"Color Me Kubrick" (2005) - Movie Review

Alan Conway here acted by John Malkovich posed as the acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick and enjoyed the benefits and harvested his alcoholic activities in leisure. “Color Me Kubrick” tells the story of that person conning people, again and again and again till we are fed up with the character and the people who fall for it. It uses generously the back ground score used in “A Clockwork Orange” and director Brian W. Cook as the newspaper thought he had something which is cud chewer for the viewers. It is an unwanted exercise of a con man finding to live through being an impostor and dwindling money from desperate people.

He walks shaking and in curves partly to his vodka addiction and to the fact of his mannerism if something of that individuality exists. Malkovich as a dedicated actor he is puts forth a performance uninteresting and unnecessary as a whole. I have seen couple of photographs of Stanely Kubrick and they tell that the real Alan Conway did not look like him at all. Still people went head over heels when some one so weird and out of place comes in from nowhere and starts praising the person or their work. Immediately they fall for it and when Conway says he is Kubrick it is as though the whole perplexity got solved in the behaviour of this personality. He is strange and drawing in because he is “the” director and artistic intellectuals have a way of showing off hand shady behaviours. That’s it and every body gets in to this trap to be milked of money, booze and what not.

In “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, we see a disturbed individual gaining to have a place in the identity of others. He craves for true love and attention. His obsession for being somebody is immense that he goes to great extremes of killing people and becoming them. There was this character beneath it even when he takes different identities. And the charisma and charm of him getting into that place with no trouble made Ripley a man of something more. A man who we would not want to be near but also strangely sympathize for his lack of love and admire his tight situation handling with a guilt. That’s the making which made it such a close runner for rooting and despising this guy on even level. The tactics of Alan Conway is silly and while it happened in real life, every time he repeats he is Stanley Kubrick and people falling for it, it annoyed the hell out of me.

Regardless of the true nature of this personality, why does one bother to provide a film on him in an indie styled version. In fact he does not even know the proper details of the director and still gets by. Of all the people in the film, only one manages to instantly spot this culprit and you wonder how he leaves him without any beating. Movies of con man are like a magic trick. Some times you wonder how they pull it off. We forget their real man/woman inside them and appreciate the presence of mind even when it is to steal and cheat. The other side of it is the characterization we have seen in “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. In “Color Me Kubrick” neither do we appreciate the so called presence of mind and the character which never seem to exist in the film. It is a mere display of the people who got fooled by this man and out of shame never came forward to accept it.

It is indeed true that when faced with a celebrity, one is tipped on the admiring level slips cash and merry without any identification. We do not want to upset the celebrity. But how does some other person of the same field fall for it and go on supporting him day after day in a hotel. And what is so amusing about showing that in the most irritating and slow ordeal of getting conned.

“Color Me Kubrick” does have an interesting feed for a great story. Think about conning posing as a great director and wandering most of his life. It sounds drawing but sadly it just sounds so. The fact that it happened in real life only aggravates the frustration of taking so much pains to do an unnecessary film.