New Movies: 2001 : A Space Odyssey

  • Share
  • Read Later

(2 of 2)

Like Space Odyssey itself, the ambiguous ending is at once appropriate and wrong. It guarantees that the film will arouse controversy, but it leaves doubt that the film makers themselves knew precisely what they were flying at. Still, no film to date has come remotely near Odyssey's depiction of the limitless beauty and terror of outer space. In this 2-hr. 40-min. movie, only 47 minutes are taken up with dialogue. The rest of the time is occupied with demanding, brilliant material for the eye and brain. Thus, though it may fail as drama, the movie succeeds as visual art and becomes another irritating, dazzling achievement of Stanley Kubrick, one of the most erratic and original talents in U.S. cinema.

Mind Boggler. Since he went on his own odyssey, from Look photographer to the ionosphere of the moviemaking business, Kubrick, 39, has built a reputation for sensing—and often starting —new trends. At 27 he made a killing with The Killing, a gritty city melodrama that is still being imitated. His next project was Paths of Glory, one of the first—and best—of this generation's antiwar films. After that came two more trend setters. The first was Lolita, a hollow, literalized adaptation of the book, for which it can be said only that it wore basic black before black comedy was fashionable. The other, Dr. Strangelove, was a major American contribution to the furiously active cinema of the absurd.

Now that Kubrick has taken off on his space kick, his fans are convinced that a sci-fi renaissance is on its way. As the spy film sinks slowly in the West, and the western sinks rapidly into TV, studios are occupied with some dozen ambitious fantasy features, ranging from Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man with Rod Steiger, to the high-camp French comic strip Barbarella, with Jane Fonda. The next trend for Kubrick? All he will give away is that it will be "a mind boggler."

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. Next Page