Page 43 - July18LivingSCCLmagazine

This controversial film by Stanley Kubrick was thought by many
to be a masterpiece, but many others considered it a complete
disaster. That opinion was split among both movie critics and the theater-going public. Kubrick deliberately left many questions unanswered, and the film was largely a visual affair with little dialogue. Kubrick co-wrote the film with science fiction writer Arthur Clarke, who wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously. The novel addresses many of the unknowns in the film, but not all. At the film’s premiere, Rock Hudson stormed out, proclaiming, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
Many others exited too.
NASA never considered a space wheel as a practical artificial gravity machine.
The film received four Oscar nominations and won one for Kubrick himself for Best Special Effects, the only Academy Award Kubrick ever received. The special effects are astounding and hold up even today. I’ll spare you the technical details, but Kubrick and his team, especially special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull, pioneered revolutionary and innovative techniques for the space shots that broke new ground in the industry. Kubrick worked with NASA engineers and scientists, Carl Sagan, and countless other experts. It was Sagan who suggested that the extraterrestrials not be shown,
a departure from most science fiction films. The spacecraft models are spectacular and are so well lit and photographed that they seem absolutely real, as do the spacecraft interiors. Astronaut Frank Poole (Gary
"Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
Lockwood) jogs around a circular track where gravity is impossible, in an ingenious Ferris wheel contraption Kubrick built.
The premiere version of the movie was 161 minutes, but Kubrick wisely cut 17 minutes for the theatrical release. Even so, some sequences go on far too long. The “Dawn of Man” sequence involving the apes could easily have been half as long. The same could be said for the famous “Star Gate” sequence toward the end, which is a psychedelic light show that includes abstract shapes, landscapes, and a blinking eyeball. The meaning of the bizarre ending, which I shall not disclose here, is completely left for you to determine.
Kubrick commissioned a musical score to accompany the film, but abandoned it for the memorable classical masterpieces, “Thus Spake Zarathustra” during the opening sequence and “The Blue Danube” for the docking sequence, which, like the aforementioned scenes, was twice as long as necessary. Yep. This easily could have been a two-hour film with nothing of substance lost.
We have to talk about HAL, the supercomputer that controls the ship and talks and reasons like a normal super- intelligent person, but makes some
very poor decisions.
We’re led to care
about him and are saddened by what ultimately becomes of him.
A discussion of this film is best summarized by Sam Lesner of The Chicago Daily News in his 1968 review: “I have seen Stanley Kubrick’s mind-bending, maddening, awesome, debilitating, demoniacal, dehumanizing, and miraculous extraterrestrial fantasy-drama twice. At first, I thought Kubrick had flipped his lid. Now I believe he is a genius.” L
Is SIRI a modern HAL 9000?
LIVING @ SCCL, July 2018 43