Holy. Crap.
How else does one begin describing 2001, Stanley Kubrick's surreal deep space meditation? Comparisons inevitably fall short. It is certainly among the greatest science fiction films of all time, rivaled only perhaps by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, but it so completely transcends the genre's limitations that looking at it as a genre piece seems grossly unfair. It is a stylistic melting pot, alternating between silent, epic, and even avant-garde renderings of its haunting metaphysical vision, and Kubrick not only uses them all well in and of themselves, but finds a way to link them together into a whole that is nothing short of hypnotic. And then, there's the most important question: What the ^*&$ did that black box mean?
The box is 2001's central visual motif, linking together the film's four principle parts--"The Dawn of Man," a Darwinian fairy tale about the origins of intelligent man, where the box is first unveiled and leads to the invention of the first tool, a club; the establishment of the main story, with the discovery of another box on the moon; the Jupiter mission, highlighted by a battle between the astronauts and the frightening HAL 9000 (where's technical support when you really need them?); and a surreal dream/time lapse sequence with an experience of travel in space and time that reminded me of the Visualizer in iTunes. It would be incorrect to say that these pieces are tied together by some underlining narrative framework that the "filmeratti" can see but that the rabble can't.
Yet the story is unified, if not by anything we can point to, then by a tonal quality. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert emphasizes Kubrick's ability in 2001 to make the audience contemplate what is going. I think this is what makes it so radically different from traditional films. Even in the best films, we are more or less placed in the thick of things, in the time, in the place, and (often) in the person. 2001 does not offer us this satisfaction, but, perhaps, something more, in that we end up contemplating something far more mysterious than we can comprehend. We do not associate with it as much as we reverence it, a commingling of melancholy and awe that might be compared to listening to the proclamation of St. John's Passion on Good Friday.
Article comments
1 - randy
Nice review. 2001 is my all-time favorite movie, and is head-and-shoulders above most other sf flicks. Also, the fact that it still looks so good after almost 40 years is remarkable, and a tribute to Kubrick's (and Clarke's) vision.
What a pity that Warner Bros chose not to rerelease 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 2001...