2001: A Space Odyssey
Review
by : Eric
Barker
Starring:
Keir Dullea (Dave Bowman), Gary Lockwood (Frank
Poole), William Sylvester (Dr. Heywood Floyd), Douglas
Rain (voice of HAL 9000)
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
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"I intended
the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches
the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music
does; to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate
it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and
appreciation." -- Stanley Kubrick, 1968
 Probably
Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece (Dr. Strangelove not withstanding),
2001 is the perfect marriage between his observations of humankind's
uneasy alliance with technology, and his own, patent fascination
with that same technology. The film also signaled a coalescing
of the dominant theme in Kubrick's canon: the increasing dehumanization
of human beings by the modern, mechanized world.
But 2001
is much more than that. It is Kubrick's most ambitious film
and his most difficult, an epic tone poem that dares to tell
its story largely through imagery rather than dialogue. It
may be true, as many have pointed out, that its philosophical
content is light as a feather, but that is not such a bad
thing. Modern conversational language, as this film continually
points out, is generally too stilted and repressed to support
even a good, emotional simile, nevermind penetrating ideas.
Yet here is a gigantic movie, financed by a major Hollywood
studio, set in a ghetto genre, with the cheek to be a work
of audio-visual art, filled with sumptuous, sometimes terrifying
music and the cinematic equivalent of metaphor. For that reason
alone, 2001 is without question one of the most important
and influential films ever made.
The film
is structured in three clearly labeled sections. The first
sequence, called "The Dawn of Man", chronicles the daily struggle
for life on Earth four million years ago and follows the man-ape
Moonwatcher (never named in the film) as his tribe is contacted
by an extraterrestrial intelligence in the form of a mysterious,
frightening monolith. Afterward, Moonwatcher begins to get
ideas - weapon-making ideas - and he changes the fortunes
of his tribe. In one of the greatest jumpcuts in cinematic
history, Moonwatcher triumphantly flings his new weapon, a
bone, into the sky and snap, it turns into an orbiting spacecraft
in the year 2001, Kubrick boldly summing up human history
in the wink of an eye.
Now we
follow Dr. Heywood Floyd, quintessential modern Everyman (albeit
extremely upper middle class) as he travels to the moon on
a diplomatic mission, to view a mysterious monolith discovered
there which "seems to have been deliberately buried". The
monolith sends a powerful signal to Jupiter.
In the
second part, called "Jupiter Mission: 18 Months Later", we
are made privy to the problems of life in space with astronaut
Dave Bowman, his partner Frank, and the ubiquitous computer,
HAL 9000, a machine with a banker's personality who turns
psychotic and nearly kills everyone on board (man's deadly
technology, a reflection of his primal self, turning on him
at last). Finally, in the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite"
sequence, Dave makes contact with the aliens and, like Moonwatcher
before him, is transformed into a new species, probably to
the betterment of his tribe.
Although
it is not my usual practice to give such a lengthy synopsis
in a review, nevermind revealing the ending, I think it is
necessary with 2001 because so many viewers find the film
obscure and difficult to comprehend. That is because Kubrick
tells this rather simple tale entirely through montage and
mise-en-scene, giving us breathtaking vistas and claustrophobic,
immensely detailed interiors and the most mundane, commonplace
dialogue possible. Almost everything that advances the story
is visual or aural; only HAL seems to have any depth, and
he is quite mad.
But there
is a great deal going on in 2001 for the observant viewer
willing to look below the surface of things. The film has
an extraordinary mythic resonance, and a real kinship with
Homer (to whom the title alludes) in its epic sweep and visual
poetics; it is uncompromisingly realistic in its depiction
of life's difficulties in outer space, so far ahead of its
time that filmmakers still make numerous scientific gaffes
which 2001 scrupulously avoids (i.e., there is no sound in
a vacuum); and it is purposely designed to raise philosophical
issues rather than answer them, since part of our fascination
with such issues is our inability to nail them down. The
film's persistent, maddening ambiguity on metaphysical questions,
even as it creates an overwhelming atmosphere of cosmic awe,
is its greatest strength, leaving its ultimate meaning (if
there is one) strictly up to the viewer.
Of all
Kubrick's films, 2001 may be the most controversial, precisely
because of its obsessive realism in the service of an ethereal
plot. Kubrick spared no expense in creating a wholly believable
future of space travel (nothing galls critics like a wealthy,
successful artist), and in so doing he forever upped the ante
on audience expectations. But everyone, even Mr. Kubrick,
was surprised at the enormous box office success of 2001,
frequently attributing it to mindless, stoned hippies repeatedly
seeing the film for its psychedelic finale. This explanation
has some validity, but it finally misses the point.
