Watching that opening, rarely is something so grandiose, so unironically epic, and something that has been lampooned and parodied to death still capable of conjuring up feelings of magnificence. “2001: A Space Odyssey” is one of the few movies remaining with this unspeakable power in cinema. People may argue about their favorite Stanley Kubrick films, but there are few that so fully demonstrate his mastery in just a few moments.
“2001” left so many audiences in 1968 floored. It was a movie unlike anything anyone had ever seen and perhaps still is. Upon watching the film for the third time, “2001” in many ways is decidedly not what one would associate with a modern epic, or even an Old Hollywood epic. Its images have scope and size, but how much of the film earns its resonance in the way even Kubrick copycats have conditioned us to expect today?
The opening goes against the grain completely. Kubrick shows us empty, still images that let us know this is Earth, but not an Earth we know. Apes appear and interact at the Dawn of Man, and the traces of humanity we see are the first hints of fear, boredom, curiosity and most terrifyingly of all, aggression.
When the music cues again, it doesn’t invoke melodrama but that of discovery, violence, genius and evolution. If Kubrick knew anything it was that these themes needed to be portrayed on as large of a canvas as possible if they were to mean anything.
The second portion journeying to the moon is almost a novelty. The operatic intensity has shifted to balletic elegance. Kubrick teases us with images of recognizable brands like IBM, Pan-Am and more. What purpose does a glimpse of a zero-gravity toilet serve but to get a laugh? What plot elements are introduced because a single character has an extended, Face-Time like phone call with his precious daughter? These set dressings are wry jokes we don’t often see in doom and gloom epics of today. The humor of this film is world building and not just a diversion.
What he further gets to show in this middle sequence is to ease us into the liberating movements and perspectives he conjures aboard the Jupiter Mission vessel later. Up and down have little meaning in Kubrick’s invented vision of space. The angles we’re forced into and the depth we can detect all introduce us to the more challenging themes he’ll use these perspectives to pose later. (SPOILERS FOLLOW)
One of the most nail bitingly intense sequences in the film is also one of its simplest. The supercomputer HAL has just murdered one of the crew members, Frank, while out repairing a malfunctioning communications unit. The pod capsule slowly turns toward the camera (not necessarily in Frank’s direction either, but it works because of the liberated sense of space and perspective), extends its arms, and in a few increasingly closer shots of it, we’re made instantly clear of its malicious intentions. There’s a quick shot of HAL’s all-seeing eye, and then Frank is fighting with his severed cord as he drifts off into space and dies.
The moment comes as a shock, but the aftermath is more suspenseful. Dave (Keir Dullea) enters a separate pod and rushes to collect Frank’s body, surely knowing there’s no chance of saving him. Kubrick conveys an unbelievable sense of urgency through no dialogue and no bombastic score in a way no other director would. He uses the controls to zero in on Frank and slowly makes a B-line across an unclear vast of space to grab him. Dullea’s stony glare penetrates directly through the camera while pulsing sirens and blinking beacons assault our senses. The next shot is of the isolated words “Computer Malfunction” blaring incessantly. No other frantic shots of panicking crew men or anything of the like give us a sense that these hypersleep men are anything but doomed. Kubrick let the world know what it is to watch a person die, and he did it by showing us the dropping displays on a single computer monitor. We don’t even know these characters, but we can’t believe what we’re seeing and the tenuous grip this higher computer power holds on our lives.
“2001” will forever be a polarizing masterpiece. Boring, pretentious, long, confusing, pointless: the list of silly pejoratives is endless on the Internet. But not only is the film not as plotless as you may recall, but it’s as relevant as ever. “2001” is a film about the incomprehensible, about the higher powers in the world that render time, space and meaning moot and help evolve us to a greater level of being and understanding. Racism may one day disappear, power may become less corrupting and all the other noble sentiments we explore in the movies may someday not be as universal, but a complete understanding of the universe is something we’ll always be striving for.
You are spot on.Something that struck me at the BTAA’s a few mohnts ago, was that most producers that went up with their directors to collect awards were women. Look at most of the industries top production companies – the majority are headed by women, and I think this is because they can keep a man’s ego in check far easier than another man is able to. There are a lot of great female directors out there, but to be honest, the industry as a whole is still quite sexist. I know we aren’t meant to say it, but it is definitely true.