Classic: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL 9000: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Stanley Kubrick, probably one of the most influential and creative film directors in the history of the film industry, has a knack for making you really take note of everything you see.
Full Metal Jacket was psychological, showing you in vivid detail a gritty side of war, with the mental psyche of the characters being tormented to the point of implosion. The Shining, despite it being adapted from a novel, was a 2 hour psychological horror, showing just how loneliness can destroy the human mind and cause them to do strange things. Dr Strangelove was, while epitomising just what a spoof film should be, just what the title suggests, strange, satirising deep political debate over nuclear related issues.
So in 1968, when Kubrick gave the public an insight into what the future may hold, it certainly wasn’t how other directors would go about it. Well, no-one’s quite like Kubrick, and 2001: A Space Odyssey was a bold and successful attempt at exploring what the future may hold through both supernatural and, once again, psychological elements.
If that domino piece falls on you, you're f*cked.
With a rousing, very memorable score, the film sets itself up to be different from the very beginning, a very hefty 3 minutes of film displaying absolutely nothing, instead giving you a raw sense of suspense, the eerie and slow crescendo building doing a lot with a little. Once the film kicks in, it takes a shade under 26 minutes for the first piece of worded dialogue to be spoken. Kubrick needs to keep the audience gripped to the storyline without any use of speech, a complete reliance on the combination of music, camerawork and acting used to keep the audience engaged.
The story is simple but confusing: a black “monolith”, in the shape of what would most easily be described as a domino piece, contains mystical powers, and has been around since the dawn of man, landing on earth, much to the bemusement of the first stage of evolution. This monolith seems to trigger something which causes a leap in evolutionary development.
Skip forward 1000s of years: humans are in space. Space travel has become a norm for the rich, a luxury way of travelling and working, a new industry for humanity to thrive in.
The story takes you on a doctor’s trip to the Moon to discuss strange occurences happening with a space project. Turns out that monolith has been causing more havoc.
Skip forward some more, and you are into the main bulk of the film: intrepid astronauts with a human-like computer travelling towards Jupiter in the first man-made mission there. The problem is, the computer’s intelligence becomes a factor when the astronauts aboard start to doubt the system’s “fail-proof” design. The computer, being overly intelligent, discovers this doubt becoming a plan to shut it down, and it decides that that isn’t for the good of the mission.
The plot flows curiously throughout its course, with odd sequences mixed intriguingly with some gloriously constructed suspense sequences. Space becomes the perfect platform for audience mind games, and when the film is over, you’re left with the feeling that the film’s storyline was almost irrelevant, and that this film was just one big social experiment on Kubrick’s part.
But despite this, the film is entertaining, riveting, and full of both suspense and thrills that rarely falter. Silence is golden here: Kubrick uses it to incredible effect, taking you on a journey through time that uses a lack of sound to better effect than films that rely on it. But when 2001: A Space Odyssey implements the pitch-perfect suspenseful score accompanying the film when necessary, it’s used clinically and with expert precision, to build the suspense to greater heights.
2001: A Space Odyssey, while not for the masses, is an exploration into the human psyche and what future could have been possible, with an ending that leaves you dazed and confused, but utterly riveted to the unique and wonderfully bizarre series of light arrays and set pieces. It’s a cult classic by all accounts, and it’s one that, if you don’t read too much into, is watchable again and again, leaving you with the same incredulity and wonderment that you experienced the first time. I highly recommend.
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