2001: A Space Odyssey

 

Remembering

2001: A Space Odyssey

I think I must have first seen this film on late night TV when I was like 7 years old. Compared to Star Wars it was dreadfully sssslow and the plot felt confusing and discordant.

But wait - isn't that Leonard Rossiter straight out of Rising Damp?

So I stuck with it, even tho the ending made no sense.

Years later at School our English teacher showed the film to our class, none of which had seen it before or understood it. So at least I had one up on them.

I can say that with confidence because those kids had never watched a sci-fi film in their lives. You could tell just by looking at their gaping mouths and confused looks. Like their mothers had just turned up dressed as sexy Jabba Slave girls.

Up until that point it was all about foot ball, football and more football. I was like the class geek because I knew all about this movie.

So we're deep in The Dawn of Man and we finally get to the Monolith scene and all the monkeys are freaking out to the discordant polyphonic sounds of Ligeti's 'Requiem' .

The class are horrified.

'Whats that funny singing all about miss?' Asks one snotty nose kid. Good point. What is all that singing about? I kind of know the answer already but I cant articulate it.

'Its to show the monoliths power' explains the teacher. Though I don't think that blew anyones mind. Would any of these kids grow up to be movie directors or composers? Fuck no. Most these kids will be kids will be mothers and fathers by the time they are 21.

Watching it now as an adult, its still dreadfully sssslow and the plot still feels confusing and discordant.

But as a film maker I get all that. And now I've come to love its idiosyncrasies.

However one cant watch this film in a vacuum. Reading various articles over the years has helped me understand this movie a whole lot better. But still, a few self explanatory scenes wouldnt have gone a miss surely. It bothered me when I was seven and it still bothers me now.

Like a quick shot of Daves pod entering the Star Gate thing.

Something like this :

After deactivating the Hal 9000, Dave discovers the mission directives.

He takes a pod out to investigate the giant monolith floating over Jupiter...

As Dave fly's over the monoliths surface, his pod becomes engulfed in arcing electricity and is pulled towards it.

Dave is somewhat concerned about all this.

The pod is pulled thru the star gate.

And there's nothin Dave can do about it.

It is quite likely that a lot of these scenes were never filmed or cut out. Or that they simply ran out of money and time and just had scrabble together what they had. I guess a lot of the ending was improvised with heavy editing.

Who knows.

The point is I was seven and largely understood the bulk of the movie but the ending kinda went off the rails due to a lack of quick A to B scenes. Had they just spent a little more time on these, the movie might have grabbed more laymen into the fold, rather than the higher echelons of movie academia.

But thats cinema folks.