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billwpierce.co · @billwpierce.co@bridge.neodb.net

Rated 2001: A Space Odyssey 7/10

Ah, to say things that have already been said. I'm currently taking a gender and women's studies class in which the professor has repeatedly lectured on what Ursula Le Guin refers to as "Carrier Bag" stories—stories focused not on delivering a single narrative, but on capturing many things as they are. When I was in elementary and middle school, we used to end every school year with a walk to a local park for end-of-year ceremonies. During these ceremonies, our principal would speak; every year, she included one theme: the importance of being bored. The importance of learning to spend time on, and be okay with, nothingness. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a tremendously boring carrier-bag story. It receives its most frequent popular culture references in the quotation of Hal's "I'm afraid I can't do that" line, providing the false impression that that scene is the crux of the story. I'm afraid to admit that this was my assumption going in. I assumed, foolishly, that this would be the story of a ship slowly revolting against some pilots, eventually killing them. That takes up only about a third of the movie. The rest of the film is focused on making us feel small. In what can only be described as breathtaking filmmaking, Kubrick shows us as we are—wholly insignificant. And maybe that's the point—that those stories that we view as essential are but a brief moment in the array of time and space that makes up the universe. In a way, the boredom is the point. Yet with boredom being the point, the film is still that—boring. In long, drawn-out shots, the instinct is to check a watch or look away. While boredom may be the point, it is still its flaw. I cannot give this film a higher rating, if for the fact that the film makes itself worse in trying to prove its point. I so desperately want to be a good film bro, give this movie a high rating, and walk away satisfied that I can continue being a film douchebag. Problem is, there's a reason that most people walked out of this movie when it first aired—it is boring. Who knows though—if I'm ever willing to sit through it again in the future, maybe I'll like it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Maybe it gets better upon further reflection, or maybe—like The Monolith—it is a film that relies heavily on ambiguity to create a false impression of meaning. It seems, on first viewing, to be a film whose technical prowess brings one to hope that it matters more than it does, forcing out of us the meaning we want to create. But mostly? It's just fucking boring.

#movie

Published 2024-01-28 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere