2010

 

(December 1984, U.S.)

By the year 1984, I'd only seen Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY when it aired on TV or when I rented it on pan and scan video cassette.  When Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: ODYSSEY TWO was released in 1982, I read it as soon as a copy was available at my local library, and when the film version was announced with Roy Scheider taking over the role of Dr. Heywood Floyd, I waited in anticipation for its release.

I went to see Peter Hyam's sequel with a friend of mine who'd never seen 2001, so I don't think he was too keen on its sequel.  Still, I was persistent about it and he was a good friend.  He approached our trip to the movies with a good attitude, and was willing to at least give it a try.  And to be fair, I took the time to catch him up on the events of 2001 while we drove to the movie theater, beginning primarily with the discover of the monolith on the moon, hardly bothering to describe the Dawn of Man sequence because it hardly fit in with the new movie.  As he listened to my detailed description, my friend sounded genuinely interested, but who could really tell.  Maybe he was just being a friend and humoring me.  My descriptive backstory of 2001 combined with 2010's pre-credit recap of the events of the first movie leading to the point of the sequel’s introduction might have been enough information for him to know what he was watching without actually seeing 2001.  That’s bullshit, of course, because there is no substitute for seeing the entire masterpiece of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, on screen if possible, and certainly a lot more than once.

Admittedly, I would’ve loved to see William Sylvester return in the role of Dr. Heywood Floyd, but Roy was about as perfect as a substitute as I could’ve imagined.  At the very least, Keir Dullea returns as astronaut David Bowman and Douglas Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000 computer (some things can never be substituted).  It's nine years later now, and the world is on the brink of World War III due to international tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.  Heywood Floyd is now a college professor because he was initially blamed for the failure of the Discovery mission to Jupiter in 2001.  A new mission is in the works, in which U.S. and Soviet astronauts will return to Jupiter together in the Soviet spaceship, the Leonov, to find out what happened to David Bowman, Frank Poole, the Discovery, and HAL.  Questions that are lingering for nine years are due to be answered.  Intriguing is the fact that this joint mission will take place even as it looks like the U.S. and Russia are about to destroy each other.

While en route to Jupiter, signs of life are detected on one of its moons, Europa.  An unmanned probe and a burst of mysterious energy determine that something is warning the Leonov to stay away from Europa.  The Discovery is found continuously rotating in space, which I consider an original visual effect rather than the ship just sitting there like a dead relic.  It's the eventual arrival at the Monolith itself that disappoints me.  It, unlike the Discovery, isn’t moving at all.  It does sit there like a dead relic.  This is a terrible point in the story because it's the mystery of the monolith’s motion and travel through space I find so breathtaking in the first movie.  While I realized Peter Hyams doesn't want to intentionally copy anything Kubrick already did, this decision seems like a mistake.

Still, there are two more groundbreaking moments in the movie: an explanation to why Hal malfunctioned and killed the rest of the crew aboard the Discovery, and the long-awaited appearance of David Bowman.  The first is delivered with some explicit detail by Hal’s programmer, Dr. Chandra (played by Bob Balaban), who explains the reason HAL did what he did is because he was instructed not to reveal the true mission about the Monolith to the ship’s crew.  This conflicted with HAL’s basic programming of his accurate and truthful processing of information.  Basically, he was instructed to lie and he couldn’t handle the stress or the consequences of it.  He became paranoid and had a computer mental breakdown, causing him to commit murder (that's quite a story).  Who knew that computers could act this way, even in what was considered our future (at the time).  

Tensions back on Earth are detailed.  The United States and the Soviet Union are escalating their conflicts to the breaking point of what could become World War III.  In space, American and Soviet astronauts can no longer occupy the same ship.  But it's Bowman’s eventual arrival that creates the circumstances that get them working together again.  His warning to Dr. Floyd is that they have to leave Jupiter in two days, despite the fact that “something wonderful” is going to happen.  Unlike Dr. Chandra’s long-winded explanation, Bowman gives little information to help us understand things.  He appears, he speaks, he transforms himself into the old man and Star Child we’ve seen in the first movie, and then he disappears.  As everyone in space prepares for a mutual departure, Jupiter develops a growing black spot on the planet’s surface that turns out to be an enormous group of Monoliths that constantly multiply.  As suspense and tensions mount, the Leonov escapes danger even as the Discovery is destroyed (along with HAL) and Jupiter explodes.  This explosion creates a miraculous new star in space, and is accompanied by a final transmission of hopeful words to our planet meant to inspire the United States and the Soviet Union to seek peace with each other: All these worlds are yours except Europa.  Attempt no landing there.  Use them together.  Use them in peace. 

