2001 A Space
Odyssey
Stanley
Kubrick
Starbust
magazine 1981
Κινηματογραφικά
/ - λεπτομέρεια από το εξώφυλλο του Starbust
Just after
2001 was released in 1968 there was a story going around that went something
like this. When Arthur C. Clarke was asked by a journalist what the film was
about he replied, I don't know. Ask
Stanley Kubrick!. On the other side of the world Kubrick was being asked
the same question and bis reply was, I
don't know. Ask Arthur Clarke!
In answer to
the question, What was the metaphysical message of 2001?, Kubrick answered, in
a Playboy interview in 1968,
"It’s not a message that I ever intend to convey in words. 2001 is a
non-verbal experience; out of two hours and nineteen minutes of film, there are
only a little less than 40 minutes of dialogue, I tried to create a visual
experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates
the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan,
in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely
subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of
consciousness, just as music does; to 'explain' a Beethoven symphony would be
to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and
appreciation. You're free to speculate as you wish about the philpsophical and
allegorical meaning of the film — and such speculation is one indication that
it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level — but I don't want to
spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to
pursue or else fear he's missed the point. I think that if 2001 succeeds at all
it is in reaching a wide spectrum of people who would not often give a thought
to man's destiny, his role in the cosmos and his relationship to higher forms
of life. But even if the case of someone who is highly intelligent, certain
ideas found in 2001 would, if presented as abstractions, fall rather lifelessly
and be automatically assigned to pat intellectual categories, experienced in a
moving visual and emotional context however, they can resonate within the deepest
fibres of one's being."
What Kubrick
was saying of course is that he made the film and it's up to the individual to
make of it what he wants. Many people did. Lots of people smoked strange and
illegal substances before and during screenings and tripped out on the light
show ending. The film's backers, MGM were quick to latch on to that particular
audience, billing subsequent reissues of 2001 as "The Ultimate Trip".
Hard core of literature fans came out of the film wearing / told you so
expressions, saying, and rightly so, that film had at last caught up with
themes and ideas that were old hat ten years before 2001 was made. Before 2001,
science fiction cinema wallowed in a pulpiness only vaguely removed from the
yellowing pages of magazines from the 30s like Astounding and Amazing.
Certainly
the special effects of 2001 stunned filmgoers all over the world. Gone were the
tacky spaceships of the 50s and 60s and all the technical improbabilities that
so many science fiction films expounded, 2001 made science fiction respectable
on the screen. Other viewers were bored rigid by Kubrick's seemingly sterile
vision of the future. The movie had no stars - still important in 1968 for
older audiences to identify with. It lacked direct narrative plotting, or so it
seemed on one viewing. And that was, and is, the great strength of 2001. The
film, if seen more than once, rewards in a way quite unique in the annals of
science fiction cinema.
2001 gave
film theorists, both professional and amateur a field day. Long-winded articles
about the "real" meaning of
2001 cluttered the pages of magazines in a dozen different languages. Usually
they were as verbose and wrong-headed as the film was clear thinking and sleak.
In terms of narrative film-making technique, 2001 was ahead of its time. Or if
you like, Kubrick revived narrative style last seen in the great days of the
silent cinema. As far as 2001 is concerned, a comparison between Eisenstein and
Kubrick is not too far wide of the mark,
The basis for
2001 was a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke and published in 1950.
Called The Sentinel, it told the tale
of a strange alien pyramid discovered on the Moon.
The first
step in turning this six-page story into a film was the writing of a novel by
Kubrick and Clarke which would serve as the basis for a screenplay. The two
took two years to write the book, which was to be called Journey Beyond the Stars, a title also slated for the film. It was
to be an epic adventure set in space.
Speaking in
1965, Kubrick described the story as comparable to Homer's Odyssey. "It
occurred to us that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had
the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation . . .
Journey to the Stars also shares with
the Odyssey a concern for wondering, exploration and adventure.”
At that point
in the film's genesis, Kubrick hoped to have the feature ready for a late 1966
release. A space epic was indeed envisaged, but not quite as spectacular as the
film finally turned out.
