The movie reviews Stanley Kubrick found “insulting”
Some of the greatest films of all time were flops when they were first released. Not all great art is instantly recognised as such, with some creators having to wait years or even lifetimes before they get their dues. In the case of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the initial critique was crushing.
It’s hard to imagine someone as mighty as Kubrick being affected by negative reviews. The director seemed unshakable and unrelenting in his vision. Even as he gained more success and notoriety, he never faulted his weirdness. Instead, his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, proved to be one of his strangest.
He was no stranger to critique. His 1960s films Lolita and Dr. Strangelove were both met with controversy. As Lolita was heavily censored and hit with a high age rating, Kubrick later said he “probably wouldn’t have made the film” had he known about the restrictions that would be put on it.
In a conversation about critics, Kubrick told Rolling Stone, “When Dr. Strangelove came out, a New York paper ran a review under the head ‘MOSCOW COULD NOT BUY MORE HARM TO AMERICA.’ Something like that.”
When it came to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film now widely regarded as one of the most pioneering movies ever made, the critics didn’t seem to get it. It’s said that during the film’s New York premiere, 250 people walked out. Actor Rock Hudson was amongst them and, according to one review, “was heard to mutter, ‘What is this bullshit? Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?’”
Despite being considered an incredibly future-thinking film, critic Pauline Kael called it “a monumentally unimaginative movie.” It gets worse as Stanley Kauffmann declared it “a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull.”
The response was bad. It was critiqued for its long run time, its bleak depiction of life and its lack of action. By all accounts, the movie was a failure if you listened to the critics.
“The first reviews of 2001 were insulting, let alone bad,” Kubrick said of the response. However, once it was opened to the public, favour turned. It became a cultish phenomenon that gained more and more popularity as the years passed. By 1971, the film was rereleased to renewed interest, finally bringing the movie into the green and making a profit.
Even the critics changed their tone. By the 1990s, the film started appearing on lists of the greatest films of all time. It’s become considered perhaps Kubrick’s most important and defining movie as those initial reviewers ate their words.
“Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion,” Kubrick said of the response to his work. He’s not one to listen to the voices of so-called experts and instead prefers to hear the opinions of his actual viewers. He added, “Which is why I think audiences are more reliable than critics, at least initially. Audiences tend not to bring all that critical baggage with them to each film.”
