Preamble
A huge gap since my last post - I've simply been very busy - swanning off to South Africa and so on. Still, back to it. I'm watching this out of order because it happened to be the next one I got from LoveFilm.
What I already knew
Quite a lot really. I've seen the film a couple of times, and read the book (and the sequels) quite a few more times than that. So I really know the story quite well, and while there are some differences between the book and the film, these are really quite minor. So there were no real surprises for me here, but I tried to watch it with fresh eyes.
Review
This film starts quite slowly, and in fact moves quite slowly all the way through. What really stands out is that there is no dialogue for almost the fist 30 minutes of the film. The initial sequence covers a group of apes in pre-history, and and their interaction with a strange monolith that appears one day.
The apes are less realistic than I remember, but possibly quite good for the time the film was made. I think the film suffers in comparison to the book in this sequence, as it's not exactly clear what is happening There are a couple of jarring moments when there seem to be very hard cuts with sudden changes in noise or music, but generally it's not badly done. What was quite disappointing for me was the transition to the second section of the film, which is held up as quite an iconic piece of film-making. The concept is very striking - a spinning bone transitioning to a spaceship - but the execution is actually pretty amateurish to my eye, the bone spins in two different directions, and the cut is to a static spaceship. I'm just not sure why it is so highly praised. Still.
The second section of the film is really the exposition for the third sequence, and follows Dr Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) as he travels to the moon to report on the progress of an investigation into another monolith that has appeared on the moon. The physical presentation of space travel looks a bit dated now, but visually it is very stylish and consistent, and there is some nice use of music - I particularly liked the use of dance music to cover the spaceship docking. Then, in really the only surprise for me, Leonard Rossiter appears - I had completely forgotten that he was in it. Floyd goes to the moon, there are some dodgy attempts at low-gravity effects, and some quite jarring exposition explaining what happened 'at the beginning' to Floyd (which I'm sure he would have known anyway). Then the monolith is visited, and we transition to the third section.
This section follows Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) as they go about life on a spaceship travelling to Jupiter, controlled by the on-board computer - HAL9000. HAL is really the central character of this part of the film, and was given a great presence, even though he is simply a block panel with a red light, and a disembodied voice (which is very well delivered). The depiction of space travel in this section is much better, in my opinion, to the previous section, although there are a couple of sequences which look a bit off. The plot really comes alive when things go wrong, Frank is killed and Dave is forced to de-activate HAL. This is all done with very little dialogue. Frank dies in silence, and HAL fades out singing 'Daisy, daisy...' which is another iconic scene. It's a very atmospheric section of the film, and does begin to show why the film is highly regarded.Then, frankly, it all goes nuts and Dave spends what feels like ages going through some weird 60s acid trip journey with lots of flashing lights and general oddness, until he ends up in a room where he lives, ages, and dies all in one long very cleverly blended sequence, only to be confronted with the monolith again, and becomes a 'Star Child'
This is where I have the advantage, having read the books, I understand a fair bit of what is going on here, but I can imagine for people who have only seen the film, this whole sequence must be pretty confusing.
Overall, I enjoyed this, although perhaps not as much as I expected. It certainly caught my attention, and created a space of its own, a mood and an atmosphere, and when the end credits came on, it was a little jerk back to reality as I had almost forgotten I was watching a film - which is probably a sign of a good movie I guess. Kubrick presents the story beautifully, and does so without it being obvious what he is doing. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much without the knowledge form the books, but that's probably my fault. It's a great presentation, I'm just not sure that the plot is made clear. But then maybe that's the idea - Kubrick was never one to do things normally :)
Rating: rent it (then buy it if you like it)
Mrs Worm's opinion
She didn't watch it
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