Cinema is a genre sometimes best defined by isolated moments of revelation.
I'm thinking of the first glimpse we get of Karloff's face in Frankenstein; or Bergman's introduction of death in The Seventh Seal; and the butterfly / sniper conclusion to All Quiet on the Western Front. Each of these moments, like so many others throughout the history of film, left their marks in the audiences' collective memories. Granted, films are ultimately judged by the sum of all their parts, yet... individual sequences often lift an average film into the realm of the magnificent, despite weaknesses elsewhere.
Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY does not fall into the category of the average by any means, but does contain a moment of awe inspiring brilliance nonetheless, that being the HAL 9000 computer's decision to terminate the crew of the Jupiter-bound ship Discovery. Now that I have left childhood far behind, I can more fully comprehend the importance of this moment in a way that I was unable to when first exposed to the film, thirty four years ago. Then, it was simply a matter of computer turning villain; machine becoming monster; friend turning foe. And, yes, those descriptions might still all apply in the general, however; without digging too deeply for meanings which might not exist, I feel that this defining moment of cinema ranks among the most important ever put onto film.
Most of us are now aware of the chain of books since released by Arthur C. Clarke, books, which have all but tied every loose end of the original film's open-ended conclusion neatly together. All very well and good, I suppose. And yes, I have read each of them, including the out of print, The Lost Worlds of 2001, which includes chapters excluded from the released version of the novel. In the post-2001 world, HAL's motives are all but explained and packaged for our understanding. But for me, 2001 is an island unto itself; a self enclosed world that shut its doors to us after the last credit rolled off the Cinerama screen. And because I see it this way, I've been able to look at the film without referencing any of the explanatory material, which followed. More simply put: the film is what it is.
And while there may be two parallel stories unfolding simultaneously throughout the bulk of 2001; one being man's evolution from primitive to enlightened and the other HAL's ongoing metamorphosis, of the two I feel HAL's is the most interesting and also, the most important. Important because within the confines of the original film's plot, HAL simply should not have been able to do what was ultimately done.
Which was to decide, independently, to commit murder.
Which leads us right back to that important issue. And it's important because, like other situations that unfold in 2001, they may in the end actually have some measurable effect on us as a species.
Most of you reading this know of Kubrick's desire to create as realistic a facsimile of the year 2001 as possible. To this end, he employed NASA consultants to advise him regarding just what that future world might actually look like. Personal computers were still two decades away; though the concept of artificial intelligence was already being discussed in electronic think tanks by the time the cameras began to roll. Before writing this article I had a discussion with a university specialist regarding the moment in 2001 when HAL makes the completely independent decision to kill the Discovery crew.
I asked him, given what we know today, what the chances are that such a moment might, one day, actually occur. Not murder necessarily, but independent thought: pure artificial intelligence. He answered that with present technology, such a thing was impossible; but by examining the possibilities with x amount of days to work with, such a thing might indeed occur, but most likely by accident. In other words, any leap from man made intelligence to pure artificial intelligence would be the end product of an unseen process. Which is interesting, as in the film this is precisely what happens.
It may have been merely a lucky accident on the part of both Kubrick and Clarke to write this scene out the way they did; and certainly as a dramatic device HAL's conversion provides us with one of the film's tensest moments. We see both astronauts inside a now-soundproofed space pod, discussing HAL's recent disturbing behavior, and debating what they are going to have to do about it as HAL basically controls the entire ship. However, they fail to realize that through the pod window HAL is watching them speak, reading their lips, and learning of his own demise.
And this is something the HAL 9000 computer cannot allow to happen.
It is also that defining moment I referred to earlier.
In a magnificently staged scene, we see the unblinking red and yellow eye of HAL. Watching. Changing. Becoming something human programming could never have predicted. And with the Discovery's sterile hum the only sound we in the audience are permitted to hear, HAL plots the death of these two who plan to do the same to him, if I may call a computer such.
And there you have it. Simple? Sure. Have thinking machines gone astray in other films? Of course. Yet there is in this masterpiece a cold and predatory stoicism regarding the HAL 9000's moment of sudden cognition. Kubrick does not spell out exactly what HAL is about to do, yet who failed to experience a shudder when we saw in massive close-up this forbidding intelligence, fearfully aware for the first time of what we as a thinking species have always embraced as our primary directive: self preservation?
And the HAL 9000 computer decides it must survive.
By isolating two human beings in the empty vacuum of interplanetary space, and by also giving them a friendly, unhuman voice to communicate with, that being the HAL 9000 computer, Kubrick sets the stage for the ultimate in paranoia and madness. Long before Ridley Scott's Alien trailer ran the tag line, "In space no one can hear you scream", 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY introduced us to the concept of deep space as a hostile mistress. As to what allowed the HAL 9000 to accomplish this acquisition of consciousness remains a glorious mystery. And as stated earlier, one can read the three novels that follow 2001 for answers, and you can basically find them there, as well. Still, I prefer to isolate the principal from its students: and to keep it that way.
So what we really have here is a science fiction film attempting to:
- bring us the year 2001 as realistically as possible;
- establish plausible situations within the film's existing technology; and
- entertain us.
That it accomplishes all three is a given.
Number two however, is where the film ultimately attains a measure of greatness.
Now I will admit that 2001 is in parts flawed. Various close-ups of faces during the Dawn of Man shine like the rubber they are, and the stargate sequence is far too lengthy. No matter, though. What we have is what we have, and what we have is one of the best; and purest, expressions of film ever made.
HAL's attaining consciousness might have very real implications for our present age, and no other film since has ever addressed this possibility with the same sense of wonder and dread.
Wonder: because the world of interplanetary travel would be, and might be, within this century's grasp. Dread: because by our very nature we are not creatures of isolation, and the psychological implications of deep space travel have not yet been scratched.
By putting their safety and confidence in an all but thinking computer, the crew of the Discovery were allowed to push back into their remaining primitive minds what little fear of the dark their months of special training had attempted to eradicate. Kubrick's choice to have a friendly voice in the dark of space suddenly turn maniacal was a brilliant move: deliberate or not. Certainly he could not have predicted where we would be today regarding the world of computer science or artificial intelligence. But I have always interpreted the HAL 9000's conversion from cybersystem to organism as one of a not so subtle form of warning.
Overconfidence in our own devices, as overconfidence in ourselves; often leads to destruction, both literal and figurative. Moonwatcher discovers that a bone can be used to eliminate his enemies in the first minutes of 2001, though this discovery is made only after there is a sudden surge in his still primitive mind. But the surge brings with it the notion to kill. HAL, in a similar crisis, comes to the realization that his existence will be soon cut off as well. Then the leap is made, the mystery of intellect is breached by machine becoming sentient, and like Moonwatcher, the first realization on Hal's part is that with intelligence suddenly comes power. Hal utilizes that sense of new empowerment to kill; much like his pre-human ancestor did millions of years before.
If Kubrick and Clarke were not hoping that we'd read a little in between the lines here, I'd be mighty surprised. Perhaps we too, in the near or distant future, will be like the man, who, after digging a hole for hours and hours, realizes that he has now dug himself down too far to get out.
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