2001: A Space Odyssey

Ahead of its time by possibly 20 years. Definitely imperfect; a tad messy, and the plot doesn’t fully land. But this is a triumph of spectacle. It’s hard to imagine how they could have made something this futuristic in the 60s. How much must this have boggled the minds of viewers in 1968? In many ways, this is also a horror movie. This isn’t a boring film — or at least, calling it boring is too crude. Parts of it are boring, and parts of it are gripping. That is part of the point, and part of the problem. What strikes me is that the four acts seem to belong to different kinds of film; indeed, they can be grouped in different ways depending on how you look at the picture. Acts one and four are the fantastical ones: they are metaphysical, the least plot-driven, and perhaps the ones that feel truest to the film’s greater ambitions. Acts two and three, in contrast, have a narrative emphasis: but then acts one and two are slow, and even boring (albeit beautiful), whereas acts three and four are more gripping. So the effect created is that the film doesn’t fit together amazingly well, because the acts keep pairing off according to different principles. It never quite settles on whether it wants to be metaphysical or practical, symbolic or narrative, an experience or a story. That is why the second of the four acts is the least successful — it's here where the film leans hardest into practical plot without yet becoming gripping enough for that to pay off. The futuristic technology is awesome. The cinematography is absolutely stunning. But the story is too practical and, dare I say it, redundant. The, let’s call them, “political” elements overcomplicate the film. We don’t need to know why this random dude is going to this moon base. The third act has a lot of the same practical qualities, but it works because it is gripping. The plot is genuinely tense, HAL is an absolutely legendary villain, and it is by far the most propulsive part of the film. But that creates another problem: it feels oddly out of kilter with the other acts and indeed this is the one act where there is no monolith. [And why is the intermission halfway through the third of the four acts and 60% of the way through the film?] It is so focused on plot, realism, and suspense that it almost feels like its own film. To be honest, it could have been. Acts one and four, by contrast, feel like they belong together most naturally. They are the least concerned with plot and the most fantastical. They are where the film becomes something stranger, more supernatural, more abstract. In that sense they feel the most quintessentially 2001, even if one is stately and the other gripping. Of course, though, you miss out on the most famous and memorable part of the film which is HAL 9000. So, anyway, this is what Kubrick should have done. He should have combined the second and third acts, hacking at the former such that the monolith appears quite early on in this new second act. Yes, you miss out on some gorgeous space scenes. But then the whole film flows better together because it adheres to this classical three act structure far better. And you don't get any of the banal space politics.