Can we open doors and see through our ignorance?

Rating: Null/10 (13 September 2002)

I remember when I first saw this film back in 1968. The background setting was this: We were standing in line and all claiming how we
were going to see strings holding up all the space craft. We expected the usual stupid plot of some Ming the Merciless going to pounce on some damsel and hold her ransome for some Flash Gordon to come to the rescue.
Weren't we surprised...It was anything but that.
At the anxious age of 19 I remember its slow deliberate pace both attracting me and irritating me a little, reminding me how I always got bored when someone was working on a machine while I couldn't figure out their interest...or, to be more accurate, why I could not grasp what was going on...
I could sense the film reminding me of my own impatience and refusal to stop, take my time, and find the beautiful, majestic pace that people that did relate to machines seemed to possess and to meander their minds into discussions concerning their care and creations.
The slight move, on my part, toward boredom was really a message from myself to myself that the irritation I felt was not the film was boring, but that I was boring and knew that I had to get out of trying to get from point A to point B at the quickest rate possible with anything or anyone. The film married with my own realization that I was going to have to break out of my childish mind, trying to get what I wanted while disregarding everything and everyone else and to start to build bridges with all the things I was bored with, hated, or were indifferent to.

The universe seemed to open up. Kubrick put small layers up slowly until they built into an avalanche and came crashing down. As we move through life we disregard or put things aside or push them out of our way to get to where we are going. Those things come back to haunt us. All of his films moved in this manner and irritated some to a great degree. Mention Kubrick's name and you'll get an immediate respponse, pro or con. We don't like being reminded that those avalanches come down and turn us into puppets, practically insignificant to events that start to steam roll after. Sept. 11 ring a bell?
Thw weakness of our own society shows here also. Somone took their time and was extrememly patient, perhaps up to 7 years in planning the attack on New York and they were competeing with a society stuck in its own road rage, in such a rush it cannot break out. For now, we seem safe. No back up punch was as carefully planned.
What happens if someone makes a ten or twenty year patient assemblage
of a second attack, but decides to use about 7 nukes neatly placed in about 7 cities and assembles everything one little bolt at a time? While we are prepared for a short fight we do not seem to be prepared for any patient, slow methodology that we need to grasp to change what appears to be an easy issue for some careful planner 20 years from now.

Kubrick irritates us because he reminds us of this.