Miraculous

Rating: 9/10 (25 November 2007)

I love this movie. I give it enormous credit for being one of the earliest (and still rare) movies that cannot be watched without engaging the world of ideas; due to both the subject matter, and the terse style by which Kubrick advances the story. The viewer is asked to make enormous leaps between disparate and often wordless sequences, that don't telegraph meaning overtly. Understanding or enjoying the movie isn't possible if you refuse to be thoughtful or if you're a passive viewer. This was an affront to older audiences (See "Rock Hudson") conditioned to believe that entertainment was the first, last and only purpose for movies; and it was a revolution for younger audiences who were ready and willing to explore films potential, and see what was next in the 60s. The movie of ideas, and not the asinine, self-important "issue" movie that Hollywood loves to reward, is the highest use for film. Sadly, most movies ask nothing of viewers. Issue movies only ask that you bring your overblown, overvalued morality with you, and reach a conclusion the entire culture already agrees on. Give me a difficult movie that makes some demands.
2001 is also entertaining. Humanity reduced to a pissing match with a computer is both chilling and extremely funny. (HAL: "Dave, I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.") Although I think the HAL plot line is a bit normative for a movie this ambitious.
I'm not a member of the Kubrick cult, but I'm in awe; the movie is absolutely fearless, audacious & cinematic. It's a Rorschach test and a zen koan. It trains your attention purposefully on the awesome & the mundane; reminding viewers that most communication does not advance any complex plot in our lives or any noble purpose. It's used to pass almost useless info back and forth, to achieve trivial goals and to make small talk. Socially, we are ants.
The attempt to predict how a mission... how an excavation on the moon would look, etc. are either dead-on or very interesting guesses. The movie would have been intriguing even if all it did was introduce the sober design logic it uses, and it's general thoughtfulness; i.e. the monolith has the dimensions of the first three ordinal numbers, squared: 1x4x9.
On this viewing I was struck by the question of how the canvas of a movie screen might be used. Is film imagery about portraying things that aid the viewer in constructing a narrative, or is it about vicariously experiencing a characters vantage? The sequence in Dave Bowman's cage accepts both readings depending on which way it's to be understood. The sequences with the monolith suggest that the genre "ghost story" is separated from "metaphysical exploration" by only the thinnest of lines.
Every frame of this movie is thoughtful AND beautiful. Hollywood has been able to do that, what... 4 times?. I'm a big fan of Citizen Kane, but that movie concerns, first and foremost, film technique, a wunderkind narrative, and a clever borrowing of a magnate's life. It doesn't make me think deeply about non-filmic ideas to any great degree; other than the obvious bromides about money not buying happiness, controlling people isn't being loved, etc.
I'm struck now by how 2001 is overlooked in the "best films of all time" polls. 2001 is the better film, making it (for me) the most important film made in film history. Kane will have to settle for 2nd.
Critic Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post quibbles that the movie is dumb because 2001 wasn't like this. (?!) How can you even respond to a remark that far off-course?