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Strangelove. Kubrick's Next Film Is His Most Hotly Contested Work - 2001: A ...

Strangelove.
Kubrick's next film is his most hotly contested work - 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was finished in 1968 after three years of consultation, production and editing. The film sees Kubrick switch genre again with science fiction replacing the director's previous interest in nuclear warfare. The two concepts are not, however, as far removed as it first appears. By making 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick offered the viewing public a glimpse what fruits might flourish from technology if it were not used solely to destroy human life.
The script was constructed with the aid of Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most famous sciencefiction writers of the day. Yet the final product was nothing like any other sciencefiction movie made before or since. Unlike contemporary television shows such as Star Trek, 2001 was unconcerned with the depiction of alien life and the human conquest of space in rational terms. Indeed, Kubrick felt that showing the interaction between humans and extraterrestrial life would be a futile exercise in science fiction movie making. A Space Odyssey was likewise unconcerned with alluding to the ‘space race' between the United States and the Soviet Union that had reached its zenith by this point in twentieth century history. Instead, the film was a strange amalgamation of flamboyant camera and photography techniques deployed in order to present a romanticised vision of space, and a minimalist script that was as reliant upon its operatic musical score as it was on its dialogue between the central characters. This permits the audience to formulate their own opinions on the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film while Kubrick was simultaneously free to expose his full directorial repertoire as a cinematic auteur. Yet again, though, Kubrick was totalitarian in his control over the entirety of the making of the movie.
As in Dr. Strangelove, he supervised every aspect of production, from the construction of an enormous spinning centrifuge to stimulate the space ship's interior, to create extraordinarily realistic manape costumes, to select all his musical arrangements, often working all seven days a week. (Kagan, 1993:146)
A Space Odyssey is Kubrick's most talked about movie in the twenty first century. In an age when digital technology has equipped modern day film director's with the ability to portray space travel in a way that would have been unthinkable in his epoch, fascination over the enduring appeal of the film is understandable and testimony to Kubrick's unrivalled ability to transcend movie genres while still holding onto his reputation as an auteur in his own right who is able to influence genre every bit as much as genre is able to dictate the terms of the film to the cinematic auteur.


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