I don’t remember my exact age, but I guess it must’ve been in my mid-teens when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or that is, I saw some of it. I found it to be somewhat interesting due to the whole space-thing, but ultimately lacking in alien creatures and explosions.
A few years later I saw some of it again with Rikke and this time around it felt even longer and just mind bogglingly tiresome. I was a bit disappointed since I genuinely wanted to like this movie. Why people older than me hailed it as one of the greatest movies ever made I couldn’t quite understand, hadn’t these people bothered with watching Aliens!?
I forgot about it for a few years after that and went about my business. Until one day when I was vacationing in Denmark during my time studying in Scotland. Rikke had to go to some social thing and for some reason I had wanted to see 2001 for a few weeks so I took the chance and got the only copy the local Blockbuster had (I hope that you do not rent your movies at Blockbuster, a corporation that does little for your interests as a movie-fan through their right-wing censorship policies); a beat-up 4:3 VHS copy which flickered so much during the first 5 minutes that I almost gave up on it.
In the time since my last encounter with Kubrick and Clarke’s odyssey something must’ve opened up my eyes to new ways of taking in the movie, because this time around I was just awed.
I mean here was a movie that was – and still is I think – among the most boring movies ever made and it cracked my head open like cheap fortune cookie and started loading in thoughts and ideas that up until that point had been, I think, too abstract for me to really bother with. I mean a 3 hour movie where nothing happens; it just doesn’t seem plausible does it?! But instead of perceiving it as such I discovered the visual journey in it, the experience of it.
Where movies like Toy Story – bless it, I love it – speaks a language mostly everyone can somehow appreciate, 2001 is talking in a tongue that to most people – not on drugs – come off as an alien monotone indiscernible stream of non-sensible blabber.
That is until you allow yourself to experience the language without prejudice, without the preconceived ideas of what you like and don’t like and what a movie should or should not do.
When that happens it can be like a neuron-detonation inside your brain as the mind tries to deal with these new impressions, thoughts, concepts and interpretations. It’s exhilarating and you suddenly gain an insight into what you had been missing all along.
And this is my postulate, the whole point of why I have written this entry and why you are reading it: “Getting it” is a state of mind. Anyone can “get it” if they are willing to allow themselves the luxury of an open mind, but few are.
I said to Bjørn the other day something along the lines of this (paraphrasing): “I just cannot understand how anyone can not have their minds blown by Matrix Reloaded!” — Well now I can, and it saddens me that stuck-up pathetic shut-eyed people like this guy are allowed to review movies when he obviously isn’t ready to ‘free his mind’…
“We all see what we want to see. Coffey looks and he sees Russians. He sees hate and fear. You have to look with better eyes than that.”
Another thing happened when I was in my mid-teens. Pulp-Fiction and Reservoir Dogs came out. Tarantino made it big time and it seemed that everybody instantly “got it”. Except me. I just didn’t get a God damn thing. — Well today I’m going to see Kill Bill, and I hope to discover Tarantino for the first time. Hopefully I have been able to free my mind. Hopefully I will look with better eyes than that.
From now on this entry will be known as Heilemann’s YMMV Law
PS: This does not negate poor craftsmanship.
I liked what you wrote, it all made a whole lot of sence, unfortunately I thought you ruined the article with your last PS comment. That comment changed the piece into a “like what I like, or you a damn fool”… and somehow I dont think thats your message.
That’s not the point of the ‘clause’ though.
The point is that regardless of whether this or that movie is understood by its target audience, some movies just suck.
Exempli Gratia Congo and Anaconda
I have rephrased the clause, I hope its intent is clearer now.
Say what you want Mike, The Matrix: Reloaded just felt “off” to me. Hopefully Revolutions will be better. And if it turns out that they’re inside another matrix, I’m going to start shooting people.
I never got the chance to see 2001, though. I’ve seen the very beginning, and the very end, but that’s it :(
But the best movies are those that can be enjoyed on multiple levels. Fight Club, hell, even The Terminator are examples of this.
I can definetly understand why you think it’s a bit off, and I’m not saying that it’s not. But I love it just the same :)
As for movies that aren’t enjoyable at anything more than the surface level, I mostly feel like I’m wasting my time. Which is why the new Star Wars trilogy feels so damn hollow.
