Okay, uh, wow. This was a movie. I think. My brain is fried after watching this. When I finished this film, the first thing I did was text the person who got me to watch it, "What the [heck] did I just watch." Here's what I thought of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
When people talk about a movie they like, they can sometimes talk less about the movie itself, what they liked or disliked, etc., and more about what kind of emotional response it elicited from them. This has to be one of those movies for me. The pure wonder, amazement, and confusion this movie got out of me reminds me of my first time watching Perfect Blue, but it reminded me more of The End of Evangelion. And there are plenty of aesthetic similarities between 2001 and EoE: sci-fi, long shots, elements of cosmic horror, classical music, making me question the meaning of life, etc. etc. etc. As previously mentioned here, and as stated in my project on the auteur, Stanley Kubrick loves his hallways and his long shots. He's the king of balanced shot composition. Every frame feels like something out of a dream. One of my personal favorites is when a stewardess on the ship headed for Clavius brings Floyd his food by walking along a circular wall until she's upside down and then walks into another room while still upside down. Although this wasn't necessarily a "new" shot (the earliest rotating room that I could find was used was from 1921), it's still impressive. There are a few shots with double gravity, specifically during "Jupiter Mission", like this one, where gravity pulls in two separate direction. Wikipedia tells me it's the same thing except Poole's actor was strapped into his seat while eating so that he wouldn't, you know, fall straight down and break his neck. Apparently Kubrick had a giant "Ferris wheel" constructed to do a lot of these rotating room shots, and it paid off because they all look awesome. I was having a grand old time watching this film. It was great. Then, I got to Jupiter. Oh, boy. What to say about "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite"? Gorgeous? Yes. Confusing? Absolutely. The scene where Dave enters the monolith is around 10 minutes long, and I got none of it. It's absolutely beautiful, and I do wonder how Kubrick managed to come up with those shots, from the laser light show to the shifting stars. I've been thinking about what exactly any of it could mean, and I honestly don't have an answer. I don't understand why the hallucinations shift from being distorted stars to just discolored shots of what is clearly the Earth. It's got to be done for a reason, I just don't get why. And why does Dave see himself growing older like in timeskips? What's the meaning of all white room at the end? Why does Dave turn into a giant floating space fetus, which is apparently called a "star child"? I don't know. The one thing I'm semi-confident about is that the monolith represents evolution and humanity's intelligence and drive for innovation. Beyond that, nothing. I can only theorize that it's about the life cycle of humanity and the nature of technological progress, but I'm not even sure about that because I couldn't actually explain why it would make sense. I didn't know where else to put it, but I just want to mention that Stanley Kubrick dropped this bombshell of a film on moviegoers and then decided to end it with the "Blue Danube Waltz," and I just feel like that's such a powerful move to make. Now, I can only think that if Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange today, he would absolutely have chosen to have Alex sing "Mr. Blue Sky" during the rape scene in that movie and would have then ended the movie with the proper "Mr. Blue Sky." 10/10, I've got no idea what I watched. I used to think Kubrick was either a genius or totally insane, but now I realize that he's both.
1 Comment
|