Julian Rice

There have been two common assumptions about Stanley Kubrick: that his films portray human beings who are driven exclusively by aggression and greed, and that he pessimistically rejected meaning in a contingent, postmodern world. However, as Kubrick himself remarked, 'A work of art should be always exhilarating and never depressing, whatever its subject matter may be.' In this new interpretation of Kubrick's films, Julian Rice suggests that the director's work had a more positive outlook than most people credit him. And while other studies have recounted Kubrick's life and production histories, few have offered lucid explanations of specific sources and their influence on his films. In Kubrick's Hope, Rice explains how the theories of Freud and Jung took cinematic form, and also considers the significant impression left on the director's last six films by Robert Ardrey, Bruno Bettelheim, and Joseph Campbell. In addition to providing useful contexts, Rice offers close readings of the films, inviting readers to note details they may have missed and to interpret them in their own way. By refreshing their experience of the films and discarding postmodern clichZs, viewers may discover more optimistic themes in the director's works. Beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey and continuing through A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, Rice illuminates Kubrick's thinking at the time he made each film. Throughout, Rice examines the compelling political, psychological, and spiritual issues the director raises. As this book contends, if these works are considered together and repeatedly re-viewed, Kubrick's films may help viewers to personally grow and collectively endure.

Discovering Optimism from 2001 to Eyes Wide Shut

Kubrick's Hope

"Black Elk Speaks, the book of John G. Neihardt's interviews with the Lakota visionary, is one of the most successful popularizations of Native American religious thought. Using the original transcripts of the interviews, Rice points beyond Black Elk Speaks to an increased awareness of difference between Christianity and the Lakota spiritual tradition. To understand these differences Black Elk must be cleanly disentangled from Neihardt. Niehardt was a Christian poet with a typological belief in providential progress, culminating in the enlightenment of all peoples in universal love. Black Elk was more complex, at various times using the language of a Lakota traditionalist, a Catholic catechist, or a synthesis of both. Rice argues that Black Elk retained throughout his life the priorities of his original Lakota identity as healer, visionary, and warrior and held to one constant purpose--the transmission of the Lakota ways to the Lakota people. This indispensable study is the first to discuss thoroughly all the major Black Elk material and the various critical approaches to it. The result is a rich dialogue with Black Elk and Lakota culture that will be of value to literary critics, anthropologists, and other students of Native America culture"--Back cover.

Distinguishing Its Lakota Purpose

Black Elk's Story

In 1963 Stanley Kubrick declared, “Dr. Strangelove came from my desire to do something about the nuclear nightmare.” Thirty years later, he was preparing to film another story about the human impulse for self-destruction. Unfortunately, the director passed away in 1999, before his project could be fully realized. However, fellow visionary Steven Spielberg took on the venture, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence debuted in theaters two years after Kubrick’s death. While Kubrick’s concept shares similarities with the finished film, there are significant differences between his screenplay and Spielberg's production. In Kubrick’s Story, Spielberg’s Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Julian Rice examines the intellectual sources and cinematic processes that expressed the extraordinary ideas of one great artist through the distinctive vision of another. A.I. is decidedly a Kubrick film in its concern for the future of the world, and it is both a Kubrick and a Spielberg film in the alienation of its central character. However, Spielberg’s alienated characters evolve through friendships, while Kubrick’s protagonists are markedly alone. Rice explores how the directors’ disparate sensibilities aligned and where they diverged. By analyzing Kubrick’s treatment and Spielberg’s finished film, Rice compares the imaginations of two gifted but very different filmmakers and draws conclusions about their unique conceptions. Kubrick’s Story, Spielberg’s Film is a fascinating look into the creative process of two of cinema’s most profound auteurs and will appeal to scholars of film as well as to fans of both directors.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Kubrick's Story, Spielberg's Film

Ella Cara Deloria

"The five narratives in this book, the third in Julian Rice's examination of the work of Ella Deloria, demonstrate Deloria's artistry in portraying the central values of Lakota (Sioux) culture. The introductory stories illustrate courage in three extraordinary women and Deloria's ability to subordinate her voice to that of different narrators. Another tale, "The Prairie Dogs," explains how the warriors' and chiefs' societies, the strongest forces for social cohesion, came into being." "The longest story, "The Buffalo People," concerns the origin of tribal identity based on such ideal qualities as the strength and generosity of the buffalo and the resiliency and grace of the corn. Following the noted storyteller Makula (Breast or Left Heron), Deloria improvises upon the poetic conventions of oral performance, from simple asides to traditional set speeches of the Buffalo Woman ceremony. Blending careful observation with creative skill, these stories offer new and often surprising perspectives on Lakota culture. They will entertain and instruct any reader with an interest in Native American societies of the past and present."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Ella Deloria's The Buffalo People

"While Ella Deloria is known as a linguist and ethnologist and as author of the novel Waterlily, many readers may not know that she also wrote extensively in several Dakota dialects. Trained under Franz Boas, Deloria collected stories, autobiographies, and extensive descriptions of all aspects of Lakota life in the 1920s and 1930s, when the memories of her informants extended well back into camp circle days. She wrote the interviews from memory--first in Lakota, then in English, creating a literary extension of the oral tradition. In this first extended critical study of Deloria's work, Rice claims her as a major American writer." "In discussing Deloria's Dakota Texts, Rice selects the theme of sexuality because it presents social and spiritual problems that are resolved in the narratives. In addition, a comparison of such issues in Lakota narratives and in familiar Shakespeare plays highlights Lakota values and serves to contextualize Deloria's work. English translations of the thirteen stories under discussion are provided in an appendix for ease of reference." "Readers familiar with Deloria's writing will welcome this critical study, and new readers will gain an increased understanding of Lakota culture. It will be of value to scholars of literature, religion, and Native American culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Lakota Narratives of Ella Deloria

Deer Women and Elk Men

Since the early 1980s, Jim Jarmusch has produced a handful of idiosyncratic films that have established him as one of the most imaginatively allusive directors in the history of American cinema. Three of his films—Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog (1999), and The Limits of Control (2009)—demonstrate the director’s unique take on Eastern and Aboriginal spirituality. In The Jarmusch Way, Julian Rice looks closely at these three films and explores their relation to Eastern philosophy and particular works of Western literature, painting, and cinema. Making a case that this director deserves far more serious attention than he has received thus far, The Jarmusch Way thoroughly discusses three of his most intriguing films.

Spirituality and Imagination in Dead Man, Ghost Dog, and The Limits of Control

The Jarmusch Way

Standing apart from celebrated Iranian ideals of war and martyrdom, revolutionary filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was known as a man who praised life and celebrated it in all his works. Creating films for more than 40 years during times of unending war and political turmoil, Kiarostami promoted the Sufi tradition of seeing God as part of nature and the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian ideal of environmental protection. Kiarostami’s self-image as a citizen of the world, his renunciation of war, and his concern for the future of nature cement his importance within the art form of poetic cinema. Addressing Kiarostami’s illumination of humanity’s self-destructive tendencies, author Julian Rice presents a detailed analysis of twelve individual films, from Homework (1989) to Like Someone in Love (2012). Departing from concerns of spectatorship or film in general, Rice’s book portrays the human and spiritual core of Kiarostami. Connected to all other humans and to the earth we all inhabit, Kiarostami’s vision remains a powerful message for film scholars and peaceful people everywhere.

Julian Rice

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