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Lolita (1962) - Stanley Kubrick | Houselights #124 · Houselights: A Film Director Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome to the nerd Polite. Welcome back to House Lights, where we are
• 0:23
  here mired in the house of Kubrick as we plow through his works of the
• 0:27
  nineteen sixties. I am one of your hosts, John Mills, and I
• 0:31
  am delighted to be joined by my two dear friends to explore Kubrick's one family
• 0:36
  friendly film from the nineteen sixties nineteen sixty twos, Loita, and absolute surefire
• 0:42
  hit that should be watched by every member of the family as often as possible
• 0:48
  as I'm sure that is a sentiment shared by my two friends here, Darren
• 0:53
  Moser and Tristan Riddell. Darren, Wow, let's jump right into it,
• 1:00
  and let's just go ahead and let me ask you. Is this want to
• 1:04
  interject? I want to interject here. Yes, Like, for those of
• 1:07
  you who are like coming in listening and you don't actually know what we're talking
• 1:11
  about or haven't been following along, we are talking about some weird stuff today.
• 1:17
  We're talking about a fifty three year old man infatuated with and pursuing a
• 1:22
  fourteen year old girl. So if that is distressing to you, maybe come
• 1:26
  back next week. We're talking about Yeah, we're talking about Doctor Strangelove next
• 1:30
  week. So I just wanted to give the audience a heads up. But
• 1:33
  yes, sorry, you know what, with your interject, with your interjection
• 1:37
  there, I would struggle to think of anybody that doesn't know Lolita as some
• 1:42
  sort of touch point. Maybe I'm too old, maybe I'm I don't understand.
• 1:47
  But even very recently, there was a documentary called Reading Lolita in Tehran,
• 1:55
  which was about the struggle to loosen up censorship rules around the world.
• 2:00
  And this is definitely a work that has, since its release, undergone a
• 2:07
  great deal of controversy. Absolutely no question about that. Um So, of
• 2:13
  course, what I call it family friendly, I consider it. You know,
• 2:17
  this is this is not one to sit down with and U and watch
• 2:22
  with the family every Christmas, like one of our mutual friends did with his
• 2:27
  family with Eyes Wide Shut, which is another movie I would jokingly call a
• 2:31
  Kubrick family friendly film. But Darren, let let's jump right into it.
• 2:37
  And I gotta ask you the core question here. Is this your first time
• 2:40
  seeing Lolita as directed by Kubrick? Oh, yes, it is, okay.
• 2:46
  But even my wife, who was also a film major for a spell
• 2:51
  when we were in college, when I told her what I was watching,
• 2:53
  Jane. She's like, oh, well, and enjoy that, and I'm
• 2:57
  like, yeah, yeah, I'm honestly it overall, it wasn't as bad
• 3:06
  as I was expecting as far as how how it was portraying the relationship.
• 3:12
  I was thought it was going to cast it in a purer light of like
• 3:19
  this is like there's nothing wrong with this, totally okay, like they they
• 3:23
  they it airs the dirty laundry of this kind of a thing, like right
• 3:28
  out there. So and at its core, you have someone who is mature
• 3:32
  and older and a functioning adult trying to have a emotional relationship with a child
• 3:39
  and they cannot reciprocate because they are not developed enough even just mentally to have
• 3:46
  that kind of like putting you before myself, lack you know, empathy and
• 3:51
  choice and all of that. So I did appreciate how that seemed to be
• 3:55
  portrayed accurately. So but yeah, there was part of me that's like,
• 4:02
  oh, yeah, that show I do with those guys, it's so worth
• 4:06
  it getting to watch these gems of cinema. But it wasn't. I remember,
• 4:12
  Expect you sent a text because we said we were gonna do sixties Kubrick
• 4:17
  and then Um, when we said like, Okay, next week we're gonna
• 4:20
  do Lolita, we get a text from you afterwards saying like, oh,
• 4:24
  dudes, I just read what Lolita was about. Yeah, yeah, I
• 4:29
  did not know that. That's a good question. Yeah, I did not
• 4:31
  know. All I knew was that poster of her, like with the sunglasses
• 4:35
  and the lollipop and and that that kind of tagline of like how could they
• 4:40
  make a film like Lolita? And I knew vaguely in a cloud of my
• 4:45
  mind like it was about, you know, an older guy and a younger
• 4:47
  girl. But that's all I knew. I didn't even know it was in
• 4:49
  black and white. I didn't know it was going to be like that.
• 4:51
  I didn't know. I didn't know Peter Seller was gonna play twenty roles in
• 4:56
  it. Didn't know that was gonna happen. Um, but yeah it was.
• 5:00
  It was definitely a first viewing, and and Tristan, I believe it
• 5:06
  was a first viewing for you as well. With this obviously it's our first
• 5:11
  time all of us seeing it. But I know that I've read the book
• 5:14
  previously. I've also seen the nineteen nineties version of sometimes worse like it's absolutely
• 5:20
  well, it depends, it depends on how you define worse, because this
• 5:25
  is one of those things where it really is the um the ultimate question of
• 5:30
  at what point do you draw a line with you know where? How much
• 5:34
  leeway do you give art? Because to your point in the book, it
• 5:42
  is not painting Humbert in a positive light at all. It's there's nothing positive
• 5:47
  about what's being portrayed. And the thing is, I'll go ahead and ask
• 5:55
  you Tristan first, like, is there a situation wherein you look at this
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  and obvious lee To Darren's point, they don't. Kubrick doesn't romanticize what's going
• 6:04
  on here. He doesn't say like, oh, this is a way of
• 6:06
  pretty good that sums up kind of what I was trying to say. He
• 6:10
  doesn't romanticize it, but does that buy it any leeway from you? I
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  mean, basically, this is the type of movie where you can say this
• 6:19
  is uncomfortable, this is a despicable main character in a lot of ways,
• 6:26
  it's a bad situation, but it's art and it's going to explore uncomfortable,
• 6:32
  awful things. Sometimes do you think that just like some people have tried to
• 6:39
  do with the book. Is this a film that should never exist because of
• 6:43
  the topic that it's it's probing. No, I don't think. I don't
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  think we're purcheoning on this shouldn't exist. I mean, there's there's movies that
• 6:51
  I've seen where it's just been a horrible story filled with horrible things, and
• 6:59
  at the end of watching it, I'm like that story didn't need to be
• 7:02
  told, Like that was just you know, like you just feel like garbage
• 7:06
  afterwards. You didn't learn anything, The characters didn't learn anything. It was
• 7:12
  just two hours of horribleness, you know, Like I'm just like, eh,
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  like that didn't need to be made. This this isn't one of those
• 7:17
  things. This is I think it has like a ninety one percentage rating on
• 7:24
  some Metacritic or whatever it is, and it's it's in the top one thousand
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  and one movies you should see before you die. It's in a lot of
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  top one hundred and five hundred lists, you know, like this is this
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  is a well respected film for how it told the story. And this kind
• 7:44
  of thing happens, this kind of disgusting, revolting thing happens, and you
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  know, I try to have you know, I'm trying to think of,
• 7:55
  Like, you know, one of my favorite movies of all time is The
• 7:58
  Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I personally cannot stand seeing sexual assault on
• 8:07
  screen. Can't stand it. It's it's one of the things that I hate
• 8:11
  most in movies. But yet one of my favorite movies has one of the
• 8:15
  most graphic portrayals of that. Now I always skip it, but the movie
• 8:18
  revolves around it, but in a you know, it's I don't need to
• 8:26
  go into it, but it's just like, that's a horrible thing, and
• 8:28
  it's a horrible thing that happens, and it's filled with horrible things that happened
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  to people. But you cannot say that it shouldn't be made. Now,
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  if this movie was romanticizing Humbert and Lolita and saying this was a love that,
• 8:46
  you know, like like society said it was wrong, but they knew
• 8:48
  it was right. You know. If it was one of those things like
• 8:52
  it was made by the French or something like yeah, no, like this
• 8:54
  is then yeah, I would say, like this movie shouldn't have been made.
