6 ms·

2001 and most of Kubrick's other films are definitely part of "the canon" of films that everyone who appreciates film as art should see. Unfortunately, you can'

2001 and most of Kubrick's other films are definitely part of "the canon" of films that everyone who appreciates film as art should see. Unfortunately, you can't just do a surprise screening of these films for your family or other audiences and expect them to be receptive. They will need to "discover" these things on their own. The best thing you can do is to make sure they have opportunities to see this stuff and to talk it up when possible. One of the best pleasures of being a teen is discovering, on your own, how rewarding a great film can be and developing "a taste" for films, music and other aesthetic experiences. You simply can't force this stuff.

RobertRoberts 9y ago
It wasn't a surprise screening. I had been talking about watching it as a family for a few years. And my family enjoys movies that most simply do not. One of my kid's friends all said interstellar was boring, and he loved it. 2001, I think, is just a bit long in the tooth. If it's redone (properly, shot for shot, in the right spirit) with updated effects and sound, I think it would be way more impactful for modern audiences. (the monkey suits really require forced suspension of disbelief today, where in the past they did not) I even explained the theory behind the movie, Dave ending up in an environment he couldn't understand, like an animal in a zoo. We discussed this movie, it wasn't a throwaway experience. And to be blunt about Kubrik, he and the film makers were self indulgent in a few places. Where it wasn't art, it was conceit.
- jerf 9y ago
  "If it's redone (properly, shot for shot, in the right spirit) with updated effects and sound, I think it would be way more impactful for modern audiences." Yeah, as much as some people would like to jump on us for being "uncultured" if we say so, there have been certain unavoidable changes in the world that fundamentally change how a modern person can't help but see the movies. 2001 wants to send a message that this is a very high-tech world, and went to a lot of effort to do so, and I'd say is certainly an integral part of the foundation of that part of the movie. But how is my nine-year-old supposed to get that on a gut level when he turns off 2001, and picks up Mario Odyssey, something that is in some sense literally millions of times more advanced than the technology shown in the movie, and is real-time interactive to boot? The context has fundamentally shifted. Even I, growing up in a time and seeing it for the first time when at least the difference was less glaringly obvious, can't help but now see a weird and thoroughly unintentional disharmony between what the film is trying to portray the world as, and what the images actually say to me now. It doesn't "ruin" it, but it would be silly to claim that it is doesn't affect the movie experience at all, either, when so many other similarly-sized details are routinely understood to be important.
  - ashark 9y ago
    I don't think giving in a New Star Trek makeover would do any good. The whole movie only makes sense in its time. If we made a film kinda like it now with our own ideas of what the tech should be like and how the future would look, we'd make a whole different film, not just add holographic displays or something. Story, themes, the texture of the film, it'd all be significantly different. The tech in the film is part of the perspective from which it was made, so IMO trying to update it is pointless at best and harmful at worst. I don't think that's true for all movies, but for 2001 I think it is.
    - jerf 9y ago
      I mostly agree with that, actually. I think it could be reasonably re-adapted... it is still future tech, even if it's closer to something we can at least imagine building now. The only thing I'd grumble about, which isn't even strictly speaking disagreement, is that while I agree that Hollywood today would inevitably want to film a different story than what 2001-the-movie was, I don't know that that's a necessity brought on by our times so much as a sign of how culturally enfeebled Hollywood has become underneath the protective coating of the world's best special effects. Hollywood's horizons have really closed off in the past couple of decades. Nolan is notable here as one of the few people who still push back against this somewhat, IMHO. The ever-increasing growth of thoughtcrime in their philosophy/philosophies can be seen in how every year more and more movies of the past become unthinkable that they'd be made today.
      - ashark 9y ago