Aside
from being released into the right culture at the right time,
2001 was such a success, and continues to be so, because it
speaks to a host of primal, mythic fears and desires in our
species -- our epic loneliness, our bottomless curiosity about
ourselves and our reasons for being -- and it does so on a
non-verbal level, on a plane that undercuts reason. All arguments
against Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey derive from
a fine old tradition of reasoning, one which may even be encouraged
by the film's austere, careful design, and that is fine, of
course, except this is a strictly right-brain movie, a sensual
experience made of imagery and music, meant to be seen on
a great curved Cinerama screen where it can sweep us away
with its light and emotion. This is not a film for the reasonable
at heart (and indeed, most films aren't).
An Oscar
winner for Visual FX, Kubrick was the only FX technician awarded
a statuette, probably because he was billed as the designer
and because FX Oscars were still a rarity. Today, all the
supervisors would have been awarded as well. It remained his
only Oscar. Also nominated for Best Director, Original Screenplay,
and Art Direction.
Notes:
Who
stole what?: Clarke's novel of 2001 was written concurrently
with the screenplay and the making of the film – not beforehand,
as is widely assumed. In effect, the book and the film are
adaptations of each other, stemming from the collaboration
between the director and the writer. The novel stands on its
own as a separate work and has not gone out of print in over
three decades, an excellent reference for those who are curious
about unexplained details in the film.
Illusions:
The stunning clarity of the effects shots, which still
look better than a great deal of current computer generated
technology, was achieved by a painstaking, laborious process
of animating models frame-by-frame. See Herb A. Lightman article
from American Cinematographer 49, no. 6 (1968): 442-47. Reprinted
in The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, cited below.
The entire "Dawn of Man" sequence was, remarkably, shot on
a soundstage using a front projection process, rather than
the usual, cheaper rear projection traditionally used to place
film actors before a background. The results, though only
marginally more intricate to produce, remain startlingly realistic.
Music:
Alex North wrote an original symphonic score for the film
at Kubrick's urging, but the director decided to stay with
more recognizable classical compositions, which he had used
both to set the mood on the sound stage, and to pace the editing
of the film. Composers Kubrick used: Aram Khatchaturian, Georgy
Ligeti, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss.
Final
touches: After the premiere of 2001, Kubrick cut 17 minutes
from the film, mostly of sequences on the space station. The
film grossed about $15 million at the box-office in its first
run, a respectable sum for the era, though the cost of production
was so high, the film only broke even by Hollywood bookkeeping
standards.
Cf.
other Kubrick forays into the realm of the fantastic --
Dr. Strangelove; Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb (1964), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining
(1980).
Books:
A fine collection of original articles about the film, as
well as subsequent essays from the last thirty years, is The
Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, selected by Stephanie Schwam,
Modern Library, 2000. Includes a complete Kubrick filmography.
See also hard to find books that are nevertheless worth the
search: The Making of Kubrick's "2001", the original work
on the subject, by Jerome Agel, New American Library, 1970;
Lost Worlds of "2001", Arthur C. Clarke's memoir of making
the film, also NAL, 1972; Filmguide to '2001: A Space Odyssey'
by Carolyn Geduld, Indiana University Press, 1973; and Kubrick
by Michel Ciment, Holt, Rinehatart & Winston, 1984.
Internet:
a great web source on Kubrick and 2001 is The Kubrick Multimedia
Guide at www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick. Contains excellent
info on all the director’s films, worthwhile links to other
good sites, and news on upcoming DVD, VHS and theatrical releases.
what
others said:
"A beautiful, confounding picture that had half the audience
cheering and the other half snoring."
-- The Movie Guide
"In some
ways it's the biggest amateur movie of them all, complete
even to the amateur movie obligatory scene -- the director's
little daughter (in curls) telling daddy what kind of present
she wants. It's a monumentally unimaginative movie."
-- Pauline Kael, Harper’s (1968)
"Stanley
Kubrick's match cut in "2001"...is possibly the most ambitious...in
history, since it attempts to unite prehistory with the future
at the same time as it creates a special meaning within the
cut itself by emphasizing the functions of both bone and space
station as tools, extensions of human capabilities."
-- James Monoco, How to Read a Film (2000)
"...so
completely absorbed in its own problems, its use of color
and space, its fanatical devotion to science-fiction detail,
that it is somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring."
-- Renata Adler, The New York Times (1968)
“Predictable
complaints that it is boring mingle with inevitable gushes
that it is gorgeous. One senses, through it all, that something
important has happened to the cinema.”
-- Max Kozloff, Film Culture (no. 48-49, Winter/Spring, 1970)
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