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Space Odyssey™, Part 2
Not since Kubrick's own Lolita and Dr. Strangelove had
a major motion picture been so controversial and received such diverse
reactions. Many of the film’s loudest critics seemed to be completely
missing the point. During a 1968 interview with Playboy Magazine, Kubrick
seemed to both echo and invert the communication theories of Marshall
McLuhan, stating that, "In 2001 the message is the medium. I
tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing
and directly penetrates the subconscious with its emotional and philosophical
content."
Besides creating a new paradigm for telling stories and making movies,
Kubrick had offered the world a new way of watching and understanding
cinema. 2001 was over two hours in length, a 139-minute psychedelic
trip that used long scenes with no dialogue to speak to audiences in a
unique language of imagery and motion. Like a Van Gogh painting, 2001
left itself open to interpretation, compelling viewers to wonder about
the artist’s intentions and ultimately arrive at their own conclusions.
2001’s ambiguity was consistent with the experimentation,
social upheaval, and spiritual seeking of the late ‘60’s and
early ‘70’s. The film seemed to perfectly complement the era’s
various counter-cultural movements.
 The explosion of visual and auditory stimuli used to depict the movie’s
climax came to be regarded as one of the most memorable sequences in motion
picture history. As the central astronaut character traversed a portal
into a new universe, viewers were treated to a seemingly LSD-inspired
light show, the kind more commonly associated with Janis Joplin and Jimi
Hendrix than with anything a major Hollywood studio might produce. At
the end of the hero’s journey, he appears to have been transformed
into some new sort of being, a "Star Child" that is embryonic
in appearance, and yet powerful enough to float in the vacuum of space
with no protective gear. This wide-eyed creature gazes out at the audience
with a look that implies both childlike wonder and a serene state of enlightenment.
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