It’s been four months since Secret Celluloid Society made its move to O Cinema Miami Beach after a long, well-received stint at Coral Gables Art Cinema. The line-up in July has varied wildly in selection, offering 16 films so far, with Mommie Dearest, Robocop, Reservoir Dogs, The Witches, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, among others. Now, Independent Ethos has the scoop on August’s and September’s line-ups alongside an exclusive interview with founder/director/art director of SCS, Nayib Estefan, who says his dreams for O Cinema Miami Beach have finally come true.
Embrace of the Serpent director talks about casting Amazonian non-actors, cinematic mysticism and the unconscious influence of 2001
March 16, 2016
Last week, Embrace of the Serpent, a movie that will certainly go down as one of the best films that saw release in the United States in 2016, started playing in area art houses in South Florida. This writer caught it last year as part of “Gems,” an annual mini film festival hosted by Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival. For the most part, during the weekend-long event, I could tell when I saw excellent work (The Assassin, My Golden Days) and rather problematic work (Youth, The Club). But Embrace fell into another kind of category as far as cinematic experiences go. It confounded me. I knew I saw a brilliant film, though I did not understand how it worked as well as it did. It reminded me of the first time, back in 1999, when I saw Eyes Wide Shut in theaters. I knew I saw another masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick, though I could not express exactly why it was so great. Several viewings later, having read the source material and written about it during my master’s degree, I came to understand it better and admire it deeper (I promise to publish the Lacanian analysis I wrote of the film by the end of the year).
It was a similar experience with Embrace of the Serpent. It took a second and even a third viewing before I could confidently understand what a masterpiece this film was. In speaking with at least four other film critics, over the months since I first saw the movie, I learned I was not the only with that same experience.
With it’s commercial release in 2016 last month by the marvelous indie studio Oscilloscope, it came time to reckon with this movie. I was honored that Michael Koresky of Film Comment, Criterion Collection and now Metrograph fame, allowed me to tangle with a close reading of it on Reverse Shot, the website he co-edits with Jeff Reichert. You can read my in-depth and somewhat spoilery review (but I think it will enhance a first time viewing, if you don’t want to invest in seeing it more than once) by jumping through the site’s logo below:
As the film headed to Miami, earlier this month, I also could not pass on an opportunity to speak to the film’s director Ciro Guerra, who helped clarify some questions I had about it. Guerra explained that he wanted to respect the culture he represents on the big screen. His research was extensive, including spending months in parts of the Amazon. After reading two books written by two early 20th century European explorers of the region, the German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grünberg and the ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, he came up with the film’s dual narrative with co-screenwriter Jacques Toulemonde Vidal.
The film’s stories unfold by alternating between the narratives, one at the start of the 20th century and the other 40 years into the future. The film’s lead character is Karamakate, played by two native, non-actors, Nilbio Torres and the elder Antonio Bolivar, as he guides two different explorers based on the authors of the books Guerra used for research (Jan Bijvoet and Brionne Davis) on similar journeys in search of a near extinct plant with hallucinogenic properties called the yakruna. And don’t bother looking up yakruna. Its name was made up for the movie. “The Shaman asked to keep it fictional because those names are sacred,” said the director, speaking via phone from his home country of Colombia. “You shouldn’t learn them from a movie,” he added.
It’s a mystical film both thematically and cinematically. The connection between landscape and setting and the similarities among the different people Karamakate encounters speaks to the ineffable tangents of time and place (he thinks of the two explorers as the same man, as the later one uses the older one’s book in furthering his knowledge). This begs for something other than a straight narrative, which Guerra fulfills throughout the movie. He harnesses this anti-linear approach to storytelling to make insightful connections between scenes that share locations at different times as well as connecting the two explorers Karamakate guides through the Amazon basin via their essential selves and not their physical bodies. There’s even a duality in the shaman’s two selves that transcends age.
Below are some highlights of our conversation that should not spoil the film but allow for some insight into it. There’s simply nothing like this movie, and the more prepared you are for it, the more thrilling it will feel. Below our abridged Q&A you will find a link to a story I wrote in the Miami New Times, last week, which goes further into the concepts that inform the film.
Independent Ethos: What did the non-actors who played Karamakate surprise you with in their performances?
Ciro Guerra: I was very concerned about that at the beginning of the process because these are real people who haven’t been acting, and they have no relationship to theater or to cinema, so I thought it was going to be difficult to ask them to act. But they may not have this contact, but they have this oral tradition that they have kept alive for centuries really. So they know how to tell a story and they really, really know how to listen, and it’s not that easy to find an actor who can listen. They were especially happy about making the film and being able to perform in their own language.
What did either one of them bring to their roles that was special?
Nilbio, He’s more playful. He has a broader range. He could play very well if he’s angry. He could play very well if he’s sad. He could play with this very complex range of emotions because he’s really open to emotional experience. He’s a really dynamic actor. Antonio has the more serene approach. He just stands there and just with his existence, his gaze, looks at you. They were two completely different actors in a way, but what we did was we built on that. We constructed the two faces of a character, but they also trust their gut. They also helped us re-write part of the script to make them more accurate and true in many ways. It was a very creative process, a very collaborative process.
Where did you learn so much about pre-Colombian mysticism in the Amazon?
It was a long process of research. I didn’t know anything about it, but basically it was the writings of the explorers. They were my guides, at first, and then, when I arrived in the Amazon, I stayed about two and a half years, going back and forth and spending a lot of time with shamans, elders and different communities in the Amazon, learning about what makes the community different and special. It was very difficult at the beginning because in the Amazon you are constantly confronted. It’s just a different way of thinking from our own that it makes you wonder a lot of different things about who you are.
The sequence at the end of the film is amazing. How did you create those special effects?
It’s iconography of the Barasana people. That’s the way they represent the spiritual world. When we made the film, we didn’t want to do a special effects show. It was something more primitive. It was something a child could draw.
For me, the final scenes recall 2001‘s stargate sequence. Was that an influence?
Some people have said that, and it’s surprising to me, but it also makes perfect sense because these guys, these explorers, were the ones that opened up these ideas of the spirituality to the people, and that was something that was very big in the ’60s. So it sort of comes full circle in a way.
But it wasn’t a direct influence?
No, no, no. Maybe not on a conscious level because 2001 is one of my favorite movies of all time, so maybe on an unconscious level it was.
The musical score is incredible as well. It mixes electronics and native chanting. Can you tell me how this idea to mix the two came about?
