Peter M. Floyd

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey can be considered the Citizen Kane of science fiction, in that it features a revolutionary visual style (a style matched with a bit of bravado, as if the director were saying “Look what I can do!”) that had an outsized influence on the movies that followed it. And, like Kane, it was controversial when it came out, and remains so to this day, with many people considering it arty and pretentious.

There’s no question that 2001 can be a difficult film to watch. It moves at a deliberate pace, not willing to speed up to satisfy those with short attention spans. The long and seemingly endless shots of spacecraft in motion can try the patience of the most ardent fan. When the movie was released in 1968, such sequences were intended to instill a sense of awe in the audience, giving them glimpses of space and future technology far beyond what had been seen in earlier sf films — though, even then, many viewers got restless waiting for something to happen. (Supposedly, Rock Hudson walked out of the premiere screening, muttering “What is this bullshit?”) In this day and age, when any hack moviemaker has access to technology far beyond that available to Kubrick and special effects director Douglas Trumbull, a modern viewer might well wonder what the big deal is. And where are the damned aliens already?

Obviously, given the fact that I’m including 2001 in my Ten Best list, I think the movie is still a big deal. I first saw it on TV when I was about fifteen. Catching the broadcast a small television, broken up by ads, is not of course the ideal way of seeing any movie, let alone 2001, which depends on its visuals for much of its power. Certainly, I didn’t fully appreciate the film until I saw it years later on the silver screen. But even on first viewing, I grasped that this was a very different kind of science fiction movie — or movie of any kind — than any I’d seen before. It was a story told elliptically, with images rather than words, with important elements (like those damned aliens) completely unseen, existing only in negative space.

Soon after seeing the movie, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s novelization. Clarke was of course instrumental in the creation of the movie, which was inspired by his short story “The Sentinel.” Yet I found the book disappointing; it lacked the radical power of the film. And I realized that this was because the novel was (of course) told with words, which by their very nature make meaning explicit. In Kubrick’s film, as opposed to Clarke’s novel, the words are restricted to the dialog, which is mostly mundane and trivial. The movie’s meaning is implicit — which makes watching it both more difficult and more rewarding than reading the novel.

I don’t want to fault Clarke too much. He remains one of the great sf writers of the mid 20th Century, with Childhood’s End being a classic that has not faded with age. And it must be said that his 2001 is far better written than your average movie novelization. But his narrative by its very nature takes away the very thing that makes 2001 the classic that it is. It’s like the Cliff’s Notes for the movie. (And don’t get me started on 2010: The Year We Make Contact, in which Clarke felt it necessary to explain exactly why the computer HAL went on a rampage. Some mysteries are better left as mysteries. Did Leonardo need to tell us why the Mona Lisa was smiling?) If you haven’t seen the movie yet (and why haven’t you?) wait until after you’ve done so to read the novel. In fact, wait a few weeks, or months, and let the movie percolate through your mind for a while before you pick up the book.

I said before that 2001 has been an influential movie, and that is certainly true in so far as its design and visual effects. But really, I would argue that it hasn’t been influential enough. There have been very few movies since (certainly not mainstream ones) that have engaged their audiences with such a distinctive visual, non-verbal style. (Offhand, for American films, I can think of David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life. I may be the only person on Earth to have actually liked the latter. Or seen it, for that matter.) On the whole, 2001 was a giant step forward in the possibility of film, and it’s a pity that so few have followed up on it.

Looking over what I have written here, I realize I’ve said precious little about the movie itself. Perhaps that’s just as well. The movie resists any kind of pat summary (“Oh, it’s about the evolution of humankind, the danger of artificial intelligence, and the pleasures of eating a decent meal!”) and seems lessened by any attempts to describe it.

See the movie on as large a screen as possible. Allow yourself to fall into its slow and inexorable rhythm. If you don’t get it, or you find it pretentious twaddle, then watch it again. Notice the themes that cross the various segments of the movie: Food. Tools. Murder. Intelligence. Sleep. Growth. Wonder. Things that link all of humanity from primitive hominids to angelic star-children. For all the starkness of its scenes in deep space, the movie is rich with meaning and life.

And I dare you not to be moved when HAL sings “Daisy Bell.”

This if the first of a series of posts about my ten all-time favorite science fiction movies. Note that I do not claim that these are the best sf movies (though I think all of them are legitimately great), but the ones that, for whatever reason, push my particular buttons. I’ll be treating them in chronological order.

