Stanley Kubrik's Boxes

Last year, whilst listening to Adam Buxton's Big Mix Tape on BBC 6 Music, I was introduced to (albiet via the airwaves and not actually in real-life) journalist, documentary-maker and all round good-natured funny chap Jon Ronson. Even though I had seen the movie "The Men Who Stare At Goats" I really didn't know who he was, but immediately found his depreciating and softly-spoken style quite beguiling. Instantly I had to catch up on his BBC Radio Four broadcasts "Jon Ronson On" and got hold of his intriguing film documentary "Stanley Kubrik's Boxes"

As someone absorbed by curious obsessions, old junk, intimate collections and who generally adores rummaging through other peoples stuff, to me, Jon Ronson's Boxes documentary felt like a gift.

In 2001, Jon Ronson was invited to Childwick Bury, the home of Stanley Kubrik who had passed away 2 years earlier. It turns out that Kubrik, famous for writing and directing such masterpieces as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining alongside many others was a complete and utter hoarder. He kept everything.

Every intricate detail of a movie's preparation, photographs of possible sites for filming, photographs of potential props and clothing, fan letters, telexes, faxes, scripts, résumés, stationary, typefaces and other curios were delicately filed, catalogued and stored in boxes. None of your cheap crappy cardboard boxes either. Good boxes, designed by Kubrick himself, to his specifications.

A brief riffle through his estate could finally answer the questions many of us had all been asking over the years without response. Was Stanley Kubrik, as Jon Ronson puts it "like some kind of mad hermit genius" and "Would the stuff inside the boxes offer an understanding of his "tangled brain"?"