2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY A
USA Great
Britain (148 mi) 1968
‘Scope (70mm) d: Stanley Kubrick
Twentieth-century art
may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in
the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the
coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.
—T. S. Eliot
Somebody said man is
the missing link between primitive apes and civilized human beings. You might say that that is inherent in the
story of 2001 too. We are
semi-civilized, capable of cooperation and affection, but needing some sort of
transfiguration into a higher form of life.
Since the means to obliterate life on earth exists, it will take more
than just careful planning and reasonable cooperation to avoid some eventual
catastrophic event. The problem exists
as long as the potential exists; and the problem is essentially a moral one and
a spiritual one.
Most astronomers and
other scientists interested in the whole question are strongly convinced that
the universe is crawling with life; much of it, since the numbers are so
staggering, (is) equal to us in intelligence, or superior, simply because human
intelligence has existed for so relatively short a period.
I tried to create a
visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly
penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophical content...I
intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the
viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does...You're free to
speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the
film.
—Stanley Kubrick
The debates about the
‘meaning’ of this film still go on. Surely the whole point of the film is that
it is beyond meaning, that it takes its character to a place he is so incapable
of understanding that a special room—sort of a hotel room—has to be prepared
for him there, so that he will not go mad.
—Roger Ebert
This is perhaps the film that separates Kubrick from
everyone else, as despite the fact it’s nearly half a century old, it will
forever remain timeless, and remains the definite portrait of human contact
with other extraterrestrial life forms, one that staggers the imagination with
a sense of visual awe and wonder, while challenging the viewers to contemplate
the idea of superior life forms in the universe, where things beyond our
capabilities to comprehend are not only possible, but probable. In seeking to unlock the secrets of the
universe, in Kubrick’s hands it’s like challenging the existence of God, where
we have to ask ourselves where do we come from?
Science offers probabilities and facts, and even enables humans to probe
other planets in the same solar system, but there are galaxies outside our
comprehension where we have little knowledge.
It’s not too far-fetched to imagine that there are complex and
sophisticated life forces in the universe that preceded man’s evolution, that
have far surpassed our knowledge, and Kubrick’s film, adapted from Arthur C.
Clarke’s 1951 short story The Sentinel, imagines just such a
confrontation. Basically a meditation on
extraterrestrial intervention and its influence on the process of human
evolution, at least initially the focus is on the history of human evolution on
earth, beginning in the Paleolithic Age of prehistory that existed before humans,
when only animals roamed the earth, but began to develop “human” attributes,
eventually evolving from the apes into a human life form. Jumping ahead 4-million years in a single
shot, man is venturing into space travel and planetary exploration, where again
the focus is upon human technical accomplishments, perceived as mighty
achievements, even as there are intimations of secret discoveries, such as an
intentionally placed object buried on the moon by some other planetary life
force that cannot be shared with the rest of the world as it cannot be
scientifically explained, so scientists, and likely military advisors, are
unable to determine if these discoveries are the act of friends or foe. Eventually as the viewers are taken on this
incredible space journey, we travel into distant galaxies we can’t possibly
understand, that are far outside our realm of knowledge, where it can feel
terrifying to completely lose one’s earthly bearings and find ourselves
suddenly at the mercy of some “other” intergalactic realm, where collectively
as a species we arrive just as helplessly as Blanche DuBois, one of Tennessee
Williams’ most quintessential characters, who utters, “Whoever you are, I have
always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
This may be the most successful experimental film ever made,
as there’s little about this film that suggests commercial possibilities,
eternally slow and contemplative, mostly a nonverbal, intensely subjective
experience offering little explanation, where there is no dialogue in the first
25 minutes of the movie, and none in the last 23 minutes, as what little
narrative exists is almost entirely advanced through spectacular visual detail
that penetrates the subconscious, where no one other than Kubrick could
possibly have imagined making it exactly this way, yet this remains the highest
