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Director: Stanley Kubrick
Verdict: Meh The first act of Stanley Kubrick’s directing career, Fear and Desire was a rough cut of what was to come. With strong acting and clever cuts, Kubrick was able to bring emotion out with limited funds. Set in a fictional valley, four men are stranded behind enemy lines. The leader, a pilot, decides to go to a nearby river and make a raft to get back to their side of the lines. However, the group is discovered by a local woman. The group decides to tie her up and interrogate her. However, finding she can’t understand them, they leave to work on the raft, leaving the youngest, Pvt. Sidney behind. He falls in love for her and raves over her, begging her to love him. He frees her, hoping she will embrace him, but she attempts to flee. Distraught, he shoots her. When the oldest of the group, Sgt. Mac, returns to find him having gone completely crazy. Sidney, hysterical, runs into the river, claiming its blood. The group soon discovers that an enemy general is nearby and decides to try and kill him. Mac sacrifices himself so that the pilot and the other soldier can kill the General and escape in an enemy plane. As Mac, badly wounded, floats down the river, he comes across Sidney, standing in the river. With an incredibly limited budget, Kubrick made the best of a tough situation with superb actors. The strongest part of the movie, the actors drove the emotion and the plot. With only a very short period of time in which to develop character traits, the actors had to work hard to be able to develop their character in the beginning in order to have the majority of the time for the plot. While the pilot overacted and was obviously having to actively try, Pvt. Sidney and Sgt. Mac played their parts beautifully. From the beginning it is obvious that Sidney was nervous and fearful. Everything seemed to add to a mounting stress. When he snapped, he snapped and it was so brilliantly played it was almost worrying. Mac, while not fanatic and crazy like Sidney, was very strong from the off. If anything, the editing and cuts almost detracted from his performance. These two performance really made the movie. Apart from the acting, Kubrick was able to help enhance the emotion of the film through cuts during two important scenes. When the men go into a cabin and stab the men inside, food is flung everywhere. The dying men, food in hand, squeeze it to mush. In between cuts of food falling and going everywhere is scenes of the men stabbing and killing. The quick cuts help emphasize the frantic nature of the attack while the food is representing the blood and gore of the action. When Sidney goes crazy, the shots are all more or less the same but there are numerous fast past cuts of Sidney. This helps show what is happening to Sidney. Everything is happening so fast and it is disorienting and confusing. The sound editing also lends a small part to the film. Faintly in the background, there is a drum beat. When focused on, it is obviously a drumbeat acting as a musical accompaniment. However, when simply watching the movie, it sounds like distant cannon fire, booming away. It is a reminder that the film is set in a war and that fighting is ongoing, even when the action on camera is calm. While very rough and showing a clear lack of funds or maturity, Fear and Desire is a standout debut film for Stanley Kubrick and shows how, even at a young age, he has a natural talent for directing.
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June 2018
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