Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
When Stanley Changed The Rules
Note: numbered notes in the text are referenced at the end of the article, with a bibliography.
1968
The critics raved.
Science fiction found respect.
The critics raged.
People found film.
The critics ate their words.
And artists found hope.
All in one summer...
When Stanley Changed the Rules
by Virginia Smith
No one can be absolutely certain of what happened that summer twenty five years ago. The film- going public was thrown into mass hysteria. Controversy raged, and yet no one was quite sure what all the controversy was over. Philosophers, theorists and even film critics began rethinking their positions. Some even reconsidered their initial negative reactions for more positive ones after a second viewing of a film which continues to drive audiences crazy. It seems that in the summer of 1968 both science fiction and commercial film decided to grow up a little, but, oddly enough, only the children seemed to get it, leaving the adults to argue about what it all meant. Meanwhile, the younger generation - and a few of the more open- minded grownups - were discovering the experience that was 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In going through a number of letters that were written to Stanley Kubrick in response to his now classic myth of Man's future in space, I was surprised to find that quite a few of his fans were under the age of 15. The letters brought back distinct memories of my own discovery of Space Odyssey at age 12. It made me feel better to think that I was not the only person who understood 2001 at such an age. And though I got it, I was yet unaware of its most important place in the history of cinema. 2001: A Space Odyssey is indeed a definitive mark in both film and science fiction, simultaneously reinforcing and rewriting the rules, based on a new standard found only within its own unorthodox approach.
In 1965 when Stanley Kubrick announced his intention to produce "the best and most realistic space movie ever made"1 he wasn't kidding. In fact, 2001 still retains this honor among many, some of whom find the detailed space gadgets and stunning special effects its only redeeming traits. By the same token, other critics found the picture to be "absorbed in its own problems,"2 sacrificing plot and humanity for "its fanatical devotion to science fiction detail."3 And despite all the beauty and detail, Kubrick has been accused of defeating his own purpose by reveling in the sheer reality and feasibility of his fictitious technology, even to the point of making the long space sequences, which showcase the possible breakthroughs, dull, tedious, boring... the list goes on. In essence, though, Kubrick has achieved the desired effect. 2001, as most sci-fi before it, makes its own - less obvious - statement concerning the effects of technology on Man. Who would have thought that the man-apes pictured in the movie's opening sequence would have used what they learned to develop into a race of people who "have forgotten how to joke and resist,... chat, speculate, grow intimate or interest one another."4 But the people of 2001 are just what their technology has made them. The apparent dullness of the future is only magnified and iterated by the style in which it is portrayed. One gets the sense that these people "have managed to diminish outer space into the ultimate of humdrum."5
Not only have the people become more like their machines, the technology is starting to act more like the people used to be. This, also another common science fiction theme - used to remind us of what we are losing each time we gain in knowledge - is made clear in 2001 by the relationship of David Bowman and Frank Poole - the human "automatons"6 who run the spaceship Discovery - with the ship supercomputer HAL 9000, "the only human in the film."7 While the programmed humans illustrate our possible future, HAL could be said to simultaneously remind us of our corrupt present. He represents a hypocritical society where the end justifies the means. He will lie and kill to keep from having to do so. His judgement is clouded by his "enthusiasm for the mission" and his directive to follow both his design and his faulty programming. HAL in turn develops psychological problems, which lead him to lying and murdering, as have many humans before and after him - humans who are a product of the cognitive dissonance surrounding them in the time in which they live. And the old science fiction question arises: Are our emotions a fair price to pay for the removal of our faults?
Another, equally common occurrence in science fiction is Man's encounter with an alien - usually superior - intelligence. Kubrick and his collaborator Arthur C. Clarke, well known science and science fiction writer, stopped at nothing to make the movie's alien encounter as close to real as possible. They made the aliens of a disembodied type, represented only by a mysterious black monolith. This very foreign, non- anthropomorphic enigma does perhaps the best job at illustrating that anyone we meet in the universe will probably be the farthest thing from what we might imagine. In short "He (Kubrick) is far too clever to couch his fantasy in the clichéd terms of Hollywood science fiction: monsters and 'things' of one horrible kind or another."8 Kubrick and Clarke seem to be expressing a new and more advanced look at science fiction aliens - that if they are advanced enough to come this far, they will be beyond trying to melt our brains or eat us or rule the earth, and that they will take a form so unusual that we will not be able to define it on our own terms or based on our own experiences. As Clarke puts it, any aliens we might chance to meet would have a technology "not distinguishable from magic."
In this way 2001 set a trend for exploring a higher plane of Man's relationship to the Universe and what might live there - benevolent, possibly friendly, creatures who are just as curious about us. In a way the stage was set for such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., though 2001's "aliens" are quite a bit more anonymous and enigmatic, almost godlike - unseen and all powerful. This does put Man in a much humbler and more realistic place in the universe. In fact, the vision has been described as both inspiring and pessimistic.
