorification – nor does it imply the futility of any attempt to cure it.
19
In A Clockwork Orange, I wanted to show how society can create its own monsters by subjecting people to such extreme violence and conditions that they become unable to feel empathy or remorse.
20
For me, the only true immorality is that which endangers our species, and the only absolute evil is that which threatens to destroy it. In the deepest sense, I believe in the potential of man and his ability to progress.
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