grossing Kubrick picture he ever made, produced for little over $10 million
dollars, yet globally earning about $200 million dollars. This is a film that each generation will
eventually discover and attempt to come to terms with, where it’s one of only a
handful of Hollywood films that were meant to be projected in 70 mm, shot in a
variety of formats from 8 mm (Cineavision, 2:35 anamorphic), 16 mm (flat
version), Digital, and 35 mm, including one of first uses of a front projection
camera in a feature film, preceded only by Ishirô Honda’s Japanese special
effects film MATANGO (1963), blown up to Super Panavision 70, where it requires
a special engineering installation to project the film properly. Nonetheless, it remains to this day the
mindblowing experience it was always meant to be, beginning with one of the
most perfectly synchronized opening credit sequences ever created, 2001: A Space Odyssey Title
Sequence - YouTube (1:39), set to the ominous music of Richard Strauss, the
opening horn “Sunrise Fanfare” from Also
Sprach Zarathustra, which plays as three celestial bodies move into perfect
alignment. This is followed by a
lengthy, visually expressive but wordless opening sequence entitled The Dawn of Man, which precedes human
evolution, showing rival groups of apes (mostly mimes and dancers in monkey
suits hired to play apes) in contention for the same watering hole, that
includes a mysterious appearance by a monolith, a black rectangular slab placed
there by “other” space travelers apparently to observe and possibly influence
the evolutionary progression of humanity, as it sparks the discovery of tools
that could be used as weapons, and with it, violence and a struggle for power, representing
the birth of consciousness, or perhaps the genesis of evil, where life forms
are finally able to exercise the use of technology to challenge the natural
order, turning ruthlessly deadly, leading to an altered power over nature, also
set to exceptionally eerie, experimental choral music, the Dies Irae of György Ligeti’s Requiem,
along with screeching apes, actually using the sounds of wild cats, gorillas,
and chimpanzees originally recorded for the John Ford film MOGAMBO(1953), and a
return of the “Sunrise Fanfare,” Dawn of Man - 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968, S. Kubrick YouTube (2:47), beautifully linking man’s initial
evolution to futuristic space travel in one of the most audacious edits in the
history of film, achieved in a stunning cut from an ape hurling a bone into the
air that becomes a spaceship, where the effect was finally achieved when
Kubrick walked back to the studio tossing bones into the air and filming their
flight with a handheld camera, with the underlying suggestion being that
despite our complex technological advancements, humanity may still be in a
state of infancy.
Once in outer space, Kubrick creates a world of clean lines
and intricate detail, where no sound can be heard aside from the film’s musical
score, establishing a glacial pace with the stately music of Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz, 2001: A Space Odyssey-Strauss
- YouTube (5:34), which has a near hypnotic clockwork precision, but also a
feeling of weightlessness where one loses all sense of time. One develops a feel for the incredible
slowness and the repetition of boredom as time passes in what seems like an
eternity, becoming synonymous with the unfathomable distances of space travel,
filling the enormously huge distances of time and space, perfectly capturing
the timeless quality that is the essence of the film. While initially we just get a taste of space
travel, resembling a kind of spacious, super first class accommodation that we
might see on an ordinary airplane, but with weightlessness, where we still have
the services of a stewardess, but also a visual telephone able to call
earth. While there are meetings and
conferences suggesting something mysterious has been discovered on the moon, a
second 4-million year old artifact buried deep on the lunar surface, a
smaller-sized monolith intentionally left behind for someone to find it,
sending a radio signal to one of the moons of Jupiter, as if providing a clue,
where the spaceship Discovery is sent to investigate. Into this equation Kubrick adds an element of
uncertainty and comic relief through, of all things, the HAL 9000 computer,
known for never having committed an error in its entire history, so it is given
the task of controlling every aspect of the Jupiter-bound flight, where for eighteen
months astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) travel
to Jupiter along with a crew that is kept asleep in a state of hibernation
until they near the planet. Along the
way, HAL identifies a malfunction, that when examined reveals nothing’s wrong,
so there appears to be a human standoff against the superior technology of the
computer, where the two astronauts meet in private to discuss the possibility
of dismantling the computer, if need be, as they no longer trust its
efficiency, as the computer’s explanation for its own inaccurate report is “It
can only be attributable to human error.”
