Director: Stanley Kubrick (UK, USA). Year of Release: 1968
Pre-historic Earth. A load of monkeys arse around – fighting, learning primitive tools by taking the rib of a carcass and using it first to attack first the animal skeleton, then other monkeys. There is a lot of this. For the first 15 minutes, we see nothing but monkeys and other animals. No-one talks – no-one has the ability. Then a monkey throws a bone high into the sky, and it turns into a 60 foot Barbie. Oh wait, hang on. That’s another film.
There is no denying that 2001 is an extremely influential and much parodied film. It is certainly a film to be admired. But is it something to be liked? Maybe I’m not the right person to ask. I’m not a great science fiction fan, and 2001 is full of space porn. Endless lingering shots of space ships moving very, very slowly. I understood what it was doing, saw even that there are people who get very exciting at watching this sort of thing. I just failed to be moved myself.
But let’s follow the plot, such as it is. A metal aircraft drifts through space – did I mention how slowly and uneventfully this happens? – to the musical accompaniement of various Strausses. First Richard’s portentious Auch Sprach Zarathustra which loses a little of its impact for me as it was what they played at the beginning of the stock car races – immediately before Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
Then there is Johann’s Blue Danube – more balletic, used as a background to us watching the space ship’s inhavitants coming to terms with weightlessness. At first we witness a passenger / business trip to the moon- An on-flight doctorHeywood Floyd is quizzed by a group of Eastern Europeans, including a pre-bald Leonard Rossiter, about what he knows about rumours of an epidemic, which has caused all communication with the moon to break down.
But this is all a prelude to a voyage to jupiter. Two pilots, Dave and Frank, are left in charge, with the help of the almost sentient computer HAL. The other scientists on board have been put into suspended animation. Cue further scenes of spaceships moving verrrry slowly, sometimes rotating, intersperced with Dave and Frank moving equally slowly (well, if you think about it, much more slowly) as they go about their on board business.
There are those who will argue that 2001 addresses deep questions. But does it really? Just as The Matrix is a lot less profound than it thinks it is, I get the feeliing that 2001 doesn’t so much bring us to think as make us smugly feel that we are having deep thoughts. Maybe I’m missing something, but for all the impenetrable black monoliths and children flying through space, the film did little to enhance my understanding of how the world is.
Maybe there are profound questions being asked there, but they are not being put in a way that engages the audience – not this audience members at least. What are these black monoliths supposed to represent? What’s this star child bit towards the end, or the regency décor? To be honest, I just didn’t care, which wasn’t helped at all by the fact that I had not been required to invest any emotion in the protagonists up to this point.
2001 does address some modern concerns about AI, but what does it actually have to say? That computers might become psychopathic? As often, it’s hard to put it better than Pauline Kael who remarked: “2001 is a celebration of cop-out. It says man is just a tiny nothing on the stairway to paradise, something better is coming, and it’s all out of your hands anyway.” This is not profundity that we’re watching, just someone who’s saying life is shit and there’s nothing we can do about it.
2001 was, let us remember, released in 1968. This is not just the year in which students and workers across the world took the streets but the year after films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde rewrote what was possible from a Hollywood film. You could challenge authority, you didn’t need a happy ending. And what does 2001 offer? Endless long shots of metal space equipment turning very slowly. This is not a film which offers much humanity.
To be fair, the scenes in which HAL becomes increasingly unhelpful are by far the best in the film, not least because they’re among the few scenes in which something is actually happening. The voice of Douglas Rain as HAL – competent but scarily unemotional – adds a certain level of creepiness. There is genuine tension in the scenes where pilot Dave realises that his life is in the hands of a literally unhumane megalomanic which does not value his life.
But at least HAL’s lack of emotion has a dramatic purpose. For most of the time, we are watching people we don’t care about doing things that don’t really matter. That and endless shots of spaceships turning very slowly. This is one of the coldest films that I have seen. There is no enjoyment, no empathy, nothing that might make you care for anything which is happening on screen.
I am going through a difficult period in my relationship with director Stanley Kubrick. The more I learn about Spartacus, the more obvious it is that the film’s greatness comes despite its director, not because of him (he virulently opposed the “I’m Spartacus” scene). A recent re-watch of A Clockwork Orange was equally disappointing, and although I hated Eyes Wide Shut when it came out, I shudder to think how it will come across when I’m not urging the director to succeed.
Of course that’s only half the story. Of course there’ll always be Doctor Strangelove, and Paths of Glory, and even Lolita. Kubrick has not suddenly become a bad director. But his place in the pantheon of great directors is much more secure in theory than after you watch most of his films. I think that this is a profound shame, by the way. I still really want to be in awe of Kubrick’s genius, despite any evidence I might see in his actual films.
CinePhil 