The Fall And Rise Of The Human Species | 2001: A Space Odyssey - Review

The first time I saw One Minute Past Eight: A Space Odyssey, sorry, 2001: A Space Odyssey (one minute past eight - 20:01 - 2001 - get it? Oh, never mind.) was my early teens, watching a taped-off-the-telly version on a well-used VHS. It was recorded off ITV, so there were ads and everything. It was one of those films that you 'had' to watch, especially if you called yourself a science fiction fan, as I did (and still do). So influential was it on everything that came after it, films I loved, like Star Wars and Aliens, that I felt compelled to watch their progenitor. I did not enjoy 2001 very much. I'd forgotten most of that first viewing but I know I found it too dry and downright boring to care about the story or characters. The opening 'Dawn Of Man' sequence was especially interminable. That said, the scene where one ape batters another to death with a bone lifted the tedium somewhat but was just nasty. The death scenes after that seemed too drawn out to have the shocking effect of, say, Obi-Wan Kenobi's murder at Darth Vader metal hands in the 1977 Star Wars, which, in the 1990's onwards, I would've taken over 2001 any day, however much Stanley Kubrick's film influenced George Lucas'. I didn't care if there was no sound in the vacuum of space, I still preferred watching the Rebel's explosive attack on the Death Star to watching a spaceship's snails-pace float into a revolving space station to the leisurely strains of Strauss' 'Blue Danube Waltz'.

How advancing years evolve one's perspective. Watching the film as an adult, in an actual cinema, newly restored by Warner Bros. with crystal clear picture and sound, is, of course, an entirely different experience and closer to the one Kubrick surely intended. Films like this aren't made for TV, of course and the only break was the unexpected, blessed, intermission (which my bladder was thankful for-bloomin' coffee.) You can properly soak up the majestic, contemplative and even, in the case of the 'Star Gate' sequence, numinous and transcendent visuals. The Pan American space plane (surely inspiration for Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic?) entering Space Station V - cleverly, carefully matching its rotation - is now a thing of meditative beauty, not boredom; like watching a whale swim through the ocean.

It's a testament to the longevity of 2001 that it still draws in cinema audiences nearly fifty years after its initial release in 1968. This is in no small part down to the film's practical effects. Long before the advent of CGI allowing films to be created in a computer, filmmakers had to actually make their effects and everything in 2001 looks absolutely real (excluding one or two obvious ape masks at the start - the white human skin around the eyes gives it away; plus, I'm sure an early close-up of astronaut Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) revealed that he wore a wig? If so, then his aged self we see later on has better makeup.)  The wow factor of sci-fi films from the last couple of decades is reduced by the knowledge that it was probably done with computers but there were still moments in 2001, such as the zero-G scenes, that had me asking 'how the bloody hell did they do that?' Of course, you can read all about it on the film's IMDb pages and I've probably seen or read about them before but I had thankfully forgotten it all, allowing me to really appreciate it all much more second time around.

If this film's effects inspired Star Wars , then Lucas and his Industrial Light & Magic effects house took it to the next level, ILM continuing to do so through Terminator 2 and Lucas' Star Wars prequels which, for me were the nadir for film effects in that, where 2001, and even the first Star Wars, proved how effects served a decent story, then Episodes I-III allowed them to totally overwhelm it. These films won't last because computer technology is always developing, whereas physical sets, models and people stand the test of time on film. ILM's T-1000 from T2 looked awesome in 1991 but he looks clunky now, especially compared to his upgrade seen in the new Terminator Genisys trailer. Christopher Nolan has cited 2001 as a huge inspiration for his latest film, Interstellar, for which he and his SFX team took great pains to create a scientifically-accurate black hole - using CGI (obviously, attempting to create a real one just for a film is rather selfish and a touch dangerous), which will no doubt look dated itself in years to come.

Of course, with Episodes I-III, it helps to actually have a story that fits three films in the first place but, hey, that's why George Lucas isn't writing or directing Episode VII. J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens looks set to return Star Wars to its more practical effects roots (alongside CGI), going by the latest trailer, which is a good thing. The story is likely to be good, given Abrams has written it with original trilogy scribe Lawrence Kasdan.

With 2001, the actual plot would easily fit a 45-minute Doctor Who episode - space authorities discover a mysterious extraterrestrial object on the moon, send a team to investigate, the object rejects them and vanishes. Earth sends another team to find it, their ship's computer goes haywire and tries to kill them but one survives, finds the object, which sends him back in time and space to the dawn of his own species, which the object influences the history of in the first place. It's epic in scope but hardly labyrinthine. Looking at it like that, there's more plot in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, only, watching Dr. Floyd (William Sylvester) take about 15 mins to arrive on the space station to the sounds of 'Blue Danube' is more interesting than listening to Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan discuss trade negotiations aboard a spaceship. It has to be said that, given its bare plot and dialogue versus the two-hour plus runtime (made up mostly of lengthy space travel sequences), a lot of 2001 is style over substance but at least there is interesting substance.

