Review of 'Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece'

Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson

I have always been a big fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey with it's amazing special effects, fantastic soundtrack and interesting story. It is a film, like Lawrence of Arabia that is not afraid to take it's time telling the story as we soak up the shear spectacle. In “Space Odyssey” Michael Benson covers in a great deal of detail how the film was conceived, created and eventually received. The book does not touch too much on the specific day-to-day production of the film but rather focuses more on the two key characters in it's creation: Obsessive director Stanley Kubrick and the reclusive, financially strained, renowned Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke.

We learn that the film was initially conceived very differently by Kubrick who always intended to be provocative but with his contact with Clarke persuaded to tell a story that would span millennia as it eventually did. After the commercial success of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Kubrick was given a free hand and pretty much unlimited budget to make 2001 but he started first with just vague ideas that Clarke was able to take and turn into a coherent narrative. Even with this, the story and script would remain in flux for pretty much the entire four years the film was in production. During that time the expert team Kubrick put together would reinvent cinematic processes and create effects that are staggering to behold with Kubrick's continual demands for perfection. It is these demands that meant he was difficult to get along with as he insisted on squeezing the most out of everyone.

Clarke faced financial problems coming off of an ultimately unsuccessful relationship with a would-be film director who used Clarke, now living in Sri Lanka, as a financier. Clarke often had a difficult relationship with Kubrick who refused to let Clarke publish his book of the film until it was released so that his vision could be released without any “spoiling” of it. Clarke would eventually resort to taking loans from the apologetic Kubrick as the publication date was pushed back time and time again.

Of the creation of the film, pre-production involved creating sets and inventing techniques to film what had never been filmed previously, while production had it's own headaches with personality conflicts and technical problems that the crew were forced to overcome including significant effort to figure out how to film the primitive man sequence that starts the film, whose production was pushed back until the very end when they were able to create something that looked far better than simply “men in ape suits”. Post-production, of course, was a huge effort with Kubrick, of course, firing most of the production staff and bringing in special effects experts and largely editing the film alone. At this point another considerable issue was figuring out the music of the film with production generally using classical music it was eventually decided to use this rather than a composed soundtrack as was the norm at the time. In any case, the efforts of those involved in the film paid off despite initial panning by critics the public loved it to the point that the film is now iconic, still looking (and sounding) great despite it's age.

This meticulously researched book is based on numerous interviews, and previously unseen material that obviously took many years to compile. Benson had access to many of the key players (or their relatives) to provide a full story of the film but also the people who put so much into it's production. Though a bit long and often tedious to read Benson strives to provide a complete and balanced insight into the making of the film rather than the actual, literal, details, touching instead on the elements that impacted the most to it's production. An incredible piece of work that will be of interest to fans of the film, the director or anyone of interest in film production.

Note that there is a small section of photos in the middle of the book showing some behind the scenes images of the production.

Rating: “I have absolutely no complaints”

Review Date: 2025-05-24

Genre: Non-Fiction

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 2018

ISBN: 9781501163937