(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)...
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."
A staggering achievement in film. I saw it for the first time when I was ten as well. It was in a theater, my family was indifferent but I precociously thought I understood it. I was close but it was so much more meaningful and ambiguous with each screening. I can watch it anytime.
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