The question doesn’t need any answering. He was fabulous, and miles different from and ahead of others. Some, including this review , might consider him second best to Spielberg or Hitchcock, but he is, to me, right at the top.
His last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, was my first of his. I had Computer Networks exam the next day. In the midnight, I just started the movie for a pre-sleep browsing kind of thing. How the next two hours passed, I don’t know. People considered it his worst, but if that is the worst, how good his best was, I wondered. Never mind my lost sleep, my exam too was a scorcher.
Then came, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket. I was again watching Full Metal Jacket a few days back. This movie didn’t get the accolades it deserved, but of the movies I have seen, none has brought the hidden drama of war as glaringly as this one. Two stories, the first half of the regimental soldiers training life, and the second one of the actual war. There is a pun of futility about war and its hardships through every single shot of the movie. Somehow he managed it. I don’t know how, and I will wonder always.
He is no more, but certainly his charisma remains. I don’t know how I felt like writing about him today, but just that remembrance of excellence brought his name forward. Hope people learn from him, how to be delivering, rather than be showing. Is Tarantino listening?
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