2001: A Space Odyssey is an experience that is beyond film
Stanley Kubrick’s landmark achievement stands apart from the rest of cinema
I am downright terrified to approach 2001: A Space Odyssey to talk about it. Just writing that first sentence caused me to have a slight existential crisis. It’s too easy to drift into an analytical or scholarly mind in discussing and breaking down Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece. An effort to remain detached and above it’s sweeping tide lest you be dragged underneath, deep into the abyss. The film itself is built like a calculated, remorseless and unknowable structure. Grandeur through the eyes of a machine. A mechanism that cradles the stream of human history in it’s vast, cold embrace, before letting loose our collective shackles to burst gloriously among the stars. From the dirt, blood and rock of our mystifying origins to settling our consciousness among the infinite, cosmic framework that we reside in.
Kubrick has with good reason been viewed as a director who revels in the cold and distant observation of human drama. A deadpan and inconsequential series of moments where drama and our struggle come across as an experiment to take notes in. Human nature always certain to waylay our better intentions. Humbert Humbert and his obsession in Lolita. The masterful farce that leads to nuclear annihilation in Dr Strangelove. The futility of decency and compassion, which stretches and breaks in war that is highlighted in Full Metal Jacket. The dystopian world of A Clockwork Orange that Alex and his droogs to violently galavant around. Populated by characters who struggle valiantly against these elemental forces and their darkest desires. Each are ultimately defeated in one way or another by the system set up around them, lost in their delusions or transformed into the version of themselves they so desperately tried to escape.
2001 does away with that, apart from, ironically, HAL-9000. Instead it explores the concept of humanity at such a scale that it envelopes us all. Creating a deeply emotional connection that belies its detached nature. Rendering character arc and depth a moot point, shedding most of what counts as narrative thrust to provoke a stronger, elemental reaction. It becomes a sensory force of attainment. Reaching up from where we are to where we could be. So this staggering approach folds in on itself, becoming hauntingly intimate, revealing a soul and heart in a way that is abstract and kaleidoscopic to how we would normally perceive it. But this is not normal. Kubrick surges beyond film into the unknown, taking us along for the ride, daring us to consider our existence beyond what we are able to comprehend.
The vistas in the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence are paradoxically the beginning as well as evocation of an apocalyptic wasteland that preludes our doom. Or a land that never felt the touch of sentient life. It’s an alien landscape. A brutal landscape. Fear, ignorance, rudimentary transitioning to the acquiring of knowledge and the leap from beast to man. Intelligence granted, a nudge by the gods. Knowledge and worship intertwined in the concept of the monolith. Intelligence begets violence. Begets domination. Linked with progress. The necessary leap has collateral. Instinct of aggression honed with intelligence creates a deadly and powerful new element: us.
Disparate threads are drawn together here. There is an inkling of a traditional narrative — the apes warring over the watering hole (as we continue over the next million or so years to fight over the resources provided by our world) — but it plays more like a mythical version of our creation, rendered as if a documentary crew filmed the events unfolding. Considering where the film travels, this first sequence drifts between a dream and a nagging root of thought that it belongs somewhere else; and not necessarily in another film either.
The monolith can be seen as an instigator, the propulsion used to make the leap. In a sense it harness the subconscious realm of what those early humans are, or a manifestation of our desire to reach upward to the -
-frontier of space. Human history encapsulated in a jump cut for the ages. Forever linked by our instincts for as long as we remain tethered to this dimensional and linear plane. Knowledge unfurling with vast structures that are breathtaking and beautiful, conveying an almost spiritual nature in their design and movement. The cathedrals of the future.
Both the docking sequence and the journey to Clavius Base are perfect examples of technological marvels given life and energy. A dance that is graceful, balletic, serene and in perfect harmony. Incorporating music and astounding visuals to project a sort of sentience upon what we’ve built. Kubrick juxtaposes this with the almost disinterested nature of the human narratives and characters in these sequences. Robotic, dry, terse. It’s expository in the purest sense.
Most filmmakers would utilise these sequences to provide dimension or backstory to characters. To give the audience an idea of the motivation and personality of them. But not Kubrick, who keeps it definitively abstract and a matter-of-fact. Heywood, the ostensible lead for this part of the film, is seen sleeping on the PanAm shuttle when we first meet him, eating chicken sandwiches on the way to Clavius Base, and having breakfast in the space Hilton. This isn’t a wondrous experience for him, this is an everyday thing. It’s part of the job. You could mistake Kubrick for having a blythe, almost comic disregard for his human characters. They are tools, vehicles to transport and package the concepts that seep through the film, glittering like the billion, billion stars in the sky.
