So I only just wrote that we’re probably done with the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick and immediately upon watching this, I realized that we’ve never watched Barry Lyndon. This is a documentary about Leon Vitali, the man who would become Kubrick’s primary assistant. I originally thought that he must have been his cameraman or something but, no, he really was his assistant for about 25 years.

According to this account, Leon Vitali had decided that he wanted to work with Stanley Kubrick ever since he watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. He got his chance when he auditioned for a role in Barry Lyndon and got the part. Though he continually worried about being fired, he apparently impressed Kubrick so much that the director added more scenes for his character. After filming he also asked to observe the editing process without and Kubrick agreed. He went on to learn more about such production work on other films and joined Kubrick as an assistant when he started to make The Shining. Through interviews with many people who worked with them, behind the scenes footage and still photos, the documentary shows that Vitali’s role gradually expanded to cover just about everything including editing, casting, foley, overseeing transfers of new copies, marketing and much more. He would work closely with the great director until his death in 1999 and even after that helped to finish Eyes Wide Shut and ensure that digitization of all of his films proceeded as the director would have wished.

Kubrick’s tyrannical treatment of everyone else around him as he pursues absolute perfection is of course well known but the various stories here really help to make you understand why so many collaborators could not stomach working for him more than once. As one of the interviewee’s astutely puts it, it’s one thing to admire a genius at a distance, it’s another when said genius orders you to clean his sofa. Vitali apparently did all this and more including taking care of Kubrick’s pets, going around the country taking photos of video shops because the director was upset about his films not being marketed as he wanted them to be, taking copious notes on everything Kubrick said and so on. He worked 16 hours a day or more, neglecting his family, and drove himself to exhaustion because he was convinced that it was all worth it for the sake of the art being made by the greatest director of the 20th century. Vitali is an extreme example of dedication and the various interviews make it clear that many behind the scenes workers due to their love of cinema.

Still there are only so many times that you can hear about how awful it was to work with Kubrick before it gets repetitive and it’s hard to care much when the film talks about Vitali’s family. At least there are plenty of interesting anecdotes like how R. Lee Ermey finagled his way into his iconic performance in Full Metal Jacket and how the creepy twin girls in The Shining were a result of the mother of the girls bringing both of them to the audition. It’s also educational to realize how much work goes into making transfers of films and Vitali needed to check every frame of every print sent to cinemas throughout the US. I suppose that this is either unnecessary in the digital age or else only needs to be done once and for all.

While this is certainly a fascinating watch, I also think it is missable. It’s true that Vitali’s efforts in support of Kubrick’s work are considerable and it’s sad that such behind the scenes workers like himself are underappreciated. Yet this documentary also makes it clear that Kubrick is the true creative force and as hard as Vitali worked, his jobs amounted to grunt work performed to the master’s exacting specifications. Kubrick was fortunate of course to attract such a loyal and dedicated assistant but even without Vitali he would likely still have been able to get by with one or more other people. We need people like Vitali of course to do all the work that goes into making a film but the truth of the world is that many, many other people could have done Vitali’s work but there are only a rare handful of geniuses like Kubrick.