• 8:58
  This is disgusting, Like listen, glorify this type of thing, because
• 9:03
  if you knew anything about the movie before you started watching it, anything at
• 9:07
  all. The opening shot with the titles immediately makes you uneasy. Yeah,
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  it's very uncomfortable. That is an old man's hands, that is a young
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  foot. Oh god, oh god, you know, you just you just
• 9:24
  immediately know that you're going to be uncomfortable. And to Cubric's credit, every
• 9:28
  single scene was uncomfortable. Without fail. Every single scene in this movie is
• 9:37
  uncomfortable. But yet this is not a completely uncomfortable watch, if that makes
• 9:43
  sense. And that's I think what I mean when I said I was concerned
• 9:48
  going into it, Like you know, I there are certain movies where I
• 9:52
  will choose just not to watch, Like we'll probably eventually reach a point where
• 9:56
  we're going through a decade where I'm just like, I am just not going
• 10:00
  to watch X because I don't want to ingest that. I don't want to
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  bring that into my mind. And this one I was a little on the
• 10:09
  fence on because I'm like Kubrick of the sixties, like I'm kind of expecting
• 10:13
  the worst. But that's what I mean by it wasn't as bad as I
• 10:18
  was expecting, you know, And you know, Electrician and like we've talked
• 10:22
  about like horror movies, Like, there's certain horror movies you like. I
• 10:26
  remember you were shopping around to a couple of people on the network, like,
• 10:30
  hey, guy, should I watch um Event Horizon? And we were
• 10:33
  just like, no, you should not, Like, like, we'll just
• 10:37
  tell you right now, knowing your sensibilities, it is not for you,
• 10:41
  and you'll regret watching that for the rest of your days. That really that's
• 10:46
  primarily because Event Horizon is an absolute garbage movie. That that's more than anything.
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  So well, yes, yeah, that's bring us back around, John,
• 10:56
  Yeah, no, I'm not trying to bring back around. But I
• 11:00
  think that this is This is definitely an interesting movie in the sense that it's
• 11:07
  a controversial book. It's something that's misunderstood in a very large sense because people
• 11:15
  immediately presume that it is romanticizing what's happening, because well, having read the
• 11:20
  book, I can tell you it's one of the most beautifully written books I
• 11:24
  have ever read in my life. It is absolutely stunning how well Nabakov constructs
• 11:33
  a sentence, how well he gets the flow and the chapters down, and
• 11:39
  basically does with this film. And then Adrian Line's adaptation later does, which
• 11:43
  is throws something awful in front of you, but then do it. And
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  we'll get to this later. But with the book, at least, it's
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  presenting an awful situation with such artistry that you keep going because it the way
• 12:00
  that it's constructed is what keeps you in there. Like the opening line of
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  the book is a gorgeous line, and it just immediately pulls you in.
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  And then you suddenly realize what's being talked about and you go, oh my,
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  oh no, this is awful. Oh no, something and you realize
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  what's in your mouth and you're like, uh, yeah, it's a McDonald
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  tamburger. Um. But even more than that, you know, Tristan,
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  you you know, we're sitting here, we're talking about this is Kubrick of
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  the nineteen sixties, and we talked about Spartacus. That's nineteen sixty. This
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  is his immediate follow up. Yeah, and it was. It was beautifully
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  done. It was great. But the the fact that Kubrick followed up his
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  respected Sword and Sandals epic with this is a puzzler to me. Can you
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  fathom somebody spending the political capital of completing a three hour were epic about Spartacus
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  and having people give it you know, give it a fair amount of praise
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  and a fair amount of success. How does this wind up being somebody's follow
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  up film? Do you see a director then uh, you know, then
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  leaning into what he's learned, and this is this is check. This is
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  not his play check movie. Okay, So to to Darren to answer that
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  and to answer John that that actually answers you, John, This is not
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  his blank check movie. This is not his follow up movie to Spartacus.
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  This was, um, well, technically it is. This was a movie
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  that he wanted to make. Um this, this was he wanted to make
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  this before he was asked to make Spartacus. The only reason why way of
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  this? Right right? That, yes, exactly, Spartacus got in the
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  way of this, and so Spartacus was a paycheck and a favor and you
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  know, so much so that Kubrick didn't like shooting Spartacus. He was so
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  um, what's like, what's the word I'm looking for? He was so
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  creatively um rain fettered, yeah, fettered that he needed to work on this
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  in his off time, like he started working on pre production for Lolita because
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  he was so bored with Spartacus. Like Spartacus wasn't really his movie. He
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  was just feels way more like the oh you could see all over, like
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  the cutting, the time jumps, like there's so much of Oh, this
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  is a Kubrick movie way more because with Lolita, even though he's not credited
• 14:45
  as the writer, he's the writer us because he and James B. Harris
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  like took because Nobukoff spent six months on the script of this movie and the
• 15:00
  original author of the book, yes, no, was the original author of
• 15:03
  the book, and they had him write the screenplay and he took, says,
• 15:07
  guys always perfect. Well, the original screenplay was like four hundred pages
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  long or oh my god, yeah, it was four hundred pages equals a
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  minute, because I don't think it's a novelist. He's a novelist. But
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  Harris said that was unfilmable and um, and then they shot it and Nobakoff
• 15:28
  didn't didn't realize that they weren't going to use the script until after he saw
• 15:33
  the first cut and they kept very very little. But Nobukov still liked the
• 15:39
  movie, which I think like to a credit to him kind of being the
• 15:43
  bigger man there. You know, he's just like he's like, no,
• 15:46
  I like what sales you know, but but but but it's the opposite of
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  what happened with The Shining, where Kubrick made that a Kubris movie and Stephen
• 15:54
  King bad mouthed so much they had to legally agree not to talk about it
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  anymore so that he could do his adaptation with What was it, Mick Harris?
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  Was that the director's name in the nine I can't remember the mini series
• 16:07
  in the ninety series? Yeah? Yeah, But the thing is, like,
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  what I think what really is a kick in the pants though, is
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  that Nubecoff was nominated for an Oscar for this screenplay. And but that's just
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  like the cinematographer in Spartacus, right because he just sat down in the chair,
• 16:30
  like Kubrick, do what he needed to do, and he gets nominated
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  for should be used to this? Right? Exactly, gonna take all the
• 16:37
  reins. You're not gonna get all the all the awards because yeah, exactly
• 16:41
  exactly. I think there was one. There was one time at the Academy
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  Awards. Um do you remember the movie? Was it Tequila Sunrise? I
• 16:49
  can't remember what it was. Um, but he the writer was nominated and
• 16:56
  won, and he goes up on stage picks up the statue and says,
• 17:02
  not a single word of mine made it into the final cut, but thank
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  you. And then I remember that, I remember that. I don't remember
• 17:10
  that, but dang, I do remember that. I don't remember if it
• 17:12
  was that movie, but I remember that happening. It probably wasn't that movie,
• 17:15
  but I don't know why that popped in my head. But um,
• 17:18
  yeah, this is one of those circumstances. So thankfully he didn't win,
• 17:22
  because that that would have that would have sucked to win that way, knowing
• 17:26
  that it wasn't your work. Um, but yeah, so smile and nod.
