how Stanley Kubrick’s film was made and received

55 years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey was released. The picture became a cult and remained in history as one of the most significant films about space. How the epic about the journey to Jupiter was created and how it was remembered is in the material of Kommersant.

From book to screenplay and back

Stanley Kubrick had the idea of ​​making a “good science fiction film” immediately after the 1964 release of his cult comedy Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Being Afraid and Loved the Atomic Bomb. To discuss the script, he met with the famous science fiction writer Arthur Clarke, who flew to New York from Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the mid-1950s.

Clarke offered Kubrick several stories to choose from, of which the director liked The Sentry the best. He formed the basis of the film and the future book. In the story, people find a pyramid-shaped artifact on the moon that is protected by an invisible barrier and emits a radio signal.

Over the course of two years, Clark and Kubrick first wrote a sci-fi novel and then the script for A Space Odyssey. The director came up with the name himself, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. The main role of astronaut Dave Bowman went to actor Cyrus Dulli.

The book was released after the release of the film and became the beginning of the tetralogy. The second part was filmed in 1984 under the title “Space Odyssey 2010”. The third and fourth books told more about the creators of the monolith and how they turned into pure energy.

NASA branch

The film is known for its detailed reproduction of space. Kubrick assembled a team of artists who were able to come up with a whole new world – from space suits and cups to computers and space shuttles, which were developed by NASA specialists Harry Lang and Frederick Ordway. The head of the American space agency called the British Shepperton studio, where the shooting took place, “his eastern office.”

Without Kubrick’s work as a starting point, there would be neither Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013) nor Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014). It is no coincidence that it was Nolan who in 2018 presented at Cannes the anniversary restoration of the Kubrick film, made without the use of digital technologies.

Timely Predictions

Kubrick, who was 36 when the film was made, grew up with 1940s-1950s sci-fi and followed the space race between the USSR and the USA. He believed that the main danger that lurks a film about space is to be late with predictions, to be ridiculous against the backdrop of the reality of lunar missions and people going into outer space.

The director managed to create an original world, many things from which were impossible to imagine in the 1960s, but they are quite real now. He predicted flat screens, video calls, voice control of computers. NASA, in the footsteps of the film, has created entertainment and exercise systems for astronauts, and is also thinking about implementing artificial gravity and hypersleep capsules.

In the film, the HAL 9000 computer managed to beat a human at chess, which in reality did not happen until several decades later.

Bored audience

Kubrick created an art-house film about space that did not fit into the format of most cinemas in the United States. At the premiere, people left the hall, the reaction of those who watched to the end was ambiguous. Some film critics called the film “hypnotically boring” and “uncompromisingly slow”. After the premiere, Kubrick cut 20 minutes from the film, but it was clear to MGM that his pace was unlikely to suit the mass audience.

However, the film unexpectedly became popular among hippies. John Lennon said he goes to A Space Odyssey weekly. Particularly appreciated was the psychedelic episode of the astronaut Bowman’s journey through space and time, made by Kubrick’s specialists based on split-scan technology.

To raise interest, MGM commissioned new posters that read: “A Space Odyssey – The Greatest Trip!” (2001: Space Odyssey – the ultimate trip). As a result, with a budget of $12 million, the picture grossed $57.3 million at the box office.

Cancellation of ordered music

The original soundtrack for the film was originally commissioned from composer Alex North, with whom Kubrick had previously collaborated. However, while working on the picture for the background, the director put on classical music and got so used to it that he refused North’s compositions at the final editing. As a result, the compositions “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss, “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss, “Gayane” by Aram Khachaturian sound in the film.

Some works, combined with the visuals, have become common cinematic clichés in themselves – the beginning of the film is especially often quoted.

What was said about the film

Screenwriter Arthur Clarke opined that, if everything is clear to the viewer in A Space Odyssey, then the film failed. Stanley Kubrick himself stated thatdoes not want to attach instructions to “2001”, which every spectator would be obliged to follow for fear of misunderstanding something. In general, the authors of the film wanted it to have a lot more questions than answers.

Critics are divided in their opinions. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the film “not about a goal, but about a search, about aspiration.” “He tells us: we became human when we learned to think. Now it’s time to take the next step and understand that we do not live on a planet, but among the stars, and that we are not flesh, but consciousness, ”he explained. At the same time, popular film critic Pauline Cale called the film a complete flop because “abstract ideas the film sets out too abstractly.”

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury wrote that the death of the astronauts in the picture does not touch: “Antonioni’s chilling breath that Kubrick is obsessed with has turned everything to ice… I think it’s a luxurious film, one of the most beautiful in the history of cinema. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have well-acted scenes and the dialogue is horrendously banal.” And director Martin Scorsese admired the ballet quality of A Space Odyssey and the fact that Kubrick was able to reproduce the rhythm of life and ritualize the passage of time.

How Kubrick “staged” the flight to the moon

“Space Odyssey” gave the world another “conspiracy theory” that Kubrick filmed a re-enactment of the Americans’ flight to the moon in the pavilion. Its supporters constantly find “confirmation” of this. For example, in the 2002 mockumentary film The Dark Side of the Moon, the widow of director Christian Kubrick claimed that US President Richard Nixon, under the impression of A Space Odyssey, really ordered Kubrick a film about the landing of American astronauts on the moon.

In exchange for this, on the set of Barry Lyndon (1975), the director was allegedly allowed to use a lens designed specifically for NASA satellites, which allowed him to shoot only in natural light.

Evgeny Fedunenko