January 26, 2010

Stanley Kubrick over the years

By: Sonny Bunch

That great Stanley Kubrick conspiracy theory stirred up a few old arguments I’ve had with people about the great director, arguments that are too complicated to settle in 140 characters or less. This, of course, is why we have blogs.

Responding to someone who argued that 2001: A Space Odyssey was “an abomination,” I tweeted “2001 can be slow at times, and has aged, um, not terribly well. But to say it’s ‘an abomination’ is simply ignorant. Or, ‘ignant,” to which Victor Morton replied “it hasn’t aged a bit.” This is a little bit of silly, willful blindness on the Rightwing Film Geek’s part: The 20 minute “special effect” sequence that dominates “Jupiter and Beyond” has aged terribly — it simply looks silly now in ways that the other special effects (which are genuinely impressive more than 40 years on) in the film don’t. And as much as I enjoy the various waltzes the space ships perform (especially on a 70mm screen), it’s the sort of thing you could never get away with these days. This isn’t necessarily a criticism of 2001, it’s just a fact: It has the pacing of a film made in 1968 by a director who loved indulging in the slower side of life.

The other problem — one that haunts most filmmakers who are looking at the future through the lens of whatever present they happen to exist in at the moment — is that 2001 looks like it’s the 1960s set in space, from the stewardess uniforms to the set design to HAL himself. I guess this isn’t a “problem,” per se, but it does draw attention to its age. You see the same thing at work in A Clockwork Orange, in which Kubrick’s dystopian vision of Great Britain future looks distressingly like a ‘roided up version of Great Britain ca. 1970. This isn’t terribly surprising, I suppose — as I said, most filmmakers looking into the future share this problem (The Fifth Element, Alien, etc.)* — but it does put a stamp on those pictures that makes you notice their age as the years go on. That’s what I meant when I said that 2001 hasn’t aged very well.

*I was trying to think of the most age-neutral film set in the future and had a little trouble. Blade Runner, perhaps? In terms of set design and vision of the future I’d say it was still pretty valid, but the costumes are definitely reminiscent of early-80s New York and L.A. I eventually settled on Event Horizon, which is so generic that it could have come from any era. So, you know, maybe being age-neutral isn’t a plus.