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2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, 47 YEARS DOWN THE ROAD
First, thanks to Wendy Harding for inviting me to guest-blog. If there's a livelier, more intelligent and thought-provoking conversational space than Wendy's on Facebook, I've yet to find it. Initially, I wanted to essay forth on the subject of sacred art, but finding that topic too vast and cosmic for my current time restraints, I decided to go with some ramble-rumination on 2001, a film that will forever invite speculation and contemplation. Actually, there are those who do regard 2001 as a form of sacred art, so perhaps in the future these somewhat random, very subjective observations of mine will be an entry to a more systematic exploration of sacred art. (I am hoping).
- I wasn't really a fully sentient adult when, on a hot summer night I went to see 2001 with my fellow nerd friends; this was a day after, I believe, the film premiered in 1968. Still, as the film is primarily a visual experience with minimal dialogue, it certainly made an impact on me as it did on most people. I first saw the film in Chicago's Michael Todd theater, one of those wide-screen, palatial movie theaters that don't really exist anymore. One of my fonder memories of the experience came during the intermission - yes, the big blockbuster films of that era often came with an intermission - when the theater's coolant system had broken down and some wag in the audience shouted out, "Hal, please turn on the air conditioner!". As all in attendance were sweating profusely, this got a highly appreciative response from the audience.
- Since 2001 is now considered one of, if not *the* best film of all time, some might find it peculiar that the film actually received mixed reviews following its premiere. One reason for this was that big blockbuster films were not supposed to be "Euro-arty" - the pacing was comparatively slow, the acting was for the most part restrained with minimal dialogue, and the soundtrack was, to say the least, very unusual. Yes, it was science fiction, but as sci-fi goes, it was genre-busting, genre-transcending. This was obviously difficult for some critics to get their heads around. I think a similar case could be made for Robert Persig's 1974 book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Three pages into that book and you realize that you're in the presence of greatness, yet Persig was rejected by publishers 70-plus times before some publishing house took a chance on him. Of course the book has been in print ever since and is regarded as a modern day classic. So why the rejections? No, I don't think most publishers or film critics are stupid, but they do tend to think strictly "in the box" and are not at all wont to stray from established genre, whereupon readers and movie-goers generally find their comfort zone, and where publishers find their best sales. What was ZATAOMM as a book? A mystery, a supernatural thriller, a philosophical manifesto, a psychological auto-bio? It really is genre-less, and like 2001, it's sui generis, distinctly one of a kind.
- By the way, if you've never read ZATAOMM, I should tell you it really has nothing to do with either zen or motorcycles.
- Another reason for 2001's initial mixed reviews is, I think, is the year it came out. When we're young spring chickens, I think there's a tendency to believe that what's going on in the world around us is the natural order of things, business as usual. So it wasn't until years later that I truly reflected on 1968 and what a preposterously tumultuous year it was: two major assassinations in the USA, (ML King and Robert Kennedy), apocalyptic race riots in every major American city, the Vietnam War claiming the lives of 15,000 American service people, as well as God knows how many Vietnamese, Paris shut down by New Left revolutionaries, the Soviets invading Czechoslovakia, the riots at the Chicago National Democratic convention ..... I'm probably forgetting something, but trust me, it was one helluva year. And 2001 the movie? It didn't address any of that, not even obliquely. I recall reading a review in which a doubtful critic wondered, rather forlornly, I thought, how humankind had moved from '68 to '01 without solving its racial problems. I believe this critic and others found the film's projection of space-age tech with all its slickness and metallic coolness to be rather obscene, particularly in light of the riotous passions of the day.
- How did 2001 do in terms of predicting the future? Obviously not too well. It should be remembered though, that at the time, the concepts of regular shuttles to the moon, a Hilton-like space station, a moon base, a manned mission to Jupiter, even exotic concepts like advanced Artificial Intelligence and ET contact, were not considered unreasonable projections - it was in '68, after all, that we put two astronauts around the moon, and in the following year, Neil Armstrong would walk on it. Social inequities and racial strife notwithstanding, the future, at least as far as tech and our "space-age destiny" were concerned, looked very bright indeed. So what went wrong? Why aren't we vacationing on the Sea of Tranquillity, why isn't there a Disney Land on Mars? Well .....
- ...... I think we were bedazzled by what some call " The Myth of the Age of Eternal Progess", in which, by dint of the Western technological progress, we supposedly transcended the rise and fall cycle of all previous civilizations. This is a beguiling myth indeed, and it's had a million proponents - HG Wells, Carl Sagan certainly come to mind. It's also fairly hubristic, in my estimation, and it can lead to a great deal of harmful denial regarding the world's current state of affairs. I think that Western Civ is in obvious decline even as we speak, and we'd best be preparing for a largely non-tech future. It really comes down to the historical cycle of empires and civilizations, no matter if it's the Roman Empire or a valley presided over by a tribe of Native Americans - eventually they're going run out of resources, and the costs in maintaining the empire are going to overrun the benefits derived. There are always those who maintain that "they'll think of something" to allow for further tech progress and continuance of our rather comfy lifestyles, and there's Ray Kurzweill and his prediction of a Parousia-like "Singularity", but I surely wouldn't bank on such.
