Movie as an Experience

People watch movies for different reasons. But most would agree that we want to be entertained. And perhaps even learn something in the process.

We sometimes disagree on our opinion about the merits of a movie because we all expect different things from it. Some people look for a good storyline or plot. Some look for action; some expect to be emotionally touched. Obviously movies are made to cater for different types of audiences and taste.

There are grounds for debate only if we first agree on what a movie is trying to achieve and then we start arguing whether the movie has successfully done so. Otherwise, some of us could just be missing the point. The Matrix Reloaded and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle both cater for different types of audiences and are made with different intents.

A movie which I enjoyed very much over the years that I've repeatedly watched it, is 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by the late Stanley Kubrick who also co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke. Released in 1968 before the Apollo landing on the moon, the movie contains ground-breaking special effects for its time. Even today, its space sequences still look realistic.

With a running time of two-and-of-half hours, to some people it is also one of the most boring movie ever made--imagine the first line of dialogue was only spoken half-an-hour into the movie!

During its LA premier, Rock Hudson was reported to walk out half-way into the movie complaining: "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"

The writer Norman Mailer was even more acerbic: "(The movie) is like one of those long interplanetary voyages where you have to go into hibernation..."

With long periods of silences, and long sequences of spacemen floating in space, and sleep-inducing Strauss waltzes as the background music, one can understand why many slept through most of the movie. Why then is it now revered as one of the greatest movies of all time?

No, I did not fall asleep when I first watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1990. But I was watching it alone, uninterrupted, with full concentration. At the end of it, I was enthralled. I sat through the movie again the next day and the following day after that.

Now, what was it about the movie that captivated me? Was it the grand scheme of the plot which spans from the dawn of Man--apemen fighting with bones--to the climatic encounter at the end with some unseen higher intelligence? Was it the visual effects which by today's standard are pretty run-of-the-mill?

At that time, I just knew that I liked it and it took me a while to figure out why. I finally realised that like a piece of poetry, or a painting, or a sip of good wine, the movie was an experience. One that had to be savoured in its totality.

It was the audio and visual experience of seeing space vehicles gliding in space to the strains of The Blue Danube Waltz; the astonishment of that brilliant fast-forward cut from bone-thrown-in-air to spaceship-floating-in-space; the suffocating claustrophobia of astronaut Poole in his spacesuit, drifting helpless in space, refused entry to his ship by HAL, the computer gone berserk; the experience of awe that borders on spirituality of astronaut Bowman, going through the Stargate to end up in a mundane aristocratic French living room and his final emergence and transformation into a "Starchild", drifting like a cosmic embryo over Earth.

It was one breathless experience. Its slow pace made it a visual meditation. Kubrick could have chosen to turn it into an pulsating space adventure with the materials he had, but he chose not to. Instead he gave us an experience that is both intellectual and religious. He himself mentioned in interviews that if he had succeeded in evoking such feelings in his audience, then he had achieved his intent.

And with me, he certainly did. That is why 2001:A Space Odyssey remains, lingering in my mind until now, an experience a lifetime, to be relived over and over again.