• 17:30
  Just But Kubrick Um the previous movies that he did besides Sparticas, Um
• 17:38
  paid for the rights because he bought the rights himself to the to the novel
• 17:45
  so that he can make it into a movie. So this this is a
• 17:48
  Cubrick film of the of the sixties. This is the first real Cubrick film
• 17:55
  because Spartacus, he was kind of like a marquand Um with Spartacus. He's
• 18:00
  a picton coming in closing deal, lock it down. He didn't write it,
• 18:04
  he didn't produce it, he wasn't involved with hiring the people. He
• 18:08
  just kind of came in there and did the best he could. Pete,
• 18:12
  he's a project project manager. Yeah, he's got he's got to collect certain
• 18:17
  things, he's got to put it together, he's got to deliver it to
• 18:18
  the editors who will then formulize that sort of thing, right, And he
• 18:22
  did, and he did a great job. He did a fantastic job.
• 18:25
  And we talked about the moments where you could definitely see Kubrick, but this
• 18:30
  movie is his through and through, from the opening shot to the final shot,
• 18:33
  this is very much Kubrick. So so let me ask you that,
• 18:36
  where do you see him? Where's the first moment you see kubrick Man in
• 18:40
  this film? I think Hiding Peter Sellers really made me think about the shining
• 18:47
  because in that opening scene when Humbert walks into the mansion and he's stumbling all
• 18:52
  over the bottles and he's walking through, and it's a one shot and it's
• 18:56
  a tracking shot, and we're following him and he passes the first thing he
• 19:02
  does is he passes that chair with a white sheet over it, and then
• 19:04
  he goes a little bit further in and he explores the mansion a little bit.
• 19:07
  We come back to the center and then Peter Sellers takes off the blanket
• 19:12
  and he was in the chair the entire time. Made me think about the
• 19:17
  nude woman in the tub in the Shining who turns into the witch, where
• 19:21
  she was there the entire time, but we don't recognize her until she moves
• 19:26
  the shower curtain. That right away, I was just like that, that's
• 19:29
  Kubrick, Darren. Do you see Kubrick in that moment or did it take
• 19:32
  a little bit longer for you to see him. The first moment that felt
• 19:37
  very deliberate for me was him, and this is probably more sensor ish,
• 19:44
  was him pushing himself behind the painting to get shot. It's a convenient way
• 19:48
  of being shot and not being seen. But the first real moment that I
• 19:55
  felt was Kubrick was I don't remember which it when it was, but one
• 20:00
  of the time jumps where all of a sudden, it was like, and
• 20:03
  it's been a year that I've been living here, and I'm like, oh
• 20:07
  okay, Like it cut as if it was five minutes later. But and
• 20:12
  that became you know, we saw that throughout this movie of a lot of
• 20:15
  time jumps, a lot of quick cuts, a lot of I mean I'm
• 20:19
  still kind of tracking down like the you know, Lita went to summer camp,
• 20:25
  he got married, and his mother died, all within a summer like
• 20:30
  that. It was all in one summer. Yeah, which it's weird because
• 20:33
  it almost feels like it was years but it wasn't. Like you start to
• 20:37
  lose your sense of time in this movie. And then and then at the
• 20:42
  end it's like three years later, you know, she's having a baby,
• 20:45
  and it's like, Okay, it's literally there's no fanfare to it. It's
• 20:51
  literally less next shot, new day, knew whatever, which works. It's
• 20:56
  not a bad cut. I never felt pulled out by it, but is
• 21:00
  definitely a stylistic choice that feels like Kubrick to me, like I'm going to
• 21:04
  tell this story, uh, chronologically how I want to tell it. I
• 21:11
  hated that. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't discount anything that
• 21:17
  either one of you is saying. For I can say that from my perspective,
• 21:25
  the way that certain scenes where the camera locked off was what said Kubrick
• 21:30
  to me. He has a very distinct way of being a spectator but being
• 21:37
  just close enough that you feel the tension of the scene. I'll give you
• 21:41
  an example where where Humbert shows up at the hospital, Lolita has been checked
• 21:48
  out and he's freaking out and the camera locks during all of this action and
• 21:56
  yeah, right, not to sound too much like a Robert All character nowadays,
• 22:00
  cut cut cut cut cut, cut, cut cut cut, But here
• 22:06
  the camera settles and it's it's almost like the way Scorsese treats Emotional Damage and
• 22:11
  Taxi Driver, where the one thing that his camera can't look at is or
• 22:18
  get too close to, is emotional trauma. And you see Humbert having this
• 22:22
  breakdown, and the camera's just close enough to convey the threat that Humbert is,
• 22:29
  but far enough away that you feel like a spectator who doesn't want to
• 22:34
  get any closer. That's one came into the hallway and sat down and is
• 22:38
  watching what is unfolded. I don't want to get involved because I don't know
• 22:42
  how this fight is going to break. Does this guy have a gun?
• 22:45
  Like? What's happening? I like, I freeze in that moment. And
• 22:48
  that's where Kubrick's camera really seems to be a lot of times. Um I
• 22:55
  think of it a lot of times in The Shining too, where Yeah,
• 22:57
  there are moments where the cameras close or where it pushes in, but especially
• 23:03
  with the tracking shots, it's just far enough away that you feel like you're
• 23:06
  following something but keeping a safe distance. Or when he's in the bath and
• 23:10
  it's like opposite him facing out, Yes, people coming by, like that's
• 23:14
  a very uncomfortable like they're uncomfortable. Yes, you know, everybody's uncomfortable in
• 23:18
  that scene. Or even the breakfast table, Like it's not a medium shot
• 23:26
  of the breakfast table, it's like just close enough where every single player is
• 23:30
  on the edge of the screen, you know, looking inward as they're talking
• 23:33
  to each other. It's very close. There's a shot in Um Doctor Strangelove,
• 23:40
  which we're going to be talking about next week, where George C.
• 23:41
  Scott is on the phone. Yeah, and you know it's like it's it's
• 23:47
  in the bottom it's kind of in the same perspective as this hallway shot that
• 23:52
  you're talking about, John, where it's in the bottom of the it's in
• 23:55
  the back of the room on the floor tilted up and he's just on the
• 24:00
  phone forever and he's walking around a little bit. But we just kind of
• 24:03
  see it as a fly on the wall. And yeah, Kubrick will revisit
• 24:07
  this all throughout the sixties, and also, you know, as we get
• 24:11
  into this seven. Yeah, there's a lot of framing in strange love,
• 24:15
  especially with like the war Room, where every shot is like chosen, it's
• 24:21
  not just put the camera wherever. Now he's telling a second story with all
• 24:25
  of that in that movie. Oh absolutely, And I think that I think
• 24:30
  that one of the most curious things. And this is something that Kubrick specifically
• 24:36
  wanted, and he actually discussed with Namikov before he made the change. But
• 24:41
  Darren, I'll throw this to you first. The movie opens with the ending.
• 24:47
  Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. Do you think it works
• 24:52
  or do you think it robs the movie of its justifiable conclusion? No,
• 24:57
  I think it works. I think I mean I've read you know, behind
• 25:02
  the scenes or interviews after I'd watched it, And Kubrick stated that the reason
• 25:07
  he did that is because he felt once Lolita kind of wooed him in the
• 25:12
  middle, it kind of lagged, like your desire to follow the story kind
• 25:18
  of dissipated, and so by moving that conclusion to the very beginning, you
• 25:23
  know that this character is going to get their come uppings, but you don't
• 25:27
  know why it's important that they get their come up. And although because it's
• 25:34
  Peter Seller's, if it was anybody else, it would be easier for me
• 25:37
  to track. But because I've seen him in so many movies where he plays
• 25:44
  multiple characters that are not the same people person, him playing multiple characters that
• 25:51
  are the same person was tricky for me to tell because at first I thought
• 25:56
  he was meant to be different people. I didn't realize it was supposed to
• 26:00
  be the same person being the you know, and he's a weird guy like
• 26:07
  in this, like he was creepier than any of the other characters, really
• 26:12
  trist and that that's a that's the point I'm going to come back to here.