Shooting
commenced on December 29, 1965 at MGM's Borehamwood Studios. It was here that
the opening Dawn of Man sequence was
shot. For these scenes Kubrick sent a camera crew to Africa to take still shots
of deserts and rock formations. These eight by ten inch transparencies were
front projected onto a forty by ninety foot screen. The apes in the film were
of course actors in costumes, apart from two shy baby chimps. The ape make-up
was devised by Stuart Freeborn who had turned Peter Sellers into three
different characters for Kubrick’s previous film. Dr Strangelove. In a recent interview, Freeborn recalled,
"Undoubtedly 2001 was a most challenging project which called for as many
as twenty six actors each day wearing fully articulated masks over a period of
nearly three months."
The Dawn of Man sequence shows the
discovery by a group of primordial apes of the monolith — the alien artifact
left by extraterrestrials as a teaching machine. Ape becomes intelligent man
when he discovers the use of tools - and the ability to kill with weapons.
With Moon Watcher, the ape leader hurling his
newly discovered bone into the sky, Kubrick catapults the audience 4 million
years into the future. Man has conquered space and a second monolith has been
found, this time buried on the moon. This sequence in which the spinning bone
becomes a space ship has come to be recognised as one of the classic images of
science fiction cinema. Kubrick introduced his audience to spaceships the like
of which the cinema screen had never before.
The space
wheel still under construction in deep space, the Orion passenger cruiser and the Moon shuttle Aries were all graced with a technical design fully approved by
NASA. The detailing on the often large models came from a multitude of plastic
kit parts, ranging from tanks to airplane models. The site of the models and
the ultra fine detail work allowed the cameras to move in close without destroying
the illusion of reality.
The look of
the ships in 2001 set a new standard, still echoed today in the model work of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. If for no other reason, it is this aspect of
2001 which it makes a land-mark film. However the real influence of 2001 is the
simple fact that it was the first science fiction film to command real critical
respect. Certainly the early space films of George Pal had received good
notices and had the help of people like Chesiey Bonestell and Robert Heinlein.
But they were still accepted on a juvenile level and aimed at a teenase market.
Many models
were designed for the film but were never used. In many cases it was not the
model that was filmed against the starfields, rather it was a photograph of the
model which was manoeuvred around an animation stand to achieve the required
results. An example of this is the sequence showing the approach to the Moon's
surface by the Aries shuttle. The
Moon's surface was a photograph of the moon shot through a telescope and
enlarged. The Aries which moves
towards the surface was another photograph. This technique helped conquer the
problems of depth of field usually associated with filming models.
Huge lunar
landscapes were filmed in the studio and these were then back projected in
front of the ports of the approaching shuttle.
With the
discovery that the monolith on the Moon is sending transmissions to one of the
moons of Jupiter, the story is once again hurled far into the future and the
story picks up again as the space ship Discovery
is making its way to that distant planet.
The model of
the Discovery was the biggest built
for the film. The atomic-powered ship was a finely detailed creation measuring
54 feet long. The slow majestic pass made by the model took days to shoot at a
time before the advent of the motion control camera. The model was firmly
anchored to the floor with the camera making the move. Each frame of film had
to receive a long exposure to conquer once again the problem of depth of field.
A smaller model, measuring 15 feet in length was used for long shots.
One of the
biggest interior sets for the Discovery
was the centrifuge. Measuring 38 feet high the entire set revolved. This
required that all props had to be bolted to the floor and lighting and cameras
were in constant motion. Stanley Kubrick described it in this way: "The
Centrifuge set was made in such a way that it had the structural integrity to
preserve itself while the frame was rotated. The actor stayed at the bottom at
all times. The camera was attached to the set so that when the set moved the
camera didn't know it. The camera was on a gimbaled mount, and the operator was
in a gimbaled seat, with a television finder. As the frame rotated at three
miles per hour, the camera was constantly adjusted by the operator to keep the
actor in the picture. The effect on the screen is that the camera is standing
still and the actor is walking up and around the top and down the other
side."
