How 2001: A Area Odyssey Turned “the Hardest Movie Kubrick Ever Made”


Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Area Odyssey has been praised in all man­ner of phrases because it got here out greater than half a cen­tu­ry in the past. An ear­ly adver­tis­ing cam­paign, faucet­ping into the enthu­si­asm of the con­tem­po­rary coun­ter­cul­ture, referred to as it “the ulti­mate journey”; within the equiv­a­lent­ly fashionable par­lance of the twen­ty-twen­ties, one may say that it “goes laborious,” in that it takes no few daring, even unprece­dent­ed aes­thet­ic and dra­mat­ic turns. The brand new video essay from Simply One Extra Factor even describes 2001 as “the laborious­est movie Kubrick ever made” — which, giv­en Kubrick­’s uncom­professional­mis­ing ambi­tions as a movie­mak­er, is cer­tain­ly say­ing some­factor.

In one of many many inter­view clips that con­sti­tute the video’s 23 min­utes, Steven Spiel­berg remembers his con­ver­sa­tions with Kubrick within the final years of the mas­ter’s life. “I wish to make a film that adjustments the shape,” Kubrick would usually say to Spiel­berg. Arguably, he’d already executed so with 2001, which con­tin­ues to launch its first-time view­ers into an expe­ri­ence in contrast to any they’ve had with a film earlier than. In contrast to the extra sub­stance-inclined mem­bers of his gen­er­a­tion, Spiel­berg went into the the­ater “clear as a whis­tle,” however “got here out of there altered” nev­er­the­much less. It did­n’t require medication to appre­ci­ate in spite of everything; “that movie was the drug.”

This isn’t to say that 2001 is pure­ly and even pri­mar­i­ly an summary work of cin­e­ma. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Arthur C. Clarke, Kubrick put a substantial amount of tech­ni­cal thought into the movie’s imaginative and prescient of the long run, with its well-appoint­ed area sta­tions, its arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent com­put­ers, its video calls, and its tablet-like cell units. Work­ing within the years earlier than the moon land­ing, says Stan­ley Kubrick: The Com­plete Movies creator Paul Dun­can, they “needed to com­plete­ly visu­al­ize, and make actual, issues that had nev­er occurred.” Such was the actual­ism of their spec­u­la­tive work (as much as and includ­ing imag­in­ing how Earth would look from area) that, as Roger Ebert notes, the actual Apol­lo 11 astro­nauts may describe their expe­ri­ence sim­ply: “It was like 2001.”

Con­ceived within the warmth of the Area Race, the movie envi­sions a fantastic deal that did­n’t come to move by the epony­mous yr — and certainly, has but to mate­ri­al­ize nonetheless right now. “We haven’t fairly received­ten to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence as por­trayed,” says star Keir Dul­lea in a Fiftieth-anniver­sary inter­view. “Virtually, however not fairly.” Nonetheless, even since then, the tech­nol­o­gy has come far sufficient alongside that few of us can pon­der the cur­hire state of AI with­out quickly­er or lat­er hear­ing the omi­nous­ly well mannered voice of HAL some­the place behind our minds. The saga of astro­nauts cur­hire­ly strand­ed on the Inter­na­tion­al Area Sta­tion does con­trast harsh­ly with 2001’s visions of sta­ble and well-func­tion­ing life in out­er area — however as a sto­ry, it would effectively have appealed to Kubrick in his Dr. Strangelove mode.

Relat­ed con­tent:

1966 Movie Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Area Odyssey (and Our Excessive-Tech Future)

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made 2001: A Area Odyssey: A Sev­en-Half Video Essay

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

“Kubrick/Tarkovsky”: A Video Essay Explores the Visu­al Sim­i­lar­i­ties Between the Two “Cin­e­mat­ic Giants”

How Stan­ley Kubrick Turned Stan­ley Kubrick: A Brief Doc­u­males­tary Nar­rat­ed by the Movie­mak­er

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Area Odyssey?

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.



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