And so, through a peculiar logic, the space hardware moves slowly because it's keeping the tempo of the waltz. We are asked in the scene to contemplate the process, to stand in space and watch. Obviously such a docking process would have to take place with extreme caution (as we now know from experience), but other directors might have found the space ballet too slow, and punched it up with thrilling music, which would have been wrong. The Johann Strauss waltz “Blue Danube,'' which accompanies the docking of the space shuttle and the space station, is deliberately slow, and so is the action.
It wants to be sublime it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.Ĭonsider two examples. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. North's score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for “2001" because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action - to give us emotional cues. Although Kubrick originally commissioned an original score from Alex North, he used classical recordings as a temporary track while editing the film, and they worked so well that he kept them. No little part of his effect comes from the music. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001" is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. Michael Benson has done the Cosmos a great service" (Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks).The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in "2001: A Space Odyssey," but in how little. "At last! The dense, intense, detailed, and authoritative saga of the making of the greatest motion picture I've ever seen. And it features dozens of photos from the making of the film, most never previously published. Drawing also from other previously unpublished interviews, Space Odyssey provides a 360-degree view of the film from its genesis to its legacy, including many previously untold stories. He has had the cooperation of Kubrick's widow, Christiane, and interviewed most of the key people still alive who worked on the film. In Space Odyssey, author, artist, and award-winning filmmaker Michael Benson "delivers expert inside stuff" ( San Francisco Chronicle) from his extensive research of Kubrick's and Clarke's archives. Drawing from Clarke's ideas and with one of the author's short stories as the initial inspiration, their bold vision benefited from pioneering special effects that still look extraordinary today, even in an age of computer-generated images. Strangelove, Kubrick wanted to make the first truly first-rate science fiction film.
Fresh off the success of his cold war satire Dr.
DIGITAL COPY SPACE ODYSEY MOVIE
The movie was the product of a singular collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and science fiction visionary Arthur C. Still acclaimed as one of the most remarkable and important motion pictures ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted the first contacts between humanity and extraterrestrial intelligence. Clarke- "a tremendous explication of a tremendous film.Breathtaking" ( The Washington Post).įifty years ago a strikingly original film had its premiere. The definitive story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, acclaimed today as one of the greatest films ever made, and of director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C.