        Part of the problem is we've seen some of the nastiest predictions of past sci-fi come true... but in the most boring ways. 2001 has an optimistic space-ageyness to it that'd be hard to replicate now without it coming off as forced and false. Our moon base would be covered in advertisements and each feature named after a corporate sponsor. Everyone on the Pan-Am flight (whatever we rename it to) would be some future-Youtube "personality" live casting their flight and future-gramming their in-flight meals. HAL would become vulnerable when some of his network-controlled doors and such lost their wifi connection and fell back on manual controls, turning the whole thing either comic or, if the manual controls also fail to activate and allow him to win after all, saving him even from his fate in the original film, tragicomic. All of this would come off as insufficiently pessimistic and no-worse-than-things-now to pass for an acceptable projection of our future. Just doing a straight remake of 2001 with more iPhones won't help it, and my guess is it'll make it feel really, really weird, and not in the ways it was trying to be. Possibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. Its story isn't narrow enough, allegorical enough, or far future enough to ring true now without adding some of our cynicism. The retro-future tech of the original saves it from that scrutiny.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  > If it's redone (properly, shot for shot, in the right spirit) with updated effects and sound... In a way, it already has with the 1984 sequel "2010: The year we make contact". That was a fairly mediocre film which simply didn't capture any of the wonder of 2001. 2001 is what it is. Simultaneously an auteur film, a vision of the future from the past, and fine science fiction. Not everyone's cup of tea, but truly great films even from the distant past (like Nosferatu) can be appreciated today-- in spite of poor special-effects. On the other hand, re-makes (or sequels) are a mixed bag. The Blade runner remake/sequel was stunning but just doesn't have the gritty magic of the original. Similarly with Solaris or even The Terminator for that matter.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Never tell anyon that the movie you are about to show them is a classic, or your favorite, or that they’ll love it. You are setting them up to be hyper critical and easily disappointed.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Expectations are a big deal. Which is why I have mixed feelings the "IMDB pre-check". I've watched some middling-reviewed films that I found awesome and vice-versa (Spy Kids had an 8.0 - was a bad movie even for kids).
  - mcguire 9y ago
    A corollary of the general principle that you should never say anything more predictive than "hey, watch this!"
- mcguire 9y ago
  As an aside, I don't like the "zoo animal" hypothesis, at the very least because it isn't symmetrical with the hominid sequence at the beginning.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    Kubrik said aliens had abducted him and put him into a zoo, more or less. And we were seeing it from a perspective of a human not able to understand the reality of the zoo's alien form. And the room was created for the human. And then, just like how humans were created from monkeys, the star child was created from a human...evolution. Google it, I found his explanation for his own movie the only one worth considering.
- nasredin 9y ago
  >I even explained the theory behind the movie, Dave ending up in an environment he couldn't understand, like an animal in a zoo. "A theory", not "the theory". There's quite a lot of theories about this movie. Example: The Monolith is the movie screen http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%202.html http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%202.html Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Spa... --- >effects and sound No, no, no! The sound design in 2001 is perfect. 2001 is usually cited as the top or one of the top movies WRT realism in space ever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it?!
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    No, I got that from reading Kubrik's own comments on the meaning of the film. I ignore speculations on what an artist means, it's a waste of time when I can just find out from the artist himself. (there's some interview of him online somewhere where he discussed this.) The sound and effects are not perfect for today. They are perfect for the 60s. Even by the 80s I could see the effects were starting to look pretty dated. Every time something takes me out of the experience of the movie, either it should have been edited out, or done better. In the case of 2001, it's an old movie. I am old, and I am a movie connoisseur. I wanted to enjoy it with my family like I did when I was younger. But the effects look down right silly. And in a serious movie, you can't have silly looking effects. Compare how the movie gravity dealt with zero-G, it makes 2001 look like high school kids made it now. The one thing that stood out, was there use of tablet computers, that was brilliant, and was done with rear projection, so it looked great even today. The rotating and curved floors are truly inspired work, but the music score is meaningless today, even to me, who grew up with classical music. If the art of film making can't improve on something made in the 60s, then it couldn't have improved on something from the 30s, and we know neither is true. So, 2001 could be remade, just not by hollywood bozos. The story is of a profound mystery, but it's not told from the perspective we have today of putting someone inside the mystery, it's told from an odd 3rd party perspective popular in older cinema. Compare how you felt in Interstellar and Gravity, __you__ were there. It was you who is in danger and in risk. In 2001, the characters were in the