Filmworker (Tony Zierra, 2017): USA

Reviewed by Markus Linecker. Viewed at the AFI Filmfest 2017.

Leon Vitali was heading for a big career as an actor when he got a role in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. During the filming, Vitali became fascinated with the technical process of the production. After wrapping the film, he made the conscious decision to leave acting in order to become Kubrick’s assistant and right-hand man, helping him for 18 years through all of his groundbreaking films. He was Kubrick’s go-to guy on and off set from then on. From coaching actors to creating marketing material to shipping films, Vitali was the person who did it continuously until today. He became obsessed with working for Kubrick.

This is a documentary about how Vitali helped Kubrick. However, the documentary is not about Vitali, but about Kubrick. This kind of foundational assistance was never seen before – Vitali had full dedication to Kubrick and to filmmaking. He sat in on coloring sessions and learned the color timing. He sat in on sound editing sessions so he could learn to edit sound. The more he learned, the more he was able to help Kubrick create his visions with better authenticity.

Even though Director Tony Zierra wants to tell about the relationship between Vitali and Kubrick it is ends up being a film about Kubrick, about his charisma but also his almost difficult ways of filmmaking without creating. Vitali called himself a film worker on visas – not an editor or assistant, as one would expect. This documentary is about the relationship Vitali established with Kubrick, completely intending symbiosis. Though they were both so different, they both had the drive to make the best movies they could.

Vitali still works with this approach. Though Kubrick has died, Vitali continues to work on Kubrick’s oeuvre, improving their quality and transferring them to DVDs, then BluRays. What people forget is that Vitali could have been a great actor, but he gave it all up to do this thing with Kubrick.

This documentary follows Vitali’s work through the use of clips from Kubrick’s films, be they the ones that influenced Vitali to work with Kubrick, such as Clockwork Orange, or films that Vitali himself influenced. There are set pictures of Vitali and Kubrick, home footage of them in the office working, and interviews of many actors who were pulled into  the pair. For example, Danny Lloyd, who played the child in The Shining, says that there in no way Lloyd could have done this role without Vitali, because he fulfilled so many functions, but most of all because he befriended him. It was this kind of support that allowed Kubrick to dig into his vision unimpeded by worries about the functioning of the set.