In Part I, the focus was on Lolita [M] (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s early documentaries, but this time we jump ahead more than a decade to Barry Lyndon [M] (1975), and a teasing little Channel 4 documentary called Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes [M] (2008).
Lolita forms the beginning of Kubrick’s comfort in letting loose his satirical streak. In that film, the target was socially wrong behaviour with an emphasis on the innate clumsiness and petty jealousies of a shallow professor whose maturity is so low, he doesn’t deserve the degree that permits him to walk into any classroom. In fact, he shouldn’t be allowed to enter any classroom, even by accident.
