Mark Reviews Movies: FILMWORKER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 31, 2018

One might say that Leon Vitali gave up a lot in order to work exclusively for Stanley Kubrick. The one person who would never say such a thing just might be Vitali himself. Filmworker catches up with Kubrick's longtime "assistant," almost two decades after the master filmmaker's death in 1999.

There's something both immensely touching and sad about Vitali as he is in this documentary. He has gone mostly unrecognized in the film industry and by all but the most devoted Kubrick aficionados, yet he's still working exclusively for his deceased boss. There's no pay in the work, of course, but there wasn't much pay for the work Vitali did when Kubrick was alive. How do you compensate someone for nonstop toil, doing tasks that weren't in the non-existent job description, often 24 hours of each and every day of a given week for almost 30 years?

You couldn't, obviously, and the equal-parts admirable and tragic thing about Vitali is that he probably would have done all of that work for free. As long as he was in Kubrick's presence, that would have been all the compensation he would have needed. Kubrick is routinely held as one of the metaphorical gods of cinema for good reason. One almost gets the sense that Vitali saw his boss as an actual god among men—a creative genius, a being of almost supernatural power and influence, a replacement for the father he both once had and never really knew.

What makes Vitali fascinating is that he recognizes all of this about himself. He knows he sacrificed a lot to work for Kubrick—his career as an actor, time that could have been spent with his family, his status—to be quite frank—as an individual with his own dreams and ambitions and life. He knows that his association with the filmmaker wasn't anything approaching the normal employee-employer relationship. He knows that, like anyone who worked with the man, Kubrick asked a lot of him—maybe even more than that with which he was comfortable.

Vitali knows all of this and more. He simply doesn't care.

What he does know for certain is that, as a young man, he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and that the film changed his life. He felt a similar way when he saw A Clockwork Orange. After those experiences, Vitali's goal was to work for Kubrick. At the time, the young man was an actor, getting regular work in the theater, on TV, and in movies. He admired the kind of performances that a Kubrick film allowed—a bit "theatrical," compared the usual movie acting.

He was cast in Barry Lyndon as Lord Bullingdon, the jealous and revenge-fueled stepson of the eponymous rogue. The offers for acting gigs, including an ensemble spot at a pair of prestigious theaters in London, started coming in after the film was released. Instead, he offered to work for Kubrick in whatever behind-the-scenes role the director could offer.

Maybe it was the real beating the filmmaker ordered Ryan O'Neal to give Vitali while the cameras were rolling. Maybe it was the raw chicken Kubrick made the young actor eat to try to make him vomit for the famous, climactic duel scene. Whatever it was, something about Kubrick's almost dictatorial presence on a production—a quality that sent others fleeing when or before their time on set was finished—appealed to Vitali. Maybe that had to do with Vitali's father, whose suffering as a child turned him into an abusive man.

Tony Zierra's documentary about Vitali's time with Kubrick provides a behind-the-scenes look at Kubrick's films from Barry Lyndon until the director's death, an examination of the filmmaker's obsessive nature even when the cameras weren't rolling, and a retrospective of his influence on those who worked with him and in the world of film in general. It would be easy and maybe even tempting to take advantage of Vitali's unique experience as a means of focusing primarily on his boss, but Zierra always frames his film as Vitali's story, not Kubrick's. If Vitali wants to talk about the filmmaker, as he often does, that is his prerogative. It's apparent, though, that Zierra is more intrigued by what drove Vitali to give up a career, how he handled Kubrick's notorious manner when it came to the work, and what impact a life as an unsung but vital component of a master's great works has had on him.

The documentary is constructed from interviews, with Vitali himself, of course, as well as O'Neal, whose reunion with Vitali after telling the story of hitting him is poignant, the late R. Lee Ermey, Matthew Modine, and various production workers and studio executives who worked with Kubrick—and, by extension, Vitali. There are archival photographs and video (either taken by or featuring Vitali on set and on location), as well as pertinent clips from Kubrick's films (as well as some scenes from Vitali playing Dr. Frankenstein, haunted by visions and nightmares of his monster, which should give a little insight into how Zierra views his subject's relationship with Kubrick).

The stories told here feature Kubrick, naturally, but they're mostly about Vitali running around on set, helping the actors prepare for their roles and to memorize their lines (Danny Lloyd, who played the psychic boy in The Shining, calls Vitali his acting coach, as the one person on set whom he really trusted), and showing in just about every way possible how devoted he was to Kubrick's craft. When asked if they would be able to do what Vitali did, the other actors point out that they're too selfish to even consider such a thing. Vitali, in their minds, might be the most selfless person they've personally known.

In a way, then, the documentary attempts to return some of that generosity upon its subject. With Filmworker, Zierra has made an affectionate but honest look at Vitali's life and work, hailing his continued efforts to keep Kubrick's vision alive and pointing out the consequences of that level of devotion.

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