2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick asks us to spend 149 minutes considering where human beings came from and what might follow them. 2001: A Space Odyssey, written with Arthur C. Clarke, makes that sound like a reasonable use of an evening, and we think it is. It is an exceptional science-fiction film, patient enough to make looking at a machine an event and strange enough to make that event unsettling. Anyone expecting a brisk adventure will have to settle into a different pace.

The long, wordless prehistoric opening sets the terms: watch closely, and do not expect somebody to arrive and explain what matters. Kubrick gives the ape-men a weight in the story that a more hurried film might reserve for its named actors. There are moments when the length of this passage feels imposed, and we could have done with a little less insistence. Even so, starting here makes us carry thoughts about human origins into the space-travel sequences.

Geoffrey Unsworth’s cinematography gives the machines the attention usually spent on faces, making their shapes and movement worth studying. The use of miniatures and matte paintings helps: the machinery seems to occupy space, with weight and distance we can understand. Production designers Ernest Archer, Anthony Masters and Harry Lange make the technology look usable, which matters more than making it look impressive. We believe people could work with this equipment, and that belief gives the film room to become stranger.

Ray Lovejoy’s editing lets us follow movement through a shot and wait for it to finish. The classical music gives that waiting a rhythm; The Blue Danube is especially effective because its easy grace makes the machinery seem almost companionable. We were moved by the combination of measured motion and music, more than we expected to be by a film so interested in equipment. For a while, the pleasure of watching something travel through space is enough, without an urgent destination.

Douglas Rain’s HAL 9000 provides the sharpest sense of another mind at work. His voice has a composure that invites trust, yet the care with which he speaks also makes us listen for whatever might be wrong. Rain makes the computer’s personality absorbing without needing the usual visible signs of a performance. Keir Dullea’s Dr. David Bowman and Gary Lockwood’s Dr. Frank Poole are deliberately less inviting company, and the restraint works, though it leaves us knowing their professional manner better than we know them.

That distance is the substantial reservation. Kubrick and Clarke are so taken with humanity’s future that the individual humans can feel like an inconvenience, and the dialogue does little to bring them closer. Some stretches are absorbing chiefly for what there is to look at, which will not satisfy every appetite for drama. We would still defend the time the film takes: its pauses allow us to notice our own unease, instead of having each new question immediately answered by the next scene.

Science fiction can become a guided tour, with every invention explained before we have had a chance to wonder about it. Kubrick trusts us to look, listen and remain unsure, and the technical care earns that trust; the uncertainty never feels like a cover for careless filmmaking. There is no need to arrive with a theory, or to pretend that every minute is equally absorbing. Give it a large screen and an uninterrupted evening, and let the questions wait.