Lolita “Disorientation”
“He’s a monster, a sexual predator, and the most sensitive and civilized fellow you’d ever meet.” And “our disorientation [about these disparate qualities] is the strongest evidence of the filmmaker’s mastery.” So says N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott, very succinctly, in his Critics’ Pick essay about James Mason‘s Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick‘s Lolita (’62).
The Times web guys being who they are and always have been, they haven’t put this latest Critics’ Picks up on YouTube yet (although all of them end up on YouTube sooner or later). Nor do they allow embedding of Scott’s video essays off their own site. They do this deliberately to anger and frustrate people like myself.
One of my fondest Manhattan fantasies is that I meet up with one of these web guys at a party somewhere, and I get to unload all of my years of frustration — the countless times I’ve been excited and/or felt inspired by one of Scott’s essays but unable to post it on HE due to the Times‘ extremely annoying policies about timely YouTube sharing and embed codes. Almost the entire web world gets it these days — the number of sites that refuse to offer embed codes is less than miniscule now — and still the N.Y. Times techies won’t budge/re-think/adapt. They’re like Japanese soldiers refusing to come out of caves and surrender after the end of World War II.
Maybe you should link to them, with HTML.
Totally agree with Scott’s observation about Kubrick’s work seeming slightly “off.” That’s one of the things I love so much about him.
I watched 2010 the other night on TCM. Not a terrible movie standing alone, though it obviously suffers greatly in comparison to 2001. I was struck that even though they used (facsimiles) of the same sets and the same models, and explored many of the same themes, it had nowhere near the same impact. Plus, even though it was made more than 15 years later, it looks far more dated. I’m sure if Peter Hyams had directed the original, it would have been quickly forgotten.
Love the Kubrick masterpiece, but also a HUUUUGE fan of the Dominique Swain version. YEP YEP.
Yes, how dare they limit your ability to lift their content wholesale to fill your own space needs.
Just do what you did here. Talk about them and link to them. It’s their content, and they get to determine how it’s used within their power to do so.
I have the GREATEST IDEA EVER for a Breaking Bad/Hung type Lolita-informed TV series about a 37-year-old sadsack just saying fuck it and becoming a lecherous teacher at an all-girls’ high school and solving little crimes for them and painting their toenails and hosting sleepovers and refereeing their pillow fights, and the dude is unequivocally the hero and you root for him every step of the way to get an 18…ish girlfriend. GOOD IDEA.
Mason would not only play unlikeable characters, but men who were ‘weak”. He produced Ray’s “Bigger Than Life” and starred as the cortisone addicted grade schoolteacher. Mason has many scenes where he reacts to physical pain, sobs, and eventually tries to kill his family. Not “leading man ” material. There is a scene early in Lumet’s “The Verdict where Mason prepares his client, the defendant in a civil case, for cross examination. He goads, bullies, and belittles the obstetrician until he shouts his innocence. Great moment.
A lot of people say they prefer the Lyne/Irons version, but I like Kubrick’s version is better, if only because it gets closer to the wit and humor of the book. Lyne overdirects the hell out of his version so the whole movie feels like a long dirge.
Mason was a great actor, one of the first truly “twisted” leading men who played characters with deep psychological difficulties. He later switched to playing charismatic villains as in North by Northwest. Loved the man.. and he had a wonderful distinctive speaking voice like no other.
“A lot of people say they prefer the Lyne/Irons version . . . .”
I know of no such people . . . except maybe LexG, but I suspect his reasons are purely libidinal.
Surprised no one made any quips about Polanski.
Kubrick’s best movie.
Lo, plain Lo, Lola, Dolly or Dolores. Whoever she is at any part of the day… please, a Blu-Ray soon.
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