Kubrick's Total Cinema: Philosophical Themes and Formal Qualities

‘Kubrick’s Total Cinema by Philip Kuberski belongs to a vanishingly small number of books that treat the films of Stanley Kubrick with the delicate combination of critical virtues they demand and deserve: a thorough knowledge of the medium of film, a penetrating insight into the aesthetic and philosophical perspectives informing Kubrick’s choices, a capacious imagination, and discerning taste. For the first time, Kubrick’s cinema is understood in ways that fully acknowledge the cognitive, metaphysical, and spiritual themes that are pertinent to his art as well as the dazzling visual achievements for which the films are justly famous. Kuberski makes a persuasive case for Kubrick not only as an important filmmaker but as one of the great artists of the twentieth century – one who addressed the central aesthetic and moral issues of modernity in a manner that was both artistically unimpeachable and able to reach a popular audience. Kubrick’s Total Cinema will find avid readers among those coming to the filmmaker for the first time as well as professionals in critical theory, film studies, and the humanities generally.’ –Frederick M. Dolan, Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, Professor of Humanities, California College of the Arts