2001: A Space Odyssey 50th Anniversary: 2010 - The Year We Make Contact (1984)

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is absolutely, indisputably a one-of-a-kind movie.  It is a cinematic masterpiece, and more than that, one of the greatest films ever produced.  

So the simple and apparent fact that must be acknowledged and embraced regarding the Peter Hyams sequel -- 1984’s 2010: The Year We Make Contact -- is that it is not in the same class.

Kubrick’s film was part science fiction, part art film, and part “ultimate trip” head  movie, and 2010’s ambitions are, well, if not smaller, then at least a great deal more direct.

When approaching 2010, one must, therefore, dispense with the perhaps-unreasonable expectation that the enterprise is going to rival, or even near the majesty and awe of its 1968 predecessor.

Because a funny thing might happen once you jettison those personal expectations (or, perhaps, your memories of 2001).

Another truth looms ever more apparent.

2010: The Year We Make Contact is still a very good science fiction film, though of a markedly different style. 

Where 2001: A Space Odyssey took man to the precipice of his own future, and to the next step of his very evolution, the sequel is very much about who man is “now” (in 1984, essentially).

Where 2001: A Space Odyssey offered a commentary on how man’s tools could overwhelm his life, and his environs (remember the white-on-white minimalism of the production design…) 2010 instead reveals man grappling with his still-human nature: the propensity to fear that which he doesn’t understand, and to go to war over territory or ideology.

2001 paid some attention to that idea, certainly. One scene in the space station lounge saw Heywood Floyd meet some Soviet scientists, and they questioned him about all the secrecy on Clavius. The scene hinted at on-going rivalries and distrust between Super Powers.

Similarly, the orbiting nuclear platforms depicted in A Space Odyssey suggested that war and hostility had survived and endured to the 21^st century. Man’s competitive nature -- apparent from the moment the ape-man tossed a bone-weapon into the air at the dawn of the species -- was thus seen as unchanged.

Yet in Kubrick’s film that idea was merely a note in a great and elaborate symphony.

In Hyams’ 2010, by contrast, that note underlines and even dominates the entire composition. It does so in faithful, earnest adaptation of Clarke’s 1982 literary source material, as well as in a brutally honest reckoning with the political details of the early 1980s.

In many ways, 2010 is thus the “hot” to 2001’s “cold.” 

The snow-blind whites, minimalism  and yet majesty of the space station and other settings in 2001 have been replaced, largely, in 2010 by cluttered, smoky control rooms bathed in suffusing red alert lighting. 

And the sequel’s characters -- instead of showcasing smooth, emotionless efficiency as Frank Poole or David Bowman did -- experience outbreaks of panic, fear, homesickness, and even…humor.

If Kubrick’s film took a big step back from the characters and attempted to observe the long arc of man’s development with a sense of cerebral detachment, Hyams’ film instead examines man at this juncture with passionate, colorful, up-close strokes.

When considered in such terms, 2010: The Year We Make Contact might be viewed as a pretty strong and, yes, wholly valid complement to Kubrick’s film. It is both a faithful continuation of the franchise’s overall narrative, and at the same time an apparent commentary on the visionary world envisioned by Kubrick. 

It’s almost as if this sequel applies the brakes -- the aerobrakes? -- in response to 2001’s flights of imagination and futurism. 

It says, instead,  Hold on!  We’re not quite there yet. 

The famous black Monolith may have judged Bowman ready to evolve into a star child, but for now, the rest of humanity remains mired in conflict and self-destructive impulses.

Absent entirely in 2010: The Year We Make Contact is Kubrick’s sense of “order in the universe,” the amazing compositions which suggest a God’s eye view of the cosmos.

Missing as well is the feeling that we humans are part of a long, ongoing process of development, moving from our “dawn” to “the infinite and beyond.” 

The sequel substitutes such awesome visions and ideas with a direct, teletype-style message to mankind (from the aliens…), transcribed by HAL.  “All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.”

In 1984 -- soon after The Day After (1983) aired on television, and at the height of East-West Cold War tensions -- the Klaatu-esque message of this film really resonated, at least with my teenage self. It was less “grand,” perhaps, “less cosmic” than Kubrick’s intellectual musings, but perhaps 2010’s direct approach was the very thing that audiences needed to hear at that moment in history.

Bluntly worded, 2010 tells its audience this: you can’t evolve and be “a star child” until you grow the fuck up. 

The astronauts of the film -- men and women from the United States and the Soviet Union -- are at the vanguard of that growth, and become the very symbols for man’s ability to, even in dire circumstances, to evolve beyond basic tribal instincts.