The "inspired" camp finds that a sense of hope can be gained from discovering the key to our intelligence and technology. The idea of being taught and monitored and rewarded with a higher form of existence - from ape to man to star child - each time we pass the test, seems to give some comfort, as if finding one's "place" in the universe is enough reason to go on living. The "pessimistic" side seems to find it depressing to consider the idea that Man would need some higher life form to pull him up out of the obscurity and decay into which he has lapsed when each episode of contact occurs. At the very same time the other side finds this a hopeful view of life occurring in necessary cycles of renewal. But this ambiguity of viewpoint is all part of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a new breed of science fiction which presents all sides of an issue without leaning too heavily toward one or the other. Perhaps a lot of the viewers who were disgusted or confused in 1968 just weren't accustomed to having a choice.
To add to its unique approach to old sci-fi elements 2001 also very deftly combines the two main science fiction subjects - technology and aliens - with a tightly woven "rigorously structured narrative."9 In the plot, which is seen as problematic, disjointed, and non-existent ("the plot. Was there one?"10) by many who were undoubtedly thrown off by Kubrick's odd new sci-fi style, paid equal attention to the problems surrounding aliens and future technology by intertwining them and making them interdependent elements in the story. The technological advances, for instance, were not incidental to the time in which humans discovered the monolith on the moon. The people of 2001 needed the technology which had been bestowed upon them by the monolith at the "Dawn of Man" four million years before in order to fly to the moon and discover the monolith which had been "deliberately buried" there four million years ago. This monolith, set there as an "alarm clock" to notify its owners that the experiment was working, sent a signal to Jupiter, where another, larger, slab was discovered.
Even the middle section of the plot, in which Man's relationship to technology is the focus, depends upon the existence of the monolith. Close attention to and further research into the plot reveal that investigation of the mysterious signal to Jupiter had been made the new, secret, objective of the previously planned Jupiter mission. Due to the secrecy of this mission, information was only given out on a "need to know" basis. HAL, the computer, happened to be one who needed to know, while the astronauts, Bowman and Poole, did not. HAL's knowledge of the true objectives of the mission, along with his orders not to tell the command crew, conflicted with his prime directive of "the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment," thus causing his breakdown. His only solution was to kill the two guys that he could not tell. Then he would not have to worry about the fact that he was not telling them, not to mention that they wanted to disconnect him. Then, of course, HAL would have to do away with the rest of the hibernating crewmen, so that no one would discover his misdeeds. Though HAL's breakdown is only indirectly triggered by the monolith, it does serve a very important function in rendering David Bowman a lone entity - after all his shipmates are killed and HAL is disconnected - who will eventually come into contact with, and be transformed by, a higher intelligence. By all this I hope to challenge the popular - but incorrect - assumption that "None of this man- versus- machine rivalry has anything to do with the main story."11
Just as 2001 raises both of the great science fiction questions in the same forum - What is Man's relationship to his future technology? and What is Man's place in the Universe? - making them interdependent upon one another, it also manages to make use of its technology in ways that most science fiction films fail to do. 2001 not only explores the over all effects of technology on Man, but it also makes technology a necessary plot device. A great deal of science fiction merely uses the setting of Man's future as a backdrop on which to play out current issues in an environment that makes them fresh and new to the viewer. This, of course, is an admirable characteristic of any style of storytelling, but the setting is usually simply incidental to the plot. In 2001, though, the technological setting makes the plot. "What other major movie has ever relied, for important twists of plot, on the electroencephalograph, the printout, the explosive bolt,..."12 Without supercomputers, spaceships, and forgotten space helmets, the plot issues in 2001 could not have been explored in quite the same way.
But in 1968 more was changing than just science fiction. "Until Stanley Kubrick came along and rewrote the rules, SF films fell for the most part into the B movie stockade. Cheap plywood rockets shuddered across sets glued together out of old egg cartons, and brave space heroes strode boldly with goldfish bowls over their heads."13 Needless to say, Kubrick also "rewrote the rules" of commercial film, reminding people what the main aim of the film medium is supposed to be - to convey narrative in a visual fashion through action and not words. This visual approach to a very complex piece of narrative and philosophy was, not surprisingly, a source of a great deal of the confusion that surrounded 2001. Due to the relative lack of confusion in the younger generation of viewers, numerous theories began to arise concerning the true effects of television upon those who had grown up with such fabricated entertainment, A more likely cause of the confusion, though, was the fact that the older critics and viewers had experienced too many "Disney marshmallows" and had grown used to being told everything. One plaintive letter to Stanley Kubrick reads:
"For the life of me I cannot understand why the critics (all of which I read when they reviewed the film) haven't stood up and shouted with enthusiasm in their reviews. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that for so many years films were made for the 12 year old mind that at last, alas, our critics have emerged with 12 year old minds. Pity." A.R. Munnerlyn New York City
The lack of early praise for 2001 had made it pointedly clear that film audiences had not only forgotten what film was for, they had also forgotten how to think for themselves. By bringing the true art of film into the commercial spotlight and "transmuting Sci-fi into poetry of the first order"l4 2001 set a trend in mainstream film which allowed more of the art in film to be made public and commercially successful. Were it not for ground-breaking work such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, some of today's most unique directors and films might simply slip into obscurity, playing second to a slew of big, mindless Hollywood productions. (Not that this isn't still happening to a measurable degree.)