It wasn’t just about using indigenous music, and that’s it. The film is about dialogue between two cultures, a dialogue that can be very violent at times, but it’s a story of cultures coming together, so the score is basically indigenous music in dialogue and the work of Western composers.
Why did you choose to shoot in black and white?
I couldn’t see the film in any other way. If I had to do it in color, I would prefer not to do it. It would be a completely different film.
This is the third time Colombia submitted one of your films to the Oscars. Now you are nominated. How does that make you feel?
It’s surprising. This year there were so many films by masters, and it was a surprise when we made the short list, but to be nominated is not something that you can see coming.
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You can read more of our conversation, including more on why Guerra shot in black and white, the quantum level of time and existence he learned from the Amazon tribes he encountered during the filmmaking process and how it influences his storytelling, in the Miami New Times by jumping through the link below:
Embrace of the Serpent runs 125 minutes, is in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Latin, Tikuna, Cubeo, Huitoto and maybe some other Amazonian dialects with English subtitles and is not rated (expect violent images and transcendence via natural hallucinogens). It is now playing in our South Florida area at the Tower Theater, Miami Beach Cinematheque, O Cinema Wynwood. To the north, in Broward it is playing at the Cinema Paradiso – Hollywood. For theaters in other parts of the U.S., where it is scheduled to continue to roll out through April, visit this link and scroll down to “screenings.” We first saw this movie as a guest of Miami International Film Festival’s Gems event, in October. All images in this post were provided by Oscilloscope, except for that of the director, which is from IMDB.com. Oscilloscope also provided a screener link for repeat viewings.
The story of The Beach Boys is so much more fascinating than most assume. The band behind such early 1960s hits as “Surfin’ Safari” and “I Get Around” were a family affair, made up of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and a friend named Al Jardine. Among them, though, was a musical genius: Brian Wilson. It was his vision in the studio — from the band’s signature harmonies to angular musical ideas to putting dogs barking on a record — that took the band from hit factory to more complex levels that would gain them critical acclaim and go on to influence many other artists for decades to come.
But the thing about Wilson is that he was also clinically crazy. From the physical and mental abuse suffered by the band members’ father/manager to the abuse of LSD, Wilson spiraled downward. He was also very sensitive and introverted. He had a fear of flying and preferred working in the studio to touring live. By the 1980s, after he legendarily retreated to bed for three years and some failed solo work, people wrote him off as helplessly crazy, not unlike Syd Barrett. But gradually questions arose about his personal psychiatrist Dr. Eugene Landy. Wilson’s brother Carl had to fight in court to free his brother from Landy’s obsessive care that took away the musician’s autonomy and even the rights to some of his music.
No one can point to one thing that broke this man down, but his musical highs were heavily balanced out by his personal lows. In a new biopic, Love & Mercy (Read our review: Love & Mercy harnesses the music & madness of Brian Wilson), director/producer Bill Pohlad finds a way to focus on both yet still make the music the most important element in Wilson’s life. It’s an amazing achievement by the producer of Wild (Wild features brutally honest and vulnerable performance by Witherspoon — a film Review), 
12 years a Slave (The Florida Film Critics Circle announce `12 Years a Slave’ big winner for 2013… and the picks by Indie Ethos) and a personal favorite, Tree of Life (An antidote for Oscar hype: My 20 favorite films of 2011 [numbers 10 – 1]). On May 15, after watching the film twice, I spoke with Pohlad via phone. I could have easily gone on a tangent to talk about these other amazing films, if we had had the time, but amazing in its own way, is his return to directing after almost 25 years. Few know his debut feature film released in 1990, starring José Ferrer and James Whitmore called Old Explorers, which is only available on VHS on the secondary market (Support the Independent Ethos, you can try to purchase direct through Amazon via this link). Like many, I haven’t seen it, so I cannot attest to its quality. But I can only imagine Pohlad has learned a lot as a producer because Love & Mercy stands as one of this writer’s favorite movies of 2015, so far.
I’ve already written one article from our interview in the Miami New Times’ Art and Culture blog. The piece mostly covers Pohlad’s acting choices (two actors play Wilson: John Cusack and Paul Dano) and how he uses Wilson’s music in impressive sound collages based on actual music by Wilson and re-contextualized by Atticus Ross. You can read that article by jumping through the blog’s logo below:
We spoke about other topics, but I couldn’t fit it all in the article, so here’s an abridged Q&A of material missing from that article, which is still no less interesting for those who plan to see this extraordinary film about a man, his madness and his music (my glowing review, which will focus on the presence and absence of music in the film’s narrative, is coming soon).
Hans Morgenstern: I want to talk about the creative way you declare the title of the film within the narrative. There’s this scene where Brian Wilson sits at the piano playing what turns out to be the melody for “Love and Mercy” for Melinda.
Bill Pohlad: Not everybody catches that. In fact, you’re the first one that actually mentions it.
I’m big on music. So I imagine you must be very attuned to music.
I’ve always been a big music fan. I find a lot of filmmakers are frustrated musicians and a lot of musicians are frustrated filmmakers, I think, once you talk to people. But I certainly fall into that category. I love music, and I wish that maybe I’d pursued that. I’ve always loved it and followed, and I think one of the attractions to this movie was trying to capture — like the Pet Sounds era and that kind thing — what’s inside the head of an incredible, creative musician.
You certainly capture that when representing what’s going on inside his head. You capture his music as well as his sickness. How did you decided on this manner to represent that?
Well, I think it comes from learning about Brian and talking to him and [his wife] Melinda [played by Elizabeth Banks] a little bit and trying to get a sense of what he actually experienced. As I got to know the story better, and I got to spend a little more time with him — both of them — you get a sense of what goes on in his head. He’s admitted, of course, and it’s very well known that he hears voices and things like that, but there’s also the musical element.
I think you do something great with the editing: you let the actors perform. A lot of times you see actors’ performances chopped up in the editing, but you had some longish takes.
Yeah, I believe in actors’ performances, and certainly the other directors that I worked with as a producer in some of the other films, that I admired have kind of allowed me to push more in that direction and have more confidence about that.
