> I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch.
If you were going to cut material from 2001 that made it unbearable to watch, the film would be 5-10 minutes long.
If you were going to cut material from 2001 that made it unbearable to watch, the film would be 5-10 minutes long.
And that's a legitimate problem for many people. I have lots of friends (and family) who find it unbearable. Even today, my dad and I will watch it together, but everyone else will leave. "BOOORING!"
(I read the book as a kid so I could figure out what was going on and explain it to my dad. No one else wanted to know.)
I think it could have given me all the things I loved about it AND been less artsy about lack of explanation, but I wouldn't have wanted to spend less time enthralled by a slow, graceful docking maneuver or observing daily life on the centrifugal deck, or witnessing the full interaction between HAL and Dave. Lots of people get very bored by these and want to see more forward movement in the plot, more action, but I just sit there fascinated. (Less so today, but that's only because the content is now somewhat dated, and I'd rather watch an updated equivalent.)
I suspect the kind of movie that appeals to people like me may not get made again.
2001 doesn’t do that. More than anything Kubrick was a photographer, and it’s possible to enjoy 2001 just for the visuals - the colour, the composition, the geometry and perspective.
It’s like a moving coffee table book that happens to be making a point about the far future of humanity.
I’ve probably failed to explain that very well so here’s a well known example.
The story about the shooting of Barry Lyndon has been covered on HN before. In short Kubric got the fastest lenses he could and had old camera specially adapted so that he could film by candle light. Of course he also knew that such a wide aperture would give him a tiny depth of field, conveniently rendering the scene like a flat period painting come to life.
I suspect he may have worked backwards from that simple idea to the rest of the film but that just speculation on my part.
His use of newly invented steadycam in the Shinning for dream like scenes with the kids is another example.
Watching his films seems to be about more than just the plot and the story. I lack the vocabulary to adiquately explain myself, I’m just a fan, but it’s kind of like watching an art installation that happens to be a block buster film.
Not just any lenses! Lenses designed for NASA to capture the far side of the Moon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7