Kubrickian

I have a list on my Letterboxd that’s just called “Hmmm”. It’s a private list, for my own reference, of twelve movies that I want to host screenings of for my friends. There are some all-time favorites on there, some films I wish more people knew about, a trilogy of movies about COVID lockdown, and some movies I just think are neat. But every film on that list is something I feel the need to share, to talk about, to obsess over with someone else.

In Kubrickian, Chris says “Showing someone a movie was like taking my shirt off…just this super intimate thing for me.” From the first time I read this play, I was drawn to the way the men in this room transcend their circumstances by talking about art. For Chris, the art is the films of Stanley Kubrick, but put someone else in the room and it could be Spike Lee or Kelly Reichardt or Charli XCX. We all have art in our lives that’s worth obsessing over, and don’t we all want to get someone as excited about it as we are?

We don’t have to be stuck in a void of a room to feel as lonely and isolated as Chris and Danny. We live in a world that pushes us to go to work and then spend our leisure time at home, watching Netflix, ordering DoorDash, consuming in isolation. Even our online “social” networks increasingly push content on us from strangers who wouldn’t know if we lived or died. Bleak, right? But Kubrickian shows the thing that I love about people. We find ways to connect with each other despite our constraints, whether those constraints are aliens, angels, or late capitalism. We host dinners for our friends. We exchange books and debate movies. We enjoy a night out at the theatre.

I hope when you’re feeling stuck in your job, or too busy to have a social life, or made lonely by capitalism in any way, that you find a piece of art to reinvigorate your spirit. And when you do, I hope you have a friend old or new who you can invite to obsess over it with you.