Sunday, October 19, 2008

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”
- George Bernard Shaw


The monolith: a symmetrical nomadic apparition, at once alternatively and simultaneously sinister and awe-inspiring, a configuration whose geometric proportions have been refined to the nth degree. It is the perfect embodiment of an abstraction that Kubrick wanted to communicate about the evolution of the human mind. The roughness and crudity of the apes living in primitive disarray is thrown into such wildly contrary relief in the midst of the monolith, that it is no surprise that even the most rudimentary conception of learning plants itself in the slightly comprehending brains of the feral apes. Something about the precision and the sharp corners of the 4 right angles of the uniform black shape sets a slow-burning charge on the faculties of one of the more thoughtful creatures, and one day, while thoughtlessly milling around some old elephant bones, the ape remembers… he remembers that strange apparition he saw, and then he looks at the bones, and the powder keg explodes: Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” sounds the fundaments of triumphant epiphany. Of course Kubrick’s implicit irony is generally overlooked on first viewing because the sheer grandeur of the music and imagery is so intoxicating. The irony of course is that the celebration of discovery trumpeted by the Strauss piece belies the fact that the ape’s seminal innovation is instantaneously utilized for purposes of murder. And so the evolution of mankind begins.

The transition from the bone to the spacecraft is often noted for being the single biggest transitional leap in time in all of cinema. And of course, we don’t need any of the space in between to lose Kubrick’s point: man has discovered how to use the raw materials that have been rationed to him by existence to astonishing and frightening ends, the bone being the original utility and the spacecraft being the most advanced. But even after 2000 or so millennia, the banality of existence persists: aboard the impossibly sophisticated and advanced technical achievement millions of years in the making, Space Station 5, the massive floating steering wheel Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) docks with as a mid-point between Earth and Clavius, there are advertisements for Hilton Hotels, who presumably own the rights to the space station, and a placard for Howard Johnson’s, that chain of restaurant’s rustic name as glaringly incongruous with the aseptic cutting edge interior of the space station as a Taco Bell logo plastered inside a bio-lab. It’s deflating to see that Howard Johnson’s sign, just as it is deflating to witness Dr. Frank Poole’s (Gary Lockwood) insipid chit-chat with his parents via telecommunication while he traverses the lofty reaches of space aboard the Discovery One. Poole himself seems mildly disgusted during this sequence, and the music played over Poole’s birthday chat with his parents is sorrowful.

Keir Dullea seems at cursory inspection to be a rather bland choice for Dr. David Bowman, the other conscious astronaut aboard the Discovery (the remaining three astronauts have been placed in cryogenic sleeping chambers in order to preserve their energies at maximum level until such time as they will be needed once the ship arrives at Jupiter) but in fact Kubrick (who cast Dullea sight unseen after witnessing his performances in David and Lisa (1962) and The Thin Red Line (1964)) has optioned wisely, in that only an actor as preternaturally cool, calm, and collected as Dullea could convince us that he stands a chance against HAL. HAL is voiced by Douglas Rain, and is one of the most quietly psychotic antagonists in film history. Psychotic you say? Yes. It is one thing to go after Dave and Frank, who HAL has clandestinely witnessed conspiring to deactivate him, but to murder the three sleeping humans who have nothing to do with the conspiracy, is the work of a madman. HAL’s killing spree is not entirely successful; Dave is resourceful, and when HAL refuses him entry onto the Discovery after Dave returns from a finally futile attempt to retrieve the drifting body of the maliciously jettisoned Frank, Dave, without a helmet, hazards death by propelling himself over a brief but treacherous fissure between the berth of the Discovery’s emergency airlock and the exit of the EVA (extra-vehicular activity) pod.

Besides the grandeur and scope of Kubrick’s vision, and the intellectual ambition, the film intuits themes and observations that can be lost on those who are put off by Kubrick’s dispassionate remove from the proceedings. But the film, if viewed properly, should not leave the viewer cold, but rather should incite ecstatic absorption which only begins in the brain and then charges from there to all the senses. This is not a boring film. Many claim that it is, but it is only due to the scarcity of these viewers’ imaginations and interior resources that the film will fail to react. I postulate that human beings with rich inner lives have the richest and most rewarding experiences with art (some people feel uncomfortable around negative space, even indignant, because, naturally, they have nothing of their own to fill it with; and I don’t mean IQ). And that is what 2001: A Space Odyssey is beyond all else - beyond its technical proficiency, its philosophy, its cutting-edge special effects, its iconic status - an artistic endeavor, and if you’re the right type of person, you’ll feel the blissful chemistry of your senses and Kubrick’s intuition bubbling harmoniously.

Whenever I watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I see the monolith, I reflexively envision Kubrick, with his dark imposing countenance and towering cold intellect. When Kubrick’s films are referred to as “cold,” generally it is the cut-and-dried nature of his presentation that is being commented on. All of this meticulous aseptic precision can result in bothersome feelings that Kubrick’s magnum opus is too pat, too exacting, the perfection is hermetically sealed. To me, it’s like the film itself is the monolith, or maybe Kubrick is.


2001 materialized before particular absent-minded and coarse terrestrials in the same manner as the silent black monolith before the howling apes; at first, they were perturbed and bewildered:

“a film out of control, an infuriating combination of exactitude on small parts and incoherence on large ones.”
- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Historian

“a thoroughly uninteresting failure and the most damning demonstration yet of Stanley Kubrick’s inability to tell a story coherently and with a consistent point of view.”
- Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice, April 11, 1968

“Such movies as 'Petulia' and '2001' may be no more than trash in the latest, up-to-the-minute guises, using “artistic techniques” to give trash the look of art. The serious art look may be the latest fashion in expensive trash. All that “art” may be what prevents pictures like these from being enjoyable trash; they’re not honestly crummy, they’re very fancy and they take their crummy ideas seriously… In some ways it’s the biggest amateur movie of them all… It’s a monumentally unimaginative movie.”
-Pauline Kael, Harper’s, February 1969

“Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
-Rock Hudson at the Los Angeles Premiere, April 4, 1968, according to Roger Ebert


But it was not long after the initial apprehension that Kubrick’s film seized our collective consciousness and deposited us in the warm glow of intuitive clarity, leaving the detractors and the skeptics crowing like beasts outside the orb of enlightenment.

2001 is not my favorite Kubrick (that would be The Shining) but it would be inaccurate to find any of the work he granted us previous or subsequent to this film as more vital to international culture. 2001 is the centerpiece in a peerless oeuvre.


Grade: A+



+ "Deliberately Buried." The 4 Markers of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): Deciphering the Monolith