2001: A Space Odyssey - The masterpiece

"This film is the Big Bang of our generation" -Steven Spielberg

Countless number of articles have been written on this subject , each one attempting to penetrate the cosmic message  conveyed through this powerful cinematic endeavour  . This movie has inspired a generation . In this blog we will try to look at things a little differently. The analysis demands a historical context. No masterpieces remain immune  from the vicissitudes of it's time.

Apes- Invention of Tools

 The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001'' is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

The Monolith

The Monolith2001 was written at the very beginning of the space age, before man first set foot on the moon in 1969. It was clearly inspired by much of the fascination with space, which gripped a nation exploring an uncharted terrain in the 1960s.The 1960s were also a time of confrontation with the communist U.S.S.R. and tension over the potential for use of nuclear weapons. The Cuban Missile Crisis was recent history at the time 2001 was in the process of being conceived. The instability of foreign relations as well as the proliferation of nuclear weapons led many at the time to wonder whether a nuclear holocaust might be around the corner.

Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during any scenes with dialogue.The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Consider two examples. The Johann Strauss waltz “Blue Danube,'' which accompanies the docking of the space shuttle and the space station, is deliberately slow, and so is the action. Obviously such a docking process would have to take place with extreme caution (as we now know from experience), but other directors might have found the space ballet too slow, and punched it up with thrilling music, which would have been wrong. We are asked in the scene to contemplate the process, to stand in space and watch. We know the music. It proceeds as it must. And so, through a peculiar logic, the space hardware moves slowly because it's keeping the tempo of the waltz. At the same time, there is an exaltation in the music that helps us feel the majesty of the process. Now consider Kubrick's famous use of Richard Strauss' “Thus Spake Zarathustra.'' Inspired by the words of Nietzsche, its five bold opening notes embody the ascension of man into spheres reserved for the gods. It is cold, frightening, magnificent.

The music is associated in the film with the first entry of man's consciousness into the universe - -and with the eventual passage of that consciousness onto a new level, symbolized by the Star Child at the end of the film. When classical music is associated with popular entertainment, the result is usually to trivialize it. Kubrick's film is almost unique in enhancing the music by its association with his images.

The film falls into several movements.Tribe of herbivorous ape-like early humans is foraging for food in the African desert. The film depicts the apes in a way which may malign to the psychological precedence of our current intelligent(if not wise) minds, which may be unsettling for a few people . We are not used to confronting the fact that we were evolved from "lower" beings in this way. By taking this perspective on the man- apes, the narrator jars us, putting people, including the reader, in their proper evolutionary framework. Humans are conceives as intimately related to the man-apes. The opening of the film implicitly connects us back with beings whom we would most likely consider animals.The activities by the monolith offer a particularly interesting bit of science fiction, while raising many questions. For many it represented a kind of perfection unattainable by humans, while others think that  the smooth artificial surfaces and right angles of the monolith, which was obviously made by intelligent beings, triggered the realization in an ape brain that intelligence could be used to shape the objects of the world.

HAL 9000 the AI computer

Next the scene shifts millions of years into the future when Mankind as a species has evolved and is capable of traversing the realms of outer space.  We meet Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester), en route to a space station and the moon. This section is willfully anti-narrative; there are no breathless dialogue passages to tell us of his mission. Instead, Kubrick shows us the minutiae of the flight: the design of the cabin, the details of in-flight service, the effects of zero gravity. The sequence on the moon (which looks as real as the actual video of the moon landing a year later) is a variation on the film's opening sequence. Man is confronted with a monolith, just as the apes were, and is drawn to a similar conclusion: This must have been made. And as the first monolith led to the discovery of tools, so the second leads to the employment of man's most elaborate tool: the spaceship Discovery, employed by man in partnership with the artificial intelligence of the onboard computer, named HAL 9000.HAL is an artificial intelligence, a sentient, synthetic, life form. According to John Thurman, HAL’s very existence is an abomination, much like Frankenstein’s monster.While the film remains ambiguous, one can see evidence in the film that since HAL was instructed to deceive the mission astronauts as to the actual nature of the mission and that deception opens a Pandora's box of possibilities. During a game of chess, HAL misstates what move is to be made (by using a hybrid of algebraic and traditional chess notation) and how many moves it will then take to mate him .HAL, as the supposedly perfect computer, actually behaves in the most human fashion of all of the characters. He has reached human intelligence levels, and seems to have developed human traits of paranoia, jealousy, and other emotions. By contrast, the human characters act like machines, coolly performing their tasks in a mechanical fashion, whether they are mundane tasks of operating their craft or even under extreme duress as Dave must be following HAL's murder of Frank. For instance, Frank Poole watches a birthday transmission from his parents with what appears to be complete apathy.The HAL sequence is the most famous from the film and for good reason. HAL represents the limits of man's current evolutionary paradigm. What began with a bone has turned into a computer whose intellect arguably surpasses man's own. So, now rather than tools aiding man in his progress forward, it is actually limiting him, HAL sabotages the mission and this sabotage is indicative of the fact that man has lost control of what once aided him. This is why man needs to evolve, because the tools have become too powerful. This menace is implied in the cuts to the dying animal during the first sequence where the ape figures out how to use the bone as a destructive tool.

Inside Hal 9000

So, Dave uses his ingenuity to defeat HAL and in essence kills man of the present. Man has advanced beyond using tools, where can he go now? The answer lies beyond the infinite.

Later comes the famous “star gate'' sequence, a sound and light journey in which astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) travels through what we might now call a wormhole into another place, or dimension, that is unexplained. At journey's end is the comfortable bedroom suite in which he grows old, eating his meals quietly, napping, living the life of a zoo animal who has been placed in a familiar environment. And then the Star Child. When the main character sees the older version of himself break the glass and the wine flowing out, he realizes that the body, like the glass is just a vessel. So when he dies (after his own time collapses on itself or something) the star child is what remains inside of the vessel, free from human bonds.

“2001: A Space Odyssey'' is in many respects a silent film. There are few conversations that could not be handled with title cards. Much of the dialogue exists only to show people talking to one another, without much regard to content . Ironically, the dialogue containing the most feeling comes from HAL, as it pleads for its “life'' and sings “Daisy.''

There is never an explanation of the other race that presumably left the monoliths and provided the star gate and the bedroom. “2001'' lore suggests Kubrick and Clarke tried and failed to create plausible aliens. It is just as well. The alien race exists more effectively in negative space: We react to its invisible presence more strongly than we possibly could to any actual representation.

The film creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us. It is about man's journey towards perfection , his evolution. The entire film is about this evolution, showing us man's roots, his present status and then his future. It's about our journey as a species towards higher and higher planes, leading to this eventual massive evolutionary jump.

Star Child

There are very few films so ripe for analysis as 2001 . It's the sort of film that is a great reflection what your beliefs are, if you're looking for something in this film, you can probably find it, which isn't to say that it has no intended meaning, it's just that Kubrick created a film that is much about what the viewer brings to it as it is what's contained in the text. Our minds have given us the tools to understand where we live and who we are. Now it is time to move on to the next step, to know that we live not on a planet but among the stars, and that we are not flesh but intelligence. This interpretation may not be absolute, maybe Kubrick's genius , his vision is still way beyond the reach of ordinary comprehension. As Kubrick himself has said ,

"You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point."

Star child and Earth