AHEAD OF ITS TIME: KUBRICK’S ‘2001’ A SCI-FI CLASSIC
Your favorite movies are owned by one corporation; change up your cinema
The year is still young and Disney still has six-plus movies on its hands to release throughout the course of the next eight months, not including releases in other film franchises owned by Fox, which will fall under Disney’s control after their acquisition is complete.
That may sound surprising, but what’s more surprising is how The Walt Disney Co. has managed to buy up nearly every important entertainment property in film and TV over the past decade – though the mouse isn’t the only firm snatching up intellectual properties, television networks, and expanding its already massive conglomerates.
It seems as if the film industry is on its way to safely securing a very profitable oligopoly, squashing any chance of new, truly original movie properties being produced anytime soon.
So, in the spirit of celebrating the art form, before lowest common denominator entertainment completes its saturation of the market, I’d like to take this time to reflect on one of the most original and influential films in history.
“2001: A Space Odyssey,” directed by genius auteur Stanley Kubrick, is the 1968 sci-fi classic that redefined the language of cinema as we know it.
The plot centers around astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, two scientists monitoring hypersleep life support systems for the spacecraft Discovery One.
Sent on a classified mission to investigate a mysterious extraterrestrial artifact, Bowman and his crew suffer unexpected technical difficulties while cruising to their destination when their ship’s prototype artificial intelligence, HAL 9000, starts malfunctioning.
Things aren’t quite as simple on the surface as they appear, however, as this three-hour epic touches on some of the most profound moments in human evolution, the nature of existence, and the presence of a higher power.
Not to mention, it’s also got spaceships.
But how does this 50-year-old film hold up today?
Despite the reverence with which this movie is talked about, there are some aspects of 2001 which do not mesh well with the way modern audiences consume movies.
Kubrick’s pacing is absolutely glacial in comparison to the epileptic story progression of most films today, his cuts are methodical, and not much really happens.
But 2001 wasn’t made to satisfy modern audiences; in fact, 2001 wasn’t even really made for audiences of the time.
Kubrick’s masterpiece was made to elevate the art form.
There is more serious artistic intent behind the first cut in 2001 than in the whole of “Avengers: Endgame.” This film is pure cinematic hypnosis, a meditation on the meaning of life, and the story of man’s role in the universe.
So by its very nature, 2001: A Space Odyssey is no popcorn flick. And yet, despite its antiquities, I found myself utterly enthralled with my first and subsequent viewings of the film.
There is something so inexplicably perfect and emotionally provocative about 2001, a feeling that can only be conveyed through watching it. From the truly timeless visual effects, to the now iconic use of German composer Richard Strauss’ “Sprach Zarathustra,” Kubrick’s most iconic film is as close to perfect as any piece of art can be.
Our attention spans may have shortened and our tastes in entertainment may have changed, but Kubrick will always be the master. If you’re tired of the current blockbuster drudgery, then I highly recommend sitting down to experience this masterwork.
Just do yourself a favor and turn off your phone while you do, because watching 2001 is like enjoying great poetry. It’s complicated, vague, and sometimes boring. It requires one hundred percent of your attention, but once you understand the meaning, it becomes all the more enjoyable.
There is not much that can be said of 2001 that hasn’t already been endlessly discussed in the 51 years since its debut, but its importance remains profound. Every popular movie franchise since the ’70s owes its success to the technological innovation and understanding of visual storytelling that Kubrick brought to the table with this landmark feature.
In a time where films live or die based on their celebrity line up and the amount of visual effects they can pack into each frame, it’s necessary to take the time to appreciate the classics. And this is definitely one – for the ages – to be appreciated.
For me it’s the purest expression of cinematic art ever committed to celluloid. I saw it at a drive-in theater during the summer of 1968, when I was all of nine years old, and it changed my Universe. Here’s my synopsis:
An unseen intelligence (God? Extraterrestrials? Take your pick.) saves our apelike ancestors from almost certain extinction. They also leave a little burglar alarm on our Moon to let them know if their little experiment in evolutionary manipulation pays off. After we detect it and trigger it, the alarm’s signal is aimed at the vicinity of Jupiter, so naturally we have to investigate. It’s as though this unseen intelligence left a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow.
After the subplot involving the HAL 9000 computer ends, we are left with a single surviving astronaut, Dave Bowman, who encounters another monolith orbiting Jupiter. Unlike Monolith #1 (A teaching machine? A form of intellectual stimulation? Take your pick.) and Monolith #2 (The burglar alarm), Monolith #3 opens a wormhole to another part of the Universe where the intelligence resides. When Dave reaches that territory and put in surroundings that he can deal with, he is studied while his life passes in a surreal, time-distorted fashion. At last he is returned to Earth in a new, transcendent form, perhaps representing the future of the human species as we become a spacefaring race ourselves.
At a purely sci-fi level, 2001: A Space Odyssey suggests that the evolution of our species was actually manipulated by an ancient extraterrestrial race. At a more philosophical level, the film is Stanley Kubrick’s meditation about what the age of space flight could mean for the evolution of humankind.
The film also has a lot to say about both the promise and peril of new technology. By using bones as tools, our apelike ancestors are able to kill for food, but they also learn how to kill one another. In the film’s iconic match-cut, our first killing tool (a bone) becomes our most modern killing tool: The orbiting nuclear bomb. As for HAL 9000, he begins as a benign tool for helping us, but eventually “evolves” into something more self-aware, interested in self-preservation, even capable of murder.
This is a film of very big ideas.