For some reason, I missed David Cronenberg's criticism of Stanley Kubrick, more specifically "The Shining," which happened close to three years ago. The gist of Cronenberg's argument is that Kubrick was a commercially minded director that lacked the "intimate and personal" in his films. Cronenberg goes on to state, in simple terms, that he's the better filmmaker of the two because of that. Um, ok. Both great filmmakers, but let's agree to disagree here, David? Especially if you look at your last few films, there's been a struggle there, many mixed reviews as well, and you always find an excuse for why the result never happened the way you expected it to, blaming the studio or lack of funding is a major argument for you. Yes, you've made classics ("The Fly," Videodrome," A History of Violence," "The Dead Zone") but you ain't Kubrick. At least, you miss the point about Kubrick, whose cold, calculating style, the opposite of intimate and personal, is what made him who he was.
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I think I'm a more intimate and personal film-maker than Kubrick ever was," Cronenberg told the
. "That's why I find The Shining not to be a great film. I don't think he understood the [horror] genre. I don't think he understood what he was doing. There were some striking images in the book and he got that, but I don't think he really felt it.
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Cronenberg added: "
In a weird way, though he's revered as a high-level cinematic artist, I think he was much more commercial-minded, and was looking for stuff that would click and that he could get financed. I think he was very obsessed with that, to an extent that I'm not.
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