mystery, and we were simply observers. Applying modern storying telling techniques (that Kubrik helped pioneer) would dramatically improve the enjoyability of the 2001 story for us today. Edit: I wanted to add that the scene where he's rebooting/working on the computer (HAL), all he does is push in clear plastic blocks. That is just stupid. (He even just pushed them in IN ORDER, wth?) I work on computers, and he didn't even mildly pretend to do anything at all technical. I think this was pure laziness on the film makers part. They knew computers were complicated back then, and to make them seem so stupidly simple that you could find an error by looking and a sheet of clear plastic with no markings or anything? It fools kids and ignorant people, but anyone with any technical knowledge, it rips you out of the experience. Another reason to update it, or at least admit it is not as effective an experience as it once was. A classic doesn't mean it's good now, it means it was good at one time.
Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
Well said. I've always been a Kubrick fan, and a fan of off-the-beat films. For some odd reason I just never watched 2001 b/c I usually wait until I get inspired or "feel in the vibe" to watch things like that. I finally did about a year ago and I was so happy I waited until the time seemed right. Its like The Thin Red Line - only movie I ever walked out of the theater on (I was about 16 or 17). Fast forward about 10 years and upon rewatch I fell in love with it.
- ambrosite 9y ago
  The same thing happens with great novels. I have recently been re-reading some of the novels I was forced to read (and hated) in high school, but I understand and appreciate them so much more as a middle-aged adult. I thought of myself as a pretty smart kid back then, but there were so many things I just could not understand without sufficient life experience.
  - pmulv 9y ago
    This is interesting to me as I've been trying to read books that I couldn't get into in high school like "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and I had to force myself through both because the interest wasn't there. I will say that 1984 was more interesting to me because of the parallels in the world today (and i'm sure every generation sees the parallels which makes it such a classic), but I didn't feel it was an entertaining read. The book within the book section was torture for me.
    - ambrosite 9y ago
      I will not say it's true for every novel. The Outsiders was a book that bored me in school, and I still find it boring. Cry, the Beloved Country on the other hand was completely over my head in high school, but it is one of my favorites now.
  - jerf 9y ago
    I am personally a huge advocate of not forcing this stuff on high schoolers, on the grounds that it has the effect of inhibiting them from ever getting into ever again because they think they already tried it. I believe we should find ways to get the same ideas across, but with works that are more approachable to people of that age, and build a pathway for them forward into the great works of the past instead of trying to teleport them directly to the end goal. But until people in general stop essentially celebrating how awesome it is that we force students into unpleasant and unapproachable works, and consider their distaste and writing off of literature forever as a sign that things are being done correctly, nothing will change. I've often thought I could make a pretty decent literature-appreciation course around the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, no sarcasm, is what really opened my eyes to these issues for the first time, somewhere in my mid-20s. It would piss people off who would assume that it simply can't be possible that we could learn how to appreciate literature from such an accessible and fun (and not-stuffy) source, but I know it can be.
ashark 9y ago
You've gotta develop ways of thinking, ways of appreciating art to enjoy the better stuff. Without more finely-tuned perceptions and, in many cases, a base of knowledge and a kind of vocabulary, taken in a broad sense, you'll miss too much to really get it. Call it "taste" if you like. True in pretty much any medium. Best you'll get from great art otherwise is maybe "yeah, I liked it", while missing much of what it offered. You may catch what you missed later when revisiting it. Much good art isn't very likely to give you even that much of a positive reaction if you watch it too early in your journey. Best way to get people into The Good Stuff is to show them one of the ones with good broad, surface appeal, then talk to them about the things that made it so good that maybe (probably) they didn't even notice, at least consciously. Show them some influences on that work, show them similar things that are worse and talk about why they're worse. Why is this character less effective, why is this similar scene so much better here than there, why did this film put this before that and how would it change if they swapped those things, why does this establishing shot make you feel uneasy all on its own (what is an establishing shot, and why are they there, and what happens if you take them away), and so on. Gotta start somewhere, and jumping in the deep end will turn almost anyone off.

