Indie Cine » Kubrick’s Boxes

Sep 10 2008

Kubrick’s Boxes

Published by dwhitney at 5:57 am under Documentaries

I have always been fascinated with the 610 cardboard boxes that encompass Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules; his attempt to document the 1960’s through the 1980’s. I imagine that for a museum curator, the thought of riffling through the great artist’s boxes of magazine clippings, photographs, and random correspondences, is attune to that first walk through King Tut’s Tomb. It is a look into the mind, or at least the thought process, of a great mystery. However, in Jon Ronson’s documentary “Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes” I discovered over at /film, I learned that Warhol’s 610 is the collection of an amateur.

Stanley Kubrick had throughout his life ammassed over 1,000 cardboard carriers filled to the brim with his intense desire to research set, costume, and historical perspective on his films to the nth degree. To me, these boxes represent the true brilliance of Kubrick’s mind and his films. This is because I assume, more than I know, that today’s film directors rely on amongst others, production designers, costumers, and historians, to handle the very small pieces of the monumental task that is the creation of a Hollywood movie. Well, Kubrick’s movies were the definition of monumental and he oversaw and obsessed about every detail of his works. And on top of all this, he somehow found the time to grade and categorize his fan letters as well as design the optimal box to store them.

These boxes which once filled Kubrick’s home, now reside at the University of the Arts London, but to truly understand their meaning, or lack thereof, watch the 49 minute documentary below. It turns out that in his later life, most specifically the 12 years between Full Metal Jacket and his final film Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick worked on his boxes most relentlessly in order to discover his next story. To me, the most eerie, compelling, and filmable story was the obsession and legacy he was fitting inside these boxes you will see below.

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