 |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Title:
Director: Writer: Producer: DP: Editor: Studio: Year: TRT: Language: Subtitles: Genre: Ratio: |
2001 Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clark Stanley Kubrick Geoffrey Unsworth John Alcott (additional photography) Ray Lovejoy MGM Polaris 1968 156 min. English English French Spanish Sci-fi / Drama 2.20:1 |
 |
Cast | ||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood William Sylvester Douglas Rain |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Summary | |||||||||||||||||||
| The discovery of a large and mysterious monolith on the moon, and a signal between it and another one near Jupiter, prompt an effort to explore that part of space and unravel the mystery. Along the way, the onboard computer begins to unravel and the sole surviving crew member is forced to journey into the unknown. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Features | |||||||||||||||||||
| Filmed press conference with Arthur C. Clark | |||||||||||||||||||
| Comments | |||||||||||||||||||
| I hesitate to catagorize this movie as "Sci-fi". It's really a drama set in the future. (At least it was 'the future' when it was made.) The film itself forced a leap forward in special effects technology and aesthetics. Kubrick creates a ballet of restricted and calculated movement while showcasing these advancements. It's a debt I wish film-makers would pay. Like Peckinpah's ballets of violence, Kubrick's work in this film seems to have been instructive mostly to critics, leaving directors to treat the camera like a slack-jawed yokel starring at some pretty Christmas lights in June. The number one complaint about this movie is that it's 'boring'. That there are seemingly infinite stretches where nobody says a word, like a week-long road trip with your family. Well, that's so close to an astute observation it kills me. All that is true, but it's the way Kubrick addresses this tyranny of the monotonous that's so fantastic. The sterility of the journey is the destination. Kubrick disrupts Frank Kermode's theory of a sense of an ending. Hours are spent talking about and pursuing this mysterious monolith, and when the time comes to actually get there, the rug is puled out from under us. He's created a narrative parabolic curve. Our desires to touch the goal increase exponentially every second we watch the crewmen run in bright white anti-gravity circles, or suck steak through a straw. But the point is, we are never going to get there. And even though that's the case, it doesn't matter. Kubrick creates the end of all mystery, the answer to the universe, and just when you think you're on to something, he reminds you, hey, you really think you in your grand insignificance can really know that? |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||