RobertRoberts 9y ago

It wasn't a surprise screening. I had been talking about watching it as a family for a few years. And my family enjoys movies that most simply do not. One of my kid's friends all said interstellar was boring, and he loved it. 2001, I think, is just a bit long in the tooth. If it's redone (properly, shot for shot, in the right spirit) with updated effects and sound, I think it would be way more impactful for modern audiences. (the monkey suits really require forced suspension of disbelief today, where in the past they did not) I even explained the theory behind the movie, Dave ending up in an environment he couldn't understand, like an animal in a zoo. We discussed this movie, it wasn't a throwaway experience. And to be blunt about Kubrik, he and the film makers were self indulgent in a few places. Where it wasn't art, it was conceit.

jerf 9y ago
"If it's redone (properly, shot for shot, in the right spirit) with updated effects and sound, I think it would be way more impactful for modern audiences." Yeah, as much as some people would like to jump on us for being "uncultured" if we say so, there have been certain unavoidable changes in the world that fundamentally change how a modern person can't help but see the movies. 2001 wants to send a message that this is a very high-tech world, and went to a lot of effort to do so, and I'd say is certainly an integral part of the foundation of that part of the movie. But how is my nine-year-old supposed to get that on a gut level when he turns off 2001, and picks up Mario Odyssey, something that is in some sense literally millions of times more advanced than the technology shown in the movie, and is real-time interactive to boot? The context has fundamentally shifted. Even I, growing up in a time and seeing it for the first time when at least the difference was less glaringly obvious, can't help but now see a weird and thoroughly unintentional disharmony between what the film is trying to portray the world as, and what the images actually say to me now. It doesn't "ruin" it, but it would be silly to claim that it is doesn't affect the movie experience at all, either, when so many other similarly-sized details are routinely understood to be important.
- ashark 9y ago
  I don't think giving in a New Star Trek makeover would do any good. The whole movie only makes sense in its time. If we made a film kinda like it now with our own ideas of what the tech should be like and how the future would look, we'd make a whole different film, not just add holographic displays or something. Story, themes, the texture of the film, it'd all be significantly different. The tech in the film is part of the perspective from which it was made, so IMO trying to update it is pointless at best and harmful at worst. I don't think that's true for all movies, but for 2001 I think it is.
  - jerf 9y ago
    I mostly agree with that, actually. I think it could be reasonably re-adapted... it is still future tech, even if it's closer to something we can at least imagine building now. The only thing I'd grumble about, which isn't even strictly speaking disagreement, is that while I agree that Hollywood today would inevitably want to film a different story than what 2001-the-movie was, I don't know that that's a necessity brought on by our times so much as a sign of how culturally enfeebled Hollywood has become underneath the protective coating of the world's best special effects. Hollywood's horizons have really closed off in the past couple of decades. Nolan is notable here as one of the few people who still push back against this somewhat, IMHO. The ever-increasing growth of thoughtcrime in their philosophy/philosophies can be seen in how every year more and more movies of the past become unthinkable that they'd be made today.
    - ashark 9y ago
      Part of the problem is we've seen some of the nastiest predictions of past sci-fi come true... but in the most boring ways. 2001 has an optimistic space-ageyness to it that'd be hard to replicate now without it coming off as forced and false. Our moon base would be covered in advertisements and each feature named after a corporate sponsor. Everyone on the Pan-Am flight (whatever we rename it to) would be some future-Youtube "personality" live casting their flight and future-gramming their in-flight meals. HAL would become vulnerable when some of his network-controlled doors and such lost their wifi connection and fell back on manual controls, turning the whole thing either comic or, if the manual controls also fail to activate and allow him to win after all, saving him even from his fate in the original film, tragicomic. All of this would come off as insufficiently pessimistic and no-worse-than-things-now to pass for an acceptable projection of our future. Just doing a straight remake of 2001 with more iPhones won't help it, and my guess is it'll make it feel really, really weird, and not in the ways it was trying to be. Possibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. Its story isn't narrow enough, allegorical enough, or far future enough to ring true now without adding some of our cynicism. The retro-future tech of the original saves it from that scrutiny.
crispyambulance 9y ago
