EPEOLATRY

MOVIE 5

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Dir: Stanley Kubrick

Now, many of you might have a misconception that this movie is based on a book by the same name but no that's not true. Actually, Stanley Kubrick hired Arthur C. Clarke to write a book based on his short story 'The Sentinel' that would be the basis on the screenplay for which Kubrick himself contributed. Although the book and the film have same theme there are vast differences in the storyline and how it is represented. Secondly, both Kubrick and Clarke deliberately have drawn parallels of story with 'The Odyssey' by Homer written around 8th Century BCE as Kubrick wanted this film to be a modern space epic.

The Dawn of Man

The movie starts with the pre-historic era with apes. Initially the apes are herbivorous, they are preyed by leopards but still have a hegemony over tapirs due to strength. We see they are living in a group and have conflicts for resources with other groups. We see certain characteristics in them: anger, fear, savagery and most important is that they live in a society. Once these apes discover a dormant extra-terrestrial object a "monolith" (or is it the other way around?) in a vicinity and are awe-stricken. Once the contact is made, one of the ape gets some inspiration from it: an idea to use dead bones of tapir as hunting weapons (i.e. a tool) and gradually they start hunting tapirs for food, eventually they start using it against other groups to establish a dominance like a war. Then an ape throws a bone in air and is suddenly montaged to a bone-like spaceship i.e. tool of modern homo sapiens. Now, this inception of idea renders a subtle suggestion I think that defies the free-will of mankind just as they are assisted for progress by so called highly intellect beings, it rather sets a time-bomb for civilization, destined to doom and are thus under controlled all the time and determinable.

The floating pen represents that human might have a supremacy on earth with their tools but in space that same humans loose control of their tools.

We even see that in space humans are just babies, i.e. they'll have to learn to walk again in zero-gravity. We even see that the spaceships and other vehicles have animal-like shapes that represents that inorganic technologies are replacing organic beings.

They even drink baby foods in space. Their reliance on the tools for everyday life have turned them lazy and their conscience: sleepy. We are introduced to Dr. Floyd and new characteristics of modern people: they are civilized, some are clandestine and the rest are inquisitive, highly formal, have been separated from their original group due to ambitions (Dr. Floyd can't attend his daughter's birthday).

Eventually in an excavation in moon, again a monolith is found and although humans are technologically far advanced this time after some time from the contact there emerges a noise out of frequency of human audible range and that painfully invades the brains of Dr. Floyd with his crew mates. So this point marks a milestone for those alien-beings upto what humans has to progress.

Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later

All that happened previously was just a premise, now the real odyssey starts. We explore some more characteristics of modern human: Isolation - we see that in the voyager Dr. Bowman and Dr. Poole rarely have any conversation for around 10 mins, they rather talk to HAL 9000 or listen to their own recorded interviews;

Artificiality - at this stage human beings are being considered so inefficient that they are put into hibernation where they can't even dream when they aren't required for any work in the space i.e. the rest of the crew, we even see Dr. Bowmen having an artificial sunbath and even their food looks so synthetic.

Now, HAL 9000 - an advance computer represents the one-eyed 'Cyclops' the son of Poseidon from the Odyssey. HAL is so smart in terms of intellectual and sentimental basis that it controls the entire ship. Notice it's even considered the sixth member of the crew.

HAL with his one-eye has a very limited view of human existence - human life looks so boring, ineffective and prone full of errors from HAL's perspective. HAL is injected with a superior sense of faultlessness for any device under HAL 9000 series. In progression, after some wrong predictions of technical errors Dr. Bowman and Dr. Poole starts doubting HAL's insidious motives and decides to shut it down, in that pursuit Dr. Poole gets killed by HAL.

Dr. Bowman goes out to save Dr. Poole in the void but then HAL refrains him from entering back in the ship and we see above image and it looks so meaningful: a small pod holding a dead body infront of a massive snake-like ship, on rejection eventually the pod lets go of that yellow body - Deep! Ain't that Something? Now, HAL isn't wary of the courage and ingenuity of humans, of how humans can take a way out from a worst-case scenarios, i.e. the surviving capabilities against all the odds.