I saw 2001 for the first time just a few weeks ago. It’s a film I’ve always wanted to see. I’m a guy who appreciates good films and always prefers art to sensation, but I just didn’t appreciate 2001. I figure it’s like the Beatles. You know they were fantastic and ground-breaking and unlike anything that came before them, but if you were born in 1980 you simply can’t appreciate that. Sure, the music is great, but you can really appreciate it for what it is unless you have lived without it. Don’t you think? Maybe I need to revisit 2001 at some point, but for the moment it’s not working for me.
I certainly think that that is a large part of why many so-called classics are lost on modern generations. I for instance never ‘got’ Citizen Kane, but then again I don’t really know what to look for in it.
But I think 2001 is a universally timeless movie. It’s not so much about the effects as some would have you believe, it’s about the who visual experience of the movie. The slow pace, the monotonous tone of every conversation, if you can even call them conversations. The dehumanisation which eventually leads to the transcendence of mankind into the starchild… Or however you decide to interpret it.
What I think makes it such an amazing piece of cinema is the fact that no one before or since have made anything that’s quite as experimental as it was. Unfortunatly.
Citizen Kane is widely respected among filmmakers because it contained a lot of firsts. It was one of the first films to use deep focus, for example. It had a non-linear story, which was unheard of for movies in 1941.
Virtually all sets in 1941 had no ceilings. This was done mostly to facilitate hanging lights from the soundstage’s overhead lighting grid, but it limited how the director could shoot the film. Orson Welles had several of the sets built with ceilings, and some of them had low ceilings, and he then proceeded to do a good number of low-angle shots that composed the actors against said low ceilings. This was practically taboo in 1941, and even today is uncommon unless the director is doing it for effect.
The camera work in Citizen Kane was clever and inventive, at a time when most films were just master shots and over-the-shoulder shots. For example, the opening scene. Or the shot in which we see Kane as a boy playing outside in the snow, and the camera starts pulling back to reveal that it’s actually inside the Kane family cabin. It might sound rather pedestrian today, but in 1941 nobody did shots like that.
So while the fact that it’s loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst (and intentionally slanted to portray Hearst in a negative light) is what caused a fluster upon its release (and what caused Hearst to successfully attempt to bury the film at the box office), it’s technical acheivements are probably one of the bigger reasons the film is so well regarded today.
Martin Scorcese once said that it was Citizen Kane that made him want to become a director, FYI.
That’s really informative, thanks Sean. I’d love to read up on it some more, you have any suggestions for material?
I liked 2001 for the amazing sense of solitude it gives me.
I like to think it conveys how long haul space travelling must be.
Mike: there was a book written about Citizen Kane, but fuck if I can remember the name of it. Basically it was the annotated screenplay of Citizen Kane, with a few chapters about the film beforehand.
There was a made-for-cable movie about the making of Citizen Kane called “RKO 281” a few years ago, it was pretty good (it had Liev Schreiber as Orson Welles, John Malkovich as the guy who wrote the screenplay, and James Cromwell played W. R. Hearst).
There is also some information about Citizen Kane in the book Flashback: A Brief History of Film (info about Citizen Kane starts on page 215). Everyone with more than just a passing interest in movies should have that book, which covers the history of movies (both American and European, but mostly American) from the very start all the way up until the late 90s.
It also helps to be taking a class on the history of film, as I am doing this semester :)
Bastard.
Thank for the titles, they’re going on my to-investigate list.
The guy teaching the class is like a walking Encyclopedia of Movies. It puts my own knowledge of movie history to shame, which is why I must kill him :)
“ “The Matrix” is also its own context, perhaps comparisons aren’t really relevant.”
This quote, taken out of context from the newsday article on matrix reloaded (to which you link) really speaks to the fact that the reviewer DID get it, “The Matrix” is its OWN context, and needs to be analyzed in that mileu. Comparisons are NEVER relevant, because two different things cannot abide by the same principles ever, intrinsically in nature as in cinema. Stating that context without explaining it, though – is a cop-out, barely scratching the surface. I would go further, explaining what the story did to explore the opposing forces of that context and what they tell us about society, aspirations/fears and ourselves.
I would also be interested to know your thoughts on how the “matrix reloaded” and trilogy tell us about society today, especially as the first and last have so many years/evolutions of modern times between them. It is my belief that the “matrix” are our self-imposed mindfears and limitations, apart from society and yet inforced by its mores. The idea that the brilliant adguys at Adidas had with “Impossible is Nothing” speaks to this invincible sport JustdoIt attitude that can be brought into the social/mental sphere, and this is what “matrix” speaks to/informs about/aspires to.
No?