Too Clinical to be Engaging

Rating: 7/10 (6 December 2013)

According to legend, during the premiere of 2001, Rock Hudson walked out of the screening yelling "Will someone tell me what the hell this movie is about?" Today I feel his frustration. Is the movie a marvel? Yes. Is this film ambitious? Yes. In the words of Bernardo Bertolucci a film "made in poetry instead of prose?" Yes. An entertaining film? Well...define entertaining. For while those on its wavelength would certainly benefit from having watched what is still regarded as not just a gold standard in science fiction but the ONLY standard in science fiction, others not inclined to watch ten minutes of flickering, tunneled lights shouldn't bother. My unbiased mind tells me I have just watched something near perfect, yet my biased, more affecting senses yen for something a little more emotionally rewarding.
I honestly find 2001: A Space Odyseey to be prosaic. Stifled from the movie's top-heavy ambitions and need for perfection that it cannot register on an emotional level; at least not to me. It justifies itself by sending a message about technological society and how one day we will move beyond the tools we use to a higher form of consciousness.
It's a message worth postulating and the midriff of the film properly highlights the movie's motif of said tools used for mutually assured destruction versus self-discovery but can't we encompass these themes into a tighter package? Then again I suppose if the film's point was introduced in familiar wrapping it would be easily digestible but also easily forgettable.
Stanley Kubrick's work as a whole just doesn't hold much sway with me. His earlier work like The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960) are to me, the perfect balance between intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. Dr. Strangelove (1964), A Clockwork Orange (1971) Full Metal Jacket (1987) have their moments if only for their macabre sense of humor but 2001 along with Barry Lyndon (1975) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) remain in my eyes, Kubrick at his most aloof.
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