Most people seem to want movies to give them a theme park ride - which is why many movies now are just an excuse for wild camera vertigo through CGI, gun play, explosions, and cliched “heroic” dialog.
2001 doesn’t do that. More than anything Kubrick was a photographer, and it’s possible to enjoy 2001 just for the visuals - the colour, the composition, the geometry and perspective.
It’s like a moving coffee table book that happens to be making a point about the far future of humanity.
This is so true about Kubrick as a photographer. He’s able to create these big immersive worlds where the pallet of emotions I experience as a viewer is just so... wide.
I’ve probably failed to explain that very well so here’s a well known example.
The story about the shooting of Barry Lyndon has been covered on HN before. In short Kubric got the fastest lenses he could and had old camera specially adapted so that he could film by candle light. Of course he also knew that such a wide aperture would give him a tiny depth of field, conveniently rendering the scene like a flat period painting come to life.
I suspect he may have worked backwards from that simple idea to the rest of the film but that just speculation on my part.
His use of newly invented steadycam in the Shinning for dream like scenes with the kids is another example.
Watching his films seems to be about more than just the plot and the story. I lack the vocabulary to adiquately explain myself, I’m just a fan, but it’s kind of like watching an art installation that happens to be a block buster film.
2001 doesn’t do that. More than anything Kubrick was a photographer, and it’s possible to enjoy 2001 just for the visuals - the colour, the composition, the geometry and perspective.
It’s like a moving coffee table book that happens to be making a point about the far future of humanity.