So if 2001 concerns what man will one day become, 2010 suggests how he needs to get there, through the end of war and petty conflict.

“My God, it’s full of stars.”

Nine long years after Discovery One went silent near Jupiter, and Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) was lost approaching the strange, alien monolith, the Cold War on Earth has grown hot. 

The Soviet Union and the United States of America tussle over the resources and loyalty of the Third World.  A problem in Central America, in Honduras, grows ever worse, and the United States threatens a naval blockade.

Meanwhile, Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) is asked to spearhead a mission to Jupiter, to re-activate the HAL 9000,  nd then determine the nature of the mysterious Monolith.  

Unfortunately, the Russians will beat the Americans to the derelict Discovery One, so an accommodation --- a joint mission -- is broached by the competitors.

Floyd and an American team consisting of computer expert Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), and Discovery One designer Walter Curnow (John Lithgow) thus board the Russian craft, Leonov, under the command of Captain Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) for the journey.  In turn, they will share their findings about the Monolith.

Leonov begins its long space journey, and takes a detour to Europa, where chlorophyll -- an early sign of life -- has been detected.  A probe is sent to examine the surface of Europa, but is destroyed by an unknown force.

Later, the Leonov conducts a difficult aero-braking maneuver on approach to the Discovery, and Dr. Chandra revives HAL.

Meanwhile, on Earth, an entity resembling Dave Bowman begins to appear to the astronaut’s surviving family members.  He tells them that something wonderful is going to happen, and soon.

Tensions on Earth grow exponentially worse, and at the same time, HAL warns the crews of the Leonov and Discovery One that this area of space is becoming dangerous because of a strange “storm” of Monoliths in the atmosphere of Jupiter.

With the storm expanding, and the outcome unknown, the two space crews must put their ideology and suspicion behind them to survive and escape this region of space.

“We should each be treated with appropriate respect.”

2001: A Space Odyssey raised many questions about the universe, mankind’s evolution, and even the reasons why the HAL 9000 went berserk.

2010: The Year We Make Contact makes no bones about the fact that it is in the business of providing answers.

For instance, early in the film it is established that the final reports regarding Discovery One and the Jupiter Mission failure left its readers with “a good amount of questions.”  Just like some members of the audience for 2001. Later, Floyd reveals, in voice-over, very detailed information about the Monolith “controlling” everything in nearby space. He seems to know a lot about it.

If the sequel boasts any substantial flaw it is that it feels both conceived and executed to satisfy those who were unsatisfied by 2001: A Space Odyssey. Accordingly, the answers just keep on coming.

And yet, if you were unsatisfied by 2001, you didn’t really get the movie, did you?

Leaving that issue aside 2010 takes great artistic pains to “ground” all the proceedings in terms that its audience would easily comprehend. For example, Floyd feels guilt and remorse about sending the Discovery One crew people to die, and so this Leonov mission is explicitly one about his redemption.

“This won’t bring those men back,” or provide “absolution” suggests Heywood’s wife. 

And again, one need only note that in 2001, we had no such insight into Mr. Floyd, or his motivations. He was not humanized in such fashion.

Other characters are similarly endowed with traits that ground them, or make them more recognizably human and contemporary. Chandra is prideful at times, and Curnow undergoes a bit of fear or agoraphobia on a harrowing spacewalk. During the tense aero-breaking scene, Floyd and an attractive Russian astronaut clutch one another, out of abject fear.

Even when Dave was locked out of the Pod Bay of the Discovery in 2001, he evidenced no such outward signs of fear.

Indeed, the film’s entire approach to character is best exemplified by Curnow’s line that he misses the color “green.” 

Was there any green (outside the Dawn of Man segment) in 2001?  Was there any explicit longing for it?

What 2010: The Year We Make Contact wants to suggest, then, is that although man may erect a white-on-white future, he’s not going to like it, and he’s still going to long for the “green” of terrestrial Earth.  He’s still going to be “man" as we recognize him now.

HAL is newly humanized as well in this sequel. We learn that he is, essentially, schizophrenic, because of the contradictory orders he received from home base. Instead of acting as a ruthless, cunning opponent, he becomes here a figure of sympathy, one who even asks if he will “dream” when Discovery One is destroyed.

Finally, the ghost of David Bowman indulges in behavior that we would consider extremely human and emotional too. He visits his relatives on Earth. He combs his elderly mother’s hair.

Again, this kind of material is absolutely absent from 2001: A Space Odyssey, where even a vid-phone call between father and child feels strangely distant and unemotional. But 2010 is a different film.