• 26:15
  Um, but trystan opening. Do you think that it works putting the
• 26:19
  ending first or do you think that it just ends too abruptly as a result.
• 26:23
  No, I think it. I think it works because it lets you
• 26:26
  know that we're not supposed to sympathize with Humbert, like it might not matter
• 26:33
  what from he's a cold blooded murderer, Like this wasn't a murder of passion,
• 26:41
  This wasn't a murderer of you know, but this was contemplated, this
• 26:45
  was decided, this was I'm going to come in, I'm going to kill
• 26:48
  you this, this is what I'm gonna do. And he's talking to about
• 26:51
  it. So like right off the bat, you're like, this person is
• 26:52
  not a good person. And so I think it from a macro perspective,
• 26:59
  from a cult role perspective, it's something that was needed so that you don't
• 27:04
  accidentally stumble into, you know, sympathizing with the protagonist, because we often
• 27:11
  do that, like with anti heroes, with like with the Walter Whites of
• 27:15
  the world, that just because they are the protagonist and because we find them
• 27:19
  fascinating, we end up rooting for them even though they're doing horrible things.
• 27:23
  Not once do we ever do that with Lolita and not I mean with Humbert
• 27:30
  towards Lolita, and not just because the three of us are decent people,
• 27:33
  but because the filmmakers didn't want us to. And I think that opening scene
• 27:38
  really establishes it. Now. What I didn't like is going back to that
• 27:42
  opening scene at the end, it felt really weird because like when he drove
• 27:48
  off from giving Lolita the money, we know where he's going and even if
• 27:53
  they in this I know this may sound like a nitpick, but like,
• 27:56
  even if they just did a fade to the painting with the hole with the
• 28:02
  bullet hole from him driving down the road, that would have been that's all
• 28:07
  you need, Like, Oh, that's right, that's where he's gonna He's
• 28:10
  ending up where we began he Tarantino did um but before the fact that we
• 28:15
  see him re emerge, walk around a little bit, and then we fade
• 28:21
  to the painting and then we get that Pucci ending with saying like, oh,
• 28:26
  by the way, he died of a heart attack. The end right
• 28:29
  right, But it completely it's screwed over any good will that they built up,
• 28:36
  because if they just ended with the painting and then put the end done,
• 28:41
  I would have I would have felt much better about this movie than I
• 28:44
  did when it ended the way that it did, because it felt rushed,
• 28:47
  It felt amateurish, It felt like, oh, let's get out of here,
• 28:51
  you know it just yes, honestly, it honestly felt like two and
• 28:55
  a half hours, we didn't get an internation this time, let's uh and
• 29:00
  done, We're out. I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think there were
• 29:03
  any even number of ways that it could have been finished more quickly, not
• 29:10
  more quickly, but more cleanly. Now, one of the one of the
• 29:15
  things that I want to get into is and Darren, I'll toss us to
• 29:21
  you first. Do you think the film does a good enough job of delineating
• 29:29
  that while Humbert is doing a despicable thing, what he's doing is a different
• 29:36
  type of thing than Claire Quilty does. Like Claire Quilty is obviously there's a
• 29:41
  network of people. He knows the guy at the front desk, He has
• 29:45
  this woman that goes around with him. He has these types of parties all
• 29:48
  the time. He has young girls come and go all the time. He
• 29:53
  will sleep with anything, basically and anyone. Yeah. Do you though the
• 29:57
  film conveys the difference between Humbert and Quilty cleanly enough? I think they do.
• 30:03
  I think I'd also read that like Kubrick was intending Quilty to be like
• 30:10
  the darker all like the darker, the darker mirror of him, and I
• 30:15
  think it. I think it works. Yeah, he's I mean, like
• 30:18
  I said, every scene that guy is in like is uncomfortable, like because
• 30:22
  he's just he's weird. And part of it is he's letting Peter Sellers just
• 30:26
  run with it. You can tell there's lots of Peter Sellers improv in his
• 30:32
  shots. But yeah, I'm just thinking, like, Okay, here's this
• 30:36
  guy who like shows up on a balcony where I'm chilling and starts talking about
• 30:41
  how I'm a normal guy and and I'm like, dude, what are you?
• 30:45
  What are you on? Like he was? That was so weird and
• 30:48
  uncomfortable. I needed that scene. It would That scene was not like,
• 30:53
  oh, like I'm supposed to feel uncomfortable and this is an awkward conversation.
• 30:59
  This felt like Peter Seller's not knowing what the hell he's supposed to say.
• 31:03
  It did. It did feel like and like I can understand that he's good
• 31:07
  at improv, but he was not in this scene and this needed to be
• 31:10
  cut down a lot. I mean I loved his improv at the beginning,
• 31:15
  like when he was like doing the ping pong and like he knew it was
• 31:19
  going to get murdered and he would like playing the piano. I thought that
• 31:22
  was great. I thought I loved him as the German psychiatrist. I thought
• 31:29
  that was great. You could tell that was a little bit of improv too,
• 31:30
  you know, even when he was on the phone or like talking about
• 31:36
  Judo with the guy at the front desk. That was great, But that
• 31:37
  scene where he was the you know, like he was trying to pretend to
• 31:42
  be a policeman. That was meandering nonsense. Yeah, agree, it was.
• 31:48
  It had no business being in this film. I agree, And I
• 31:53
  think as well that there is a I think that this is Kubrick trying to
• 32:04
  figure out how best to adapt a work from a different medium. I think
• 32:10
  that this is Kubrick fin the story within the story, like what is this
• 32:15
  background character story? What are they doing? Like making it his own.
• 32:20
  Yeah. I think that there is a very distinct difference with later Kubrick works
• 32:23
  where he's adapting something or in the case of Arthur C. Clarke, working
• 32:28
  in tandem with an author while something is being created, where he has more
• 32:34
  of a say in what it is. This very much feels like a director
• 32:37
  constrained by the source material and saying I like, I feel there. The
• 32:45
  feeling I got through this entire experience was Kubrick wanting to push out in different
• 32:49
  ways and have his own thing happen, but either deciding to or feeling obligated
• 32:54
  not to go outside certain lines that were put there. I think that clear,
• 33:00
  quilty and specific. He expands that character. He definitely, yeah,
• 33:05
  absolutely expands it from the book. And that's our first hint. I think
• 33:09
  of him trying to push a boundary and say I want this to be mine
• 33:15
  and not again, not to be repetitive, but you get eventually to the
• 33:19
  shining where it bears hardly any resemblance to the source material. It is a
• 33:24
  Kubrick work period, and I think that this is somebody adapting somebody else's work
• 33:34
  and has some of the clunkiness that goes along with that. But you know,
• 33:40
  since we bring up Peter Sellers, Tristan, I want to ask you,
• 33:44
  do you think that it is a flaw of the film to let Peter
• 33:47
  Sellers do the multiple roles. Do you think that it works to the detriment
• 33:52
  of the film to indulge that aspect of Sellers, not different rules though he
• 34:00
  is playing the same character though, But yes, but to do those sorts
• 34:05
  of things, There's at no point do I sit there and say that's not
• 34:07
  Peter Sellers, Like there's no sort of big thing where I'm like, that's
• 34:12
  not Peter Sellers. I would argue and trust I'll throw this you first.
• 34:15
  I would argue it actually because it's unearned knowledge of the audience sort of thing
• 34:20
  like we talked about before with other other stuff. It makes me feel like
• 34:23
  the main character is dumb because he doesn't see through the disguise that I do.