In the end, though, not all is resolved and not all questions are answered.  Much like the first movie, we're finally left with the shape of the Monolith standing alone in the swamp of Europa; an intelligent life form that will continue to evolve and raise questions for humanity.  

I recall asking my friend what he thought of 2010 and I have to give the guy credit for doing his best to spare my feelings of enthusiasm by telling me that he thought it was a good movie, when what I’m sure he really wanted to say was, “Dude, I didn’t get any of it.  I didn’t see any of 2001, so how could I possibly enjoy this?”  I’ll never know for sure if that was the truth, but I’m still grateful for his movie companionship, nonetheless.

It’s taken some years of movie maturity to fully understand and appreciate this, but the first rule when judging 2010 is you’re required to put 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY aside to the point where it almost doesn’t exist.  This is a sequel, to be sure, but to make unfair and unwarranted comparisons to Kubrick’s masterpiece is nothing short of futile.  While 2010 can never achieve the poetic mystery or the sense of wonder its predecessor did, I cannot deny it effectively continues the story that Arthur C. Clarke put in print.  This is still a fun and exciting space adventure in its own right, once you’ve accepted the fact that 2001 is meant to stand alone as one of the greatest motion pictures ever created.  Still, I can’t be entirely kind to this film.  Despite the fact that one of the central points of 2010 is to answer essential questions that have lingered for sixteen years between film releases, it’s the answers that I feel ultimately flaw the film.  Keeping in mind that it’s the sense of inexplicable mystery that makes 2001 such an achievement, why would we even want answers?  Yes, HAL went crazy.  Yes, HAL killed the ship’s crew.  Yes, Bowman entered an alternate dimension beyond the infinite, and yes, Bowman was reborn as the Star Child.  Many of us didn’t get it.  Some of us were infuriated by it.  Some of us embraced the great mystery of the unknown and beyond.  Some of us thought the ambiguity of unanswered questions made it all the more appealing.  Bob Balaban breaking it down for us in logical and explicable terms, ultimately pointing to our own government doing what they do best, lying, serves no true purpose but to only ruin what many of us found so delicious in the first place.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Victor Milson: "So, here we are on your actual brink.  My agency's gonna become a part of the military, I've got a president with his finger poised on the button, and you want me to walk across the park and tell him we want to hitch a ride with those very same Russians.  Have I missed anything?"

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

 (April 1968, U.S.)

Sunday February 13, 1977 was a truly significant night in my movie life, and I didn't even know it.  It was the television broadcast premiere of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on the NBC Big Event.  Because it was a Sunday night, I didn't get to watch the entire movie, but even if I'd been able to, there's no way I would've been able to fully understand what the hell I was watching because I was only ten years-old.  I knew nothing of Kubrick; the man or his art.  I was simply watching a movie about outer space and astronauts on TV, and it looked really cool, despite being a very quiet movie with almost no dialogue.

It's important for me to mention the TV premiere of this classic sci-fi film because its purpose and impact caught up with me again years later when I was a high school teenager and watched it again on rented VHS videotape.  You know what?  I hated it!  I was an older kid now, who had lived through the generational impact of the fact-paced sci-fi entertainment of the late 1970s and early 1980s that included two Star Wars movies, two Star Trek movies, two Superman movies, Battlestar Galactica on TV, Alien, Moonraker and Disney's The Black Hole.  For me to watch such a boring display of space exploration accompanied by classical music instead of an adventurous soundtrack was, to say the least, intolerable.  Still, time and cinematic maturity can be kind to almost anything.  I gave the movie another look by the time I got to college and...well, long story short, I'm proud and honored to say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite motion picture of all time, and Stanley Kubrick is my favorite film director of all time...and none of it may have ever happened without that first TV airing on NBC planting the original seed.

What is 2001: A Space Odyssey about, and how can it best be explained in any conventional sense?  How does one effectively explain a twenty-minute sequence of the dawn of man in prehistoric Africa in which a tribe of apes are influenced by the appearance of a black alien monolith and thus discover how to use a bone as a weapon and, after their first hunt, use this new weapon to drive away their rival apes in what can only be classified as man's first war - over a watering hole?  Perhaps we simply take it at face value that man was destined for war from the beginning, and thus the immediate cut to millions of years later simply show how we've evolved from one weapon of the bone to a far-more sophisticated piece of weaponry floating in space near Earth's moon.

