"A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later"
- Stanley Kubrick
About this Quote
Stanley Kubrick's quote offers extensive insight into his point of view on filmmaking. He recommends that a film must resonate more like music rather than sticking strictly to the narrative conventions of fiction. This comparison to music highlights the psychological and sensory effect movies need to aim to accomplish. Music, a universal language that communicates straight with our emotions without the requirement for words or stories, serves as an effective metaphor for Kubrick's vision of movie theater.
In stating that a movie needs to be a "development of state of minds and feelings," Kubrick stresses the experiential aspect of movie theater. Much like a symphony or a piece of instrumental music that takes its audience on a psychological journey through its motions, a film needs to direct its audience through a wave of emotions, capturing them in the moment. This underscores the significance of atmosphere, tone, and emotional nuance over stiff plot structures or comprehensive exposition.
Kubrick's assertion that styles, deeper emotions, and implying "come later" suggests that these components need to emerge naturally from the audience's psychological engagement with the movie. Instead of being instantly apparent, the much deeper meanings and themes of a movie need to reveal themselves as the audience reviews their psychological experience. In this sense, Kubrick supporters for a more user-friendly and intrinsic understanding of cinema, where audiences form an individual connection with the film's essence before dissecting its intellectual or thematic material.
Through this quote, Kubrick motivates filmmakers to concentrate on crafting an instant emotional landscape, one that captivates and immerses the audience. By likening movie to music, he highlights cinema's potential to evoke deep, visceral reactions, recommending that the true power of film lies not just in storytelling, however in its capacity to move, to mesmerize, and to resonate on an emotional level.
This quote is written / told by Stanley Kubrick between July 26, 1928 and March 7, 1999. He was a famous Director from USA, the quote is categorized under the topic Movie. The author also have 17 other quotes.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away"
"Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising"