The people we follow are mostly scientists and researchers, corporate men and government officials, they can be seen as analogues of Kubrick’s own predilection and approach. They have an extremely prosaic eye for examination and investigation that somehow, instead of diluting the wonder being shown, amplifies it. We’re not connected to what they’re doing, but we are to what Kubrick is orchestrating. The sense of adventure and discovery, in which we are part of the journey. Far from it being a cold, emotionless voyage, Kubrick infuses it with wonder and awe. A technical marvel on two levels — what’s being presented on screen, and beneath it, the realisation of how these sequences were brought to life (in a manner of speaking).
The Discovery mission to Jupiter is where the convergence of machine and humanity is at its clearest. The HAL-9000 has the personality of any character in the entire film, and it’s just a red light and a eerily calm voice. HAL is convinced of its own perfection, no errors, no mistakes or malfunctions. It is a textbook definition of hubris — something that is alluded to or foreshadowed in the previous sequences but without any payoff. Here we see the consequences. HAL becomes murderous and psychotic, a classic horror villain. That red light coming to represent the devil deep within the power of technology. A machine that is hamstrung by the foibles that make us humans so flawed.
HAL’s ‘death’ even comes across as somewhat tragic. After HAL kills nearly all of the crew, the lone survivor, Dr. David Bowman — the chiselled, archetypal hero of this sequence — enters HAL’s mainframe and removes everything that makes HAL what, or who, he is. There’s a tinge of sadness to it even though HAL got what was coming to it (him?). This is Kubrick twisting the adventure aspect into a thrilling episodic narrative. the deathly silence interrupted only by the hurried, anxious breaths. The constant red light of HAL, an all-seeing, all knowing eye. The showdown between Dave in the pod and HAL commanding the Discovery. Human vs. Machine. Resolutely anti-melodramatic but still able to create a surging force of tension all of its own.
Again, that abstract mentality pervades through the sequence. Elements that one would normally expect are approached differently or not there at all. The editing is minimal, the movements are small, the music is sparse. Kubrick gives it a minimalist touch, a far cry from how sci-fi tends to be presented on screen. Of course, he keeps to this aesthetic throughout the entire film, but this is the most traditionally structured sequence and yet it remains of a piece. It drives home that strange, ethereal feeling that the film achieves. Of being an experience that reaches a plane of reality that’s separate from what’s come before, or after.
In the overture and intermission there rings out a primordial dirge as if the universe is coming into being. From chaos comes order. It stirs within us an instinctual calling, something only our subconscious is aware of but nevertheless connects to us at that moment when the cosmos expanded at an exponential rate and all that has, does, and will exist came into being.
The monoliths are many things. They are the most talked about element of the film, thematically at least. Their meaning, purpose, motivation have been analysed and interpreted for decades. They can be unknowable. Inhuman. These structures — or mechanisms — of symmetry, perfection and order. And in the film, we see their reflections, or the attempts to mimic what they represent through the various constructs — the designs of the ships, the architecture of the bases, the development of computers that are meant to be fool proof and without fault. It is creation in the image of the gods.
And with each monolith that is discovered, we are drawn ever outward. Away from our home, leaping forward into the unknown. As Dave reaches Jupiter, entering the stargate, we are removed from what we were — ape and the bone. The question of whether our humanity can be lost or gained laid out as Dave journeys through realms of unimaginable wonder and comprehension. Reality stretched to its limit. Outside of time. Concepts we long took for granted broken down. We are beyond human meaning now, cast out as we are to the void, traversing and witnessing strange phenomena which we cannot fully grasp but all the while our curiosity and desire for discovery driving us. Keeping us from completely collapsing.
2001: A Space Odyssey can be seen as an attempt to capture who we are as a species. A stirring and hopeful ediface to human achievement and, more importantly, the spirit. When Dave arrives in that neoclassical room, the twin spires of the internal and the eternal come together. We can forget who we are. Our past disappearing as we see our future take over. We find ourselves alone, in the moment, waiting for it to creep up to us, not knowing when it’ll arrive. Transforming the aging , the death, and the rebirth into something else. Beyond human. Beyond death. Beyond form. Something that we know so intimately is gone.
The film becomes transcendent. The tapestry of our history and future wrought as one, where we shed those human concerns, striving for something greater. That means a certain perspective has to be altered. If we continue to view the world as we are, it can only remain linear. There must be a divergent path, and we must be willing to not just be aware of that path, but brave and bold enough to take it. It’s okay to be afraid, to be skeptical and curious, when looking beyond the horizon of our limited vision. Because when you make that leap and journey beyond what limitations we may have put up in front of us, there resides a place of beauty and awe. 2001: A Space Odyssey is the medium of this journey, and it’s power remain 50 years since it’s release, standing apart and alone among cinema. Like a sheer, black monolith in an ancient desert.