Since 2001 general audiences have become a great deal more educated in the nuances of plot and film. For a growing number of people - especially of the younger T.V. generation - "visual beauty is sufficient reason for the existence of a film."15 And these young people "who do not need the prop of a conventional plot"16 have inevitably become the unique filmmakers of 1993.
Even at age 25, 2001: A Space Odyssey is still fresh - not dated in the least. And, just as in 1968, it is still the cause of much controversy and discussion. Is it science fiction? Is it just pure science? Is it art? Is it schlock? Lord knows, I have had my share of arguments. But despite the ongoing theory and conjecture, one truth remains clear. After twenty five years 2001's longevity and continuing relevance have made it a classic and rendered it a work of art, definitive in both science fiction and the whole of film.
Notes
1. Piers Bizony
"2001 at 25"
Omni. May, 1993
2. Renata Adler
Review of 2001
New York Times
3. Renata Adler
Review of 2001
New York Times
4. Penelope Gilliatt
"After Man"
The New Yorker. April 13,
1968
5. Penelope Gilliatt
"After Man"
The New Yorker. April 13,
1968
6. Joseph Gelmis
"Space Odyssey Fails Most
Gloriously"
Newsday. April 4, 1968
7. Tim Hunter, Stephen Kaplan and Peter Jaszi
Review of
2001
The Harvard Crimson.
8. Hollis Alpert
"Fantastic Journey"
Saturday review. April
20,
1968
9. Review of 2001
Variety. January 15, 1969
10. Virginia M. Dominick
Letter to Stanley Kubrick
The
Making
of Kubrick's 2001
Jerome Agel ed.
11. Stanley Kauffman
"Lost in the Stars"
New Republic. May
4,
1968
12. Review of 2001
Saturday Evening Post.
13. Piers Bizony
"2001 at 25"
Omni. May 1993
14. Fred Myers
"Sci-Fi Triumph"
Christian century. June 26,
1968
15. Book Review of 2001
The New Yorker. September 21,
1968
16. Book Review of 2001
The New Yorker. September 21,
1968
Bibliography
Adler, Renata
Review of 2001
The New York Times
Agel, Jerome
The Making of Kubrick's 2001
1970, New American Library.
Alpert, Hollis
"Fantastic Journey"
Saturday Review
April 20, 1968
Beja, Morris
Review of 2001
Extrapolation: 4 Science Fiction Newsletter
Book Review of 2001
The New Yorker
September 21, 1968
Bizony, Piers
"2001 at 25"
Omni. May 1993
Champlin, Charles
Review of 2001
Los Angeles Times
Foretsch, Jim
Review of 2001
West Omaha Dundee-Sun
Gelmis, Joseph
"Space Odyssey Fails Most Gloriously"
Newsday. April 4, 1968
Gelmis, Joseph
"Another Look at Space Odyssey"
Newsday. April 20, 1968
Gilliatt, Penelope
"After Man"
The New Yorker. April 13, 1968
Hartung, Philip T
"The Screen"
Commonweal. May 3, 1968
Hatch, Robert
"Amazing Voyage to Nowhere"
Nation. June 3, 1968
Hunter, Tim; Kaplan, Stephen; Jaszi, Peter
Review of 2001
The Harvard Crimson
Junker, Howard
Review of 2001
Channel 13, New York.
Kauffman, Stanley
"Lost in the Stars"
The New Republic. May 4, 1968
Myers, Fred
"Sci-Fi Triumph"
Christian Century. June 26, 1968
Review of 2001
Saturday Evening Post
Review of 2001
Variety. January 15, 1969
Shatnoff, Judith
Review of 2001
Film Quarterly. Fall 1968
Sweeney, Louise
Review of 2001
The Christian Science Monitor
Taylor, John Russel
"On Seeing 2001 a Second Time"
London Times
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick dir.
MGM, 1968
Walsh, Moira
Review of 2001
America. April 27, 1968
This page: Copyright © 1996, 1997, 2008
The essay "When Stanley Changed The Rules": Copyright © 1993, 1996 by Virginia Smith