Chronological Kubrick

That's an interesting idea. However, Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket should be swapped. Strangelove takes place in essentially 1964, while FMJ is around 1967/68.

Even though A Clockwork Orange technically takes place in the near-future, I feel like it's very much a film of the '70s. Going from The Shining to Eyes Wide Shut to 2001 would make more sense, somehow. ACO would make sense after FMJ, which ends with corrupted youth, and before The Shining, which is all about the "orders from the House" and "all the best people" that pull the strings in all of his films.

I think that Kubrick's films, from Strangelove on anyway, actually mesh very well chronologically -- the ending of each seems to lead very nicely into the opening of the next. Other posters have written about this recently. For example, the apocalypse of Strangelove leads us back to the dawn of man in 2001, which ends with a close-up on the Starchild looking at us. This then leads into the iconic first shot of another "child" staring at us in ACO, which ends with a shot of people costumed in 18th-century garb watching Alex, leading us into Barry Lyndon. Lyndon then ends on a freeze-frame that traps its main character much like Jack will be trapped in a photograph at the very end of The Shining. The Shining's final July 4th party photo also leads us into FMJ, which deals with the perils of American imperialism; FMJ ends with Joker fantasizing about erotic daydreams, leading us into EWS and its opening shot of a naked woman.

"Now you could always start with the dawn of man, and Strangelove is apocalyptic so maybe it would go last."

Yeah, some of the films both have a lengthy temporal span (and so need to be inserted more than once in such a chronology), but also distort the very notion of simple linear chronology, as with all ghost movies, as with "The Shining". We might supplement your list, then, as well as adding in the four earliest films (docs and debut feature):

2001 a space odyssey (pre-history, pre-dawn, 'dawn of proto-humans', millions of years ago).
Spartacus
2001 a space odyssey (pen-ultimate scene: the mid-late 18th century Rococo simulated-surreal bedroom at the 'end' of the cosmos).
Barry Lyndon (ends in 1789)
Paths of glory
The Shining (the spectral aberrations and haunting, fantasmatic-real revenant visitations in the Overlook, especially the Gold Room ballroom, from the 1920s/1930s).
Fear and Desire (debut feature, set in WWII)
Day of the Fight (short doc)
The Flying Padre (short doc)
The Seafarers (doc)
Killers kiss
The killing
Lolita
Dr Strangelove (very much mid-sixties setting)
Full metal jacket
A clockwork orange (dystopian future still recognizably 1970s)
The shining
Eyes wide shut
2001 a space odyssey

Wow, that's really cool. Never thought of it like that.
Thanks for the input.

I had the very same idea last month, how synchronistic. Pretty much same list too, it is quite a linear thing and it dawned on me he may have hid some special meaning right there.




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