This film’s modus operandi -- also evidenced in the desire to create thrilling space action scenes like the space walk or the aero-braking --  is to showcase the yin/yang of human emotions or passions.

The environs of the Leonov, the new ship created for the sequel, likewise showcase this aesthetic. The ship’s control room is always either under-lit and dark, or bathed in red light. Papers are scattered everywhere, on panels and tables. The visual aesthetic is much more Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) than it is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. And again, that’s because the film wants to present a realistic portrayal of emotional, contemporary man in space. 

Why? Well, the film examines man at close-up range. He can be wonderful and good, seeking absolution, longing for nature's "green," or acknowledging his fears. Or he can bring the world to the precipice of nuclear Armageddon. 

And again, I feel it incumbent to note as well the apocalypse mentality of the country in the first Reagan presidency, which forms the cultural context behind this sequel. This was a time when in public forums Russia was derided as “The Evil Empire,” and it was announced (as a joke) that bombing Russia would begin in "five minutes." It was an era in which cabinet appointees like Secretary of the Interior James Watts declared it was not really necessary to take care of the planet's environment because Jesus Christ would return in his lifetime, and this would be the last generation.  These words are not my opinion of what happened, they are part of the historical record, and therefore not partisan or biased. These things were said in public, and heard in the public square, by children and adults alike. They were noted.

2010: The Year We Make Contact is very much about that context (as well as the Falklands Island War…), an environment of distrust and concern about nuclear war in which it becomes impossible to visualize your “enemy” as another human being, but rather as a godless monster that must be destroyed. 

The message is made plain in the film terms of the astronauts’ behavior, and their cooperative solution for survival. 

To endure a disaster near Jupiter, two ships and two crews must literally become one. 

The Russian Leonov and the American Discovery One must join together and pool resources -- literally as one ship -- to see a new sunrise.  This is the Monolith’s lesson for the entirety of Earth as well. The two rival super-powers --  if they hope to claim their stake in space -- must become one. They must treat each other “with appropriate respect” and recognize their enemy’s common humanity.

The aliens final message in the film is very on the nose.  “Use these worlds together. Use them in peace.” 

If humans do not do so, the implication is that the Monolith aliens will respond accordingly. The events on Europa with the destroyed probe reveal that these aliens will brook no interference with their agenda. Again, this seems highly reminiscent, at least to me, of The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), and its alien ultimatum.

“Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.”

2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t transmit an easily-digestible message like that, which can be stated in a few simple words, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact does.  The two films stand in stark contrast because of that difference. 2001 coolly asks its audience to interpret its message, and 2010 states its message, rather bluntly and emotionally, and with some degree of heat and excitement.

In general, I prefer Kubrick’s approach, but there are times when the 2010 approach becomes a necessity too…especially if you are the parent of a misbehaving child. 

As such a parent figure (as the Monolith aliens may be to humanity), it is necessary at times to make certain you are heard and clearly understood

The message in 2010 is indeed clearly heard and understood. That fact doesn’t make the movie “bad.”  It just makes the film a very different kind of space opera from its predecessor. 

Beautifully mounted, and buttressed with splendid recreations of the Discovery One, and some tense moments in space, 2010 is a worthwhile film, and a solid sequel to one of the cinema’s all-time greats.  We can remember it that way, in part, because it sought not to imitate a great film, but to chart its own (if ultimately less challenging..) territory.

Another way to put it. We may not give 2010 equal respect to 2001, but let us all treat it with "appropriate" respect nonetheless.

2010 Comic Book (Marvel Edition)

Pop Art: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Aurora Edition)

Comic-Book of the Week: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Marvel, Issue #2/Jan. 1977)

This is the short-lived 2001: A Space Odyssey series “based on concepts of the 1968 MGM movie by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.”

Just imagine attempting to capture the age-spanning awe of 2001: A Space Odyssey every month, and you get an idea of what height this comic aspired to reach.

In particular, I’m remembering issue # 2, from January of 1977, written, drawn and edited by the great Jack Kirby. 

In this “startling second issue” of a comic that urged readers to “begin a new journey to the stars - and beyond,” we are treated to the fascinating tale of “Vira, the She Demon.” 

The story begins in prehistoric Italy -- a land dotted by live volcanoes -- as Vira, a “non-submissive female” in the words of Kirby, attempts to survive in a totally inhospitable environment. She is dying of starvation until she encounters the Monolith. 

This strange alien tool/being imbues her with the knowledge of “fear,” and she hence sets herself up as the fierce She-Demon Goddess of a local tribe. Terrified of this pretend-God, the tribe's men house Vira and hunt game for her, and in return she leads them with wisdom...forming mankind’s first government.