- I should say something about my personal aesthetic reaction to 2001. Stanley Kubrick was never my favorite film director; I often found his style to be cold and bloodless, detached and not in a good way. However, Kubrick's chilly style was the perfect fit for 2001; this was a marriage that produced a classic. To be sure, I still find the film to be cold, but existentially, awe-inducingly, wonderingly cold - a little acre of fear and trembling in the face of what's called the "Mysterium Tremendum", that sense of awe that comes with a glimpse into the Unknown regions. I've often wondered at those who found, and who still find a sense of serene beauty in the contemplation of the depths of outer space. Beautiful, in a sense, yes, of course, but I've never found anything the least serene about its abyssal depths, unfathomable distances and its extreme unfriendliness to carbon-based life forms. Kubrick' rendering seems to put me right there in the midst of it. For all of Kubrick's game-changing cinematic influence on, say, George Lucas and his space sagas, I think the film that comes closest to 2001's depiction of space's yawning depths and blank inhospitality to human life is the 2013 film, Gravity.
- In his contemplation on the nature of God, Blake wonders what kind of Hand could have fashioned the tiger's fearful symmetry. What about the Hand that fashioned the mind-numbing vastness of the universe!? Fact is, 2001 really is a metaphysical film with a metaphysical message, and this is what will forever keep it in the conversational grapevine. The film addresses ontological issues, the meaning of evolution, the ultimate destiny of humankind, and the progress of physical, material existence into that of pure Energy and Spirit - these themes are complimented by the film's slow but stately pacing, the use of symbol such as the black monolith, the alignment of planets, the transformation of astronaut Dave Bowman as he moves about the dream-like neoclassical bedroom at film's conclusion. And of course there is the 2001 "theme song", Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathusta, a reference to Nietzsche and the concept of the Ubermensch .......
- Is the Übermensch, the newly born Star Child, a pitiless, beyond-good-and-evil Being, come to replace humanity? I don't know, but it's disturbing to think that the Star Child might be mirrored by the spacecraft's sentient computer Hal 9000, who kills off most of the crew in the name of preserving the mission. Adding to this chilly mix is the scene at film's beginning in which the hominid flings a boar femur, his war-club, into the air and we CUT TO: the space station. Implication: War is indeed the father of all things, as Heraclitus said 2500 years ago. Well, perhaps it is. After all, many, if not most of the advances in science came from the military. The personal computer, eg., was largely developed by the military. In any event, my view is that we do evolve spiritually, and that in the fullness of time, we sublimate our baser passions into that which we call "human values", compassion, pity, kindness, empathy. For a film whose theme is human transcendence, 2001 is decidedly lacking in what we would call human values.
- A few words on Hal the computer - no, we didn't develop human-level AI by 2001, but it's an ongoing concern of many that we're going to do so within the next 40 years or so. I have my doubts as to whether a machine can actually acquire a self-aware consciousness a la Hal, but who knows? It might be possible to build a computer so complex that a human soul - or some other immaterial entity - could incarnate in it. I actually wrote a poem about this once. But again, speculation. Whatever the case, of all the robots and AIs in filmic history, Hal is, for me, the most disturbing. As he lacks metal human-like limbs, he's short on the pyrotechnics we usually associate with machines-gone-rogue, but his unblinking electronic orange eye speaks volumes. It's the steady gaze of a non-human intelligence, very disquieting - but again, isn't the trans-human Star Child also a non-human intelligence? What might we expect from that? Those disturbing notions aside, I think it's a bit ironic that of all the film's characters, it's Hal who ends up displaying the most emotion. "Stop, Dave. I'm afraid ....."
- Even though 2001 was an MGM film, it was mostly filmed and edited in England. The Shepperton Studios were larger than anything Hollywood had to offer. When the film came out and movie goers beheld Kubrick's quantum leap in space depiction, there were rumors abounding that he had actually built an anti-gravity machine and had actually shot the space scenes in space. That should give you some idea of the fantasy-mad, conspiracy-addled climate of the times.
- My favorite spoken line from 2001 comes from Dr. Floyd's daughter (played by Vivian Kubrick): "I want a bush baby!" I still have no idea what a bush baby is.
- Thank you.
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And that's all from Will for now. Till next time. And just to help any other confused people, whilst there were several points in this piece I wanted to debate, there's one thing I can definitely settle: this is a bush baby!
Hi, I would like to order my bush baby, large-size, and in beige, please.
ReplyDeleteComing right up, sir! :-)
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