Spoilers herein.
In my experience, there is no filmmaker like De Palma. As with Kubrick and Greenaway, you have to know what to expect going into a theater, because they do not concern themselves with storytelling in the ordinary sense. De Palma doesn't make films about life, and is unconcerned with the drama one normally finds there.
He makes films about films, and since the target is an abstraction in the first place, the dramatic focus is flat, the acting obvious, the stories predictable -- all by design. By definition, we've already been wherever he goes. The value of the experience is in how he takes something that is ordinary and examines it in new ways. Its the 1890s Paris painting scene, where the eye is everything.
We've seen him do Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Antonioni, and more. Here he tackles Kubrick, and the results are astounding.
Kubrick does an end-on entrance of a spaceship with majestic passing; De Palma does too, and then enters a window to show Robbins and wife in an elaborate view, dancing the camera around them with Robbin's face reflected just incidentally. Kubrick has a clever shot of a man walking around the gravity ring; De Palma elaborates on this a hundred-fold with comings and goings and ups and ins and reversals until we are dizzy. 2001's spaceships were the stuff of pulp covers, but here we have even accurate rivet patterns, everything scrupulously close to NASA specs. 2001 has a cheap Kaleidoscope passage and some clean room visions when the makers are encountered. M2M's `makers' are encountered in an ever-cleaner, ever more abstract room.
Incidentally, in the only clever element of the script, those makers show images of how they `seeded' Earth, with an ambiguity between the making of the image and the act itself.
One doesn't go to a film like this expecting a traditional Lucas-like ride. This is intelligent, self-referential stuff targeting not the mind but the eye. I suppose a question is whether it can also be entertaining for kids. I suspect not. Kubrick himself never tried. The fault is with the marketeers who try and sell these films in the same way as simple thrill rides. Shame on them. Regrets to all the ticketbuyers expecting Spielbergisms.
If you are an IMDB visitor and reading this, chances are you are serious about film. If so, I recommend that you see 2001, then this in one evening. Forget about story, acting, drama, and focus on where these gents take your eye. The thrill is that you become God -- what higher fantasy do you wish?
In my experience, there is no filmmaker like De Palma. As with Kubrick and Greenaway, you have to know what to expect going into a theater, because they do not concern themselves with storytelling in the ordinary sense. De Palma doesn't make films about life, and is unconcerned with the drama one normally finds there.
He makes films about films, and since the target is an abstraction in the first place, the dramatic focus is flat, the acting obvious, the stories predictable -- all by design. By definition, we've already been wherever he goes. The value of the experience is in how he takes something that is ordinary and examines it in new ways. Its the 1890s Paris painting scene, where the eye is everything.
We've seen him do Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Antonioni, and more. Here he tackles Kubrick, and the results are astounding.
Kubrick does an end-on entrance of a spaceship with majestic passing; De Palma does too, and then enters a window to show Robbins and wife in an elaborate view, dancing the camera around them with Robbin's face reflected just incidentally. Kubrick has a clever shot of a man walking around the gravity ring; De Palma elaborates on this a hundred-fold with comings and goings and ups and ins and reversals until we are dizzy. 2001's spaceships were the stuff of pulp covers, but here we have even accurate rivet patterns, everything scrupulously close to NASA specs. 2001 has a cheap Kaleidoscope passage and some clean room visions when the makers are encountered. M2M's `makers' are encountered in an ever-cleaner, ever more abstract room.
Incidentally, in the only clever element of the script, those makers show images of how they `seeded' Earth, with an ambiguity between the making of the image and the act itself.
One doesn't go to a film like this expecting a traditional Lucas-like ride. This is intelligent, self-referential stuff targeting not the mind but the eye. I suppose a question is whether it can also be entertaining for kids. I suspect not. Kubrick himself never tried. The fault is with the marketeers who try and sell these films in the same way as simple thrill rides. Shame on them. Regrets to all the ticketbuyers expecting Spielbergisms.
If you are an IMDB visitor and reading this, chances are you are serious about film. If so, I recommend that you see 2001, then this in one evening. Forget about story, acting, drama, and focus on where these gents take your eye. The thrill is that you become God -- what higher fantasy do you wish?