Kubrick expects some patience from his viewers – certainly 2001 is “boring” on a superficial level.

Eno’s music is often the same – it rewards your attention.

Kubrick staged a beautiful world which evoked the great majesties of 18th century art and architecture, and then placed within it shallow, boring, insufferable people. Then, any time anything interesting is going to happen, the narrator ruins it by divulging it before it happens.

No filmmaker today would have the audacity to make their film deliberately boring. Many do it quite by accident, though.