• 34:30
  Yeah. Yeah, it was with them, like when we see him
• 34:34
  at the dance, that's who he is. And then when we see him
• 34:37
  at the at the police convention, you think that he's just like playing a
• 34:44
  he's just being a goof ball for lack of a better term, Like he's
• 34:47
  just like he's either high or he's just messing with him or he's just like
• 34:53
  that's how he gets as jollies as by pretending to be somebody else. But
• 34:58
  I never once thought it was not, you know, quilty. But then
• 35:01
  when we get to the to the psychiatrist, I'm like, okay, well
• 35:07
  that's clearly Peter Sellers. Are we not supposed to think that's Peter Sellers?
• 35:10
  Like is that quilty? Is it not? It was super distracting, But
• 35:15
  then when he started talking about like how she needs to do the play,
• 35:22
  I was like, okay, so it is quilty. I'm like, but
• 35:24
  why is quilty falling her around like he like, does he really have that
• 35:30
  much free time? And I mean, you know, like just like to
• 35:37
  I'm not gonna say it. I was gonna say something gross, but like
• 35:38
  it's it makes you think, like, like, what is it about the
• 35:43
  leader that is driving these old weird men crazy where they will will devote their
• 35:47
  entire lives to this to this young, naive and immature girl. But yeah,
• 35:57
  like it wasn't until the psychiatrist scene where it really took me out,
• 36:00
  and then I think that was the last time we saw him. Yeah,
• 36:06
  to your point about it pulling you out of the moment, Lolita later addresses
• 36:12
  it when she says, oh, it was quilty all the whole time when
• 36:15
  he saw you as this blah blah blah blah blah. But in the moment
• 36:20
  where you're watching it, it doesn't. I would say it doesn't work specifically
• 36:24
  because of what you're saying is because that's not clear at the time you're watching
• 36:29
  it. I got what they were going for, and I don't know if
• 36:35
  it's because I read the book where I said, oh, okay, I
• 36:37
  see I see where they're pushing with this. I don't I don't want to
• 36:42
  believe that that's the case. That I was able to sort of like ameliorate
• 36:45
  it that way, because when he was playing the psychiatrist in specific, it
• 36:49
  annoyed the hell out of me. It felt like they were just indulging an
• 36:53
  actor who was like, oh, no, I could do a German accent.
• 36:57
  No, no, no, I could do it. And it was
• 36:59
  like, Okay, yeah, let's give it a shot. Why not that
• 37:00
  that might be interesting? But Darren, Yeah, I think, yeah,
• 37:05
  like two things about it. One the fact that Lolita kind of has to
• 37:08
  give the oh it was him a long speech for it to make sense.
• 37:14
  That's kind of telling um. Or maybe they could have gotten away with like
• 37:19
  one other shot of him behind in the backstage of the play or something putting
• 37:24
  on a fake mustache, like showing here is this man becoming another person putting
• 37:30
  on a disguise. Honestly, I know I am jaded from the fact of
• 37:35
  Doctor Strangelove, Like having seen Doctor Strangelove before this movie makes me interpret that
• 37:42
  character differently because I am used to, Oh, well, Peter Steller's just
• 37:46
  plays multiple people and that, and so I initially think that it is different
• 37:52
  people. So yeah, it And I think the last time we see him
• 37:58
  or not see him as we hear him with that weird. That was the
• 38:00
  weirdest one to me was that, like because it was like was it supposed
• 38:05
  to? They make it sound like it's a totally different character, not different
• 38:08
  character, but different ploy that he is doing with this solicitation phone call.
• 38:15
  But is that not kind of what the doctor would have said? Like it
• 38:21
  was. They make it sound like it was an additional ploy, but it
• 38:23
  was. It was weird, So yeah, it And also, like Tristan
• 38:28
  said, they kind of gave Peter Sellers a little too much rope. You
• 38:31
  know, he didn't need that much in a lot of this, I mean
• 38:37
  wonderfully acted. Again, I think probably the best the two flavors of Peter
• 38:42
  Sellers, I like the most or the very beginning scene where he's like probably
• 38:47
  one of the most realistic I've been shot and I'm reacting to it. Moments
• 38:52
  like he's in pain and he's not walking. It's not like usually people get
• 38:57
  shot and it's like they shrug it off. It's like, no, dude,
• 38:59
  you've been shot, Like your leg or arm or whatever is hurting,
• 39:02
  like hell right now? Uh. That and then anytime he was with the
• 39:07
  It totally reminded me of the couple in Singing in the Rain that are like,
• 39:15
  you know, the Madame from Paris who's like it's vulgar like her and
• 39:21
  Peter Selt, like when they're at the dance, it's like, you know
• 39:23
  what I'm talking about, Like that's what they reminded me of, where like
• 39:27
  there that the darkest of black hair. She doesn't does she say a word
• 39:30
  in the movie, And it's it's so weird. Yeah, and and yeah.
• 39:37
  But with the Quilty plot, this is this is one of the things
• 39:39
  where I think the film gets, you know, a more controversial angle.
• 39:45
  Tristan, I'll throw this to you. When Lolita starts talking about, oh,
• 39:50
  it's Quilty all along, and she goes through the list of all of
• 39:52
  the people Quilty has pretended to be and how she had been in love actually
• 39:57
  with Quilty the whole time. Do you you think the film goes to too
• 40:01
  many does in that moment? Does the film go to too much of a
• 40:06
  length to give lowlit to too much agency, too much of a a mature
• 40:15
  character, because in that moment, she seems like she's in with the mastermind,
• 40:22
  she's a henchman of quilty, who's the evil, the real evil villain
• 40:27
  the whole time, when in actuality I mean that the villain of the story
• 40:30
  is still Humbert. Do you think that that scene alleviates too much guilt off
• 40:36
  of Humbert or do you think that it does not. I don't. I
• 40:38
  don't think it alleviates any guilt off of Humbert whatsoever. I think with I
• 40:45
  think from a story structure perspective, it's unneeded. I think I don't think
• 40:52
  quilty is needed honestly, like in order to tell this kind of story,
• 40:58
  or at least in this kind of way, I feel like there's way too
• 41:01
  much quilty. I feel like it's structured in such a way where it doesn't
• 41:07
  feel like it matters, like it's It would have been more interesting if,
• 41:14
  like at the end, she said, like I cheated on you all the
• 41:17
  time, you know, like it was like I went on dates all the
• 41:21
  time, I was with tons of different men. You you were just a
• 41:24
  way to make sure that there was food on the plate or something like that.
• 41:28
  I don't know, like that would have been a little bit more devious.
• 41:31
  I mean still, I mean she was fourteen at the time, so
• 41:37
  you know, like I hate the excuse that in the real world people will
• 41:42
  do whether it was like, oh, you know, she might have been
• 41:44
  fourteen, but she was knew what she was doing. It doesn't matter.
• 41:46
  He knew what he was doing, and that's the important thing. Absolutely,
• 41:52
  And with Quilty, like to say that, like like she was in love
• 41:55
  with Quilty the whole time. She was with Quilty of the whole time,
• 41:58
  And the only thing that really p strof was that he wanted her to do
• 42:01
  a film like an art film. It just felt weird, like it just
• 42:06
  it not weird asn't like I know it's supposed to feel weird, but it's
• 42:08
  it didn't seem appropriate for the structure of the story where it didn't minimize Humpert
• 42:17
  enough because it was just one other guy. Like I feel like if there
• 42:21
  was if she was just like if really belittled him and really set him aside,
• 42:27
  it would have been better if it wasn't just one person that she was
• 42:30
  hanging out with. And it's also very unrealistic that this guy would follow her
• 42:34
  around while still being a TV writer and still things can play. Putting forth
• 42:39
  a lot of resources on this, yeah, a lot of resources to do
• 42:44
  this for someone that's not being with him full time, and that's what felt
• 42:47
  weird to me. And when she acted more mature at the end, I
• 42:51
  mean, like this is four years later, we're seeing her at eighteen.