Speaking of some of the people you admire, there’s a sequence at the end of the movie [that we see in the trailer] in Brian’s bed that reminded me of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Yeah. You don’t necessarily want to do those things blatantly. I was afraid, I’m going back and forth thinking that people would think that was a total rip-off. But to me because of the role that that bed played in Brian’s life … where that sequence at the end came from was the fact that we’re trying to create a film here that’s true and kind of authentic … When I first started talking to John Cusack about the role, he was like, ‘Well, you know, but at the end, isn’t there a time when Brian could, you know, like get up and leave and walk out … on Landy or something like that?’ As a filmmaker or a storyteller 
you’re always looking for those ways to end the movie or something like that, but the problem is that never actually happened. Brian never did walk out. There wasn’t any dramatic storming away from Landy, so I wanted to find a way to end the film that was more true to what actually happened and true to life. Our lives just don’t go that way: clean and neat, so the idea of like having this period where you’re able to like see Brian struggling within himself, with who he is and where he’s been and coming from some kind of peace, that felt more authentic than trying to force some kind of ending, so that’s where that sequence came from. Then, when you’re visualizing it with the bed and all, yeah, someone can think of Kubrick and all that, but hopefully it’s organic to the movie as well.
Mike Love [played by Jake Abel] comes across a little, I would say acerbic in the film. Have you had any reaction from him about the movie?
I don’t know. We haven’t heard yet. The whole Mike Love thing is tricky in the sense that certainly he has a reputation, either fairly or unfairly, of being a tough guy or whatever, and not a particularly pleasant guy. I mean, the first thing I wanted to do is deal with that in the storytelling sense. I don’t like the idea of creating arch villains or one-dimensional guys, and Mike was a great example of that. I didn’t really want him to be seen in that way, as the bad guy. It’s too easy, and I wanted to relate to 
him and tried to. I hope it comes through a little bit. He’s just a guy. He’s a human being. He’s different than Brian. That doesn’t make him bad. You just know that Brian’s a creative genius, and we’re telling this story about this extraordinary, creative artist, but the guy next to him is just a regular guy. He’s got talents of his own, but he’s not that kind of guy. That does not make him bad. I wanted to portray it in that way, saying, Hey, maybe you can relate to this guy. He’s got a good gig going, and all of a sudden his cousin starts going off, and starts doing these really weird things. It’s like, ‘Hey, c’mon what are you doing?’ As opposed to making him like that bad guy, so hopefully there’s some balance there.
I’ll leave you with a featurette with more information by the actors and Pohlad:
Update Love & Mercy is coming the the Bill Cosford Cinema for a weekend run this Friday, July 31. Click here for the schedule.
Love & Mercy opens in limited release this Friday, June 5, across the nation. In our South Florida area, the venues are as follows:
- Miami-Dade: Coral Gables Art Cinema, Aventura Mall 24 Theatres and Regal South Beach 18
- Keys: Tropic Cinema Key West
- Broward County: Cinemark Paradise 24, The Classic Gateway Theatre
- Boca/Palm Beach counties: Living Room Theaters/Boca, Regal Shadowood 16/Boca, Cinemark Palace 20/Boca, Muvico Parisian 20, Movies of Delray 5, Delray Marketplace 12, Cinemark Boynton Beach 14
For other theaters across the U.S., visit the film’s website and put in your zip code in the box in the upper left corner via this link. All images courtesy of Roadside Attractions, who also hosted a preview screening for the purpose of this interview.
‘Interstellar’ is an enthralling experience … when emo astronauts stop weeping — a film review
November 7, 2014
There is no denying one thing about Interstellar: it’s an epic space adventure made for the big screen. It features set pieces that will dazzle and impressive alien landscapes that will enthrall. The effects, which include a near-scale spaceship seemingly tearing through the stratosphere and popping into the silence of space, are unforgettable. The appearance of an intergalactic wormhole that will carry our brave explores to another galaxy against the stark backdrop of what looks like a painted planet Saturn is both surreal yet geeky cool.
There is no need spoiling what lies on the other side of the titular crossroads, and I would hate to reveal how director Christopher Nolan presents the theory of the wormhole in not one scene but two that occur at different points of the movie yet are still connected to the moment of the spaceship’s penetration of the portal both narratively and visually. He’s a smart filmmaker, but I feel obliged to warn viewers to lower their expectations.
It will be easy for ticket buyers to understand why plot points were held so secretive ahead of the release of Interstellar once they see the film. It’s a preposterous yet sprawling movie filled with several overwrought pauses in action for lots of tearful emoting or explaining of theoretical astrophysics between sequences of action, and then there’s the ludicrous third act. As opposed to the much more interesting Inception, this film feels clunky, arriving at a trite finale that’s more supernatural than scientific.* Both films share an action-packed climax that unfolds in alternate levels of time and space featuring fast-paced inter-cutting, but one did it much better: Inception. In that film, time felt reinvented like Chinese boxes on a plain. But with Interstellar Nolan pads nearly three hours full of expository theory to inform the viewer with a weird logic that actually disarms anything interesting about the impressive visuals and ideas that occur throughout the film. To end on a note that does not so much defy astrophysics as it does wash its hands of it, devolving into a convoluted idea that feels more desperate to tie up loose ends in a fantastical reach for closure betrays much of what’s impressive about the film: the awe-inspiring visuals.
It’s so ironic that in this near future version of our planet, children are being taught that the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969 was staged. We learn this when the film’s hero, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), 
is called to a parent-teacher conference regarding his daughter Murph’s (Mackenzie Foy) defiance to the idea that a conspiracy theory has become a fact. After all, she has a legit, vintage text book her dad had given her, and he was an astronaut for NASA once. But in this dystopian future, NASA has been dismantled and people have more earthly concerns. Mother Earth is revolting against human kind, and people cannot grow corn fast enough to sustain life on a planet overcome by dust storms.
To double the irony, Nolan has made no secret about the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that downplayed emotions and exposition to achieve moments of transcendence that are rarely achieved in film. Of course, Nolan also qualified his comments to say he was not trying to match the masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick. I studied the movie for my Master’s thesis (you can read an abridged version of my analysis beginning with this post: How Stanley Kubrick broke the rules of Classical Hollywood cinema and made a better film with ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’: My MA thesis redux – part 1 of 4), and I can tell you, if Nolan would have taken the fundamental notion of presenting a film that relies more on visuals over language, viewers would have come away with a more memorable experience.
By no means did I enter Interstellar expecting a film equivalent to 2001. It would be unfair considering the influence 2001 has had on so many films since its release, not to mention the era when it was released, so many decades ago, and the changes to commercial film since then. What I did expect of Nolan is to place some trust in the power of visual language without weighing it down with characters continuously declaring their feelings tearfully or espousing theoretical knowledge as the narrative bumbles along. Adding to the encumbrance is an operatic, overly present score by the often cheesy Hans Zimmer. So he uses organs, but anyone who has heard the impressionistic work of Philip Glass or even the bombast of early Yes, has heard the instrument used more effectively.