Fast forward to the 21st century and we meet astronaut Vera Gentry, of Explorer Unit 5, now stationed on Ganymede. A race of vicious alien hunters destroy her life support and shelter, and like Vira the She Demon so long ago, she flees, only to encounter the Monolith.

This time, the Monolith whisks her off into a world of her own (just like David Bowman’s sitting room in the famous movie...). In her own environs, including a swimming pool she once owned, Vera Gentry ages to 102 years old before ultimately transforming into a Star Child, a so-called “New Seed.”

Wow. Trippy stuff. It was an audacious move to begin a comic-book line based on a film that had few interesting characters, little dialogue, and which jumped from time-period to time-period with regularity, but I wager Jack Kirby was just the talent to do it. This issue apes 2001 by starting at the “dawn of man,” (like the film...) leaping to the year 2001 (like the film...) and then on and beyond into the “future of man” - just like the film. The enigmatic black Monolith, as one can tell from this summary, is a key player, a catalyst, and agent of transformation.

Apparently, it wasn’t long before Marvel's editors realized this sort of story was going to be awfully difficult to sustain every issue. I mean, how many times can you repeat the same tale as the movie? The anthology format essentially meant there was nothing recurring for comic-readers to latch onto each month except....philosophy and the general concept. Therefore, in later issues, such as the final one, number # 10, Kirby went in new directions, focusing on a character named “Mister Machine,” and avoiding the Monolith. In the "Monolith Mail" page of that book, the editors wanted to gauge reader response. Should they focus on Mister Machine as a central character or continue the anthology format? Alas, we'll never know where the comic-book might have finally gone...

So why remember Kirby’s 2001: A Space Odyssey comic today? Well, first of all, it was daring. This wasn’t Star Wars where you could take Luke Skywalker to a water planet one issue, then team him up with a giant green bunny for a pastiche of The Magnificent Seven the next. Kirby’s take on 2001 was a bold idea that relied on the notion that fans would be interested in real science fiction stories, even ones not held together or connected with recurring characters.

Also, I’m a sucker for Kirby’s unique art design. Why hasn’t some clever filmmaker faithfully adapted his style to cinema? His concepts and designs are inherently cinematic, and totally different from anything we’ve yet seen captured on the silver screen. Anyway, that’s another story. I just really believe that Kirby’s comics accurately captured the nature of the 2001: A Space Odyssey universe (with a nod to Marvel’s Watcher thrown in too...), and I wanted to champion that accomplishment.

After all, 2001 is an odd and beautiful film, one with a minimum of talking, but oh such remarkable imagery. We all remember the scene where an ape-man in the past throws a bone into the air and we leap forward to a bone-shaped orbital spaceship, right? Well, Kirby constantly presented panels like that in the comic-book, leaping us from century-to-century with the same kind of visionary touch. Original? Nah, it was Kubrick’s imagination translated to a comic, but it was translated in interesting fashion nonetheless, and Kirby’s art certainly made it feel original, that’s for sure.

So let’s hear it for doing something bold and different in comics. It’s easy to do a Star Trek, Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica in comic form, but 2001: A Space Odyssey? That’s just a crazy notion, and Marvelous Marvel’s been there and done that.

2001: A Space Odyssey Role Playing Game (TSR)

Model Kits of the Week: 2001: A Space Odyssey - Orion Edition

Board Game of the Week: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Parker Brothers)

2001: A Space Odyssey 50th Anniversary

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and perhaps the greatest science fiction film in cinematic history.  Accordingly, film critics and scholars have approached the film in a number of ways.

2001: A Space Odyssey is open to many interpretations because of the narrative's ambiguous nature, and due to the absence of an overt explanation regarding key events and motives especially vis-à-vis the HAL 9000’s murderous behavior on the Jupiter mission. 

While acknowledging that 2001: A Space Odyssey may be viewed under a number of different and competing microscopes -- and quite rewardingly so -- I want to write today about what I believe is the Kubrick film’s primary focus: man and his tools.  

For our purposes today, a tool might be defined as “a device used to facilitate or perform work formerly or otherwise completed by manual means.”  Thus, the term "tool" can encompass spaceships, computers or other weapons, as well as more pedestrian instruments.

In terms of structure, 2001: A Space Odyssey is organized into four distinct segments, each diagramming a stage or phase of mankind’s historical development. 

In order, these are: “The Dawn of Man,” Clavius, “18 Months Later,” and “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.”  Three of these segments are separated from one another by black title cards.  The Clavius section is not so delineated, but via a memorable visual transition instead.

