12/25/2023 0 Comments 2001 a space odyssey 1968![]() (This is particularly true of the machines and the ironmongery in general.) Levy, on the other hand, claims that the “emotional imagery of a shot is given changing meaning by repeating it in different situations in the film. In Kubrick’s case I would imagine that having spent so much money on special effects – and having achieved such results – he could not resist showing them off as much as possible. The first time Levy tracks along a road and we miraculously see at each succeeding intersection his hero running up (or down) the cross street, the effect is breathtaking. Both Kubrick and Levy are far too self-indulgent. And then it goes on and on later in the film the same effect is used again. One never thought Johann Strauss would provide the music of the spheres, but somehow it seems invigoratingly right. As it slowly starts to fall, he cuts to a fantastic spaceship swirling round and round to the Blue Danube waltz. Not always: when Kubrick links yesterday, the dawn of man, the discovery of the first tool, the first weapon, with tomorrow, he has his primitive homo sapiens exultantly throw a jawbone into the air. By and large, both films remain a series of gorgeous images.Ģ001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. ![]() And in its quite different way Herostratus is stunningly photographed: W2, the twilight area between Westbourne Grove and the Harrow Road with its gasometers, its iron bridges, and rotting slums are rendered in such a way as to make them play an almost independent role in the film.īut neither film manages the much more important task: to create its own beauty – one independent of the individual shots – one which comes from the articulation of the shots, the construction of sequences, or even sometimes simply from a gracefully apt camera movement. Somehow, they are lit to look like nothing we have ever seen before, only perhaps dreamed of, or briefly glimpsed in those frighteningly awesome moments just before a summer storm breaks. Much of Kubrick’s £3 millions went for special effects, and, for the first time ever, a science fiction film looks plausible: the spaceships with complex exteriors like early Paolozzi sculptures, the surrealistic surface of the moon, and the fantastic prehistoric landscapes. If his space vehicles move with agonizing precision, wouldn't we have laughed if they'd zipped around like props on "Captain Video"? This is how it would really be, you find yourself believing.Certainly, both are beautiful to look at. Perhaps they are, but I can understand his motives. Some of Kubrick's effects have been criticized as tedious. ![]() The stars look like stars and outer space is bold and bleak. There is not a single moment, in this long film, when the audience can see through the props. What remains fascinating is the fanatic care with which Kubrick has built his machines and achieved his special effects. There is hardly any character development in the plot, then, as a result little suspense. But they behave so strangely - talking in monotones like characters from " Dragnet" - that we're hardly interested. The pilots grow suspicious of the computer, "Hal," which runs the ship. Three scientists are put on board in suspended animation to conserve supplies. The ship manned by two pilots, Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. And man, confident of his machines, brashly follows the trail. The action advances to the year 2001, when explorers on the moon find another of the monoliths. ![]() Who put the monolith there? Kubrick never answers, for which I suppose we must be thankful. In a million years, man will reach for the stars with the same tentative motion. The apes circle it warily, reaching out to touch, then jerking away. The shock of the monolith's straight edges and square corners among the weathered rocks is one of the most effective moments in the film. Until this moment in the film, we have seen only natural shapes: earth and sky and arms and legs. Thus do man's ancestors become tool-using animals.Īt the same time, a strange monolith appears on Earth. ![]() Kubrick begins his film with a sequence in which one tribe of apes discovers how splendid it is to be able to hit the members of another tribe over the head. Yet the machines are necessary because man himself is so helpless in the face of the universe. And Kubrick's actors seem to sense this they are lifelike but without emotion, like figures in a wax museum. But the achievement belongs to the machine. ![]()
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