The film pays off when the extraneous noise, like the music and dialogue, are toned down. It’s hard to buy these emo astronauts. Thank goodness they have a pair of robots, voiced by Bill Irwin and Josh Stewart — who look like monoliths with inventive articulation and act like R2-D2 — that are programmed with senses of humor. Then there are even more secondary characters, including a surprise appearance by a famous actor, but none ever feel written with the right amount of sympathy, and too much repetition of how they feel comes across as patronizing to the audience instead of adding dimension to their characters. The most sympathetic performance of all turns out to be that of young Murph. Foy plays a frustrated young woman desperate to be taken seriously but also reaching out for the love she needs from her too-noble-for-his-family’s-good father.
She brings the right amount of restraint and spunk to the character that makes her the most endearing element of the entire cast. Her absence in the second half of the film feels pronounced after a capably somber Jessica Chastain steps in as an older Murph after one of the film’s genuinely emotional plot twists creates a powerful leap in time for the space travelers.
As for some of the other performers of note, Anne Hathaway plays Cooper’s foil Amelia, and though she is a wonderful actress, there is not enough substance in her role for Hathaway to pull out a dynamic enough performance to remember. She played a much meatier character in The Dark Knight Rises as Catwoman. Her acting chops are betrayed here by a mostly hollowly written character, which deflates a key speech for Amelia at the center of the film. Finally, as for McConaughey, the dude knows how to push the waterworks from his tear ducts, but sometimes he comes across mush-mouthed in his attempt to ground Cooper as the modest hero of the movie.
It’s not like the stakes are not heavy in this film. This space journey has both the human race at stake as well as the personal baggage of the astronauts. It’s just delivered with so much sentiment that it all feels rather strained. Some will roll their eyes, thinking, “enough already!” Others who love being spoon-fed emotional drama, will go along with this melodrama and have a cathartic cry. As for the film’s finale, I love mysticism in the movies, but the tonal inconsistency of so much astrophysical theory, 
which is suddenly allowed to be subverted by another force that is grounded in a convenient kind of supernature makes it all hard to swallow. But if you can forgive Interstellar’s redundant sentimentality and a final act that will invariably disappoint anyone with some knowledge of theory and astrophysics, the movie’s still worth the price of admission. Those splurging for the IMAX experience will feel less ripped off than those waiting for a home video release, so take advantage. Much of what works in the film is purely visual and kinetic, and Nolan is at the top of his game at least in that sense.
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*Last year Gravity received the ire of popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson for its slips in logic, but at least that film tried to seem realistic.
Interstellar runs 169 minutes and is rated PG-13 (there is some light cussing and some moments of terror and startling deaths). It’s in theaters at every multiplex in the U.S. today, including IMAX. Paramount Pictures invited us to a preview screening in IMAX for the purpose of this review.
Film Review: ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ celebrates the creativity necessary to do justice in sci-fi cinema
April 23, 2014
To many, the new documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune will feel like a nice consolation for the fact that cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky never finished his version of Frank Herbert’s esteemed sci-fi epic. It’s a terrific chronicle of the Chilean director’s ambitious planning to prepare a thorough treatment for his first film proposed to major Hollywood studios. But it is also a celebration of unfettered creativity in all its glorious excess.
For Jodorowsky, a film about several worlds fighting for possession of a substance that expands consciousness should be treated literally as a mind-altering experience. When he set out to adapt the beloved book (which he admits he never read) in 1975, he said he wanted to not just make a film but “a prophet.” He wanted to alter viewers’ sense of perception. He says he wanted to create the cinematic sensation of taking LSD.
What resulted was several hard-bound books of spaceship designs, character sketches, costumes and storyboards that detailed his vision … but no film. In this documentary, filmmaker Frank Pavich interviews Jodorowsky who waffles between the bright side of bringing a new vision to Hollywood that predated Star Wars and a suppressed rage at the machine that stifled his vision. 
Pavich also brings to life the images of the book by editing together the story boards and animating some of the many detailed concept designs of the spaceships by rendering them digitally. The camera pans and scales over the static images from the book. There are sound effects and an eerie, Moog-drenched score by Kurt Stenzel that could have been the score to Jodorowky’s Dune. It’s as close to the would-be movie as we get.
But that’s not the point of this documentary.
Jodorowsky’s Dune is really about the vision of the cult director that ultimately expands the consciousness of Hollywood for the daring vision needed to pull off science fiction with respect to considering possibilities that go beyond earthbound thinking. 
Directors like George Lucas, Ridley Scott and James Cameron are indeed indebted to Jodorowsky for planting the seed of possibility for latter-day sci-fi work such as their’s.
Jodorowsky gathered a true dream team of collaborators, or, as he calls them, warriors, to make his film. He hired people like H.R. Giger, who would later design the title monster of the Alien movies, to design the world of the evil Harkonnen. The dark prog rock band Magma was to compose all the music associated with it. Meanwhile, Pink Floyd agreed to also provide original music and Chris Foss and Jean “Moebius” Giraud were brought in for design and artwork. Dan O’Bannon who would go on to write the screenplay for Alien was hired as a screenwriter based on what Jodorowsky saw in Dark Star. Clearly inspired about by Kurick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jodorowsky also pursued that film’s Oscar-winning effects man Douglas Trumbull. However, Jodorowsky was turned off by his underwhelming, practical bottom-line attitude. He was no spiritual warrior for Dune.
The beauty of this documentary comes from its ability to channel Jodorowsky’s lively attitude for art as enlightenment and spiritual home. When he says he does not want to compromise to the studios even if it means the demise of his project, it becomes the right thing. It’s as if Jodorowsky’s Dune fell apart as a martyr so it might inspire films like Star Wars and Alien.
As ever with Jodorowsky, there’s humor in his wisdom. When Star Wars fans bemoaned George Lucas’ revising 
his films with digital effects in the 1990s the mantra became “George Lucas raped my childhood.” Jodorowsky, however, proudly declares, “I raped Frank Herbert,” as he thrusts his hips back and forth holding an imaginary book doggy style in front of him. In that charming Jodorowsky way of his, he is not belittling the source material. Instead, he compares it to the consummation of marriage, taking a virginal bride dressed in white to the bedroom, tearing away her dress and fucking her. “I raped him with love,” he adds.
