We could describe Stanley Kubrick, who died March 7 twenty years ago, in three lines, we would probably say that he loved art and hated people; who preferred the set to worldly evenings; and that the kitchen represented for him a much stronger glue than certain topos dissected by critics with obsessive care. A peculiar feature of his visionary and avant-garde cinema, object of study in the most prestigious universities of America, is, in fact, his relationship with food.

Food as a metaphor

A detail that seems of little importance, but that is the common thread of many of his most famous works. In Stanley Kubrick, food becomes a metaphor for something else: a rich or miserable existence, a vital drive or a death wish. And it is curious how often a food is in antithesis with the character who consumes it. Exactly like Alex and his gang who, in Clockwork Orange (1971), they stage the worst atrocities while going crazy for milk more. A sweetish milkshake associated with the connotations of the innocence of little boys and certainly not to those who whistle at night with the truncheon tight to the belt.

In The Shining, masterpiece of 1980, the lecture notes of the Overlook Hotel, scene of the madness of Jack Torrance played by Jack Nicholson, overflow with provisions. As if in the vanishing sense corresponded a table overflowing with food.

In Full Metal Jacket (1987) food is a disturbing element, full of easy jokes and very deep discomforts. To embody is the recruit who bears the name of Golmer Pyle, so bolso as to earn the nickname of Palla di Lardo, in fact. Epithet that will lead him to such discomfort as to lead him to madness.

Is in 2001: Space Odyssey (1968), however, that Stanley Kubrick puts food on a pedestal, as a perfect metaphor for the progress or degeneration of the human race. The film, one of the most appreciated and studied by the director, is striking for the rarefied, aseptic atmospheres, but also for the use of the raw material and its transformation. The transition from the Neolithic age to the contemporary age takes place, in fact, through the consumption of food by anthropoid monkeys that first feed on twigs and dry branches, and then, after the appearance of a giant monolith in their clearing, of fresh and red tapir meat. We therefore pass from a vegetarian diet, which for Stanley Kubrick represents hunger and malnutrition, to a meat-based diet, associated with prosperity and progress. After the appearance of the mysterious stone, in fact, the primates discover in the bone a defensive weapon suitable for hunting: a circumstance able to ensure its survival. The following passage, in which food begins to be charged with a new meaning, is this: if in the beginning it was the primates who sought it out and devoured it raw, without it being the object of the transformation of the fire, later it was no longer hunted, but served comfortably. On board the Orion, in fact, a stewardess hands Floyd a tray provided by the computer, while the Discovery astronauts consume ready-made chicken, ham and cheese sandwiches without effort. In the future, free from famine and free from the search for food, everything appears to be still, immobile and even uninviting. The food is incorporeal, taken through a straw to prevent it from dispersing in a gravity-free environment. Each color corresponds to a food: fish, corn, chips, carrots, coffee. It no longer has shape, consistency. Now it is shredded, chopped up and light years away from the bloody crudity that so aroused the anthropoids. It is technology that has the power to give it and take it off, just like a cybernetic Mother Nature. If you behave well and respect the rules, you will have it, otherwise you will die of hunger because progress has the last word. No longer the man. Later in the story there is a scene of Bowmann being conducted by aliens at dinner. In what looks like a hotel room, the man consumes his meal on an elegantly set table, with crystal glasses and fine crockery. It is the prelude to death, to a new existence and, even here, food is the protagonist. Between the cycle of hunger and satiety, the myth of rationality and the destructive relationship between man and machine, food is still there and this, perhaps, is the subliminal lesson that Stanley Kubrick tries to teach us: be it bloody or mush soft, the meal will always accompany humanity. Between space and time. Between the past and the future.