A reader reacts to the review of The Killing:
Next up, Kubrick’s “Lolita.” As to the religious undercurrents in “The Killing,” well, it was a genre picture, and noir is ultimately a religious film genre. The bad guys always pay in noir. Kubrick himself was raised as a secular Jew, and when the subject of religion came up (mostly in regard to 2001’s “spirituality,”) he gave many different and somewhat conflicting answers. According to Stephen King, Kubrick hung up on him when King said he believed in God.
I do not see film noir as necessarily religious genre, as I’ve never restricted the concept of evil to the religious realm. I see noir as morality tales (itself a religious genre, but I’m busy ripping out these things by the roots, might as well get all of them), illustrative examples of how bad decisions can doom people – or bad circumstance (so it becomes a lesson to the powers-that-be to fix the circumstance). Incidentally, most of the noir I’ve seen doesn’t have any religious elements, and even in The Killing I had to stretch a little bit, although otherwise it was mere caprice that did the bad guy in.
Insofar as Lolita goes, I may be terminally ruined in that regard. Having seen it on stage, by The Four Humors, wherein the lead female role was played by a 6 ft, 280 lb guy with no makeup, not shaved in three days, and in a shirt a size too small …. well.
Source: City Pages
And thanks for the historical note on Kubrick.
