04/07/2002 Entry:
"2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick (1968)"

My second viewing of the 70mm release at Music Box was interrupted right at the beginning of the Jupiter journey when Bethany got violently ill and I had to take her home. Of the three times I have attempted to see this remastered release, I have succeeded only once (the other was interrupted at the intermission due to a parking issue at the old Film Center.) I get one more chance next weekend thankfully. While this is undoubtedly my favorite film of all time, I find I have little to say about it as a story and experience that isn't better said elsewhere. My father refers to 2001 as a rorschach, and I think he's onto something there. Suffice it to say that seeing 2001 letterboxed for the first time was a pivotal moment in my appreciation of film as art as opposed to film as entertainment.

Seeing the film twice in a week was an interesting experience in that today I was a little more able to not get so swept away in it and instead focus on some of the filmmaking details. For instance, in both the Blue Danube sequnces, when filming a scene from space none of the elements ever intersect. For instance, there will be a spacecraft flying towards the moon, but it will never cross the moon. Or a spacecraft will glide between the Earth and the space station. There is a scene where the Pan Am craft is gliding out away from the Earth and right when you're about to see the two cross there's a cut. It is perfect for those scenes, stressing the dance between all the planetary bodies gliding through space as the waltz plays. At first I figured there was some technical problem - like the effects would have been more difficult or costly. The more I think about it the more I doubt it though. I mean, Kubrick had a freaking 80 foot tall hamster wheel built for the movie, I can't believe it would have cost that much more to print a spacecraft on top of a moonscape. There are a couple of instances later where images do cross. The most noteworthy is when the moon shuttle is taking Heywood Flloyd out to see the monolith and it passes behind an outcropping. I have no idea why in this single instance it was decided to break away from everything being separate objects. If I recall, almost everything is set off from each other during the Jupiter Mission as well, like when the meteors fly by. Those seem to me to be more like formal design choices rather than the earlier scenes, which I feel are more influenced by the music. I could and probably should continue going off on this for another couple hours, but I have more to get to.

The other thing I really noticed this viewing was the sound design during Flloyd's security briefing. Everytime the shot changed, the sound of the voices changed to match the shot. When we see a long shot of Flloyd from the back of the room, his voice becomes smaller and there is added reverb. When there is a shot of him on the right side of the screen, we hear his voice panned to the right speakers. I actually found it distracting and thought it was a problem with the print, which is weird since this is the first time I've noticed it and I've seen this scene on the big screen six times. At first I thought maybe I was enjoying some of the benefit of the vaunted 70mm sound system, but three of those viewings were on this very 70mm remastered release. I almost never notice sound design so this was kind of fun. I wish I could have stayed for the rest of the film to see if this technique is used throughout. Music Box has a page up about the differences between 70mm and 35mm Anamorphic, and they mentioned that HAL's voice is recorded entirely on the surround sound track, which is a really interesting way to get that kind of eneveloping effect. This is the kind of thing that you will never ever notice watching a film at home. I mean, it is wonderful that I can watch DVDs on the train and everything, but obviously it's not the same.