> If it's redone (properly, shot for shot, in the right spirit) with updated effects and sound... In a way, it already has with the 1984 sequel "2010: The year we make contact". That was a fairly mediocre film which simply didn't capture any of the wonder of 2001. 2001 is what it is. Simultaneously an auteur film, a vision of the future from the past, and fine science fiction. Not everyone's cup of tea, but truly great films even from the distant past (like Nosferatu) can be appreciated today-- in spite of poor special-effects. On the other hand, re-makes (or sequels) are a mixed bag. The Blade runner remake/sequel was stunning but just doesn't have the gritty magic of the original. Similarly with Solaris or even The Terminator for that matter.
valuearb 9y ago
Never tell anyon that the movie you are about to show them is a classic, or your favorite, or that they’ll love it. You are setting them up to be hyper critical and easily disappointed.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Expectations are a big deal. Which is why I have mixed feelings the "IMDB pre-check". I've watched some middling-reviewed films that I found awesome and vice-versa (Spy Kids had an 8.0 - was a bad movie even for kids).
- mcguire 9y ago
  A corollary of the general principle that you should never say anything more predictive than "hey, watch this!"
mcguire 9y ago
As an aside, I don't like the "zoo animal" hypothesis, at the very least because it isn't symmetrical with the hominid sequence at the beginning.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  Kubrik said aliens had abducted him and put him into a zoo, more or less. And we were seeing it from a perspective of a human not able to understand the reality of the zoo's alien form. And the room was created for the human. And then, just like how humans were created from monkeys, the star child was created from a human...evolution. Google it, I found his explanation for his own movie the only one worth considering.
nasredin 9y ago
>I even explained the theory behind the movie, Dave ending up in an environment he couldn't understand, like an animal in a zoo. "A theory", not "the theory". There's quite a lot of theories about this movie. Example: The Monolith is the movie screen http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%202.html http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%202.html Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Spa... --- >effects and sound No, no, no! The sound design in 2001 is perfect. 2001 is usually cited as the top or one of the top movies WRT realism in space ever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it?!
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  No, I got that from reading Kubrik's own comments on the meaning of the film. I ignore speculations on what an artist means, it's a waste of time when I can just find out from the artist himself. (there's some interview of him online somewhere where he discussed this.) The sound and effects are not perfect for today. They are perfect for the 60s. Even by the 80s I could see the effects were starting to look pretty dated. Every time something takes me out of the experience of the movie, either it should have been edited out, or done better. In the case of 2001, it's an old movie. I am old, and I am a movie connoisseur. I wanted to enjoy it with my family like I did when I was younger. But the effects look down right silly. And in a serious movie, you can't have silly looking effects. Compare how the movie gravity dealt with zero-G, it makes 2001 look like high school kids made it now. The one thing that stood out, was there use of tablet computers, that was brilliant, and was done with rear projection, so it looked great even today. The rotating and curved floors are truly inspired work, but the music score is meaningless today, even to me, who grew up with classical music. If the art of film making can't improve on something made in the 60s, then it couldn't have improved on something from the 30s, and we know neither is true. So, 2001 could be remade, just not by hollywood bozos. The story is of a profound mystery, but it's not told from the perspective we have today of putting someone inside the mystery, it's told from an odd 3rd party perspective popular in older cinema. Compare how you felt in Interstellar and Gravity, __you__ were there. It was you who is in danger and in risk. In 2001, the characters were in the mystery, and we were simply observers. Applying modern storying telling techniques (that Kubrik helped pioneer) would dramatically improve the enjoyability of the 2001 story for us today. Edit: I wanted to add that the scene where he's rebooting/working on the computer (HAL), all he does is push in clear plastic blocks. That is just stupid. (He even just pushed them in IN ORDER, wth?) I work on computers, and he didn't even mildly pretend to do anything at all technical. I think this was pure laziness on the film makers part. They knew computers were complicated back then, and to make them seem so stupidly simple that you could find an error by looking and a sheet of clear plastic with no markings or anything? It fools kids and ignorant people, but anyone with any technical knowledge, it rips you out of the experience. Another reason to update it, or at least admit it is not as effective an experience as it once was. A classic doesn't mean it's good now, it means it was good at one time.

Disruptive_Dave 9y ago

Well said. I've always been a Kubrick fan, and a fan of off-the-beat films. For some odd reason I just never watched 2001 b/c I usually wait until I get inspired or "feel in the vibe" to watch things like that. I finally did about a year ago and I was so happy I waited until the time seemed right. Its like The Thin Red Line - only movie I ever walked out of the theater on (I was about 16 or 17). Fast forward about 10 years and upon rewatch I fell in love with it.

ambrosite 9y ago
The same thing happens with great novels. I have recently been re-reading some of the novels I was forced to read (and hated) in high school, but I understand and appreciate them so much more as a middle-aged adult. I thought of myself as a pretty smart kid back then, but there were so many things I just could not understand without sufficient life experience.
- pmulv 9y ago
  This is interesting to me as I've been trying to read books that I couldn't get into in high school like "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and I had to force myself through both because the interest wasn't there. I will say that 1984 was more interesting to me because of the parallels in the world today (and i'm sure every generation sees the parallels which makes it such a classic), but I didn't feel it was an entertaining read. The book within the book section was torture for me.
  - ambrosite 9y ago
    I will not say it's true for every novel. The Outsiders was a book that bored me in school, and I still find it boring. Cry, the Beloved Country on the other hand was completely over my head in high school, but it is one of my favorites now.
- jerf 9y ago
  I am personally a huge advocate of not forcing this stuff on high schoolers, on the grounds that it has the effect of inhibiting them from ever getting into ever again because they think they already tried it. I believe we should find ways to get the same ideas across, but with works that are more approachable to people of that age, and build a pathway for them forward into the great works of the past instead of trying to teleport them directly to the end goal. But until people in general stop essentially celebrating how awesome it is that we force students into unpleasant and unapproachable works, and consider their distaste and writing off of literature forever as a sign that things are being done correctly, nothing will change. I've often thought I could make a pretty decent literature-appreciation course around the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, no sarcasm, is what really opened my eyes to these issues for the first time, somewhere in my mid-20s. It would piss people off who would assume that it simply can't be possible that we could learn how to appreciate literature from such an accessible and fun (and not-stuffy) source, but I know it can be.

ashark 9y ago

You've gotta develop ways of thinking, ways of appreciating art to enjoy the better stuff. Without more finely-tuned perceptions and, in many cases, a base of knowledge and a kind of vocabulary, taken in a broad sense, you'll miss too much to really get it. Call it "taste" if you like. True in pretty much any medium. Best you'll get from great art otherwise is maybe "yeah, I liked it", while missing much of what it offered. You may catch what you missed later when revisiting it. Much good art isn't very likely to give you even that much of a positive reaction if you watch it too early in your journey. Best way to get people into The Good Stuff is to show them one of the ones with good broad, surface appeal, then talk to them about the things that made it so good that maybe (probably) they didn't even notice, at least consciously. Show them some influences on that work, show them similar things that are worse and talk about why they're worse. Why is this character less effective, why is this similar scene so much better here than there, why did this film put this before that and how would it change if they swapped those things, why does this establishing shot make you feel uneasy all on its own (what is an establishing shot, and why are they there, and what happens if you take them away), and so on. Gotta start somewhere, and jumping in the deep end will turn almost anyone off.