It doesn’t matter that Jodorowsky never read the book. What matters is that he created his own work, something that has only gained more value over time. The legend grows as with its mystical possibilities, hence the notion that this may indeed be one of the greatest films never made. Director Nicolas Winding Refn appears early in the documentary to boast that he’s the only one who has seen Jodorowsky’s version of Dune because the director himself sat with him and paged through the book and shared his vision. As we can expect with Refn, it’s a rather juvenile and insulting comment to this idea of possibilities of what the essence of this film did for science fiction cinema. It lowers the film to a materialistic level that defies Jodorowsky’s vision, which belongs to the imagination, and that’s why Jodorowsky’s Dune stands as the greatest sci-fi movie never made.
Jodorowsky’s Dune runs 90 minutes and is rated PG-13 (for fantastical violent and sexual images and drug references). It opens in South Florida on Apr. 25 in Miami Beach at the Regal South Beach and in Boca Raton at Living Room Theaters and Regal Shadowood. The following week, it opens in Miami at O Cinema Wynwood. It will appear at the Miami Beach Cinematheque on June 7 with other Jodorowsky surprises to be announced. Sony Pictures Classics invited me to a preview screening for the purpose of this review.
Update: Actor Brontis Jodorowsky will present the film in person on June 15; he will also introduce another film he stars in, Táu (see MBC’s calendar for details). On Tuesday, June 17, at 7 p.m., he, Village Voice film critic Michael Atkinson and Miami Herald film critic Rene Rodriguez will share the stage at MBC in the second installment of the Knight Foundation-sponsored series “Speaking In Cinema” to discuss this film and other works by Jodorowsky (see details). A meet-and-greet party at the Sagamore Hotel ends the night.
Earlier Update: Cinema Paradiso has booked Jodorowsky’s Dune to begin its run Friday, May 23, at both its Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood locations (jump through the city names for dates and times).
Chapter III-B: The Sublimation of Narrative: Film Techniques in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Note: this is a continuation from the post: How Stanley Kubrick broke the rules of Classical Hollywood cinema and made a better film with ’2001: A Space Odyssey’: My MA thesis redux – part 3 of 4
7. Film Techniques should be invisible
Finally, and most uniquely to the medium of cinema, with 2001: A Space Odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick employs obtrusive film techniques, including powerful match cuts and long, self-aware musical sequences where music goes beyond mood and atmosphere to take on a narrative role. This last element of Hollywood cinema dictates the audience should not become aware of technical aspects of movie-making while watching a film. As film scholar David Bordwell notes, “Hollywood’s pride in concealed artistry implies that narration is imperceptible and unobtrusive” (24). Cinematic techniques, such as music and editing, must not break the movie’s spell by calling attention to themselves.
a. Editing:
Some edits in 2001 might feel superficially jarring upon initial viewing, but they are actually pregnant with questions and meaning. Granted, whenever a film is spliced, information is lost, but the Hollywood aesthetic dictates that scenes need to be cut in a seemingly seamless manner. Bordwell explains, “From shot to shot, tonality, movement, and the center of compositional interest shift enough to be distinguishable but not enough to be disturbing” (55).
Much to the chagrin of some critics, 2001 contains several conspicuous edits. As cited earlier, critics like Sarris, Kael and Schlesinger bemoaned the ambiguity between scenes. However, Kubrick’s editing decisions were well thought out. He inserts transitions between many important scenes that force the audience to fill in “gaps” of time and space. These transitions are more associative edits rather than temporal. Nelson pointed to this as an outstanding aspect of the movie:
“[2001] embodies a kind of ultimate cinematic universe, where all the assurances of ‘normal’ perspective are literally turned upside down, and ‘settings’ project … a disturbing lack of contextual and historical definition” (110). The narrative effect of this leaves questions of story continuity in the viewer’s mind.
The viewer should not mistake these odd moments of editing with a plot hampered by events strung together haphazardly or coincidental ploys written into the storyline to keep the movie going. These are, in fact, tools that allow the director to raise his story to another level, beyond the theoretical confines of classical Hollywood cinema. In fact, one could argue Kubrick’s movie is more truthful as a result of what he leaves out between cuts as opposed to employing expository dialogue. In Robinson’s Lexicon, the term “cut” is defined as “[The] key to what is carried across from one image to another; whereas with words, inventions of man’s reflective powers, artifice is carried across; with images[,] entities within the visible creations, it is creative power that carries across the cut.” (Lavery 358).
The first scene that compels the viewer to see beyond the action in 2001 is probably the most famous scene of Kubrick’s entire career. It occurs in the early part of the film, during “The Dawn of Man,” when Kubrick introduces the ape-men. He directs the viewer’s attention to a scene involving the ape-men’s cognition that a bone could be used as a tool/weapon by showing the creatures’ transformation from this revelation by using a jump cut to show man’s final stage of evolution: man in space.
During this scene, a screaming Moon-Watcher tosses the bone in the air. As the bone hurtles against the sky in slow motion, the sound cuts to silence before the viewer is presented with the vastness of space and a satellite drifting above the planet earth. A second later, Johann Strauss’ The Blue Danube begins. Beyond exciting viewers’ intellect with his surprising edits, Kubrick further emphasizes the jarring cuts with the waltz. As this scene clearly shows, “The Dawn of Man” section is not just about man evolving from apes; it seemingly encompasses the lifespan of Homo sapiens.
In his Newsweek review, film critic Joseph Morgenstern pointed out that an extraordinary amount of time is covered in that gap: “The man-ape gleefully hurls his tool of war into the air. It becomes a satellite in orbit around the moon. A single dissolve spans 4 million years” (97). The edit is a trick of the mind, as much as it is the eye. It is a direct association between club and space vehicle. The bone doesn’t turn into a satellite. They are two images literally juxtaposed. To correct my namesake (no relation), the transition is not a dissolve but a simple splice in the film. More specifically, it is a match cut, where two similar looking objects are edited into one another to create a relationship (W. Phillips 130). In effect, quicker than a blink of an eye, the viewer is transported four million years into the future. Nelson defines the implication of the association thus: “The technological leap from the bone to the moon-bound Pan-American spacecraft, imagined against the black background of infinite and unknown space, emphasizes that the next stage of man’s evolutionary rise continues the initial development begun by the ape.” (82).
