Director: Stanley
Kubrick
Screenplay:
Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
One of the things that most
people don’t realize about the best of the Star Trek series, particularly the original
and “..The Next Generation,” is that they aren’t about space travel, what they
are about is what can happen when one expands the human limits of the mind. The
capabilities of the structure, and trying to find the most faraway point within
us; what Roddenberry did were use the metaphor of traveling through space to
illustrate this thought. This is a strange way to begin discussing Stanley
Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but in it’s own magical way, this movie is
about the same concept, only here Kubrick dares to illustrates one more radical
thought, that the human race as it is, is about to evolve and be reborn into
and enter a new level of the expansion of the mind, once unseen, or for that
matter, unthought-of. Actually, it’s a very radical thought, which long after
the year in the title has come and gone, and long after the boundaries of
space, and well after the increase in familiarity with special effects has
waned our ability to be amazed by them, “2001…” still manages to enthrall us with it’s visual
beauty and amazement.
Of Kubrick’s 13 Oscar
nominations, he only won one, and it was for this film’s special effects, along with Douglas Trumbell, who was the brainchild of the effects (though he
didn’t share the Oscar with Kubrick), worked on the film in secrecy for
years before releasing it to an unsuspecting 1960s audience. The movie begins
at the beginning of time with apes walking on Earth, until they discover an
object that transfixes them. The same object will appear eons later buried on
the moon. The way to read this is that the apes realized that the object was
made, and also placed on the earth, and this enlightens them to kill and
control and build, and eventually become modern humans (or human of the future,
technically, but still modern humans). The humans, who find the object on the
moon, come to the same conclusion. These findings eventually lead to the
Jupiter Mission, where 5 astronauts, and the HAL 9000 computer (voiced by
Douglas Rain) begin their voyage to Jupiter to find what they hope is the
source of the object.
The scenes on the spaceship
are really the most memorable. For once, for being a year older than the
moon landing, it’s scary to see just how much like some of NASA’s actual footage
they are, (Some say they're too similar, but those people do not need to be heard from.) but they’re not showy, in fact the banality of them is quite a
contrast to most portrayals of space travel. There’s a few astronauts, most of
them are in a deep sleep for the long journey and only two, Dave and Frank
(Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, Kubrick purposefully casting actors who were
unknown and nondescript) are the only ones awake on the ship. One of them jogs,
another plays computer chess with HAL or eats dinner. These are images of
striking beauty, and the score, renown for using only classical music, including
Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” as the great opening as well as Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” during the famous scenes of the ship
getting ready, songs that are now cliché to use for similar effect in movies
and shows now, but it’s use here is still breathtaking.
Then of course, the
machine, the manmade object, will eventually attempt to overtake its creators,
in the movies most famous sequences. What one astronaut eventually will find,
and the journey to get there, I will leave for you to find out, and you can
interpret the ending anyway you want. I don’t even know completely what it
means, but you will be exhilarated.
The movie recently ranked #6
by the Critics and #2 by Directors on “Sight & Sound” magazines Greatest
Movie polls, strange considering how the reaction was mixed originally, and
panned by many. It was definitely an anomaly in its time. A film that asked us
to think and consider, and didn’t lay out the story in the ordinary language of
film, yet used the language to convey ideas and thoughts, perhaps better than
any film up ‘til that point. The movie is separated into two parts, and barely
has more than, maybe at most a couple thousand words of dialogue, and I’m being
generous. This movie is a unique work, technically, years ahead of its time; yet, there’s nothing like it then or now, and is still one of the most amazing
experiences cinema’s ever done.
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