In brief, every one of these four segments focuses specifically on the interaction between man and his tools, and the evolution of that relationship across the years and centuries.  This relationship grows, essentially, from a view of how man utilizes his tools for survival, to one of how he comes to depend on -- but simultaneously ignore -- the tools proliferating around him. 

Then, the progression continues in the final two sections of the film. 2001: A Space Odyssey's third part gazes at the way man (seemingly without intent...) allows tools to dominate him…and eventually threaten his very existence. 

Finally, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey meditates on the way that man might move beyond his long-held dependence on tools. 

Or alternately -- depending on your belief about the film’s unseen aliens -- the film meditates on how man finally unites or joins with them.

The Dawn of Man

2001: A Space Odyssey commences on Earth in pre-history as a group of hominids -- ape-like human ancestors -- struggle to survive in a harsh and forbidding natural landscape. 

These hominids form loose associations with one another at first, but are rivals for resources such as water and food. The hominids live in relative harmony with other creatures, such as cow-like animals, but this harmony is a limiter to their survival. If the hominids can’t kill for food when they need it, for instance, survival is imperiled.  Similarly, lack of access to water equates with death.  

In this landscape, those who are physically strong can take the land -- or resources -- from the weak or timid.

Then, one day, the imposing black Monolith appears on the savanna, and a curious hominid individual approaches it.  He is imbued with enhanced intelligence by this mysterious, alien object.  This increased intelligence manifests itself in an unusual way.  The affected hominid is able to see and contextualize a discarded animal bone as something new and different: as a tool.  

This tool assists him in procuring food. Specifically, it is a bludgeon with which to more effectively kill animals.  

Yet the tool is also vital for use in defense of the hominid's territory because it can be used to vanquish invaders.  Soon after the first use of the tool, the loose association of hominids seems to become more tribal.  The “tool” -- which overtly makes their lives better -- tightens and cements the loose bonds of “society.” It galvanizes them. But if the tool is a protector, make no mistake, it is also history's very first weapon.

Soon, Kubrick's camera records the tool's dynamic impact on man and his burgeoning civilization. The hominid tool user bashes an animal carcass in glorious slow-motion.   Bones fragments and other chunks of organic shrapnel are hurled into the air like exploding fire crackers.  The image represents a joyous celebration of destruction, and of man's new-found power.

Man now boasts the capacity to destroy on a level heretofore unseen.  The bone represents not merely weaponry, however, but mankind’s first step in the process of dominating the environment around him.  He is no longer victim to predators and competitors.  He can fight back with lethal force and re-shape the natural world to his specifications.

Mankind's long climb toward the stars has begun...

Clavius

“The Dawn of Man” interlude in 2001: A Space Odyssey concludes with the triumphant hominid participating in an orgy of destruction, tossing that first tool -- an animal bone -- into the air.  Kubrick’s camera focuses on the bone’s ascent into the air and then cuts suddenly, while the tool is still airborne, to orbital space.  

In the relative space of the frame that the bone previously occupied, we now see a (roughly) bone-shaped satellite in its place. This moment, this match-cut, has been termed "one of the most breathtaking and inspired cuts in film history." (Jeff Rovin, A Pictorial History of Science Fiction Films, Citadel Press, 1975, page 123).

2001: A Space Odyssey then cuts once more, to several other brief shots of orbital satellites. These are nuclear weapon platforms, the very latest development of that long-ago weapon: the hominid's “bone.” These are the modern tools that allow man to protect himself, but also permit him to threaten his neighbor and preserve his territorial imperatives on Earth.  

Although mankind has developed greatly in the span since the Dawn of Man, Kubrick suggests through his remarkable visual transition from bone to space weapons platform that this development mostly arises in terms of his destructive potential.  Now, whole countries can be wiped out in mere seconds. Man not need even see his enemies or competitors, or come into physical proximity with them if he wishes to vanquish them.

In other words, man has finally mastered his environment, and he has done so by constructing ever-more powerful tools, ever more powerful weapons.

Yet there is another significant element of this equation as well.  The unmanned orbiting weapon platforms reveal that man has also ceded, to a large degree, the day-to-day control of his environment to his increasingly complex and powerful instruments.  

2001: A Space Odyssey’s sophomore segment is dominated, for the first several minutes at least, by a soundtrack composition that determinedly reflects this notion: The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss  II (1825 – 1899).  

A waltz is commonly defined as a dance performed by a “couple who as a pair turn rhythmically around and around as they progress around the dance floor.”  

However, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the couple that dances the waltz is not human.  Instead, the duo consists of a space station and the Orion Pan-Am space clipper.  The passenger vehicle approaching the station actually "tunes" itself to match the revolution of the space station. The two metal bodies in space perform a synchronized docking maneuver. The simple, repetitive nature of the waltz suggests that this movement is part of an almost unthinking routine.

The implication here is clearly that man has fashioned a world in which his tools have assumed a role of paramount importance, and work together in untroubled, unthinking coordination. Thus, the tools are a critical part of man’s environment, but not, at this juncture, in a manner that is deemed overtly threatening to man's supremacy.

Rather, the tools -- space stations, space passenger-liners, and so forth -- have permitted for man to expand his environment (into Earth orbit), and still maintain the façade of a regular or routine "human" life. Top put it another way, man has brought the leisure and affluence of Earth society (as well as the threat of nuclear destruction...) into the closest realm of the final frontier: high orbit.

After the docking of the spaceship, 2001: A Space Odyssey follows Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) to the airport-like interior of the space station, where many familiar 20^th century “brands” have expanded their reach.  There’s a Howard Johnson's, a Hilton Hotel, and Floyd even utilizes a “Bell” picture-phone device to contact his daughter and wish her a happy birthday.  

In short order, Floyd also engages in conversation with several Soviet scientists -- who are suspicious of his presence and whatever secret is being closely monitored on the moon base at Clavius -- thus suggesting another brand has survived to the 21^st century too: The Cold War.

Floyd then travels to Clavius Moon Base. He attends a board meeting, delivers an extremely dull and pedantic speech about security, and then heads out to Tycho crater, where a Monolith has been recently unearthed. Along the way -- aboard the moon-bus -- Floyd eats a ham sandwich and makes small-talk with the pilots. They compliment him on his speech, and in turn he dutifully compliments their work.

This entire section of 2001: A Space Odyssey is devoted to the manner in which man has rendered the frontier palatable by extending those things (and those tools….) which make his life more seem normal or more routine.  

The board-room scene in which Floyd discusses, before an audience of scientists, how to maintain security about the Monolith, is one of the most deadly dull imaginable, and the visual set-up reinforces that notion. Indeed, that's the point.  Virtually the entire scene is a static long-shot.

Virtually everything in the this Clavius interlude, from the boring “work” talk (x 2) to the act of eating a ham sandwich while flying over the lunar surface suggests that man has let his tools overwhelm him while he remains in a kind of developmental stasis.  Even the film's white-on-white visual palette suggests this fact.  In the board room scene, the white of the walls is blinding, and nearly washes out everything, including the event's speaker, Floyd.

Our space-age tools render everything...ordinary, it seems. There's even a zero-gravity toilet for bathroom emergencies! The natural setting or surrounding -- orbital space -- however, is ignored. This lack of oversight regarding technology, regarding our tools is clearly an approach with problems, as the next section of the film reveals in detail.

Jupiter Mission: 18 Months Later

When men working on the moon excavate the Monolith, it emits a signal beamed at Jupiter, and so Floyd and others quickly prep a voyage to that distant world.  Discovery One is the ship to make the journey.  It travels with a crew of six, at least according to the BBC News Special featured in the film  The six include three scientists in cryogenic hibernation, two astronaut pilots to manage the flight (Frank Poole [Gary Lockwood] and David Bowman [Keir Dullea]), and the most advanced computer ever constructed, the HAL 9000.

HAL, the audience is quickly informed, can “reproduce most of the activities of the human brain” and is “foolproof and incapable of error.”   

In short then, HAL represents the ultimate tool, one who can mimic -- to the last detail -- every facet of human consciousness.  He even refers to himself as a “conscious entity.”  And according to Dave, HAL acts like “he has genuine emotions.” 

Kubrick suggests  HAL's "sentience" and importance as a co-equal of man by favoring the computer's view-point several times.  Several shots consist of us -- the audience (or the camera) -- looking out through Hal's ubiquitous red eye. This perspective all but declares HAL's status as a life-form.  It is also a significant change from the camera-work in the earlier sections of the film.  

In his essay, "The Face in the Machine," (Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films, Chapter 2, McFarland, 1998, page 54.) author Randy Rasmussen notes that the Dawn of Man scene is notable for its camera-work, which suggests "a neutral observer."  Such is not the case here.  The viewpoint of a neutral observer is replaced, at least at times, by HAL's distinctive eyesight.

So what does HAL's nature -- and choices -- say about man and his tools?

By recreating himself  in “tool” form, man has actually only succeeded in recreating all his own weaknesses and insecurities.  

