Film scholar Mario Falsetto encapsulates this point when he says, “ 2001 argues that a different form of communication may be needed, both by the human species as it moves to exhaustion and by the medium of film as it endeavors to create a nonliteral, metaphoric level of meaning.” 2 This seeking lies at the heart of many experimental films that have emerged both before and after Kubrick began making films. In so doing, he searches for new dimensions of cinematic language through which we can tap into some of the mysteries of human life and the universe. In both 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick seeks to explore inner states of being, human consciousness, and the transcendental evolution of this consciousness through specifically cinematic means. It is this level of engagement that I would now like to explore by looking at the strategies Kubrick shares with his predecessors in the avant-garde. By enticing us to probe his world of cinematic exploration through his use of metaphor, Kubrick invites a deeper level of engagement than the average narrative film is capable of. The deeper one probes into Kubrick’s formal strategies and the intricate weavings that operate between different levels of film form, the clearer it becomes that Kubrick is using cinema to make metaphorical connections between the medium and the way that human beings understand their world. If one pays close attention to the formal structure of these films, their many layers of meaning reveal themselves, meaning that transcends verbal language or narrative progression. One of his favorite strategies is the use of metaphor, a strategy that he uses in ways that often transcend the linguistic. By playing with the boundaries between narrative and non-narrative cinema, Kubrick manages to call attention to what it is about cinema that is purely cinematic, and in so doing challenges the perceived limits of his chosen medium, pushing it toward a fuller realization of its potential. While Kubrick does use established codes and conventions of the narrative cinema to which most of us have become accustomed, he also pushes beyond these codes and conventions as he searches for innovative and imaginative ways to explore his subjects. This influence is evident in his like-minded interest in experimenting with the technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of the cinematic medium in order to explore what makes cinema unique, and how that uniqueness is reflected in the way in which we respond to it. Kubrick has no doubt been influenced by the work of these experimental filmmakers. In this respect, Kubrick’s films share an affinity with experimental films by artists such as Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, Maya Deren, Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, and Kenneth Anger. Beyond the Infinite: Part One 2001: A Space Odysseyīy Leah Hendriks Volume 6, Issue 9 / September 2002 29 minutes (7133 words)Įvery time I watch Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) I am struck by the way in which these films declare themselves as pure cinema, presenting themselves as examples of work that explore the meaning and potential of cinema, and how cinema as a medium relates with our perception of it.
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