CONCEPT
from March, 2001
from the ARKADIAN ARCHIVE
Review: Lolita, Stanley Kubrick 19xx, adaptation of novel by Vladimir Nabokov
Reviewed by Max Zempfski-Shannon.
Lolita was a very Baa, Baa blacksheep movie.
As I sit at my typewryter, my dog, Archie, yapping “Fast!” 1 and my maid, Sweet Quim2, yelling “Hush!” I reflect on a movie that, maybe, after all these years, must have been better to society in polluted ashes flitting up discountenanced skies. First, I must tell you how emphatically I did not see the whole movie. No indeed, this downyfine Quinquagesima I had cabbage to boil and hash to fry; I skipped the beginning, as is my wont these days to sacrifice any minutes of a movie in excess of two hours (it’s the right thing to do): so have I also done these days with Schindler’s List, Armegeddon, Dr. Chicago, Dune, and every other Kubrick movie. In the case of little but long Lolita, the choice was wise. Entering the theater magnanimously my first glimpse was of the tall swaggering xeno, his metal instrument thrust towards a half-closed door, through which, presumably, his ailing wife lay quivering and taking her quinine. For a moment I thought: Maybe this movie ain’t so bad. But sure enough, the little demon emerged: Lust. When languid Lolita skipped out of her impure camp and made her move. When Hummy’s stellar darling whispered secrets and parted her legs, and made her move. And when she frolicked on the stage like ash and golddust. My lighter sides reprands me says ‘why, Max, do you sit like a qadi to pass judgment on the vehicle for gentle entertainement.’ For the Masses, my Gentle Literate, for the Masses! And this is a movie I knew I must absolutely condemn. From the first cue to the last cut, this movie was immoral and degrading and all too real. Too often in our society a tiny pixie xoanon wood play games around tinder middle-aged hearts. I have seen this myself. In Lolita, the brat actually pits the two innocent men against each other. One dies as a result, and the other lands in jail. And all for, in the deepest respect, a juvenile slut. I know where she contracted the Japanese ‘way of life,’ and it ain’t tucked in alone. Maybe Mr. Kubrick and Mr. Nabokov had the best of intentions. I don’t know for a fact that they are perverts. The movie was certainly pretty: black figures on light backdrops, white figures on dark backdrops, tentacle interstates, and bands of shadows crisscrossing zigzags almost symmetrically. It could have been a mistake: a bloody accident of orientation that occluded the vision, quashed their thought.
It does not change the fact that Lolita is a Very Baa, Baa, blaksheep movie and one which should not shame our sacred and stain-free silver screens.
1. With a nasal infection that increases his deep dog baritone to a high dog tenor.
2. A fine, if contrary, alto.