With the 27th pick in the 2018 TDOS Cabin by the Lake Movie Draft, I select...
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968):
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Dir. of Photography: Geoffrey Unsworth
Writer(s): Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke (based on the novel by)
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Douglas Rain
Genre(s): Science fiction
Runtime: 2 hours, 29 minutes
IMDb Entry:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=nv_sr_2
If my love of film flows outward from
Blade Runner, then Stanley Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey represents my first major step towards understanding the sci-fi tradition that
Blade Runner belongs to. Though they are wildly different films, each is emblematic of a visually arresting, cerebral, Nietzschean approach to the craft.
2001 is another film that I managed to see in the theater long passed its initial theatrical release, and what a wonder it is to behold in such an environment. Its investigation of the relationship between man and his machines, as well as the prognostication of what the "next step" may look like as man outgrows his machines, is positively sublime, and reflective of a time in film history when the film could not be extricated from its home in the theater.
2001 was meant for the big screen.
It's a difficult film to describe, and also difficult to "spoil," in the contemporary sense. It's more like a symphony in three distinct movements than a linear filmic experience. Each movement illustrates man's connection to the stars, and how man was destined to be thought of as more than the sum of his physiological components. Man, like the very monolith that figures so centrally to the film's thematic resonance, is out of place in the universe, in that man can question his very place in that universe.
2001 articulates that question of "place" in a number of fascinating and cyclical ways. In the "Dawn of Man" segment at the film's opening, we see our genetic ancestors discovering power, and a beginning for man. By the "Star Gate" sequence at the film's close, we're introduced to the
next beginning for man. The film is an allegory of birth and death, of what it means to come into being, and what it means to .
There is also sense of delight and whimsy at the heart of
2001's interrogations into the nature of our universe. Kubrick's decision to score the film using an array of classical pieces proved to be both balletic and beautifully-rendered. The shots of
Discovery One, the satellites, and other spacecraft set against the black of space, spinning in their centrifugal motion to the tune of a waltz, betrays a charm that Kubrick is not often credited for. These tools of man delight us, but as the failure of Hal 9000 shows us during the "Jupiter Mission" section, and as the "Star Gate" sequence makes abundantly clear, man is destined for greater things than the management of machines.
There is so much to say about
2001: A Space Odyssey, and I'm afraid I don't have the time to say it all. t is clearly a film designed to inspire awe, rather than to thrill or shock or satiate. It is a film that resists the audience's desire for answers. It is "required reading" for anybody who's ever looked up at the stars and wondered, "What lies beyond the moon for man to discover?"
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@Sluggah.
