Few filmmakers are as known for their meticulous shot planning, editing, and mise en scène as Wes Anderson and Stanley Kubrick. Both also use or used music to great effect in their works, creating evocative scenes forever tied to a particular song for decades after. So what happens when someone decides to recut Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to be more like a funny yet melancholic Wes Anderson film? One film lover decided to find out.
Nathan Hartman took the original 2001 and recut it to musical cues from Anderson’s films, injecting the whole affair with a bit more whimsy and emotion than the original incarnation of the sci-fi epic. On his website, Hartman describes his motives and also his technique:
Playing with the visuals in Kubrick’s masterwork, 2001 allows for an easy editing template. Long on shots and short on sound, cuts could be put together rather seemlessly. Suddenly, the Dawn of Man sequence is scored to Mark Mothersbaugh tracks from Rushmore, spaceships fly to The Beach Boys, and a two-and-a-half hour film is cut down to an hour-and-twenty-minutes.
To some, I might as well be ransacking the Vatican with such blasphemy, but I found the experience liberating. The process of understanding both directors and attempting to serve both equally is probably an impossible task, but a challenge I enjoyed balancing.
The trailer for the cut is below. To view the entire film, head over to Nathan Hartman’s website here.
Wes Anderson’s 2001: A Space Odyssey - Trailer from Nathan Hartman on Vimeo.