Released in 1968, before the first man set foot on the moon, the late Stanley Kubrick�s most celebrated work stunned cinema-goers and movie critics alike, eschewing, as it did, a typical science-fiction formula for a philosophical exploration of the age of man. In its current re-release, complete with a musical intermission as the director intended, it continues to astound, baffle, and thrill in equal measures, remaining as one of the most beautifully-shot and thought-provoking films ever made. Currently, many hundreds of web-sites and literary texts exist, discussing possible meanings of the visual imagery and thematic content of the film, and it is this ambiguity of interpretation which appeals most.
The film begins at the dawn of mankind. A group of pre-historic apes are struggling to survive, their desert in drought, their enemies all around, competing for scarce supplies. Startlingly, they discover a Monolithic structure amongst the cracked, barren landscape. In the shadow of this mystical object, one ape is inspired to discover that the dry bones all around him can be used as a tool to fight off enemies and to kill others for meat. This is the first step of man�s evolution; the use of tools to survive and control his own environment. Next we are transported 4 million years into the future where man�s use of tools has enabled space travel and extra-planetary exploration.
Here however, man has become a slave to the tools he has created, in particular artificial intelligence on which they are now dependent. We see that at each point in man�s evolutionary history, he has been open to enemies and has used the tools at his disposal to maintain life. The ultimate battle which is fought out in space is one in which man is pitted against a tool he has created himself and which now has become an enemy. This battle is one which ultimately proves that man is more than the implements he has created and by achieving this status, the next step of evolution can occur in which man can transcend physical form as occurs here in the birth of the Starchild.
2001 is a quite extraordinary experience, one to which I cannot do justice in print. Kubrick was truly a master of cinematography and this film is packed with moments of his genius; It is there in the space ballet, choreographed to the strains of The Blue Danube; in the use of smooth-motion tracking shots to explore the elaborate, gravity-defying interiors of the spaceship Discovery; in the deep, saturated colours of both the natural and man-made landscapes, and in the numerous symbolic images throughout (like the visual metaphor of the ape�s tool and the space satellite, or the alien-like Monolith). Indeed, this feels less like a film, more like a case of visual poetry, both evocative and innovative. The use of music and incidental sounds too, is particularly impressive, some scenes played out over ambient textures, some over majestic classical pieces, and others eerily silent.
The true meaning of the final scenes is most open to debate and I could bore you to death with my theories; they feel more like a cinematically-induced acid trip than a neat denouement, yet the story of man�s evolution is not one many of us will ever really understand. Christ, does anyone fancy a pint? |
