Stanley Kubrick’s films often focused on dehumanization and the dark side of human nature. Dehumanization was a common theme in Kubrick’s films. Kubrick commonly used this theme because he was fascinated with the dark side of human nature and not because he thought all humans were basically evil. T
he best examples of his trend are A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket. These three films explored dark side of the human psyche and the violent nature of human beings.
A Clockwork Orange is probably the most notorious of all the Kubrick films that explored the dark side of nature. The main character, Alex, is a psychotic rapist who gets sent to prison for murdering a woman. While in prison he is selected for an experimental procedure that supposedly cures violence.
They way it works is they strap Alex is front of a big screen and force him to watch violent acts over and over again. They condition him to feel sick anytime he gets the urge to use violence. But by the end of the movie Alex is back to his old ways and thoughts again. A Clockwork Orange is not a very uplifting movie.
There are numerous scenes of rape and violence. I think the message Kubrick was trying to convey was that violence doesn’t solve violence. Conditioning a human to become sick anytime they get the urge to be violent. Kubrick once said that Alex represents someone without a conscience, original sin, and he represents man in his natural state. Even though the film is violent it is a great examination of the dark side of human behavior.
The Shining is another good example of dark side in Kubrick’s films. The Shining is about a family that stays at a hotel during the off season to take care of the place. Jack Nicholson plays the father, Jack. Staying with Jack at the hotel is his wife and son. Their son, Danny, has a special psychic abilities which he calls shining.
Jack eventually starts to go insane after spending a few months stuck inside a hotel with his family. As the movie progresses we see Jack continually break down mentally until he finally snaps and tries to kill his family. The hotel where they stay is haunted and Jack begins to see things and people who aren’t supposed to be there. These supernatural entities are the ones that push Jack over the edge.
He was already disturbed before he saw any ghosts but it was the ghosts that influenced him to kill his family. The isolation that Jack felt made him paranoid and he believed he had to kill his family because they were trying to interfere with him and his job as the caretaker of the hotel.
One camera shot in particular displayed Jack’s descent into madness. It is the glare shot which is a common shot in Kubrick films which tend to show a character’s emotional meltdown by showing a close up of the actor with their head tilted down slightly and their eyes looking up straight into the camera. In the Shining, the glare shot occurs when Jack is staring out a window and viewing a snow covered ground. The camera slowly zooms in on Jack who has demented look on his face. That one shot says it all without one word of dialog.
Full Metal Jacket is great depiction of dehumanization. In Full Metal Jacket a group of enlistees for the Marines are put through hell in training camp and then face hell again when they are deployed to Vietnam. The scenes that depict the training are arguably the best scenes in the movie.
The drill sergeant, who is played brilliantly by R. Lee Ermey, is absolutely brutal to the trainees. One trainee in particular gets the brunt of the drill sergeant’s punishments. Private Pyle, who is played by Vincent D’Onofrio, is overweight and slow which makes him a target of the drill instructor. The whole point of the drill instructor is to make the trainees capable of killing.
The drill instructor pushes Pyle so hard that Pyle begins to go insane and eventually he shoots the drill instructor and then puts the gun to his head. Once again in Full Metal Jacket, the glare shot is used. This time it is in a bathroom where Private Pyle is sitting on a toilet with an M16 in his hands. The glare shot shows just how much Private Pyle has changed since the beginning of the movie.
In the beginning he was a cheerful fun loving type. Eventually, all the insults and beatings get to him and he loses it. Full Metal Jacket is the best example of dehumanization. It shows how Private Pyle is systematically conditioned to become a killer. He loses the innocence that he had before arrived at training camp and becomes a psychotic killer who kills himself.
These are just three examples of dehumanization and the exploration of the dark side in Stanley Kubrick films. Most of Kubrick’s other films have excellent examples of dehumanization as well. Stanley Kubrick was an amazing director who delved deeply into the human psyche where many other directors would not go.