Kubrick makes sure the human dialogue throughout couldn’t be more
deliberately banal, which of course raises questions about modern society’s
dependence and over reliance upon technology, where breakdowns or the
unexpected are never counted upon, as unlike the occasionally flawed human
factor, computers are supposed to represent a Godlike perfection, a kind of
utopian technological vision that can be counted upon. The thought of them breaking down or making
errors is unthinkable, yet this is the dilemma facing the two human astronauts
aboard the spaceship Discovery, though they discount the computer’s ability to
read lips when they discuss their options, a fatal mistake that leads to the
intermission.
No sooner does the audience return to their seats but HAL
jettisons Frank, who is on an external inspection and repair, into the void of
deep space. The jolt of this vile act is
initially difficult to process, where the viewer thinks there must be some kind
of mistake. But it’s Dave that must
leave the safety of the ship to retrieve his dead comrade and return him to the
ship, where HAL refuses admittance.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to
jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me,
and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that
idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod
against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
In the movie, HAL tries to kill Dave by keeping him out of
Discovery after Dave retrieves Frank’s body.
In the book, Dave never tries to retrieve Frank’s body, and HAL tries to
kill him by opening inside and outside airlock doors and letting all air
escape. In both cases, Dave survives by
making it to an emergency airlock and turning on the oxygen, where he’s forced
to dismantle the computer. Theories
abound about HAL as a representation of the new digital culture, a machine with
artificial intelligence that is nearly human, a Frankenstein invention that veers out of control, where man is
ultimately at the mercy of the machine. HAL
may have been programmed from the beginning to malfunction, as it’s conceivable
he was programmed to malfunction so he could eliminate the crew in order to
more perfectly carry out the mission, quickly killing the crew in hibernation,
but due to his close interaction with the astronauts, he has difficulty concealing
this information from them, as he knew how they would react, becoming more of a
cautionary tale where Dave is forced to disconnect his higher brain
functions. Perhaps the most amusing
scene in the entire film is when Dave does exactly that, where HAL tries to
talk him out of it, “Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down
calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” This is one of the few instances of a
computer having a nervous breakdown, or a meltdown of catastrophic proportions
for reasons that are never made explicit in the film, yet it’s HAL’s insecurity
that may be the most human aspect of the film, perhaps Kubrick's most humorous
character, played by the voice of Canadian actor Douglas Rain, yet he gains our
sympathy when he pleads for his life, begging him to stop, “I’m afraid,
Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it,” where his dismantling leads
to a delirious soliloquy and a children’s song, Deactivation of Hal 9000 -
YouTube (4:38). Ironically, the
sound of human breathing (Kubrick’s own recorded breathing) acts as a
counterpoint to the machine’s lobotomy. The
last of the astronauts to survive, Bowman is finally on his own in the farthest
reaches of the solar system, cut off from all earthly ties, suggesting an end
of humanity as we know it before it is transformed anew. Unlike many special effects movies, Kubrick
was determined to make every effects shot look extremely realistic, using
hand-drawn illustrations, frame by frame, of a space ship flying, also finely
detailed miniature models of spacecraft where the attention to detail made it
possible for the cameras to get as close as possible without losing believability. Initially (also in the book) the Discovery
was on a mission to Saturn, but when the special effects crew couldn’t come up
with a convincing model of that planet, Kubrick changed it to Jupiter. One of the crowning achievements of the film
was the level of detail achieved a year before we actually set foot on the
moon, where Kubrick hired a Scientific Consultant, Frederick Ordway, who
collaborated with various corporations like Whirlpool, RCA, GE, IBM, Pan Am,
and NASA, providing easily recognizable product placement in exchange for some
of their futuristic ideas, where the familiarity of their logos adds another
layer of realism to audiences.