Tools originated, in the Dawn of Man section of the film, as weapons that man uses for purposes of destruction.  By recreating his psychology in machine form -- A.I., essentially -- man has now transmitted that very pathology to his tools.  Not only is HAL inquisitive like his organic creators, he is capable of imagination.  And because of that imagination, he can -- in his own words -- “project concern” about the mission to Jupiter.  That concern graduates to paranoia, and HAL eventually commits murder.  Does he do so out of fear of where is headed?  Of what he will find upon reaching his destination?  

Or does HAL become a killer so to preserve his standing as “the most reliable computer ever made?”

We can conclude from HAL's narcissistic behavior that by the year 2001 and the dawn of A.I., our tools have finally grown as psychotic and confused as mankind, himself.  As much as he is a child of man, HAL is also a child (or grandchild) of bombs, tanks, those orbital nuclear satellites and every other murderous tool our race has ever built.  Both of HAL's parents -- machine and man -- are steeped in a long history of bloodshed and death.    

One of the famous scenes in science fiction film history occurs in this third section of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It involves man’s triumph over the tool (or child...) that has attempted to dispatch its master. Dave Bowman breaks into HAL’s memory bank and begins to very methodically shut down the computer’s higher brain functions. 

While this happens, HAL rather pitiably sings a song called “A Bicycle Built for Two (Daisy).” 

The lyrics of that song are instructive, and reflect, in a strange way, man’s relationship with his tools.  “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you,” sings HAL, and indeed, he is indeed half-crazy, torn between fulfilling his programming and satisfying his own, human-spawned sense of imagination, inquisitiveness, and paranoia 

Later, HAL sings the lyric “It won’t be a stylish marriage,” and again…it is not a stylish marriage between man and machines, is it? It has become quite an uneasy relationship.  And the bicycle built for two? Well, that's the Discovery One, in a sense. It is the conveyance headed into the future, carrying man and machine together in "marriage" toward a joined destiny.

Nuclear weapons hang in Earth orbit, ready to destroy their makers at the push of a button, and on Discovery, a microcosm version of that “war” rages. The tool has attempted to usurp its master, and the master -- now desperate -- strikes back against it.  

Yet mankind, as we saw in The Dawn of Man, cannot survive without his tools. And as we witnessed in the Clavius section of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he no longer even recognizes how dependent upon them he is. 

What HAL and his murderous ways acutely point out is the fact that man's tools have grown to such intelligence and ubiquity that the user/tool relationship itself is in question.  Not a stylish marriage, indeed.

The agenda from Kubrick, I believe here, is one of warning. It might very well be that the director viewed this period (the turn of the century) as the epoch in which the human race was in the most danger of destroying itself. 

Lest we forget historical context, 2001: A Space Odyssey was produced in the late sixties during a conflict that seemed like it was going on forever (Vietnam) The threat of nuclear annihilation  -- when the push of a single button could rain death upon millions across the planet -- was ever present.

But if man can survive his flirtation with deadly machines, with the technology he himself has forged to tend to his needs and make life comfortable, 2001: A Space Odyssey seems to suggest, than there will be no limits for what he can achieve. If  masters the urge that gave rise to such weapons in the first place, the sky's the limit.

Which brings us to…

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

The final section of 2001: A Space Odyssey has often been considered the most opaque in terms of its meaning.  What actually happens here?  

To summarize, Bowman learns of the Monolith’s existence and, in a space pod, actually travels inside it.  He mysteriously finds himself in a Victorian sitting room where he ages and confronts the Monolith again.  Then,  he reaches for it, just as the hominid reached for it in “The Dawn of Man” and as an astronaut reached for it in the Clavius section.   In reaching out for the Monolith, Bowman is re-born  As hominid became man, man now becomes Star Child.

Some of the last images of 2001: A Space Odyssey showcase the Star Child regarding Earth with curious, attentive eyes.

So how does this coda fit in with the leitmotif regarding the evolution of man’s relationship with his tools?

There are two interpretations to consider.  

The first is that Bowman, by defeating the HAL 9000 and traveling inside the Monolith, has been proven victorious during the most dangerous time in mankind’s history.  He has heard the wake-up call (provided unwittingly by HAL) and re-asserted -- for the first time since that hominid tossed the weaponized animal bone into the air -- humanity’s control over his own tools.  

With no regard for his future survival, Bowman chooses exploration of the frontier over his own continuation.  He seeks to move forward (and thus “evolve”) when he could have simply stayed on Discovery and engineered a Robinson Crusoe-type existence, sans HAL.  ''

He not only defeats an upstart creation or tool, Bowman abandons routine and security for the unknown, to expand his own personal knowledge. He chooses the extraordinary over the ordinary, and remember the Clavius section of the film is all about how space travel has indeed become very ordinary.