This becomes the most important cut in the movie, as it clearly sets a profound tone. The match cut of the bone to the space vessel cracks the invisibility element of editing. Maybe not in a literal way that makes one think of the artifice of movie-making, but a jarring, obtrusive way. It calls attention to itself. The film is not looking to explain events, but seeks to stimulate the viewer to inform the action. Hence, the film’s appropriate hallmark of scant dialogue and exposition versus visuals pregnant with meanings. Throughout the film, Kubrick shows the audience that dialogue has little value in exposition. Instead, he emphasizes nonverbal communication like music and images, which he emphasizes through other carefully thought-out cuts within the film.
B. Music
Classical Hollywood cinema dictates a movie should use music sparingly, supplementing the action on screen but never overshadowing it. As Bordwell says, “The music confines itself to a moment-by-moment heightening of the story. Slight anticipations are permitted, but recollections of previous musical material must be motivated by a repetition of situation or by character memory” (35). 2001 both follows this rule to its fullest effect but also takes a daring turn away from it. Kubrick utilized diverse but, for the most part, famous classical music pieces for the score of 2001. One of the most iconic pieces must be Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, which appears during the opening credits and during the epiphanies that note the ape-men’s transformation to human and humanity’s ascendance to Star-Child.
Classical Hollywood cinema demands fleeting, associative uses of music that cue the audience into what event might happen next. As Bordwell notes, “During the film, music adheres to classical narration’s rule of only allowing glimpses of its omniscience, as when the score anticipates the action by a few moments” (34). In other words, the tone of the music should be an efficient thematic element scored to the scene that might clue the audience to a character’s intentions or the mood in the scene. Bordwell explains, “Just as classical camera work or editing becomes more overt when there is little dialogue, so the music comes into its own as an accompaniment for physical action. Here music becomes expressive to certain conventions (static harmony for suspense or the macabre, chromaticism for tension, marked rhythm for chase scenes)” (ibid).
The manner in which Kubrick uses music in the film was revolutionary in that entire scenes went on with only musical accompaniment and no dialogue while the narrative developed on an almost subconscious level. In the documentary film Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, film director Tony Palmer calls 2001 a milestone in cinema history precisely because of the way Kubrick utilized music:
I always think that history of the cinema divides into two essential eras: before Stanley Kubrick and after Stanley Kubrick, especially in relation to the use of music in film. Before Stanley Kubrick, music tended to be used in film as either decorative or as heightening emotions. After Stanley Kubrick, because of his use of classical music in particular, it became absolutely an essential part of the narrative, intellectual drive of the film.
In fact, Kubrick at first hired composer Alex North for an original score, which would have conformed more to Hollywood cinema’s demands that the music be inspired by the image and try to convey a musical mood in support of the images. North recorded a soundtrack, which is now readily available, but Kubrick was so taken by the classical temp tracks he used during filming, he decided to stick with those instead. “This was a crucial decision,” wrote Roger Ebert in his second review of 2001, where he reflected on the film 30 years after he first saw it. “North’s score … would have been wrong for ‘2001’ because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action— to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action.” Ebert emphasizes the word “outside,” which points to Kubrick’s reaching beyond the actions on screen and drawing the audience into a film that tries to go beyond conventions of Hollywood cinema.
Throughout 2001, non-diegetic music never overlaps with dialogue. There are, however, three questionable scenes focusing on man’s interaction with the monolith. There are the ape-men, who seem to react to the sound of György Ligeti’s high-pitched howling chorus that emanates around them or possibly from within the monolith. Also, the lunar scientists reel in pain after a similar chorus of voices turns into a piercing high-pitched sustained note. Then, during the penultimate emergence of the monolith, Dave Bowman enters the star gate as the chorus once again returns.
One critic referred to the monolith as “the singing slab,” as the imagery seems to respond to seemingly non-diegetic music (Sweeney 229). This minimal use of music that might or might not be non-diegetic adds to the potency of the scenes, which offer a repetitious pattern of similar, yet unique and related events that occur during entirely unique instances during man’s evolution. Ciment explained it best:
The oratorio by György Ligeti which acts as a musical leitmotif for the presence of the monolith coincides with Arthur C. Clarke’s idea that all technology, if sufficiently advanced, is touched with magic and a certain irrationality. Its choral accompaniment leads us onto the threshold of the unknown, just as Kubrick’s use of the opening bars of Also Sprach Zarathustra prepares us for the profundity of his intentions … 2001 postulates the same progression as in Nietzsche’s work, from the ape to man, then from man to Superman” (Ciment 128).
Ciment also notes that 2001’s use of Also Spoke Zarathustra during the evolutionary leap from ape-man to space-man and the rebirth of Bowman emphasizes the film’s Nietzschean tone (105). Kubrick harnesses the power of music to tell the story, rather than limiting the score to offer cues to the audience of what might happen next or set a mood. In 2001, music becomes an essential part of the narrative, while dialogue refrains from offering any profound details into character motivation. With his use of music in 2001, Kubrick goes beyond the limitations of language and even images alone to push his statement.
Conclusion:
Although Hollywood film demands some degree of cognitive effort by the viewer, it never calls on the viewer to accept abstractions. For instance, at the end of 2001, an astronaut transforms into a baby floating in space. Traditional Hollywood film demands that there be some kind of explanation as to how this happened, be it exposition or a visual representation of the force that brought on such a change, but the film joins the aged astronaut and the fetus only by a film splice, which is imperceptible to the human eye, considering how fast film rolls. Essentially, nothing joins the two embodiments of the one astronaut. Also, nothing before the transformation hints that this is what will be happening to the astronaut and nothing after the transformation explains why it did, at least not definitively.
The dictates of traditional Hollywood cinema never allow for such ambiguity, as every event in a Hollywood movie must contribute to the story in some definitive manner, be it subtle or obvious. For instance, a classic Hollywood version of 2001 might show an alien wave a magic wand over the astronaut and then a flashy transformation might play out between the human and baby forms, definitively linking the two as a single being.
I believe in cinema as serious art. Not as solely entertainment but a medium that allows us a way of looking deeper at ourselves, a kind of aid to mankind in delving in and discovering ourselves. In turn, finding transcendence in art. 2001 strives to tap into a deeper power of the film medium, inspiring contemplation of the deepest questions of life, such as the origins and future of humanity, while not falling into the trap of heavy-handedness. It can only achieve this by breaking the limits of conventional Hollywood cinema.
I think Ebert hit 2001’s purpose on the head when he revisited the film 30 years after he first saw it and contrasted its purpose with the absence of deeper purpose in movies that follow the classical Hollywood cinema:
Only a few films are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape. Most movies are about characters with a goal in mind, who obtain it after difficulties either comic or dramatic. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is not about a goal but about a quest, a need. It does not hook its effects on specific plot points, nor does it ask us to identify with Dave Bowman or any other character. It says to us: We became men when we learned to think. Our minds have given us the tools to understand where we live and who we are.