I'm confused by 2001's reputation for being confusing, since the plot is fairly simple, even if the ending is left open to interpretation. It's more interesting that way. Is it, as the friend I saw it with surmised, all about God and creation? Is the black monolith an instrument of the divine, encouraging humankind's development and possibly even creating us? Or, is the symbolism of the sun and moon's alignment, accompanied by Strauss' 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' - a symphony based on Neitzche's book of the same name in which he wrote 'God is dead' - an indication of a more atheistic view?  If the monolith is divine in origin, then it inspires humanity to battle itself, although, where the monolith (or the mysterious and omnipotent forces within or behind it) possibly wished to prompt the monkey to use the bone as a tool, the silly ape had to go and get all territorial over his little drinking pool (which was dirtied by him trudging through it anyway) and bashing a rival monkey's head in. Can't we all just get along? Well, if our hairy prehistoric ancestors are anything to go by, no. The ape chucks his murder weapon into the air, leading to a jump cut to a similarly-shaped construct floating above the Earth. I assumed this to be a space station but IMDb informed me that it is a nuclear device, which would make more sense - the progress of man in one cut, also communicating the violence that has been a part of that evolution.

Thankfully, by the future, violence between humans seems to have become a thing of the past and the Cold War has thawed, as the American Dr. Heywood happily meets with a group of Russians at the 'Hilton' restaurant aboard Space Station V to discuss rumours of strange occurrences on the Clavius moon base. Heywood is coy; after all, these are still Russians he's talking to, formerly the US' rivals in war and the space race. Pleasantly distracting me in this scene somewhat was the fact that one of the Ruskies, Dr. Andrei Smyslov, was played by Leonard Rossiter. It was weird that I had been thinking of the '70's comedy TV show in which he starred, The Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin, whilst watching the film (those long space sequences, although pretty, do allow the mind to wander), perhaps subconsciously aware that Rossiter was in the film - then up he popped!

Despite his best efforts at being Russian, Reggie-style mannerisms crept in (6 years prior to him playing Perrin) - placing a palm on his back hip, the polite 'yes, yes' and an 'absolutely' here and there. He was in the film all too briefly and the other characters don't show half as much charisma as Rossiter does in his brief scene. Yeah, they're bureaucrats and scientists but so's Smyslov. It would've been more entertaining if he had overtaken Floyd's role to Clavius and ended up going through the Star Gate himself. Those still shots of Dave's face expressing fright, wonder, etc as he goes through the Star Gate at the end (looking like he's been snapped by papparazi) would be priceless with Rossiter's facial dexterity. The sequence would lose its power somewhat, though.



Although very serious, 2001 does have surprise with some humorous moments (beyond Rossiter and fake monkey-men), like the wordy ten-step instructions for the zero-gravity toilet aboard the space plane. Well, I know I'd want to be careful if I had to go…Now, if only it were true that Ronnie Corbett played an ape at the start...

Anyway, plot questions. When Floyd and his team investigate the monolith at Clavius, why did it allow them to photograph it by itself but prevent them from taking pictures of themselves in front of it? Maybe it didn't want these damned dirty apes - these monkey men it helped create - getting in its shot? When Dave and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) enter the pod to have their discussion about HAL 9000's  erratic behaviour, why didn't Dave ask the computer to rotate the pod back to its original position, so HAL would not have been able to read their lips and discover their intentions? Did HAL just malfunction or did 'he' really want to sabotage the Jupiter mission? If he demonstrated signs of superiority toward humans to begin with and he is aware of Floyd's secret video message Dave views after killing HAL (a strangely disturbing scene; 'My mind is going, Dave. I can feel it.' Ugh!), then perhaps HAL wants to communicate with the monolith himself, maybe try to harness, even control its power?

Did Dave's pod go into the monolith near the end? Where was that nice room he was in? How long was he in there for to age that much? Did the Star Gate trip age him? Who cooks his meals for him - the younger Dave? Do those seven pyramidal objects we see during the Star Gate voyage represent the seven ages of Man - a man - Dave, of whom we see four ages - young man, old man, near-death man and (star) child? Is the Star Child the beginning of a New Dawn or has he been sent back to evolve humanity in the past we saw at the start? Is he just figurative? Who knows? Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke know. But they're dead.

Another thing that aids the film's legacy is its overall design. Hardly anything looks dated at all - only some of the costumes, like the spacesuits of garish '60's colours, like Star Trek uniforms from the Original Series (hang on, isn't 'Space Odyssey' just a more pretentious way of saying 'Star Trek'?) The aforementioned scene in the Hilton looks like it has furniture from Ikea and decor from an Apple Mac store. Indeed, 2001 predicts future technology (for 1968 at least), with the iPad-like view screens that Dave and Frank watch 'BBC 12' on whilst eating their meal. There were only two BBC channels in '68 and only four now but at this rate, we should have 12 BBC channels by the next century! Attention to detail also helps draw you in and everything looks like it really works, with all the nuts, bolts and spacecraft ephemera.

It's clear to see how 2001 influenced and inspired future sci-fi filmmakers. Virtually every big space-set science fiction film since has taken something from this one. Star Wars, Star Trek (especially The Motion Picture), Alien, Event Horizon, Sunshine, Superman (1979), TRON and er, Stargate, all owe some debt to Space Odyssey in terms of design, camerawork, effects or plot. These are all good films but some pale in comparison to Stanley Kubrick's granddaddy of science fiction motion pictures.

Images courtesy of:

 http://www.bfi.org.uk/whats-on/bfi-film-releases/2001-space-odyssey

http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2007/11/meddling-with-2001/