- by Dan
  [October 21, 2001]

A warning for the unintiated: Since I doubt many people over the age of 20 have not seen Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece, I'm not going to be concerned with spoilers in this article.

2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed in Cinerama (which is really a marketing term devised to describe 70mm films projected onto a curved screen) so where better to premiere its glorious re-release than at the penultimate altar to the form, Seattle's Cinerama theater itself?

The management of the Cinerama, arguably the best theater in the world, wisely chose to screen 2001 in all of its original pretense and glory, complete with opening overture and intermission. This harkened back to a classier time when the cocktail hour reigned supreme and beehive hairdos seemed like a good idea. Now (and probably then) the intermission serves as an opportunity for Kubrick afficionados to sneak out to their vehicles for one last joint before Frank Bowman's shuttle connects with the obelisk in orbit around Jupiter turning him into a star-zygote (and effectively revealing the earth to be a giant gonad).

So what do 2001: A Space Odyssey and dance music have in common? So glad you asked...

Last Wednesday, I found myself sitting in the Breakroom listening to deep house music. Normally, this type of music would cause my skin to feel as though small insects were crawling all over it. But on this particular night, I realized what it is that makes deep house so cool. It requires its listeners to be creative. While it provides a solid background that makes you want to move your ass, a melody or some other crucial element is always missing from the mix. This is the place left for the listener to create their own self-expression, so they can move their bodies to the melodies in their minds.

Kubrick's genius lies, I believe, in that while he has a very specific overriding theme in mind (so specific, in fact, that he's famous for his anal-retentive directorial style), his scenes are so long and build so slowly that there's plenty of time for viewers to explore their own ideas about what's going on—to hang their own ornaments on Kubrick's Christmas tree, if you will.

So house music requires some effort and creativity on the part of the listener, and Kubrick's 2001 is parallel in this way—you, the viewer, are left enough space to find your own meaning while riding the track laid so meticulously by this generous filmmaker.

I saw 2001 with a friend who worships Kubrick. He is sure that every camera angle, every blink, every color and cut reveal something amazing about the mind of the filmmaker. I remarked afterwards that 2001 wouldn't have suffered from a slightly more aggressive editor. My friend was at best dubious. I knew I sounded a lot like the emperor in Amadeus who tells Mozart that his symphony contains too many notes. Mozart responds by asking which notes the emperor would have him remove, and my friend (ever Kubrick's defender) asked me which scenes I would have shortened.

I was ready.

"You know the scene where Bowan has impregnated the obelisk and is hurtling from star-zygote to space-embryo through all that psychedelia? Well, maybe Kubrick had some symbolic reason for spending 15 minutes cycling though through every color of the alien rainbow, but I doubt it."

My friend neither agreed nor disagreed. And maybe this reviewer wears no clothes, but my friend is still speaking to me.

That said, I don't know if it was done on purpose or not, but on opening night at the Cinerama, the management may have provided some ingenious commentary. After the curtains had completely withdrawn but just before the monstrous climactic chord so famously associated with that opening starfield, the projector flickered to a stop, the curtains closed, and the audience erupted in laughter.

For me, this was a hilarious reminder that 2001 is just a movie, folks. Arguably one of the best ever made, but just a movie. No... really.