Quote:
Originally Posted by Disinfo Agent
If by "understand" you mean "finding something worthy" in the film, something that pleases you and stimulates you, something where you find a meaning, then that's exactly what I feel: that those who take pleasure on egging supposedly "elitist" films like 2001 failed to understand them. Their loss.
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But that's not a definition of "understand" at all! Further, it's not "those who take pleasure in egging" the movie who get picked on, or not just them. It's anyone who didn't like it. Most of the people who've stated that they don't like it have stated just that. They didn't like it. Few of them implied that people who do are elitist. What has been stated is that people who claim that anyone who dislikes the film simply doesn't understand it are elitist.
I believe that what
Lianachan is saying is that quite a lot of people who don't like the film
do understand it. In my experience, this is true. It is also my experience that most people who
do like the film don't say that those who don't like it don't understand it. However, there is a certain class of people who treat the film like an icon. Like dogma. Either you like it or you are wrong, and possibly too stupid to get why it isn't brilliant. I'm not saying that's
your attitude. In fact, I'm at this point refusing to say who's saying it, because that isn't the point. I'm saying it's an attitude that has come across from some people.
I am in the middle, myself. I understood the film just fine. I can see the superior artistry with which it was created. I just didn't think it was the greatest film, or the greatest sci-fi film, ever made. Now, I do think we can all agree that I know a thing or two about film. I hope we can also agree that I'm no dummy. Ergo, I think it's safe to say that it's a reasonable assumption that I understood the film. However, there are
some people who would assume that I don't, because I don't like it as much as they do.
What the filmmakers intended is often irrelevant to what people bring to the film. Kubrick and Clarke may have intended you to have great spiritual revelations from the movie. However, it is possible to fail to have great spiritual revelations and still understand what's going on and the intention behind it.