I love 50’s science fiction movies, despite the fact that many if not most of them are terrible. Made in a decade that had a stick up its butt, they tend to suffer from a severe case of stodginess, with earnest humans (nearly always men) confronting menaces from beyond, either here on Earth or in what was then called “outer space.” Even the best sf movies from the decade — The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, The Thing from Another World, It Came from Outer Space, and so on — carry this weight of stodginess with them. The tentacles of irreverence that were poking into the corners of popular culture — in, say, Mad magazine, “The Ernie Kovacs Show,” and the songs of Little Richard — never got their grasp on the Hollywood studios churning out endless movies about square-jawed heroes punching aliens in the face.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (from 1956) is the best sf movie of the decade not because it transcends that stodginess, but because it makes the stodginess work for it. Set in the small California town of Santa Mira, where everyone is white and middle class and totally square (the cast of characters includes children and adults, but no teenagers or twentysomethings), the movie depicts what happens when the residents are replaced one by one by alien pod people who are absolutely identical to the originals, except for being even more stodgy (having no emotions, desires, or dreams). While it was almost certainly not in the creators’ minds, one can see the pod invasion as an illustration of what Fifties conformity culture might be if carried to extremes.

The two protagonists, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and his old flame Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) at first glance are as stiff and formal as everyone else in town. Miles is never without a coat and tie (except for the scenes when he’s in a bathrobe) and Dana swans about in a fancy strapless dress as she goes about her daily routine. But, significantly, they’re both divorced, an unexpected characterization for a time when divorce was considered morally questionable. And they’re both likeable people, generally interested in helping their friends and neighbors, which starts the plot rolling as they investigate what is starting a seeming outbreak of mass hysteria, when these friends and neighbors start insisting that their loved ones have been replaced by imposters. Soon enough, Miles and Becky find themselves surrounded by hostile creatures bearing the faces of their friends.

The direction, by Don Siegel (who would go one to direct the Clint Eastwood flicks Dirty Harry and The Beguiled, among others) is quite effective, considering the clear limitations in the budget. Body Snatchers starts off as a creepy mystery (what’s the cause of this seeming hysteria?). Then it becomes a horror movie, as Miles and Becky, and their friends Jack and Theodora (played by King Donovan and Carolyn Jones — yes, Morticia Addams) find first a blank, featureless body that slowly becomes a copy of Jack, and then (in a truly unsettling scene) a set of giant seed pods that disgorge frothy duplicates of all four of them in a truly unsettling scene. The final act of the movie is an exercise of true paranoia, as Miles and Becky realize they are the only two left in town who have not been assimilated, and try to escape with their souls intact.

There are many who prefer Philip Kaufman’s remake of 1978, which does have a lot to recommend it, including Donald Sutherland’s deft performance as the lead, Leonard Nimoy as a pop psychiatrist, and a lot of gooey visuals. (There were additional remakes in 1994 and 2007 which I didn’t see; I’m not sure anyone did.) Set in urban San Francisco, Kaufman’s version has a different feel and overall theme than the original (urban alienation vs. rural assimilation). I find myself preferring the simplicity and directness of the original; it’s far more terrifying to have your friends, rather than complete strangers, turn into soulless imposters.

The 1956 version is generally faithful to Jack Finney’s novel, but has (surprisingly for a Hollywood film) a more depressing ending. In the book, Miles and friends are able to defeat the aliens, and the pods end up leaving Earth. In the original cut of the movie, Miles is the only one in Santa Mira to escape the pods, and he ends up running up and down a freeway, raving like a maniac: “They’re coming! You’re next! You’re next!” The studio would not allow that to stand, however, and Seigel was forced to add a framing device in which Miles tells his story to a skeptical doctor (While Bissell, who appeared in half the sf movies coming out of Hollywood in the 50s), as word comes in that an overturned truck has spilled giant seed pods all over the highway. (Which is still a far cry from the book’s happy ending.)

Ever since the movie was released, there has been debate about its meaning. Do the pod people symbolize Communist infiltrators? Or McCarthyite demagogues? Siegel insisted that there was no political meaning, but of course no one had paid any attention to that. Honestly, the concept of friends and family taken over by an alien hive mind can be adapted for any age and political outlook; you could just as easily say the pod people are MAGA-ites, or the Woke. Conformity is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.