2001 opus one review8/18/2023 The bone is thrown into the air and dissolves into a space shuttle (this has been called the longest flash-forward in the history of the cinema). I have always felt that the smooth artificial surfaces and right angles of the monolith, which was obviously made by intelligent beings, triggered the realization in an ape brain that intelligence could be used to shape the objects of the world. In the first, prehistoric apes, confronted by a mysterious black monolith, teach themselves that bones can be used as weapons, and thus discover their first tools. And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it - not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a good conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it. What he had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man's place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer. The overnight Hollywood judgment was that Kubrick had become derailed, that in his obsession with effects and set pieces, he had failed to make a movie. The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling. The film did not provide the clear narrative and easy entertainment cues the audience expected. Rock Hudson stalked down the aisle, complaining, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?'' There were many other walkouts, and some restlessness at the film's slow pace (Kubrick immediately cut about 17 minutes, including a pod sequence that essentially repeated another one). To describe that first screening as a disaster would be wrong, for many of those who remained until the end knew they had seen one of the greatest films ever made. Fearing to fly and facing a deadline, Kubrick had sailed from England on the Queen Elizabeth, doing the editing while on board, and had continued to edit the film during a cross-country train journey. Clarke, special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull and consultants who advised him on the specific details of his imaginary future - everything from space station design to corporate logos. Kubrick had been working on the film in secrecy for some years, in collaboration, the audience knew, with author Arthur C. It is impossible to describe the anticipation in the audience adequately. I attended the Los Angeles premiere of the film, in 1968, at the Pantages Theater. Kubrick's film is almost unique in enhancing the music by its association with his images. When classical music is associated with popular entertainment, the result is usually to trivialize it (who can listen to the “William Tell Overture'' without thinking of the Lone Ranger?). The music is associated in the film with the first entry of man's consciousness into the universe -and with the eventual passage of that consciousness onto a new level, symbolized by the Star Child at the end of the film. Now consider Kubrick's famous use of Richard Strauss' “Thus Spake Zarathustra.'' Inspired by the words of Nietzsche, its five bold opening notes embody the ascension of man into spheres reserved for the gods. At the same time, there is an exaltation in the music that helps us feel the majesty of the process. And so, through a peculiar logic, the space hardware moves slowly because it's keeping the tempo of the waltz. We are asked in the scene to contemplate the process, to stand in space and watch. Obviously such a docking process would have to take place with extreme caution (as we now know from experience), but other directors might have found the space ballet too slow, and punched it up with thrilling music, which would have been wrong. The Johann Strauss waltz “Blue Danube,'' which accompanies the docking of the space shuttle and the space station, is deliberately slow, and so is the action. It wants to be sublime it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.Ĭonsider two examples. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. North's score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for “2001" because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action - to give us emotional cues. Although Kubrick originally commissioned an original score from Alex North, he used classical recordings as a temporary track while editing the film, and they worked so well that he kept them. No little part of his effect comes from the music. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001" is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in "2001: A Space Odyssey," but in how little.
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