What follows for much of the film is some of the most beautiful space and space ship imagery ever displayed on screen, accompanied by the powerful music of "The Blue Danube" (my favorite classical piece of music, and I don't like much classical music) and pieces by Hungarian-Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligeti (among others).  Dr. Heywood Floyd (Chairman of the United States National Council of Astronautics) and his team travel to the moon where they discover a recently-found identical monolith which had buried for four million years.  As they examine the monolith, it suddenly emits a high-powered radio signal which is aimed at the planet Jupiter.

Eighteen months later, the US spacecraft Discover One is bound for Jupiter.  On board are mission pilots and scientists Dr. David Bowman (played by Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (played by Gary Lockwood), along with three other scientists in suspended animation.  The ship's operations are controlled by the ship's computer bearing a human personality, a HAL 9000 computer addressed as "HAL" (voiced by Douglas Rain).  After some routing moments aboard the ship, HAL detects an imminent failure of the ship's antenna control device, which ultimately turns out to be a false diagnosis.  This is serious because up until now, the 9000 series of computers had a zero error reputation, and HAL is proven to be in error predicting the fault, though he calmly attributes the discrepancy to human error.

Concerned over this new development in HAL's behavior, Dave and Frank have what they think is a private discussion in which they decide that HAL must be disconnected if he's proven wrong.  What they don't know is that HAL has been reading their lips during their conversation, and is on to their scheme.  In a series of vengeful computer acts, HAL kills Frank and the three sleeping crew members, while refusing to allow Dave re-entry into the Discovery after he's retrieved Frank's floating body in space ("I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that.").  Through his own resourcefulness, Dave manages to re-enter the ship through the emergency airlock, and it would appear that HAL is now in big trouble, as Dave systematically disconnects HAL's memory and functioning circuits.  Listen carefully to how HAL, the almighty know-it-all and controller of the entire ship, is now reduced to a babbling (and singing) fool as he fearfully pleads to Dave for his life.  Upon HAL's final disconnection, a prerecorded video message plays, revealing that the mission's objective the entire time is to investigate the radio signal sent from the monolith to Jupiter.

What follows next as the chapter known as JUPITER AND BEYOND THE INFINITE can only be described as a dazzling and totally awesome visual trip of sight, sound, and color (thank you, Douglas Trumbull) as the Dave and the Discovery discover a third and much larger monolith orbiting Jupiter and its moons.  Dave's EVA pod is pulled into a space vortex of colored light and he is carried across vast distances of space, while viewing bizarre cosmological phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colors (a Stargate).  When his ultimate trip finally comes to an end, Dave finds himself inside a neoclassical hotel suite where he witnesses, and ultimately becomes, older versions of himself until he finally dies a very old man in bed, where the monolith watches at the foot of the bed.  As Dave reaches out for the monolith (my favorite shot in the entire film, by the way)...

...he appears to be transformed into a fetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light, which floats in space beside the planet Earth.  This fetus has become affectionately known as the Star Child.

What does all of this mean, and upon deep reflection, does it really have to mean anything specific in order to be appreciated?  2001: A Space Odyssey is ultimately a story of man's journey and destiny through time and space, in which anything and everything is possible.  While it may not be completely comprehensible on the surface, one can come away with so many different possibilities upon multiple viewings of this sci-fi masterpiece.  Stanley Kubrick himself explained in a 1980 interview of the film's closing scenes where Dave is depicted in old age after his journey through the Stargate...

"The idea was supposed to be that he is taken by godlike entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form.  They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room.  And he has no sense of time.  When they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of superman.  We have to only guess what happens when he goes back.  It is the pattern of a great deal mythology."

Perfectly explained, in my opinion, and we have only ourselves to blame if we lack the patience and intelligence to allow ourselves the chance to appreciate the artistic intent behind the ultimate journey into the unknown discovery.  Audiences in 1968 didn't get it because it was so dull, that is until late night patrons decided to get high before experiencing the film's awesome effects, thus dubbing it "the ultimate trip".  We can thank these potheads, I suppose, because folks who could appreciate true cinema finally made 2001: A Space Odyssey the legendary cinematic classic it has always deserved to be, and my favorite motion picture of all time.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Dr. Heywood Floyd (recorded): "Good day, gentlemen.  This is a pre-recorded briefing made prior to your departure, and which for security reasons of the highest importance, has been known on board during the mission only by your HAL 9000 computer.  Now that you are in Jupiter space, and the entire crew is revived, it can be told to you.  Eighteen months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the earth was discovered.  It was buried forty feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho.  Except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter, the four million year-old black monolith has remained completely inert.  Its origin and purpose, still a total mystery."