 Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Year Of Release: 1968
Plot: After a strange, apparently extra-terrestrial black monolith is found on the moon, it starts emitting a signal towards Jupiter. In response the first manned mission is sent out to the giant planet, however astronauts Bowman and Poole start to have problems with their computer, HAL, which develops homicidal tendencies. But even if they manage to overcome that, they still don’t know wait might happen as they approach their destination. |
Watching 2001 underlines the difficulty of telling what constitutes a ‘great’ movie. It’s routinely included in lists of the greatest films ever made, but I know a lot of people who hate it or who have never managed to watch it all the way through. However if I ask myself whether I think 2001 is a ‘great’ film, I’d have to say yes, but if you asked me how often I watch it, I’d have to say pretty rarely, because it is undoubtedly quite boring.
That seems a contradiction, because I genuinely think it’s an astonishing movie and I’m awe of what director Stanley Kubrick created, but boy does 2001 go on and on and on. This is a film where the first spoken words don’t come for 25 minutes, the first five minutes of dialogue are just a man telling his daughter he’s going to miss her birthday party, and you could actually completely chop out the first 40-minutes without making much difference to the main story. In fact it’s not so much one plot, as a linked series of four tales interspersed with seemingly never-ending but incredibly beautiful shots of spaceships. It resolutely refuses to be clear about what’s going on or why, spend ages on things that don’t really seem that important to the plot (although thematically they’re much more vital) and has an utterly bizarre ending that still has people arguing about what it’s all about.
It probably not surprising then that a lot of people aren’t fans. However it’s also one of the best looking films ever made, is incredibly intelligent and makes you think an awful lot, uses music in an astonishingly effective way, has some brilliant scenes (I’d class Bowman trying to switch off HAL as one of the best scenes in cinema history), possesses a truly impressive scope and ambition, and has had a profound impact on the history of cinema.
The point I want to make here is that asking what the ‘greatest’ movies are, is a completely different thing to saying what most people’s favourite films are, but people routinely confuse the two. To generalise, the first is about film as an artform and taking everything about it into account, from how well made it is to its impact on cinema history, while the latter is largely just about a film’s entertainment factor. I’d imagine most people would agree that something can be great, even if it’s not necessarily fun (Einstein’s General Theory Of Relativity is great, but few people would turn down a trip to the pub so they can stay home and read it). In fact if you were doing a survey asking people for the greatest, best or their favourite films, you’d probably come up with a completely different list for each.
For example, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my favourite films. I think it’s wonderfully entertaining and I can watch it over and over again. However it’d be tough to class it as a cinema ‘great’. It’s immensely fun, but it doesn’t challenge the brain, it doesn’t do anything new, it hasn’t pushed the boundaries of cinema or had a massive impact on film history (although its special effects advances were important). If you asked me overall which is a more impressive film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit or 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’d have to say the latter, even though I’m far more likely to re-watch the former. With 2001 I’m in awe of its virtuosity, beauty and what it has to say and suggest, but with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s just fun.
Many people get up in arms whenever a list of the greatest films comes out, and Citizen Kane is at the top. They say it’s only there because that’s the conventional answer that people think they ought to say, and that actually it’s boring and even those voting for it hardly ever watch it. However these naysayers are missing the point. If it was a poll asking for people’s favourite films, I’d agree that most people saying Citizen Kane were just being poncy, but if you’re talking ‘great’ films, it has to be up there. As a piece of filmmaking (so not necessarily just as a piece of entertainment) it’s astonishing and its importance to the history of cinema ensures it deserves a place on any list of great movies. It’s the same with 2001. It isn’t much fun, but it’s amazing to look at, brilliantly well made and incredibly profound.
After having re-watched Kubrick’s sci-fi before writing this, I doubt I’ll watch it again for another couple of years, but I’ll still defend it as one of the greatest movies ever made, even while I watch my favourite films an awful lot more.
TIM ISAAC
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