It is Bowman’s courage (like the Homind’s courage, or the astronaut’s courage...) that reveals to the Monolith that man is ready to grow again. In this case, that courage involves leaving what is known (the Discovery One, personal safety) for what is unknown.

The second interpretation is actually one that I prefer. The aliens in the film are never depicted in a corporeal form that we would recognize as life.  But an argument could be made that Monolith is that alien life form. And it is simultaneously a mechanism tool (spurring evolution and transmitting a signal), and a life-form in and of itself. 

The Monolith is the alien life form behind man’s development from savage to open-eyed star child;” one that has, we must assume, integrated the idea and use of tools into itself.  

The greatest stage of “existence,” therefore, occurs when tools and their users come together in one form, fully integrated. Today, some people call this futuristic notion “The Singularity,” and there is much talk of it occurring in forty years or so.   

But the bottom line is that the Monolith -- while physically-appearing to be an “instrument” -- shows a human interest or curiosity in mankind. It cares for Dave Bowman through the end of his days. It accelerates man's development when that development is earned and warranted. 

So if HAL was the mad machine born from humanity’s weaknesses and pathology, the Monolith appears to be an instrument and life-form imbued with qualities we would consider man’s finest.

The idea that man will meld with his machines or tools and emerge as something greater than either parent is characterized visually, I believe, by the frequent views of Dave Bowman's eye during the Stargate sequence.  As you can see from the image above, this eye is not quite human anymore. 

Instead, it's like a "technologized" version of a human eye, a melding of HAL and Dave.  

And the only close-up of an eye that Kubrick has favored us with so far is one of HAL's.  But now -- in the Stargate sequence -- Dave's eye is featured in similar detail.  A visual connection is forged.

Beyond Our Tools: Order in the Universe

Stanley Kubrick’s selection of shots and compositions in 2001: A Space Odyssey suggest that beyond man and his tools there is an order to the universe that humans can’t necessarily understand, or even detect. 

Perhaps becoming the Star Child means reckoning with that currently “unknowable” order, one which I believe to be something akin to Singularity.

Kubrick begins the task of suggesting order in the cosmos from the inaugural shot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

The first image is of a beautiful outer space landscape which depicts Earth's pocked moon in slow descent. 

Beyond the moon, slowly growing visible is Earth itself: blue, beautiful, and alive. And over the Earth, even more distant stands Sol, our brightly shining sun. The three bodies are aligned perfectly, suggesting a connection, an invisible line, a perfect one-two-three. This is 2001: A Space Odyssey's first indication of a cosmic order, but not the last.

Even the soundtrack suggests this order.  2001’s “theme song” as it might even be considered is “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” a formal composition by Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) which again, primarily denotes order.  

As Kenneth Von Gunden and Stuart H. Stock wrote in in Twenty All-Time Great Science Fiction Films (Crown; 1982, page 190), the composition: “…opens with an ascending phrase of three notes…which represent Nietzcshe’s view of the evolutionary rise of man…These three notes serve note that the number three is essential to the film: from the perfect alignment of the three spheres of Earth, Moon, and sun at the beginning to the appearance of things in threes...”

We see this kind of "ordered" staging of heavenly bodies in "The Dawn of Man" sequence as well. 

There, Kubrick gives us a shot from ground level, gazing up at the imposing monolith. The sun -- high in the sky -- is intersected by the Monolith's apex, and beyond the sun is a crescent moon.  Here we have another viewpoint that intimates a frame of intentional arrangement: a direct line from the Monolith to the heavens above; to the "star" people or aliens.

Late in the film (near the climax), Kubrick's camera depicts a shot of Jupiter and its myriad satellites. Once more, the heavenly bodies are lined up in symmetric, precise sequence, but then -- interestingly -- a black Monolith intersects the line of planets and moons almost perfectly on the horizontal axis, splitting the line in two.

It is almost as though here we are gazing at an algebraic equation -- a new meaning -- created by the planets' positions.  It is an order beyond mankind's understanding or comprehension since we -- unlike Kubrick's omnipotent camera -- can never see such a view, can never act as "the eyes of the universe," as it were.

We travel between worlds; in orbital space, but can we see the stars how God might see them?

Or how the Monoliths do?

In all these views, the stars are immaculate and perfect, arranged and organized for eyes not our own.

But it is, perhaps, in our constantly evolving relationship with our tools that we have the best chance to some day detect that very perspective.

We'll  see.

Next Friday: 2010: Odyssey Two (1984)