• 42:53
  She had to like scrounge for herself, she had to get a job for
• 42:57
  herself. She's married and has a baby. Like I fully believed this older
• 43:01
  and more mature Lolita, because like when you're fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and
• 43:06
  seventeen and you have to find for yourself and like be a waitress, like
• 43:08
  you see some stuff. Yeah, you age like real fast. You age
• 43:13
  up exactly, You age up real fast. It's like the kids who went
• 43:15
  to war, you know, they came back in because they had to be
• 43:19
  I think another that's kind of high seeer, you know. I think quiality
• 43:24
  gets dragged in it because we aren't able to see very much of Lolita's perspective
• 43:32
  and inner thought because it is not a book. And I think that is
• 43:37
  always, I mean, it's always the difficulty in translating between a written medium
• 43:42
  and a visual medium. Um you know. I mean we got voice over
• 43:45
  from from some of the characters that that helped, but from yeah, I
• 43:52
  felt like a lot of a lot of her motivation was just left kind of
• 43:58
  in the air, like we we're just I didn't know what was her her
• 44:02
  drive. Yeah, it's it's but it was not nearly as much as any
• 44:09
  of the other characters. It's especially difficult because to give some credit they they
• 44:15
  give Lolita like it's it's weird. It's really weird. I mean not just
• 44:22
  because of the subject stuff like that really weird, right, but what but
• 44:28
  what's weird is this is one of those things where I I actually subscribe to.
• 44:36
  Um. Oh, I can't think of his name right now. The
• 44:38
  guy who did Watchman, Ellison Snyder. No, no, no, not
• 44:43
  the one who wrote one wrote Watchman. Yeah, yeah, Ellison. Um.
• 44:46
  Anyway, he once said that, um, there are certain things where
• 44:52
  they were just intended for the medium that they are created in. They're not
• 44:58
  meant to be adapted. I would argue that Lolita is not meant to be
• 45:01
  adapted because your brain when you're reading something will only go but so far you
• 45:12
  have natural safety valves built in where you will go somewhere, and you will.
• 45:16
  Unless they are extremely graphic and how they describe something, you will stop.
• 45:21
  You will absolutely stop. The film as a visual medium, has a
• 45:25
  much weirder line to sort of traverse with that because it visually has to convey
• 45:31
  the story, but everybody's line is a little bit different. I always go
• 45:36
  back to when I read A Misery by Stephen King. There's a certain point
• 45:42
  in that where I was writhing on the couch and what was being described in
• 45:46
  the book was actually worse than what happens in the movie with his legs,
• 45:51
  But in the movie it was even more horrific because I couldn't stop seeing it.
• 45:58
  I had like it was being force fed into my eyeballs sort of thing.
• 46:01
  And I think that Lolita is just one of those works that never was
• 46:07
  meant to be adapted, and I think that James Mason was never really meant
• 46:14
  to play the role trist And I throw that to you first, What do
• 46:16
  you think of Mason in this role as Humbert Humbert. I've always really appreciated
• 46:23
  James Mason because every role he's in, he's very you know, James Mason,
• 46:30
  he sounds like Stewie with constipation. No, I really I really liked
• 46:37
  James Mason, and I liked him in this role. It was interesting to
• 46:40
  see who they wanted and who they were trying to get because the first person
• 46:45
  on their list was Carrie Grant. And I personally think Carrie Grant would have
• 46:52
  been amazing in this role. But I think he made the right choice and
• 46:57
  turning it down, and turning it down hard because seeing Carry Grant in this
• 47:02
  would have felt like stunt casting. Because the Carry Grant we know and love.
• 47:07
  I'm not going to say he was like Tom Hanks, but he was
• 47:12
  you know, like when you go to see a James Stewart in a villainous
• 47:15
  role and you're just like, no, this feel doesn't wrong. Yeah yeah,
• 47:20
  And seeing Carry Grant do this, it's just like because he's because Grant
• 47:24
  is such a suave American James Bond type person in in you know, the
• 47:31
  Hollywood lexicon, seeing him debase himself with with this kind of um, with
• 47:40
  this kind of infatuation and statutory events, um, it's it just it would
• 47:46
  feel it would just feel just too wrong. I mean I should say,
• 47:52
  but with James Mason, you know, like he he doesn't have that image
• 47:55
  that Carry Grant has. Now, I'm not saying James Mason is a scumback.
• 48:00
  I'm just saying that that that image, that reputation of the kind of
• 48:04
  roles that he plays, it lends itself more to this kind of a of
• 48:07
  a dirt back, and so I was okay with I was okay with his
• 48:12
  performance. I know. They also tried to get Laurence Olivier and he also
• 48:15
  said no. Hard It was really funny because they kept coming back to Grant
• 48:19
  and Olivier and they both said no, stop asking mum. So I I
• 48:27
  thought he was I thought it was an interesting choice. I thought Shelley Winters
• 48:30
  went back and forth between being a good choice and a bad choice for Charlotte.
• 48:37
  I don't know how to describe it, but it's just there. There
• 48:42
  were times when she was acting like she was acting instead of just acting.
• 48:45
  It felt like she was acting for the stage instead of acting for the camera.
• 48:51
  And there was a there was a time when we first meet Charlotte and
• 48:55
  she's showing, you know, um Humbert the house and he's clearly not interested.
• 49:00
  He's like, maybe I could just maybe I could just get your number,
• 49:01
  and you know, then then I can think about it. And then
• 49:05
  he sees Lolita with her son hat and bathing suit and he immediately changes his
• 49:08
  mind. And then Charlotte's just like, oh, oh, yes, of
• 49:14
  course you could. You're gonna stay now, fantastic? What change your mind?
• 49:16
  Was it the garden? I'm like screaming inside my head woman, she
• 49:21
  he just saw your fourteen year old girl, you know, in her bathing
• 49:24
  suit. Now he wants to stay, Like, have you not seen Lolita?
• 49:28
  This is what happens. Yeah, she doesn't win any mother of the
• 49:34
  Year awards at all, Like she's a terrible mother. And then when she
• 49:37
  brings out like the gun and you're like, oh, oh, she's crazy,
• 49:43
  it's oh it is oh. But see that that's one of the things
• 49:47
  that I regard as a shortcoming of the film. Again, this is something
• 49:51
  where you can't have everything from the book in the movie. But the book
• 49:54
  points out that Humbert has had basically, I think, I think it's like
• 50:00
  two nervous breakdowns before this. He's not a well man, and I think
• 50:06
  that's the flaw I see really in Mason's performances. He seems like a well
• 50:09
  man until he makes that one decision based on the Godden and it's like,
• 50:15
  ah, he's no, It's not like he suddenly sees loud and He's like,
• 50:19
  no, this guy screwed up to begin with, and he's got some
• 50:22
  stuff that he hasn't worked through to begin with that he needs to get a
• 50:28
  handle on. So he's already damaged coming in and in the book you understand
• 50:32
  that like he is in the book. I urge people to read it because
• 50:37
  the book is really fascinating because it's Humbert's perspective. It's a guy. It
• 50:44
  basically comes across as a guy just trying to get out of the death penalty.
• 50:47
  He's basically making his plea to you, the jury member, saying,
• 50:52
  just don't put me to death. Okay, I know it was wrong,
• 50:57
  but just don't kill me for this, please, which ties into the whole
• 51:01
  thing at the end. It's like, by the way, he died of
• 51:02
  a heart attack, by right, that's the sort of thing. And I'm
• 51:09
  actually going to split with you on this one, Tristan, because while I
• 51:13
  think there are shortcomings with her performance, I think that Shelley Winters has a
• 51:17
  thankless task in this, which is to play a woman who seems so desperate
• 51:25
  that she would blow past Humbert's shortcomings, while at the same time a woman
• 51:35
  who's strong enough to be raising a daughter and have a boarding house going on,
• 51:42
  Like that's a you know, she's a woman caught between two extremes.