Dave Bowman represents 'Odysseus' or 'Ulysses' from the Odyssey as Odysseus was masterly skillful in archery. See how Kubrick plays with our minds: I've noticed that in most of the films of Kubrick there is this one character in which the audience starts residing, for instance like how we get immersed in video games i.e. we're into the character we are playing, for this Kubrick takes us to a process - first he isolates us from others, he controls that character in terms of his emotional stimuli of a situation that we can easily mistake ourselves for them (like the video game characters that are somewhat under our control) secondly, he projects the character in a difficult situation that we are suddenly immersed into that environment and we are hooked up with it ... that character is what Tom Cruise plays in 'Eyes Wide Shut', Danny in 'The Shining' and Alex Delarge in 'A Clockwork Orange' and certainly Dave Bowman in this movie. We initially see that the cameras are installed in the spaceships but as soon as Bowman hustles and survives to enter back into the ship, there's a transition in camera movements suddenly it's a hand-held 3rd person and quite shaky from the POV shots, this act makes the situation even more immersive. Afterwards, when Dave again instills in the pod, notice a projection of 'MEM' from the computer right on his eyes like a superhero mask. So now Dave our Odysseus is the superhero that we've highly yearned for.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

Now the monolith appears again, this time in space in an alignment with the screen and the pod of Dr. Bowman makes a contact with it and the something like an space-time event horizon occurs that happen in a black-hole and we enter into a stream of colourful flowing spectrum emerging from a thin-line, now what's that? An Alien Techno Party! Yeah, you can say something like that lol! Now in 1968 when the movie was released physicist didn't have that deep knowledge of black holes or there weren't enough sophisticated cinematic instruments to generate that effects, so Kubrick took this initiative of showing something even more mysterious and deep by projecting several images that represents a gateway to bulk, like entering into a 4D or 5D void and to decode that how Kubrick brings that feel to us with visuals and classical music is rather too enigmatic, Kubrick once said in an interview that the 'Star-Gate' sequence completely plays in a person's subconscious mind and is indiscernible in the conscious.

Now coming back to story, in this psychedelic experience Bowman sees varied visions of what looks like the interior of eyes, birth of a fetus, various constillations of stars, flowing sperm, etc that's so organic respite of the artificial life that Dave has led so far.

Now what is this? Well, you tell me.

Now Dave enters an artistic abode where his artificial devices are out of function, now this place isn't in existence it's either a metaphor or more like what Interstellar showed a '5D - Tesseract' inside a black hole (from which Matthew sends morse signals to his daughter via gravitational anomalies) but Kubrick's Tesseract is more psychological than scientific. Now a fast progression of aging occurs and Bowman getting more of an organic living finally comes to his death bed and the monolith is there suddenly infront. What is this monolith? Monolith is a device from which humans a 3D being gets the knowledge of places and beings in higher dimensions - Kubrick kept the aspect ratio of the monolith to be same as that of cinemascope - a wide frame in which the movie was shot!

Now a kind of death occurs for Bowman and he's again reborn as a 'Star-Child' that has a protective layer around him, i.e. he's turned into a species more advanced than homo sapiens. Now, human beings are ready to take a next step in evolution due to the grace of those aliens; notice all the art in that house were Renaissance paintings. (Renaissance means rebirth) Now, the child is juxtaposed with the earth for he's ready to establish a new empire and that's how the arc of the story is completed by a full circle.

EXTRAS: This movie was heavily funded by IBM and NASA for the space race propoganda. We even see the logo of IBM in various instruments of space, the song 'White Daisy' sung by HAL whilst it's shutting down was the first recording of the IBM A.I. Another reason for Kubrick changing the shape of monolith from a triangle in books to a television screen in the movie deliberately, I think might be to insist the audience to beware of the propogation that's being projected. XD