Though the calendar reads 2020
we’re still waiting for the future promised in 2001. Stanley
Kubrick’s 1968 film, created concurrently with Arthur C Clarke’s
novel, is recognized as one of the most influential motion
pictures ever made, endlessly scrutinized from both a story and
production point of view. Both avenues are open to New Yorkers
and visiting tourists from 18 January through 19 July at the
Museum of the Moving Image adjacent to the Kaufman Astoria
Studios in Queens.
Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey is an in-depth
examination of how the New York-born director’s desire to make
“the proverbial ‘really good’ science fiction film” (as Kubrick
wrote to Clarke in a letter preserved under glass in the
exhibit) led to “the ultimate trip”, as MGM’s marketing
department called the movie once young people seized upon the
heady, ambiguous film that exploded into sound and light to go
“beyond the infinite” in its most notable sequence.
That section of the movie – the stargate scene – is what greets
you as you climb the stairs to the museum’s third floor. There
are also smaller screens offering clips from films that directly
influenced Kubrick when he was dreaming of the future. To the
Moon and Beyond, created for the 1964 World’s Fair, sits beside
the George Pal-produced Destination Moon. Jordan Belson’s
experimental shorts and the Soviet-influenced Czech masterpiece
Ikarie-XB1 flank the National Film Board of Canada’s 1960 short
Universe, narrated by future voice of HAL 9000, Douglas Rain.
During the press preview, Kubrick’s eldest daughter, Katharina,
said “teenage boys made that movie a success”, as she detailed
the initial critical drubbing her father’s vision of tomorrow
faced on release, and how counting the walkouts with a clicker
during the premiere left the director “feeling depressed”. When
she heard a radio DJ call it “groovy”, she knew it might catch
on.
“Today,” she continued, “young people are very enthusiastic
about the film. It’s Goat [greatest of all time], or whatever it
is,” she joked, mentioning its frequent revivals and the recent
Christopher Nolan-led “unrestored” release.
Her father’s exhaustive research is made wonderfully evident in
the exhibit with large amounts of correspondence on show,
awaiting a deep dive. No detail in the finished film wasn’t
thoroughly discussed between the production team and groups like
the Rand Corporation or Ordway Research. One can also inspect
the deals with groups like Hilton Hotels or Parker Pens because
even an arthouse masterpiece from the 1960s made room for spon-con.
The model ships, drawings, sketches, costume tests, helmets,
props, walls of index cards and apeman suits are what one
expects from an exhibit like this, but what grabbed me most was
a special section dedicated to the stargate sequence. I’ve read
about Douglas Trumbull’s creative use of the split-scan
technique (which the twentysomething tinkerer essentially
invented on the fly) but I’ve never quite understood it before.
Seeing the enormous schematics and large-format photos finally
brought that home.
Not that I’d ever let go of the suspension of disbelief. With
the eerie György Ligeti music piped in (and, elsewhere, Aram
Khachaturian and Strausses both Richard and Johann) one is
quickly reminded that all this behind-the-scenes magic wouldn’t
mean much without the ideas Kubrick and Clarke dreamed up.
“It doesn’t tell you what to think,” Katharina Kubrick says of
the film, the first of her father’s works she was old enough to
see on its release. (“I certainly wasn’t allowed to see Lolita,”
she joked.) “Who you are is how you receive it,” she continued,
adding that her father remained a “proud Bronx boy” who would
receive VHS tapes of New York football and baseball games from
his sister when the family lived in England.
The film’s New York roots are a point of pride for the museum.
Kubrick and Clarke’s first meeting was held at the long-gone
midtown bar Trader Vic’s. Clarke, already living in Colombo in
modern-day Sri Lanka, was in town to work on Time-Life Library’s
Man and Space. The pair talked through the story in Kubrick’s
frenetic apartment with three energetic young daughters on
Lexington Avenue, his office on Central Park West and on walks
between the two. When physical production moved to Borehamwood
in Hertfordshire, Clarke stayed on at Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel
to work on the novel.
2001: A Space Odyssey was the first film the Museum of Moving
Image programmed after its rather Kubrickian remodeling job in
2011. (The architect Thomas Leeser admitted to the movie’s
influence, according to opening remarks at the press event.) The
film has screened 46 times to packed houses at the museum since
2011, one of the few spots left in New York with exquisite 70mm
projection.
The new exhibit comes to New York after a successful run at the
Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt. It represents
all of the 2001 elements (with “amplification”) from a larger
Stanley Kubrick show that toured London, Los Angeles and
numerous other cities.
With six months of Envisioning 2001 in the upstairs gallery,
many special guests like Douglas Trumbull, 2001 actors Keir
Dullea and Dan Richter and the director of the Carl Sagan
Institute, Lisa Kaltenegger, are booked for accompanying film
screenings. In addition to 2001 on both 70mm and digital,
programs include films that inspired Kubrick, were influenced by
2001 or are notable “outer space speculators”. From now until
July, Queens, New York is the ultimate trip.
Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey will be
showing at the Museum of the Moving Image, New York, from 18
January to 19 July. |
