Filmworker

Filmworker (2018) — watch online on iFILM this documentary from director Tony Zierra about Leon Vitali, the British actor who played Lord Bullingdon in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) and then, instead of building on that part, quietly stepped away from acting to become Kubrick's full-time right-hand man.

For more than twenty years Vitali handled whatever the job required: casting child actors for The Shining, supervising foreign-language dubbing, checking film prints in projection booths across Europe at three in the morning, managing correspondence Kubrick had no patience for. He held no formal title and received no public credit. After Kubrick died in 1999, Vitali stayed on to oversee the restorations of every film they'd made together. Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, and Stellan Skarsgård all appear, recounting what they saw of this arrangement up close.

The film's quiet question is whether Vitali's choice was devotion, obsession, or simply the only way someone this close to a singular vision could feel useful. Stream Filmworker (2018) online on iFILM.