Of interest, the early drafts of the script included a
narration, but the final version exclusively utilizes inner titles, where the
most intriguing is the final title sequence, Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Once Bowman ultimately reaches Jupiter, there
is another encounter with the monolith, who seems to have been waiting for him,
sweeping him into a force field, sucked into a star gate sequence that hurls
him through the infinite on a psychedelic-rendered phantasmagorical journey
into deep space, transporting him to another part of the galaxy, jettisoned
through celestial starbursts and gaseous nebular regions, shot through colored
filters, including aerial footage of Monument Valley, Utah and aerial shots
originally made for Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE (1964), designed by special
photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, photographing drops of dye
moving on a glass plate to create the strangely moving gaseous effects. Kubrick also invented a split-scan effect by
keeping the camera’s shutter open to expose a single frame of film while he
moved the light source toward the camera to create fantastical light patterns. Two musical pieces by Ligeti overlap, the Requiem and the orchestral work Atmospheres, which add an eerie
intensification, making the abstract expressionist artwork the visual focal
point of the film, a place where the spatial and temporal ambiguity meets the
metaphysical and philosophical realms, where the viewer is literally plunged
into the incomprehensible. Making
contact with an extraterrestrial life force that has progressed beyond anything
we could imagine, their potential would be limitless and their intelligence
ungraspable by humans. To us they would
appear as gods. For Kubrick to simply
speculate on the possibility of their existence is sufficiently overwhelming,
where he doesn’t try to decipher their motives.
When the journey is over, Bowman arrives in a “white room,” also
described as a Louis XVI room, bearing some resemblance to the artworks shown
in PATHS OF GLORY (1957), something that resembles human perfection, where the
only imperfection in the room is Bowman, who is fed and kept alive, eating his
meals quietly, placed on display like a zoo creature in luxurious hotel room
surroundings that would feel familiar to him, perhaps something discovered from
his own dreams and imagination. When his
life has passed from middle to old age, the monolith returns to the foot of his
bed and Bowman transcends into another dimension, reborn as a being of higher
intelligence, a star child, where he’ll likely return to earth to help them
leap forward into their evolutionary destiny.
The beauty of the film is this is simply one man’s vision,
where the timeless aspect of the viewing experience is so subjective, the film
remains open to multiple interpretations, which are likely to evolve over time
as well. While the film tinkers with
narrative experimentation, it alters the way stories are told, where at the
premier screening of the film, 241 people walked out of the theater, including
Rock Hudson who remarked, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is
about?” Interestingly, the minimal use
of story in a conventional sense allows the director to maximize visual
sensation, where it was the psychedelic rendering in the final sequence that
appealed to young viewers who eventually flocked to the film in droves, often
enhanced by drugs or psychedelics, creating a mystical aura surrounding the
film. And while this is a late 60’s
technological fantasy, a forerunner to exactly the kind of blockbuster,
computer generated, science fiction films that could perfectly be described as
cheap thrills, it is also an extension of DR. STRANGELOVE, in some ways a
prophecy of things to come, where human fallibility is less likely to destroy
mankind than the abdication of moral responsibilities to presumably infallible
machines, like HAL, or the Fail-Safe nuclear response, where computers (and
certainly the programming) have the capacity for error. While the film alters the genre’s conventions
about how the future will look, in this respect, Kubrick’s film may be the
cinematic response to Fritz Lang’s visually exhilarating, pioneer silent sci-fi
film METROPOLIS (1927), perhaps the summit of German Expressionism,
interestingly set in the year 2000, with its wide range of elaborate special
effects, dramatic camera angles, bold shadows, and futuristic set designs,
where Roger Ebert noted that “Metropolis
is one of the great achievements of the silent era, a work so audacious in its
vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today
than when it was made.” While much of
the commentary about Kubrick’s film was about its minimal dialogue, the film is
chock full of various means of communication via language, print, computer
graphics, mathematical formulas, video and televised recordings, or words and
graphs on a computer screen, much of it printed in the Helvetica
typeface, all of which suggest a futuristic world where man is dominated and
owned by technology, where they have adapted, becoming perfectly integrated
into corporate terminology, even part of the circuitry, where there’s precious
little human interaction. Ultimately the
film is a terrified celebration of technology and an elegy to the end of man,
where the final sequences are perhaps the most provocative and ambiguous, revealing
unresolved speculation on the origins and destiny of human life, expressed in
extraordinarily visual starkness and serenity, leaving the viewer in a state of
rapturous awe, caught in a rhapsodic wonder about heaven, earth, and the
infinite beyond.
