Film
SCIENCE FICTION 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (U) 139 mins 00...
Like you couldn’t see it coming a mile off. The re- release (with new widescreen 70mm print) of the greatest sci-fi film of all time, 33 years after it was made, in the year it was set. Stanley Kubrick's non-linear trip through the light fantastic violently divided critics in 1968. The general consensus was, in the words of US critic Renata Adler, ‘somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring.’ 2001 initially died at the box office, but slowly gathered commercial momentum finding its audience in hippies who, according to the white collar press, saw it as a trip without the LSD.
Starting work in the mid-60$ on 001, adapted from Arthur C. Clarke’s story The Sentinel, Kubrick had his own agenda - he wanted to make the definitive statement on the dehumanisation of man through the tools he creates, from bone club to robot. Thus the most human character in his film is the computer, HAL 9000 (a clever piece of foresight by Clarke and Kubrick as one letter forward spells IBM, a company that by 2001 would be vying to run our lives through technology). In closed off workshops Kubrick and a remarkable group of model makers and production designers worked to make 2001 look as realistic yet futuristic as possible (remember this is still about two years before a man landed on the moon) and they did. And the sfx still impress, today.
Up to this point Kubrick had been a populist filmmaker with the successes of Dr Strangelove and, particularly, Spartacus under his belt, as
Kubrick wanted to make the definitive statement on the dehumanisation of man
well as critics’ favourites Paths Of Glory and The Killing. He was cinematic gold, but cantankerous to the core. He chose to follow his successes by jeopardising a then enormous $12m budget, discarding any conventional idea of story. Prehistoric apes are boldly timelined into a space ballet featuring a lunar craft docking to the sound of Strauss, which prefigures an extended drama aboard a spacecraft bound for Jupiter where the aforementioned HAL commits murder. Meanwhile, the monolith (is there are more iconic image in sci-fi cinema than that black slab?) transmits messages from Jupiter across centuries. And the whole trip ends with a giant embryo of a space child signifying what? The
next step in human evolution?
Gloriously grand architecture, technology, space, music and mise-en-scene, but what is Kubrick’s opus really about? Perhaps the brilliant writer Eric Rhode was closest when he wrote in 1976: ‘It allows him [Kubrick] to face the theme that has long haunted him: his own death. He will be 72 in 2001, and his journey into outer space is also very much a journey into the self awareness of its annihilation.’ Kubrick died in 1999, two years short of the year his opaque masterpiece is set. That 2001 suggests so much, yet explains so little is why it‘s a true classic. (Paul Dale)
I film/rouse. [ill/iburgli from I r. l.liiri; (il /. Glasgow from [n 7.") Jun.
DRAMA BLOW (18) 123mins COO
High jinks
The story of the rise and fall of drug smuggler George Jung. the small-town kid from New England who turned America on to cocaine. Blow is a cautionary tale. Johnny Depp's swaggering. piratical Jung progresses from smuggling marijuana in the late- 608 to importing cocaine on an industrial scale in the 70s. But the transition from pot to coke marks a shift from hippie innocence to disco—era decadence. paranoia and greed. The young George gets his first break in the drugs business in 1968 California with the assistance of his stewardess girlfriend Barbara (Run Lola Pun's Franka Potente in her first US role) and camp but canny hairdresser Derek Foreal (Pee Wee Herman creator Paul Reubens). It is a time of high jinks — in more than one sense — and director Ted Demme finds a style to match, employing freeze framing and lurching zooms. We could be in an episode of The
28 THE LIST 24 May—7 Jun 2001
Monkees.
Of course, it can‘t last. In 1972, George gets busted. Ironically, prison proves to be the making of him. He goes into the (aptly named) joint with a BA in marijuana and emerges wrth a PhD in cocaine. Thanks to his friendship with cellmate Diego (played by Jamon Jame/i star Jordi Molla). on his release he gains entry to the world of the Colombian drug cartels and becomes Medellin kingpin Pablo Escobar's connection to the untapped American market. The US can't get enough of cocaine. George makes a fortune and strengthens his Colombian ties by marrying Latino spitfire Mirtha (Penelope Cruz). Again, George's luck runs out. only this time he doesn't bounce back. He loses his marriage. his liberty and — most keenly felt of all - contact with his young daughter.
If Blow is intended as a modern morality play. however. then its ethics remain unclear. As George, Depp moves from jaunty y0uth to thick-set. shuffling middle—age. but his dead-eyed remorse isn't enough to convince us of his tragic status. We never see the social costs of his freebooting entrepreneurship. Unlike Traffic. wrth its panoramic view of the effects of the drug trade. Demme fails to give us the Wider picture. (Jason Best)
I General release from Fri 25 May.
WIiS'l [-RN ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (15) 116mins 00..
‘Down in MeXico they got ranches so big you can't ride from one end to the other in a week' declares Matt Damon’s dispossessed young lexas (:r )‘.‘.’l)i')‘.’ .lohn Grady Cole in Billy Bob Thornton's adaptation of Cormar: McCarthy's bestselling novel. ‘It ain't all fenced in and sold off and played out. not down there,‘ he adds. seeking to persuade his best friend tacey Itawlins (Henry lhoriiasi to set tr iith With him in search of a land where cowboys can still act out their rlieaiiis of adventure.
The year is 1949. but Mexrco continues to exert a gravitational pull on Yankees chasing a vanishing frontier. It's a theriie that echoes Sam Peckinpah. Cole and Rawlins may he callow. and much better scrubbed than Peckinpah's .vrlri hunch. but they share a personal code of loyalty and integrity Wllll the dooiiied outlaws. 'You either stick or you durt.‘
That code is put to the test when the pair reluctantly allow hot headed lftf:l‘éifl‘: sharpshooter Jimmy BleVins (Lucas Blacki to join them on the trail. A tangle with the law predictably follows. from which the older cowboys take refuge on a huge MeXIcan ranch, where Cole's prowess at breaking ‘.‘.’|I(l horses ‘.‘J|Il‘; him respect and pigues the interest of the owner's high spirited daughter (Penelope (grii/i. lhe couple fall in love. but Cole finds himself up against a code of fair:in honour riiore rigid than his own.
Thornton's film is leisurely paced and glorious to behold. “.‘Jllll ‘,[i|f:ll(ilfl Widescreen cineiiiatography evoking the majesty of the western landscape. tut it feels broken—backed. The first cut reportedly ran to four hours, and f:/f:ll thozirjh the finished film describes an efficient narrative are. certain key episodes lack the resonance a longer movie may have provrded. But if Pretty Horses is not the masterpiece it might have been, it remains a worthy addition to the Western canon.
Damon and Thomas. though unray too old to play the book's teenage protagonists. are corwincingly laconic. and Cruz is as ravishing as ever. But the best performance comes from Black. the young co-star of Thornton's directing debut Sling Blade. as the volatile. dangerous live Wire BICYIHES. and it is in his scenes that the film comes closest to tragedy. (Jason Besti I General re/ease from Fri 25 May
Echoes of Sam Peckinpah