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On Sunday, City Gallery is screening one of my favourite films, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I picked it because it resonates with the art-science dialectic and mystic minimalism in our current shows, Semiconductor: The Technological Sublime and Eva Rothschild: Kosmos. In googling the film, I came across a toxic review from the day by the brilliant film critic Pauline Kael. It has such brio, I need to share …

‘The ponderous blurry appeal of the picture may be that it takes its stoned audience out of this world to a consoling vision of a graceful world of space, controlled by superior godlike minds, where the hero is reborn as an angelic baby. It has the dreamy somewhere-over-the-rainbow appeal of a new vision of heaven. 2001 is a celebration of cop-out. It says man is just a tiny nothing on the stairway to paradise, something better is coming, and it’s all out of your hands anyway. There’s an intelligence out there in space controlling your destiny from ape to angel, so just follow the slab.’

Ouch. As Quentin Tarantino describes Kael (enthusiastically): ‘The greatest shit ever and she’s just being so fucking mean.’ Can we love Kubrick and Kael? I find it hard not to.

Catch 2001 at City Gallery Wellington, Sunday 9 June, at 2pm. (And check out my blog.)
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