AFI #15: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on July 10, 2020 and ABC Radio Central Victoria on October 12, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(G) ★★★★★

Director: Stanley Kubrick.

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack, Vivian Kubrick.

Finally heading outside during the pandemic.

When Stanley Kubrick offered 2001: A Space Odyssey to movie production powerhouse MCA, the company's head Lew Wasserman reportedly said, "Kid, you don't spend over a million dollars on science fiction movies". 

This was the '60s, and million-dollar budgets had been around since the silent era in the 1920s, but sci-fi was still seen as a genre comprising cardboard sets, hubcaps on strings and other things that didn't cost a million bucks. By the '40s and '50s, sci-fi films were generally regarded as B-movies of little artistic merit, with the likes of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) notable exceptions.

But Kubrick saw potential for the genre to be something more, to say something profound. He wrote to author Arthur C Clarke in 1964, saying he wanted to make the "proverbial good science-fiction movie", and the two combined to do just that. 2001: A Space Odyssey took the genre seriously, not only in the way it presented space travel, but in the way it could be used to ask big questions about life, the universe and everything. In doing so, they changed cinema.

From its opening moments, it's obvious 2001 is aiming for profound (some critics would say it missed and hit "pretentious" instead). We stare into the darkness as Ligeti's Requiem (the creepiest piece of music ever) howls at us, before the sun peeks over the Earth, the opening fanfare of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra blaring, and then a subtitle tells us it's the dawn of man. This is the furthest thing there is from Barbarella, the other big sci-fi hit of 1968. This wants to art. This wants to be cerebral. 

What follows is mindblowing now, but must have been positively brain-melting back in 1968 because there had been nothing like it before. The effects were next level, paving the way for Star Wars, but the content was also out of this world. Mystical monoliths, angry apes, killer computers - The Boston Globe rightly gushed it was "the world's most extraordinary film ... as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life". It's visual trickery and otherworldly philosophies led stoners and acid-droppers to lose their minds (the star gate, man!), triggering a reworking of the poster's byline - it was re-branded as "the ultimate trip" to cash in on the unforeseen hipness. 

Some critics who didn't get it recanted on repeat viewings, although some hold out that it's overblown. But the film has become a regular fixture in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound director and critic poll since 1992. Critic Barry Norman, writing about the film in his top 100 list, noted how it could be seen as cold and obscure, but declared that "2001 is so imaginative, breaks such new ground and remains, even now, so infuriatingly thought-provoking that it stands out as a landmark in the evolution of the cinema".

He's not wrong. It's irregular narrative isn't about following a single character, but the entirety of humankind, from its discovery of tools to its first steps beyond the dual infinities of time and space. It's only in the second and third of the four segments that we get something resembling a protagonist, and it's only in the third segment where we see characters face dilemmas and make choices that shape their existence.

"Say it to my face, Dave."

Despite about 88 minutes of its runtime (including the opening 25 and closing 23 minutes) being dialogue-free, 2001 is continually compelling, not least because we're trying to figure out what is going on and where things are going next. It takes 30 minutes before we get any indication of plot via dialogue, and 42 minutes before that plot is advanced. For long stretches, we hear nothing but breathing and the hiss of oxygen. But it's always riveting, beautiful, and intriguing.

The technical achievements of Kubrick and his effects team help keep it all grounded and dazzling. The ape costumes still look pretty good (holy shit one of them gets attacked by a fucking leopard!), the spinning camera/set tricks never get old, and Kubrick's continual fetishisation of the technology is engrossing (as well as part of the point). There's also a beauty and elegance to his compositions, whether it be the landscapes of Africa or a man walking down the corridor of a spaceship. 

And then there's the ending, where your brain begins screaming "what the fuck is going on?". There's an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but my interpretation is basically the same as this fast-talking British chap:

I can understand people being bored or frustrated by 2001, and for not being on board with its greatness. It takes the things we expect in a film - a typical three-act structure, a protagonist, dialogue, a clear and discernible plot, answers to questions - and largely ejects them out into space. It's a deliberately different film - some might say deliberately difficult and obtuse - where very little happens on a small scale. Even the most conventional section, where Dave (an under-rated Dullea) battles the computer HAL (one of cinema's greatest "villains" and a remarkable creation), is told slowly and often in near silence.

But slow and silent shouldn't necessarily be downsides, and certainly aren't when they're as beautiful and profound as this. A "story" that explores the nature of humanity, technology, evolution, the infinite, and our place in the universe deserves to be told in a methodical, graceful, and steady fashion. Kubrick understood this, and chose to tell his and Clarke's story this way for a reason. 

In the process, he revolutionised special effects, helped tear up the cinematic rule book, and reinvented an entire genre. He proved once and for all that sci-fi could and should be taken seriously. But best of all, 2001 took movies through the star gate, to see what was on the other side.