• 51:45
  She's desperate, but she's also able to keep things going. And I think
• 51:51
  I think that what she's robbed of is a good enough death scene, if
• 52:00
  you will, something dramatic enough to cap it off. I think that it's
• 52:04
  building to a certain thing. And then she dies off screen and we don't
• 52:07
  even get to see her face because you know, in the book and an
• 52:12
  Adrian Line's later adaptation, Humbert is forced to look at her as her eyes
• 52:17
  are open, and he's like, I could feel her staring at me even
• 52:21
  though she was dead at the time sort of thing. And so I think
• 52:24
  Winters has a sort of thankless performance here, but I think it's effective.
• 52:30
  I feel like we got that scene when she found his diary. I feel
• 52:36
  like, you know, she kind of got that that cathartic screaming out him,
• 52:43
  smacking them around, saying like you're never going to see her again.
• 52:45
  I think I think it got almost almost there, like it built, and
• 52:51
  it built, and it built, and it feels like it got clipped off
• 52:52
  at the last minute. I expected something and I don't fault her for it.
• 52:59
  I think that she was going there, and I think that it's either
• 53:01
  a function of the script or the editing chopped it off for the last second.
• 53:07
  Uh. You know. Well, one thing I did like about that
• 53:09
  that scene, or I should say that that that um I guess one.
• 53:14
  It was one big one big scene was when they were in bed together and
• 53:17
  you know, and they were kissing, and then he rolls over and he
• 53:21
  sees the picture of Lolita, and then he then she starts talking about sending
• 53:25
  her to boarding school. And then they roll over to the other side of
• 53:29
  the bed, and that's where he sees the gun. And it's just it's
• 53:31
  an alternate perspective back and forth of you know, if I in order to
• 53:37
  get Lolita, I'm gonna have to use the gun. If I use the
• 53:38
  gun, I might lose Thelida. You know. It's just like it's this
• 53:42
  this dichotomy of going back and forth. It felt that was very good visual
• 53:46
  storytelling of getting inside Humbert's head. I agree. I the one thing I
• 53:53
  would really harp on. I mean, there were a couple of things I
• 53:58
  would really harp on, but that you know here, I definitely harp on
• 54:01
  and we all know I have a passion for the music of a film.
• 54:06
  So, Darren, I want to ask you, how do you feel about
• 54:08
  the score first, Hanley Kubrick's adaptation of Lolita. I'm trying to remember the
• 54:15
  score. Um. For some reason, I only have the little Nellie James
• 54:22
  Bond trill stuck in my head right now. I don't know why. The
• 54:24
  only thing that I remember is Lolita's theme. That's the only thing that was
• 54:29
  really Yeah, that's true buried into my brain. Which is funny because that
• 54:34
  was one of the complaints about Spartacus was that the love theme just keeps coming
• 54:37
  back and it's like, oh, is there anything else? What else is
• 54:42
  going on here? And it's what's interesting is the score. It was done
• 54:47
  by Nelson Riddle, but then the the main theme was done by somebody else,
• 54:53
  which I always find super interesting, Like about that, Yeah, right,
• 55:00
  isn't that? It just seems odd to me. It seems like an
• 55:02
  odd decision. So but but do you feel that the music was effective,
• 55:07
  Darren? Or? I mean, it was music. I honestly, nothing
• 55:12
  memorable stands out in and I'm not going to rewatch to reabsorb the music.
• 55:16
  So so as a question that you know, as we're sort of rounding third,
• 55:22
  as we like to say, Christ and I'll kick it to you first,
• 55:27
  do you feel that this is a film that's deserving of the that you
• 55:36
  mentioned earlier in the review, aggregator, or do you think that this is
• 55:39
  something where, because of Kubrick's name in his later regard, has been retroactively
• 55:45
  given more esteem than it deserves. Oh geez um, that's a tough one.
• 55:52
  That's a real tough one to answer it. Like, I don't know
• 55:53
  if I can answer that, because I think from it started off with a
• 56:00
  lot of great will and like it had some pretty cool storytelling, some really
• 56:06
  good tracking shots, and you know, like using the house as the set.
• 56:10
  I mean you could tell it was a set, but they really utilized
• 56:14
  it. And and you know, finding Sue Lyon so young and she was
• 56:19
  clearly capable. I think the only time that I really felt like she was
• 56:24
  a young actress was at the end when she was trying to be eighteen.
• 56:28
  And that's hard. I mean, she was she was a fourteen year old
• 56:30
  playing a fourte year old. She did great when she tried to play an
• 56:32
  eighteen year old. She just doesn't have the experience to really convey that kind
• 56:37
  of hardened wisdom that she got on the road. Yeah, I mean she's
• 56:45
  seen things like she hasn't yet. Yeah, yeah, she hasn't yet exactly.
• 56:50
  It's kind of like Ezery taking over for Jadzia. We're not really selling
• 56:53
  the three hundred years of experience here. But I think this movie made huge
• 57:00
  waves when it came out, and this was this is very controversial, but
• 57:07
  I felt like it it told the story definitely in a in a way that
• 57:12
  really appealed to the censors. I feel like they danced around a lot of
• 57:17
  things, even though there was a lot of double entendres. I mean,
• 57:21
  some more obvious than others. That one of the more obvious ones that Lolita
• 57:24
  was at the summer camp camp climax. Good lord, I laughed out loud.
• 57:30
  Yeah, I did a double tepe with that. I'm like, is
• 57:31
  that is that the name of the camp? Is that really the name?
• 57:36
  Is that? Was that their first Was that their first round of of takes?
• 57:40
  Like did they did they workshop that at all? I think they were
• 57:45
  very tired at night when they came up with that. So what I call
• 57:47
  it camp Climax? Yeah? All right? All right, whatever, and
• 57:52
  he's playing with a stuff beaver. But yeah, I honestly, John,
• 57:58
  I can't answer that question. I feel like this, I think this movie
• 58:00
  has earned its place in history, but my enjoyment is not that of everybody
• 58:07
  Else's fair enough, So let's go right into ratings. Then, Darren,
• 58:16
  does this Has this been retroactively rehabilitated in terms of its reception or should people
• 58:23
  agree with a different rating that maybe you would offer for Lolita nineteen sixty two
• 58:30
  as adapted by Stanley Cooper. Yeah, I think it's always interesting when you
• 58:35
  look at the Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic score of movies that came out before the
• 58:40
  internet was a thing, because it's like, I'm like, well, who
• 58:45
  is who is rating this? Because there is not there's no way to accurately
• 58:49
  look. I mean, we can barely discern budget versus box office when looking
• 58:53
  back through history to try to tell how something performed, how something did,
• 58:58
  how it was received and all of that. So yeah, it it's I'm
• 59:06
  I'm torn between two numbers just because as a Kubrick movie, I see Kubrick
• 59:12
  all over this. I see his decision, his direction, like all of
• 59:16
  that. I love on a topic like well I ever watched this ever again?
• 59:22
  Aspect that drags it down, and that is nothing against Kubrick. That
• 59:25
  is just this movie, the source material, the uncomfortableness, you know,
• 59:32
  the choice of ingesting that. Um So, I guess I have to decide
• 59:37
  which way I want to really be rating it. Okay, I'm gonna give
• 59:42
  I'm gonna give Kubrick a little extra leeway and I'm gonna give it a three
• 59:47
  um for because I really can't deny it's a well made film for as being
• 59:57
  a film, you know, moving the the ending, the beginning. Like
• 1:00:00
  we talked more about the art of filmmaking in this review than we've talked about
• 1:00:06
  in quite a while, and I think it's apparent that he is a master
• 1:00:12
  filmmaker. He is that dedicated choice of how close am I to the subjects?
