Kubrick's Hope ─ Discovering Optimism from 2001 to Eyes Wide Shut

Rice (retired, English, Florida Atlantic U.) conducts close readings of Stanley Kubrick's films 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. While he explores Kubrick's themes and concerns in wide-ranging detail, his most overarching conclusion--contradicting such common opinions as Michiko Kakutani's declarations that Kubrick's great theme was "the intrusion of irrationality upon the ordinary, daylight world of logic and reason" and that he held a "deeply cynical view of the world" and of mankind's propensity for greed, violence, and self-delusion--is that while Kubrick may have worried about humanity's future, his films express a consistent belief in the redemptive value of self-knowledge and discovery. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Julian Rice, now retired, was professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. His books include Black Elk's Story (1991), Deer Women and Elk Men (1992), and Before the Great Spirit (1998).