Why did we sit through 143 minutes of that? Right from the beginning I might have known that eight minutes of blank screen and music was not going to be a good idea.
It got worse. Monkeys round a pool, other monkeys round a pool, screen goes blank. Monkey discovers a bone and bones another monkey. Cut to deep space and a monolithic slab emits a piercing sound and suddenly we're off to Jupiter.
HAL says there's something wrong and we watch a pod emerge from the ship. Three and a half minutes later, the pod has gone another foot and a half. We're just staring in sheer numbed boredom at this point but can't reach over to switch off the DVD.
Then the screen goes blank and a sign comes on: "Intermission." On a DVD? We decide to stick it out in case it was just something on the film. It wasn't. It was a real time fifteen minute intermission, presumably while we went out to make popcorn. We wind forward.
"Can't remember it ever being this bad," mumbles my mate.
"I'm deciding whether never to watch it again or to watch it again just once in my lifetime."
"Yep."
Near the end, I say, quietly, "If that person in that bed points at that monolith, I'm going to vote this the worst film ever."
The person in that bed pointed at that monolith.
We silently trooped out of the room. "Did you feel yourself visibly age?" I asked.
.
Did you atleast have popcorn?
ReplyDeleteI never did understand that film. When I watched it I was told I would get it at the end... I didn't and they couldn't explain ;-)
ReplyDeleteI have had it explained by someone else since and found it quite weak LOL
It's not just you it is c**p film.
It really was that bad....hippies in space.
ReplyDeleteGood - it wasn't just us then. It's a bit Emperor's new clothes then.
ReplyDeleteYounger Son went to see it a few years ago. He came back and said, 'What the ... ?!'
ReplyDeleteOh, no, I can't agree. Yes, the film is flawed, but the opening sequence is brilliant. This critic sums it up for me:
ReplyDelete"The first fifteen minutes or so of 2001:A Space Odyssey make, in your correspondent's humble opinion, one of the finest sequences ever committed to celluloid. Our humanoid ancestors live in fear for their lives, and forage or scavenge for food. But then they encounter the monolith, and the first giant leap of consciousness occurs: weapons = fresh meat, and supremacy over rival groups. The climax of the sequence takes place to the inspired soundtrack of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and the final jumpcut when the jawbone/axe is triumphantly flung into the air, only to turn at its apogee into a spacecraft, is just awesome. Even now, just re-running the scene in my mind's cinema, I have goosebumps. The arc of that jawbone describes the arc of human technological development, and also prepares us for the next evolutionary leap after the second monolith is found. It is a cinematic flourish that I don't believe I have ever seen equalled."
I never saw the reason for the cult following A Clockwork Orange received.
ReplyDeleteI hated that film,although it was original.