• 1:00:17
  When am I moving the camera? When am I not? All of
• 1:00:22
  those extra pieces of filmmaking that he really pulls off Willen and creates, you
• 1:00:29
  know again with double entendre, with uncomfortableness with even I mean Jack, the
• 1:00:32
  opening shot, the opening shot immediately sets that tone for like Tristan said that
• 1:00:39
  young you know leg with the toes being painted by an old hand and you're
• 1:00:44
  just like, uh, like, I just don't. I don't like this,
• 1:00:49
  like what is going on? But I think the only thing that would
• 1:00:53
  maybe benefit is maybe if it was in color or there were other ways to
• 1:01:01
  help differentiate the people. Honestly, I had a little bit of hard time
• 1:01:05
  telling some of the people apart in the beginning. Just sometimes it happens for
• 1:01:08
  me with black and white movies, where like, I mean, it didn't
• 1:01:12
  help that Peter Sellers was playing like half the cast. But there's there's sometimes
• 1:01:16
  where they'll introduce like new people and I'll be like, is that a person?
• 1:01:22
  Have I seen them before? Sometimes it's tricky on me. But that's
• 1:01:25
  really a minor quibble. So I'm going to give it three painted toenails,
• 1:01:32
  all right. Justin said that purposely to be uncomfortable throwing it to you.
• 1:01:38
  I'm gonna be with Darren on this one. This is three stars for me
• 1:01:44
  because I think there there is great filmmaking in this movie. But I don't
• 1:01:51
  think this movie is great. I think, um, you know, like
• 1:01:55
  to echo what Darren is saying that, like there's so much that makes you
• 1:01:59
  uncomfortable from the beginning, all the way to the end. But the thing
• 1:02:01
  is is that this movie is way too long for what it is. I
• 1:02:07
  mean two and a half hours. You do not need to enough hours to
• 1:02:10
  tell this story. This could have been under too easy. And there are
• 1:02:15
  some decisions that I just didn't understand. Like the montage at the beginning I
• 1:02:20
  thought was one of the worst montages I've ever seen. I thought that could
• 1:02:22
  have been done way better. Like even like from an editing standpoint, just
• 1:02:29
  if they re edited that montage, I think it would have been better,
• 1:02:34
  even if they kept the shot selection that they did. But it's just that
• 1:02:38
  scene when they they're finally in Ohio it's six months later, and and he
• 1:02:45
  is like actually painting her tonnails and he said, He's like, you know,
• 1:02:47
  like you're not you didn't tell her about us, right, But at
• 1:02:52
  the same time he's trying to be a father or some sort of father figure.
• 1:02:57
  It's just like, oh, that was one of the best and worst
• 1:03:00
  scenes in the entire film, But there was so much nonsense in between,
• 1:03:04
  Like they gave Peter Sellers way too much rope and he hanged himself with it,
• 1:03:07
  and it just it was a story that started out really strong, and
• 1:03:13
  completely petered out towards the end, and like by the time that we get
• 1:03:19
  to Lolita at eighteen, I just don't give a crap anymore. I'm like,
• 1:03:22
  I don't care, okay, whatever, you know, like, just
• 1:03:25
  just kill Peter Sellers again. I mean, I don't know, Like I
• 1:03:29
  just I lost so it had it gained so much goodwill and it just pisses
• 1:03:34
  it away towards the end. So I'm giving it three stars because there is
• 1:03:38
  great filmmaking inside, like I said, but it'sself is not a great film.
• 1:03:44
  I'm gonna say something extremely controversial in that I don't think that this does
• 1:03:51
  a good enough job portraying how piteously pathetic humber is. I don't think that
• 1:04:03
  Humbert is. He's still too leading man. This is the difficult thing with
• 1:04:10
  the character, and this is why I think a novel is the medium for
• 1:04:14
  this story and not a film overall. Is Humbert does not see himself as
• 1:04:21
  what Quilty is. And there is a very weird and difficult distinction because Humbert
• 1:04:30
  is a broken person with a lot of mental difficulties who does not understand that
• 1:04:40
  the reason that quilty is there, like that there is a difference between the
• 1:04:45
  two of them. But ultimately, what Humbert is pursuing is the same thing
• 1:04:49
  that Quilty is. Humbert is incapable of seeing that. And I think that
• 1:04:57
  Mason is too genteel for the role. He's not ikey enough in a sense.
• 1:05:06
  It's it's weird um. I think additionally that sue Lyon is great,
• 1:05:15
  but she is too unreal in certain scenes, and and to sort of flip
• 1:05:28
  it around, I do think that the movie falls into the trap of making
• 1:05:31
  her too conscious of things at the end. She seems a bit too powerful
• 1:05:39
  at the end. I don't like that. I don't like that because I
• 1:05:43
  think it lets Humbert off the hook, just not it doesn't let him off
• 1:05:46
  the hook, but just a tiny little bit. It makes him a little
• 1:05:49
  too sympathetic when he breaks down in it, like she seems a bit too
• 1:05:53
  mean and in control at the end. I don't I don't care for that
• 1:05:57
  either. These are very complex and difficult characters to portray in film, and
• 1:06:06
  that is why I wind up recognizing the things that I see about this that
• 1:06:12
  are Kubrick, but seeing the things that ultimately aren't even really his fault.
• 1:06:19
  But at the fault of trying to even adapt a work like this, I
• 1:06:24
  wind up giving it a I'm gonna wind up and give it a two.
• 1:06:27
  I don't see any circumstance where I'm going to revisit this, and I didn't
• 1:06:31
  find it. I found it compelling enough until about the hour forty five mark,
• 1:06:39
  and then when I saw how much I had left, I said,
• 1:06:41
  you've got to be kidding me. Oh, come on, And having read
• 1:06:45
  the book, I knew how much was left, and I was like,
• 1:06:47
  and I actually paused it and I said, come on, hail Mary passed.
• 1:06:50
  We're gonna wrap this up in fifteen. Oh no, we're not.
• 1:06:55
  I did the same thing like I checked it it like at the ninety minute
• 1:06:59
  mark and I was like, oh, good lord, I have an hour
• 1:07:01
  left. Yeah. Although very odd, also seeing Lois Maxwell Moneypenny from James
• 1:07:08
  Bond for many years as the nurse in it, and I was like,
• 1:07:11
  oh, that's weird and released that same year as doctor. Now see,
• 1:07:16
  I thought I recognized her, and I was confused because for some reason,
• 1:07:21
  part of me was wondering if she was the woman that Quilty was always around
• 1:07:28
  with and was also in on it, because you know, everybody's anybody in
• 1:07:32
  this movie, So I'm like, am I supposed to recognize this person?
• 1:07:35
  That makes sense? I unconsciously recognized her from the Money Penny roll initially,
• 1:07:41
  and this is because this always happens with me. Lois Maxwell looked very much
• 1:07:45
  like Majel, Barrett, Rod and Barry to me, Oh my gosh.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah. There was a moment when I honestly thought, I was like,
• 1:07:50
  wait, is that Majel right? And I was like, no, that's
• 1:07:55
  Moneypenny. Yeah, it was. It was wild, But you know what,
• 1:07:59
  you know, what's true wild? We had a type as you're saying,
• 1:08:02
  he would be a very avid Bond fan. Yes, but I will
• 1:08:08
  tell you that what's really wild is that we're going to come up on one
• 1:08:12
  of the great satirical works of the nineteen sixties, which, you know what,
• 1:08:17
  Let's find out whether it stood the test of time as we continue in
• 1:08:20
  the House of Kubrick nineteen sixties and we plow head into Doctor Strange Love or
• 1:08:28
  How I Learned to Stop worrying and love the Bomb, Join the Revolution,
• 1:08:31
  Join the Nerd Party,