To assist
himself further, Kubrick directed the sequence with the aid of closed-circuit
television, a technique he still uses today, most notably in the maze scenes in
The Shining.
With the move
of the story to the Jupiter mission, the audience is introduced to the
"stars" of 2001, Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea. Both actors were
virtual unknowns, although Lockwood had acquired some fame as a professional
football player. The other actor on board the Discovery was Douglas Rain, a classical actor from Canada.
Rain was of
course, the voice of HAL, the ship's super computer and 2001 's only villain.
HAL ran the ship, played games with the robot-like astronauts and generally
looked after their wellbeing, until he developed a malfunction and attempted to
kill the space travellers. He is eventually disconnected by Dullea in a truly chilling
sequence as the astronaut systematically destroys the computer's memory banks.
With Poole (Lockwood)
dead and the life support systems of three other hibernating astronauts shut
down. Bowman (Dullea) continues his mission to Jupiter alone.
It is at this
point in the story where the metaphysical side of 2001 takes hold and
interpretation of events is left to the individual viewer. Whether Bowman is
"taken" by aliens through
the timegate or the images which
flash on the screen are meant to be taken literally is up to you, but the
simple fact remains that the visuals which Kubrick committed to celluloid in this
sequence are simply stunning and have never been bettered in the annals of
science fiction cinema.
Many of these
shots were optically treated film of aerial footage shot in the Hebrides and
Monument Valley, using a variety of coloured filters to give a properly alien
effect. Clouds of dust and gas, seen swirling from Bowman's point of view, were
achieved by the use of chemicals filmed in a small tank. Douglas Trumbull, one
of the effects technicians on 2001, would later refine this technique for the
swirling cloud formations seen in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind.
Perhaps the
most visually astonishing sequence in this section of 2001 are the scenes which
utilised the "slit-scan” machine designed by Trumbull for the famed
"light show" ending as Bowman hurtles through the timegate. This involved the use of an
automatically focussing camera which could hold depth of field from 15 feet
down to 11/2 inches, giving the effect
of two mirrored planes of seemingly infinite depth.
With Bowman
in the hands of the aliens(?), the film concludes with a beautiful coda as the
astronaut is seen to live out his life in a tastefully decorated room. Stuart
Freeborn's makeup of the young Dullea aging into an old man gives a truly
touching feel to these scenes. With Bowman near death and seemingly bed-ridden,
the astronaut slowly raises his head from the pillow to be confronted by the
monolith. He dies and is reborn a star
child, hovering above the Earth. The film ends.
Oddly enough,
another ending was considered in which the Star
Child is seen to detonate nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth, One
can only applaude the change. Had this been the end of die film, then not only
would it have been a repeat of the ending of Dr Strangelove, but it would have destroyed the sense of wonder and
adventure so carefully developed throughout the film.
There was a
considerable amount of footage cut from 2001 before its release. At one point
it was decided to show the aliens and various attempts were made to film
aesthetically satisfying creatures. Roger Dicken who was employed on the film
creating lunarscapes spent some time carving wooden extraterrestrials. Other
test footage shot using various lighting effects created in the slit scan
machine were discarded also. The death of Poole was also reportedly shown in
graphic detail as the astronaut is seen to implode in his spacesuit – another
wise excision.
The film was
previewed in early 1968 to a mixed reception. Kubrick took the film back to the
cutting rooms and deleted a further fifteen minutes, tightening what many
critics saw as a flaccid narrative. When it was finally released, the film had
been four years in the making and had overrun its original budget by several
million dollars and had nearly taken MGM to the verge of bankruptcy.
2001 is
constantly being reissued, finding not only a new audience every few years hut
repaying its original fans with new insight into the mysterious minds of its
creators, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.
Sources:
Playboy 1968
New Yorker Magazine 1965
New Yorker Magazine 1966
Making a Monster
Al Taylor and Sue Roy 1980
The Making of 2001
Jerome Agel 1970
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[ ανάρτηση 19 Φεβρουαρίου 2024 :
2001 A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick
Starbust magazine 1981
Κινηματογραφικά ]
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