- Yes, I know, I should have seen this by now. A coworker told me that they were showing this in a glorious 70mm print at the Lightbox and that if I was ever going to see it, now would be the time to do so. Done and done.
- This is my kind of movie. I think I really do love anything that is slow and deliberate and takes its sweet methodical time in getting where it’s going. I love the building of intense, suffocating isolation through extreme minimalism. I love science fiction that remains tethered to existing tangible space voyage in our lifetime, even if it extrapolates and moves beyond to a level we haven’t yet reached.
- The way this film is shot is absolutely mindblowing; I kind of wish I had been around when it first came out and when the visual effects would have made an even bigger impact. Still, it says a lot that they’re not at all dulled by all of the movies this has had an obvious effect on. I think what I love most about it, though, is how unsettling it makes the physical space of the ship; it’s like M.C. Escher or Rene Magritte, where there’s an inherent logic to it that gets superseded by the surreality of it. (And, of course, Magritte is my favourite surrealist, so!)
- Never before has a score that was not intentionally written for a film fit that film so well. It’s like the Strauss is providing a running commentary on the movie. Unnerving.
- Can we talk about how you’d never in a million years be able to make this movie today? Or you might get it made but no one would distribute it and it would go straight to DVD. Dave’s psychedelic expedition in the last twenty or so minutes would be cut down to a minute in a contemporary movie, if not chopped all together. And when was the last time you saw colour solarization in a movie? That’s what I thought.
- I got a real kick out of the Pan Am shuttle to the moon and the fact that the future will obviously still look like the 1960s.
- Also, Dave and Frank have giant iPads. Nice. Ten points, Kubrick.
- I know that in space no one can hear you scream, but the silence in this film is deafening. This has to be the most claustrophobic sound design ever created.
- I enjoy that HAL is an omnipresent red eye, lidless and unblinking. Cripes.
- Jeff Bridge’s pimped out meditation lair in Tron: Legacy makes so much more sense now that I’ve seen this movie.
- I expect a higher calibre of audience when I go to the Lightbox on account of the fact that it’s the Toronto International Film Festival’s new home and that the kinds of movies they show are movies for people who actually want to watch movies as a somewhat serious endeavour. Naturally, the people who decided to sit behind me were popcorn-rustling, chair-bumping whisperers. Seriously, people? I expect this when I go to the Scotiabank; I come to the Lightbox to get away from this.
Categories: 4 Stars
Caught this at The Lightbox last week and was equally blown away. Is it just me, or is it unassailably cool to see a movie that has an intermission and an overture announcing each act with the curtain closed?
Yes, yes, I completely forgot to comment on the overture and exit music!! Am I wrong to be annoyed that people weren’t deathly silent during those parts? I know there’s nothing on the screen but it’s clearly part of the experience of watching the movie.
My all-time very favorite movie.