2001 is constructed to inspire viewers to go beyond the image and ultimately look into themselves and what they can bring to the movie. The pay-off for those watching the film comes only when viewers embrace its open-ended quality, feel liberated by it, and instead of scratching their heads or superficially marveling at the “weirdness” of the film, begin to invest in the scenes that call to them. It is only then that they can grow from within after watching a film as convention-busting and masterful as 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is art, the sort of art that out lives us, intriguing one generation after another.
Works Cited
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.
Ciment, Michel. Kubrick: The Definitive Edition. Trans. Gilbert Adair and Robert Bononno. 2001 ed. New York: Faber & Faber, 2001.
Ebert, Roger. Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. 27 March 1997. Rogerebert.com. 6 Feb. 2006 <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970327/REVIEWS08/401010362>.
Lavery, David. “‘Like Light’: The Movie Theory of W.R. Robinson.” Seeing Beyond: Movies, Visions, and Values. Ed. Richard P. Sugg. New York: Golden String Press, 2001. 346-363.
Morgenstern, Joseph. Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Newsweek 15 April 1968: 97-100.
Nelson, Thomas Allen. Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze. New and expanded ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Phillips, William H. Film: An Introduction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
Sweeney, Louise. Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Christian Science Monitor 1968. The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. Ed. Jerome Agel. New York: New American Library, 1970. 227-229.
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Note: In Miami, O Cinema hosted an encore screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey on Saturday, April 27 at its Miami Shores location. This screening was part of O Cinema’s on-going Kubrick retrospective inspired by Room 237, which also played at part of the retrospective (see event page). Today is the last day to catch the film, inspired by Kubrick’s the Shining; both these films have one more screening each this afternoon at the Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables (see calendar).
Room 237 trailer:
Chapter III-A: The Sublimation of Narrative: Narrative Structure in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Note: this is a continuation from yesterday’s post: How Stanley Kubrick broke the rules of Classical Hollywood cinema and made a better film with ’2001: A Space Odyssey’: My MA thesis redux – part 2 of 4
4. Events have clear causes and effects
As film theorist David Bordwell notes: “Coincidence and haphazardly linked events are believed to flaw the [Hollywood] film’s unity and disturb the spectator. Tight causality yields not only consequence but continuity, making the film progress ‘smoothly, easily, with no jars, no waits, no delays.’23 A growing absorption also issues from the steadily intensifying character causality, as the spectator recalls salient causes and anticipates more or less likely effects”* (18). This formula effectively eases the viewer into the story, but when it came to 2001: A Space Odyssey, critics felt disappointed that Kubrick did not follow this convention.
Throughout the film, many causes and effects have an ambiguous relationship, which unsettles the viewer. The premiere screening of 2001 in New York featured many walkouts and complaints. Kubrick himself counted 241 (as Jack Nicholson recalled in the Life in Pictures documentary), and movie critic Roger Ebert noted one Hollywood actor at the screening, namely Rock Hudson, who “stalked down the aisle” and grumbled, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
Beyond the frustrations of an actor accustomed to working in the Hollywood form, many esteemed film critics also felt hindered from appreciating 2001 because they expected a classical Hollywood film with clear causes and effects. One of the most notable dissenters was Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice. In his review, he sounded frustrated by the obliqueness of the monolith, precisely because of the ambiguity surrounding an object that plays a key role in the transformative events in the movie: “A big black slab figures in each section of the film, but we never find out exactly what it is or what it signifies” (Sarris 45).
Others hoped Kubrick could spell out the meaning of his film less ambiguously. In his review for Vogue Magazine, Arthur Schlesinger, like many critics, blamed Kubrick’s attention to special effects** for the film’s seemingly failing, unintelligible narrative. “In 2001 he has gone mad over electronic artifacts … Obsession continues to outrun explanation, and this reviewer, at least, could not understand a good deal of what was going on.” (Schlesinger 76).
With 2001, Kubrick often violates the rule of “tight causality” Bordwell speaks of in his fourth rule of the classical Hollywood form. For instance, after disconnecting HAL, Bowman decides to leave the spaceship Discovery in a space pod and make the ominous decision to blindly approach the mysterious monolith floating in space, but in Arthur C. Clarke’s book, the author gives a clear reason. The book establishes Bowman living in the now derelict ship, carrying on the research for some time after HAL’s disconnection, until, one day, he reports to mission control that he wants a closer look at the monolith floating outside and offers his plan to return to the Discovery in about 90 minutes (Clarke 247-248).
This monolith, which Clarke names “the Star Gate” in his book’s narrative (effectively loading it with more meaning) later seems to absorb Bowman and the space pod as if it were a kind of portal to a place beyond space and time (Clarke 243). The genius of Kubrick’s ambiguous set-up lies in the slipperiness of it. Bowman’s actions startle the viewer, adding to the shock of the lengthy Star Gate sequence, which would only be hampered by exposition. The special effects during the rest of the movie are all meant to dazzle and create an experience beyond words, reflective of Bowman’s unearthly experience. It involves the viewer on a visceral level, rather than if the director served up clear explanations as to what he or she is seeing.
Key to Kubrick’s harnessing the power of ambiguity, the director stays away from using language to explain what might be happening in the movie. 2001 has the rare characteristic of having very scarce dialogue, which contributes to the film’s vagueness. Clarke explains: “[B]ecause we were dealing with the mystery of the Universe, and with powers and forces greater than man’s comprehension, then by definition they [the forces] could not be totally understandable” (Clarke 249).
5. Narrative has chronology
Bordwell states that fifth convention is almost taken for granted by the audience. “[T]hrough its history Hollywood cinema seeks to represent events in a temporally continuous fashion; moreover, narrative logic has generally worked to motivate this temporal continuity” (Bordwell 9). As already can be seen, it is impossible for 2001 to fit this convention because there is no clear character or group of characters that influences the film’s story from beginning to end.
If the fact that Kubrick focuses on three different characters, during three lengthy sections of the film does not already do enough to undermine this convention, the presence of the Stargate sequence blows this rule away. Kubrick called this voyage to Bowman’s destiny— depicted in a drawn-out sequence of lights and brilliant geometric and amorphous shapes, not to mention freeze frames, flash cuts and reversed images— “a journey through inner and outer space” (qtd. in Gelmis 91).
