5.2Death
On March 7, 1999, six days after screening a final cut of Eyes Wide Shut for his family and the stars, Kubrick died in his sleep at the age of 70 from a heart attack, due to coronary atherosclerosis. His funeral was held on March 12 at his home estate with only close friends and family in attendance, totaling approximately 100 people. The media was kept a mile away outside the entrance gate.[9]:372
Alexander Walker, who attended the funeral, describes it as a "family farewell, ... almost like an English picnic," with cellists, clarinetists and singers providing song and music from many of his favorite classical compositions. Although Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, was recited, the funeral had no religious overtones, and few of his obituaries mentioned his Jewish background.[9]:373–374[100]
Among those who gave eulogies were Terry Semel, Jan Harlan, Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. He was buried next to his favorite tree in Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire, England.[128] In her book dedicated to Kubrick, his wife Christiane included one of his favorite quotations of Oscar Wilde:
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
6.Conclusion
Many of his films broke new ground in cinematography, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a science-fiction film which director Steven Spielberg called his generation's "big bang", with innovative visual effects and scientific realism. For Barry Lyndon (1975), Kubrick obtained lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA in order to film scenes under natural candlelight and The Shining (1980) was among the first feature films to make use of a Steadicam for stabilized and fluid tracking shots. As with his earlier shorts, Kubrick was the cinematographer and editor on the first two of his thirteen feature films. He directed, produced and wrote all or part of the screenplays for nearly all his films.
While some of Kubrick's films were controversial with initially mixed reviews, such as Paths of Glory (1957), Lolita (1962), and A Clockwork Orange (1971), most of his films were nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes or BAFTAs. Film historian Michel Ciment considers his films to be "among the most important contributions to world cinema in the twentieth century" while director Norman Jewison calls him one of the "great masters" that America has produced.