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2001: a space odyssey (1968)
Review by Earl
Green
On a young planet called Earth, an alien intelligence
- in the form of a large black monolith - tests the intelligence of a primitive
race of primates. It also influences their development into a more ambitious
and potentially more dangerous species. The monolith vanishes, having completed
its task.
Millennia later, a primitive race of primates living on the planet Earth
has developed the technology necessary to make short range space travel
commonplace, and has discovered another monolith buried under the surface
of Earth's moon. Faced with the first solid evidence of extraterrestrial
life, humankind launches a mission to Jupiter, the planet toward which
the newly discovered monolith transmitted a brief signal. Astronauts Dave
Bowman and Frank Poole pilot the spaceship Discovery, carrying a
cargo of three trained scientists in cryogenically-induced hibernation,
though Bowman and Poole - along with most of the rest of the human race
- have not been told about the monolith on the moon, and their fellow travelers
were frozen prior to the mission to avoid that information leaking out.
The Discovery's onboard computer, the artificially intelligent HAL
9000, begins to show signs of unreliable decision-making, and when Bowman
and Poole take steps to shut HAL down, it kills Poole during a spacewalk
and tries to shut Bowman out of the ship when he goes to retrieve his fallen
comrade. HAL also deactivates the three frozen scientists' life support
units, killing them as well. Bowman manages to get back aboard Discovery
and shuts down HAL's higher logic centers. But when Discovery finally
reaches Jupiter as planned - with only one surviving crewmember - no amount
of astronaut training, nor even the sum total of human experience, has
prepared David Bowman for what he will find there, for the monolith has
returned.
This movie earns so many simultaneous accolades for brilliance and scathing
criticisms, it's a paradox in itself, even aside from its convoluted storyline!
We'll start with the positive. With no disrespect intended toward set designers
and builders over the past thirty years, no one has ever topped the revolutionary
sets constructed for 2001. The huge circular flight deck dominates
the Discovery, a ring-shaped construct built in a true circle which
the characters and the camera seem to effortlessly move around. I imagine
it was actually built on its side and rotated for those scenes, and then
taken apart into smaller, more manageable chunks for stationary scenes.
Still, it's a mind-boggling piece of movie history, as well as being one
of the few things about 2001 that is easy to understand. At the
heart of the story, there appear to be two plots: one about man's evolution
being influenced by aliens, the other about a computer's inability to handle
duplicity. Well, actually, that second plot applies only if you read the
book. And the biggest problem with 2001 is that you have to read
the book to understand the movie. Not that there's anything wrong with
Arthur C. Clarke's novel, but the movie should be able to stand on its
own, and it doesn't - the concept of HAL struggling with the concept of
lying is not dealt with in 2001, but is given a hearing in the 1984
sequel, 2010. The most obvious basic problem with 2001's
story is that it is not complete. It starts at the beginning, but never
gets to the end, and doesn't even really offer any hints as to what the
end is. Clarke claimed for years that the non-sequitur conclusion of 2001
made no allowances for a sequel, but I honestly never believed Clarke's
claim. It is so obvious that 2001 requires a follow-up that, if
Clarke truly believed it was a complete story either on film or on the
printed page, his grasp of the necessities of good storytelling is very
loose indeed.
On film, 2001 suffers from another problem - the scientifically
accurate but aesthetically questionable decision on the part of Kubrick
to allow no sound in most of the spacewalk scenes that the astronaut characters
couldn't hear for themselves. Yet he does allow music to creep into these
same sequences, so what's the point, and what's the distinction? The music
is another sore point among longtime admirers of 2001 - which do
you prefer, the classical "score" assembled from existing recordings,
or Alex North's more modern original music? Both were quite formidable
to listen to, and as much as I love North's original score as later recorded
and released by Varese Sarabande, I have to side with Kubrick. The classical
music lends 2001 a kind of timelessness, especially the unnerving
and abstract choral Ligeti pieces, and the music accompanying the first
appearance of the Discovery is one of my all-time favorites. Other
sound problems, however, are the large swathes of the movie which contain
absolutely no sound whatsoever. That may well be much more scientifically
accurate, but it can be boring as hell at times. When the aural status
quo does change, often you hear the astronauts breathing like they're making
an obscene phone call to Earth.
I've heard many complaints that 2001 has no emotional hooks for
an audience to grab on to, and is a purely intellectual film. As an experienced
devil's advocate - yes, even hell can afford a defense attorney! - I would
point you toward Keir Dullea's wonderfully subtle performance, especially
in the latter half of the movie when he is the only human being to inhabit
the remainder of the story. He's clearly worried, scared, furious, and
professionally calm, all at once. The psychedelic montage at the end of
the movie is interspersed flash-frame stills of Bowman in awe, screaming
in fear, and stunned into non-comprehension, and that the viewer can instantly
sense all of these sensations in the brief seconds that his face appears
amid the much more colorful "stargate" imagery is a tremendous
testament to Dullea's skill. Unfortunately, he was reduced to recanting
Zen-like promises of wonderful things to come in the sequel, when his appearances there
could have been much more frightening and meaningful.
2001 is a well-stirred soup of good and bad, brilliant and banal,
and like the meaning of the movie itself, it's ultimately up to each individual
viewer to figure out what's really going on in this film.
- screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
- directed by Stanley Kubrick
- Cast: Keir Dullea (David Bowman), Gary Lockwood (Frank Poole),
William Sylvester (Heywood Floyd), Douglas Rain (HAL 9000)
- Additional cast (no roles specified): Daniel Richter, Leonard
Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Beatty, Sean Sullivan, Frank Miller,
Bill Weston, Edward Bishop, Glenn Beck, Alan Gifford, Ann Gillis, Edwina
Carroll, Penny Brahms, Heather Downham, Mike Lovell, John Ashley, Peter
Delmar, David Hines, Darryl Faes, Timmy Bell, Terry Duggan, Tony Jackson,
Joe Refalo, David Charkham, David Fleetwood, John Jordan, Andy Wallace,
Simon Davis, Danny Grover, Scott Mackee, Bob Wilyman, Jonathan Daw, Brian
Hawley, Laurence Marchant, Richard Wood
- Oops: BBC 12!? Do the Discovery crew pay a license
fee?
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