Actually, one of the most confounding moments of the film happens here. Kubrick once explained: “In a timeless state, [Bowman’s] life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn … and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny” (qtd. in Gelmis 91).
The critics who disliked this film hated the long, ponderous Stargate sequence so much, they would have preferred to see it cut. Sarris and the Christian Science Monitor’s Louise Sweeney did not find any value in Bowman’s trip through space and time at the end of the movie. In addition, Kauffman joined Sweeney in sharing a preference for having the scenes with the ape-men excised. This leaves the tight chronology of the Discovery trip as the only section of the film that mattered in these critics’ eyes, hoping for relief in the classical Hollywood form.
Going somewhere beyond man’s perception of space and time, specifically during the Star Gate sequence, the narrative announces its dramatic move to go “beyond infinity.” As Robinson has observed: “Since nothing beyond infinity can be rationally conceived, the title of Part III [‘Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite’], a verbal paradox, itself signifies that Dave has embarked upon a venture too subtle for reason to comprehend” (163).
6. Unambiguous ending
2001: A Space Odyssey is all about open-endedness. However, as Bordwell notes, in classical Hollywood film, “[t]he ending becomes the culmination of the spectator’s absorption, as all the causal gaps get filled” (Bordwell 18). With a film that conforms to classical Hollywood cinema, a viewer should feel confident that, by the film’s conclusion, he or she will understand how all of the film’s causes and effects lead up to the finale of its story. By contrast, the end of 2001 concludes with many gaps in the film’s plot left open, in effect leaving many questions in the viewer’s mind unanswered. This demands the viewer see beyond the visuals of the film. After all, Kubrick’s goal, as he has already stated, was to create an experience. In an interview with The New York Times’ William Kloman in April 1968, Kubrick explains, “Essentially the film is a mythological statement. Its meaning has to be found on a sort of visceral, psychological level rather than in a specific literal explanation.”
Several critics who wrote negative reviews of the movie indeed had problems with how Kubrick ended his movie. “By the end three unreconciled plot lines—the slabs, Dullea’s aging, the period bedroom—are simply left there like a Rorschach, with murky implications of theology” (Adler 209). Adler specifically voiced her disappointment that the film did not attempt to conform to classical Hollywood cinema, saying the film could not work if it did not spell out its intentions: “This is a long step outside the convention, some extra scripts seem required, and the all-purpose answer, ‘relativity,’ does not really serve unless it can be verbalized” (209). I shiver at the thought of cinematic experience reduced to verbalizing all its intentions.
Sarris also complained about the vagueness of the finale, stating the film ended on an arrogant note of artiness: “The ending is a mishmash of psychedelic self-indulgence for the special effects people and an exercise in mystifying abstract fantasy in the open temple of High Art” (Sarris 45).
Like Kubrick, Clarke was quite aware of the contentious points the New York critics brought up against the film and offered many vocal counter points to their criticisms. “[T]he ending does not consist of random enigmas, some simple-minded critics to the contrary. (You will find my interpretation in the novel; it is not necessarily Kubrick’s. Nor is his necessarily the ‘right’ one—whatever that means.)” (Clarke 249).
The arrival of the Starchild ends Homosapiens and begins a race of something else… if one can even call it a race. But, in keeping with the filmmakers’ intent: who knows? Kubrick meant to leave you wondering with that jarring finale. Classical Hollywood films are constructed in such a manner that no questions are left unanswered; their stories and messages may seem clear-cut, but they are also limited in scope. Audiences are effectively force-fed a conclusion and an idea that has as much value as the popcorn and soda they consume while viewing it. Meaning is closed, shut down rather than encouraged by such movies. Films, like any art that hopes to stand the test of time— should mean something to the viewer personally. Kubrick wants to leave the audience with a feeling more so than a thought. As Kubrick once said, “The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it” (qtd. in Gelmis 80).
Part 4 in this series of posts will examine the final and most complex rule of Hollywood film challenged by 2001: A Space Odyssey (as of he posting of this third part in the series, it stands at double the length of this post, but I hope to shrink it, and it might take more than a day).
Edit: here is the link to Part 4: How Stanley Kubrick broke the rules of Classical Hollywood cinema and made a better film with ’2001: A Space Odyssey’: My MA thesis redux – part 4 of 4
Meanwhile, do not forget…
In Miami, O Cinema is hosting an encore screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey on Saturday, April 27 at its Miami Shores location (that’s a hot link for tickets and more information). This screening is part of O Cinema’s on-going Kubrick retrospective inspired by Room 237, which is also currently playing at O Cinema (see event page). The film, inspired by Kubrick’s the Shining, continues to expand this week in the Miami area. It opened at the Miami Beach Cinematheque on Tuesday, Apr. 23 (see calendar) and the Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables will begin a run on Friday, Apr. 26 (see calendar).
Notes
* Bordwell here quotes from Barret C. Kiesling, Talking Pictures (Richmond, Virginia, Johnson Publishing Co., 1937).
**According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2001 won the Oscar® for Special Visual Effects that year. It was also nominated in three other categories: Art Direction, Directing and Screenwriting.
Works Cited
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.
Clarke, Arthur C. Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
— –. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Millennium Edition. New York: Roc, 2000.
Ebert, Roger. Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. 27 March 1997. Rogerebert.com. 6 Feb. 2006 <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970327/REVIEWS08/401010362>.
Gelmis, Joseph. “The Film Director as Superstar: Stanley Kubrick.” 1970. Stanley Kubrick Interviews. Ed. Gene D. Phillips. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2001. 80-104.
Kauffman, Stanley. “Lost in the Stars.” Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. New Republic 1968. The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. Ed. Jerome Agel. New York: New American Library, 1970. 223-226.
Kloman, William. “In 2001, Will Love Be a Seven Letter Word?” New York Times On The Web 14 April 1968. 5 July 2006 <http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/041468kubrick-2001.html>.
Robinson, William R. “The Birth of Imaginative man in Part III of 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Seeing Beyond: Movies, Visions, and Values. Ed. Richard P. Sugg. New York: Golden String Press, 2001. 161-187.
Sarris, Andrew. Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Village Voice 11 April, 1968: 45.
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. “2001: A Space Odyssey: ‘a superb wreck’” Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Vogue June 1968: 76.
Sweeney, Louise. Rev. of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Christian Science Monitor 1968. The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. Ed. Jerome Agel. New York: New American Library, 1970. 227-229.
Independent Ethos 