Subject: Retrospective: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

From: [email-masked] (Ram Samudrala)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 04:56:05 GMT

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2001: A Space Odyssey
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/2001_a_space_odyssey.html

/2001: A Space Odyssey/ is hailed as one of the greatest films ever
made. While one can readily see certain aspects of it that are
incredible, the film can also be readily dismissed as a self-indulgent
confused mess.  Since I find virtue in self-indulgence, I will choose
to do the former.

The film is based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel, and is divided into
four sections. On its own, each section is brilliantly done and each
of the individual parts could be made into a movie of its own accord.
However the sections do not come coherently together. Sure, it's
possible to make a leap of imagination from one section to the next
and connect it (and several people have, offering many different
interpretations), but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been more
coherent.

The first sequence is the dawn of man sequence, where we see the early
African human (Australopithecines, surrounded by Joshua trees) trying
to eke out a survival on berries and roots, and competing with other
groups of humans for food and water.  One group discovers a huge
monolith, an object from outer space, but do not realise what to do
with it. Soon after, however, they discover the use of a bone as a
club (it took them that long?) and thus begins man's degradation.  As
the early hominid bludgeons his enemy to death and throws up his bone,
it turns into a spaceship as we fast-forward several millenia.

This begins the second phase, the moon landing.  Here we're introduced
to humans on the moon who chance upon an amazing discovery: a huge
monolith of obviously extra-terrestrial intelligent origin.  As the
moon crew investigate, a signal is sent off from the monolith in the
direction of Jupiter.  

The third phase of the films involves man's travel to Jupiter.  The
infamous HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer who becomes
unstable, dominates the story and threatens the mission.  

The final phase of the film is a bit too sugary for my tastes: Here,
the one survivor of the mission to Jupiter lives his life out in a
fantasy world created by those responsible for the
monolith. Ultimately, he is reborn as a Star Child who returns to
earth.

People have argued that the monolith is what enabled the early
hominids to invent the club, but my interpretation is that at that
time, the monolith was useless to the cavemen.  However, any
civilisation that arose that developed the technology that would
enable them to travel to a nearby moon and uncover the object would
certainly be within the reach of interplanetary travel and so the
second time around, the monolith was buried beneath the moon's
surface.

Kubrick is making socio-political commentary about at least four
issues directly connected to the four phases of the film: that the
inherent and violent nature of man is what leads to progress; the need
to succeed pits man against one another; that there is danger in
trusting machines to do everything a human does; and that there is
hope for humanity after all (i.e., by becoming Nietzsche's Overman).
As I mention above, these four issues don't necessarily merge in a
coherent manner.

/2001: A Space Odyssey/ pays painstaking attention to detail. There is
no sound in the space.  The dialogue is daringly minimalist.  The
re-use of previously composed classical music, Johann Strauss' /Blue
Danube/ waltz and Richard Strauss' /Thus Spoke Zarathustra/
(cf. Nietzsche reference above), for the film score is a great master
stroke. All of these features go to make /2001: A Space Odyssey/ one
of the most thought-provoking films I've seen.

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