Film­work­er

Whether it was mak­ing Tom Cruise do 95 takes of walk­ing through the same door dur­ing the film­ing of Eyes Wide Shut or harsh­ly bul­ly­ing Shel­ley Duvall so she act­ed with the right lev­el of fear in The Shin­ing, direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick’s exhaus­tive meth­ods for achiev­ing cin­e­mat­ic per­fec­tion are well doc­u­ment­ed. Film­work­er, a look at the life of Leon Vitali, who gave up a suc­cess­ful career in act­ing to become Kubrick’s right-hand man, achieves some­thing fresh by show­ing what it was like to live under the rule of the dic­ta­to­r­i­al genius on a ²⁴⁄₇ basis.

From the off, it’s clear Vitali main­tains a pas­sion­ate, if slight­ly creepy, love for Kubrick. Sit­ting next to a Kubrick cud­dly toy and describ­ing his audi­tion for Bar­ry Lyn­don (he end­ed up play­ing the cru­cial role of Lord Bulling­don), Vitali’s lips quiver as he almost sen­su­al­ly describes how the director’s hand­shake, ​“sent a buzz right through you.”

Film­work­er focus­es on Vitali’s vital con­tri­bu­tions to Kubrick’s fil­mog­ra­phy. He was respon­si­ble for cast­ing young Dan­ny Tor­rance (Dan­ny Lloyd) and the mur­dered Grady twins in The Shin­ing as well as help­ing R Lee Ermey ​“achieve per­fec­tion” as the drill sergeant in Full Met­al Jack­et. Yet direc­tor Tony Zierra’s doc­u­men­tary is at its best when it ques­tions the ethics behind how Kubrick con­sis­tent­ly pushed Vitali to the edge.

Vitali did every­thing from edit­ing film trail­ers and scout­ing loca­tions to set­ting up video mon­i­tors in every room of Kubrick’s estate so the direc­tor could keep tabs on his sick cat Jes­si­ca. Sure, it sags at times and the edit­ing is a lit­tle rough, but at its core Film­work­er is a touch­ing love let­ter to the obses­sive process of film­mak­ing and the sac­ri­fice we make to achieve some­thing that’s cre­ative­ly unblem­ished. Through­out, Zier­ra makes it obvi­ous he believes Kubrick was the true love of Vitali’s life. How­ev­er, by the time Film­work­er reach­es its con­clu­sion, it seems like that feel­ing may have been mutual.