Film: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Genre: Drama/ Sci-fi
Source: USA (1968)
Rating: G
Location/Format: Blu-ray
Grade: A

It's been too long since I've recorded a movie review--in part because I've been busy, yes, but mostly because I feel overwhelmed approaching the monumental task of writing about Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece 2001. How do I say anything meaningful about a film that literally left me breathless and overwhelmed and lost and moved and confused and deep, deep in thought? It is a film that to me is everything everyone said it was, and still somehow more.

First off, I appreciate that the Filmspotting podcast's recent Sacred Cow discussion of the film which prompted me to finally go watch it. I waited to listen to the podcast until after I had seen the film so that I could process it a little on my own, but their insights and conversation were really meaningful, even though I don't see the whole film in the same light they did.

Without question the film is a masterclass on the marriage of sound and image. As many critics have noted, there is little dialogue, but to call it a "near silent movie" is in no way accurate. Kubrick uses music as a narrative device, providing meaning to what we see before us, making it evocative and emotional and erudite. His use of Strauss's "Blue Danube" or the famous "Also Sprach Zarathustra" are epic and profound, but two scenes in particular stood out for their sound. First, the encounter of the Monolith by the astronauts on the surface of the moon, when the shrieking chorus both terrifies and overwhelms us as viewers. Few other films have filled me with as much dread, as much foreboding, as this scene. As the astronauts descend the ramp (and let me note that the effects are so legitimate looking throughout the film that it is incredible to realize that this was filmed in an era so far before computer effects and before man had even actually been to the moon) one cannot help but anticipate a meeting with a higher power, a God-like figure too great for man to comprehend.

Because I have a hard time not reading this film (despite Filmspotting's insistence on Kubrick's misanthropy and pessimism) as about encounters with the divine. The Monolith transforms those who come in contact with it, as Moses was transfigured before God on the mountain, both for better and for worse. I almost see the Monolith not just as an artifact from an ancient and more advanced race of beings, but as an angel of metamorphosis. Some can handle the transformation (though I like the reading of the end of the film as the end of one race and the birth of something new, I also like reading it as Dave's rebirth and new beginning. Does it kill him or elevate him?) and some cannot. Some pervert the elevated status, as the apes, for example, develop tools, and then use them to destroy. It's a movie so filled with possible interpretations that it's silly to try and harmonize them all, and maybe this meaning for me wouldn't hold up under a second viewing, but I definitely saw in this film both the terror and the awe with which the divine is often described in literature the world over. I like that, and though the music in the moon sequence may have terrified, it also reinforced the wonder of the interstellar object.

The second sequence that stood out (and this is probably no surprise) is the life and death of HAL 9000. Never has a machine produced such an emotional response from me--not even Arnie's dying "thumbs up" in Terminator 2. HAL is, fascinatingly, the one character in the film who expresses the most emotion, and so perhaps it is fitting that his loss is far more painful than, say, Dave's death in the still-semi-perplexing sequence at the end of the film. I did not anticipate the pain of hearing him plead for his life, of losing his brain function, of ultimately singing, tragically "Daisy Bell" as he lost all sense of himself. It is a powerful moment, in part because the action here is so frantic compared to the slow pace of the rest of the film. Here we are invited to question madness and paranoia, yes, but also repentance and forgiveness and understanding. The entire sequence on Discovery One is incredible from a technical and storytelling perspective, and it's certainly the most narratively coherent section of the film, but it also provides an emotional heart to the film as well. Fascinating.

There is so much more to say here. The beauty of Kubrick's composition. The structure and the epic scale. The minutia and mundanity with which Kubrick paints a reasonable future (based on 1960s understandings). The technical expertise of making characters run in enormous hamster wheels or walk on the ceiling. The awe. The power. The self-reflection caused. It really is a masterpiece, and one I will have to make a note to rewatch every few years, since I think it's interpretively rich enough that each viewing could bring new analysis, ideas, or insights. I'm glad my first viewing was at least on a 52" screen, and I hope and hope and hope that I will have an opportunity to see it projected full size on a big screen in my lifetime. 

I loved it.