— RANKING: 2 —
THE ULTIMATE “TRIP”: In the film that forever changed the genre, an astronaut (Keir Dullea) begins his journey into space. A realistic example of “hard” sci-fi that transforms along the way into a metaphysical odyssey. Courtesy: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
CREDITS
MGM; Stanley Kubrick, dir.; Arthur C. Clarke, story; Clarke, Kubrick, scr.; Kubrick, Victor Lyndon, pro.; Geoffrey Unsworth, cin.; Ray Lovejoy, ed.; Ernest Archer, Harry Lange, Anthony Masters, prod. design; John Hoesli, art dir.; Colin Arthur, ape makeup; H. L. Bird, Winston Ryder, sound; Kubrick, Douglas Trumbull, photographic F/X; 141 min. (release print), 160 min. (dir. cut); Color; 2.20:1.
CAST
Keir Dullea (Dr. Dave Bowman); Gary Lockwood (Dr. Frank Poole); William Sylvester (Dr. Heywood R. Floyd); Daniel Richter (Moon-Watcher); Leonard Rossiter (Andrei Smyslov); Margaret Tyzack (Elena); Robert Beatty (Ralph Halvorsen); Sean Sullivan (Dr. Bill Michaels); Douglas Rain (HAL 9000, voice); Frank Miller (Mission Control, voice); Edward Bishop (Aries-1B Lunar Captain).
MOST FAMOUS LINE
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
“HAL” TO DAVE
BACKGROUND
In the beginning, there was Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008). The British-born science writer early on argued in favor of creating satellites, and in 1948, wrote a short story, “The Sentinel,” which was published in 1951 as “Sentinel of Eternity” in the Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader. Kubrick found himself drawn to the concept of an unnamed narrator who describes an ancient pyramid on the moon, placed there many millions of years earlier by interplanetary travelers. But does it contain the secrets of the universe, to be shared by humankind as a gift? Or is it a warning that earthlings shouldn’t attempt to master the galaxy as these now-extinct creatures once did?
THE PLOT
During “The Dawn of Man,” the first in a succession of titled sequences that provide a storytelling format, members of a missing link society come in contact with a strange monolith that descends from the stars. In “TMA-1,” Floyd, one of many Earth beings now inhabiting space, learns of a possible epidemic back home, as well as strange disturbances in the outer reaches of our solar system. Astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole are dispatched to discover what’s occurring in the “Jupiter Mission 18 Months Later.” Both are menaced when super-computer HAL, deciding that the humans are an unnecessary encumbrance, kills Frank, before being defeated by Dave. This surviving astronaut enters a psychedelic light tunnel in “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” aging as he discovers that past and present are one and the same.
THE FILM
American-born Kubrick (1928–1999) made his home in England and shot his later films there. During the mid-to-late 1960s, he was the first filmmaker to convince the studios to invest large budgets in arthouse projects. Cineastes consider him to be among the screen’s great “formalists”; as a director, Kubrick was interested in form over content. Ultimately, his style is the subject matter, which annoyed novelists he has adapted—Stephen King (The Shining), Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), among them. An exception is Clarke, who stated that “The Sentinel” is “an acorn to the resulting oak-tree” that Kubrick created.
Kubrick’s original conception was a series of interlocking vignettes about man’s desire to penetrate the skies and make first contact. This idea would have included many sequences similar to those in George Pal’s Conquest of Space (Byron Haskin, 1955), concluding with a first look at the sentinel. The image of the child that concludes the movie draws from an image in Clarke’s 1953 novel Childhood’s End.
Even as Kubrick wrote the screenplay, Clarke worked on a novel, to be released more or less simultaneously. They tossed ideas back and forth, with Kubrick planning to take co-credit for the book even as Clarke would take co-credit for the script, though, in the end, Kubrick was not listed as co-author.
THEME
Evolution is basic to the piece, with Kubrick taking pre-existing ideas and creating revolutionary cinematic approaches to convey these concepts as only the art of film can. For example, the transition between the prehistoric apes and futuristic movement into the cosmos is achieved through a memorable cut: a dominant ape throws a bone high and, as it falls back down, it’s replaced by a spacecraft. As this appears to be the same object employed to kill a fellow ape, man’s darkest urges are connected to his greatest scientific achievements. Yet, there is a sense of wonderment as to the potential of humankind to survive. Dave does defeat the computer, the Frankenstein’s monster for our future. When Dave’s journey is done, the last image he sees is not of his own self as an elderly, apparently dying man, but a baby being born. It may be Dave himself, suggesting the theory of relativity: there are no straight lines; life is circular.
TRIVIA
The film was shot on the sprawling soundstages of England’s Shepperton Studios, Kubrick employing many British actors. This set the stage for a tradition in which classy sci-fi often featured just such an Anglo backdrop.
However much the use of symphonic music seems, in retrospect, essential, Kubrick did consider a rock music score to make the film more appealing to young people. Pink Floyd was at one point approached.
A major motif is eating: during each of the four separate sequences, key characters are seen eating meals, providing a connection between the most sophisticated people in the final scenes and the advanced apes at the beginning. No matter how much we evolve, some things never change—unless, of course, humankind is replaced by the computers.