THE KUBRICK FAQ
Edited By Barry Krusch
P 1995 materials written by Barry Krusch A Public Domain Work
This document may be freely re-transmitted and republished in whole or in part by any
person or body for any and all purposes.
LAST UPDATED: June 23, 1995
The latest version of this document may be obtained at www.krusch.com.
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The Kubrick Faq
There’s a man lives in London town,
Makes movies, he’s world renowned,
Yes, he’s really got the fame,
Stanley Kubrick is his name.
He does it all, he does it all,
Stanley does it all . . .
He’s a man who looks ahead
To make you think he raised the dead
And he cuts all his flicks.
He’s a genius with his tricks.
He does it all, he does it all.
I’m telling y’all, Stanley does it all.
 Poem by Scatman Crothers (written during the making of THE SHINING) [NEWSWEEK, 6/2/80]
LET US GO THEN, YOU AND ı,
WıTH THE EVENıNG SPREAD OUT AGAıNST THE SKY
LıKE A PATıENT ETHERıSED UPON A TABLE . . .
 T. S. Eliot, THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK (1915)
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INTRODUCTION
Many people have seen the films of Stanley Kubrick, but not all of them are aware of
the extraordinary level of depth to be found in that director’s work. To those who are
interested in knowing more, this FAQ will tell everything it knows.
For those who don’t like “spoilers,” be forewarned. There are many “spoilers” here. If
you don’t want to have details of the films revealed to you before seeing them, stop
reading this FAQ now!
Those who do want to read the FAQ, but not onscreen, would be well-advised to go
to their local STAPLES, OFFICE DEPOT or SAM’s, and buy some pre-punched
three hole laser printer paper (the kind that goes in binders), a binder, and some tabs
to demarcate the sections.
This FAQ would not have been possible without the contributions of the people who
frequent the ALT.MOVIES.KUBRICK newsgroup on USENET. Thanks to them.
(Incidentally, it is the same FAQ as the one titled “The ALT.MOVIES.KUBRICK
FAQ on the Web; I just changed the title for the CD-ROM version. The Courier font
remains the same).
DISCLAIMER: Many of the interpretations of Kubrick's films that are found here are
based on descriptions of Kubrick’s films which may or may not be accurate. Every
fact here should be double-checked against a copy of the film in question to ensure
accuracy. If the “fact” turns out to be erroneous, the interpretation must be revised.
B. Krusch
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
How is this FAQ, D, different from FAQs A, B, and C?
What will Kubrick’s new film, AI (Artificial Intelligence) be about?
Tell us something about Kubrick.
What are the similarities between Kubrick and James Joyce?
What are some anagrams for Kubrick films?
DR. STRANGELOVE
Q) What are some brief insights on DR. STRANGELOVE?
Q) Just who WAS Dr. Strangelove, really?
Q) Is truth stranger than fiction?
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Q) What are some themes that seem to be present in 2001?
Q) What is the difference between metaphorical and literal
interpretation, and what does it have to do with 2001?
Q) Is 2001 “too slow”?
Q) What did Kubrick have to say about what 2001 “means”?
Q) What did Kubrick say is the plot of 2001?
Q) What are some brief insights on 2001?
Q) What is another view of the plot of 2001?
Q) Is 2001 “a major disappointment”?
Q) When people say that 2001 is a film on different “levels,” what do
they mean?
Q) Who is Margaret Stackhouse?
Q) So what did Ms. Stackhouse have to say?
Q) Were there any other comments by fans?
Q) What did Penelope Gilliatt have to say about 2001?
Q) What was the longest review in the HARVARD CRIMSON?
Q) Why would Kubrick think “man” is little more than a high-tech chimp?
Q) Do the stages of the human race correspond with the ages of the
human being?
Q) What are some outside references Kubrick refers to in the film
[intentionally or otherwise]?
Q) Why does Kubrick include a shot of a leopard in THE DAWN OF MAN
sequence?
Q) What are some relevant passages in THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA that
pertain to the film?
Q) Has anyone ever figured out the ending of 2001?
Q) Is 2001 “ironic”?
Q) Is the ending of 2001 really pessimistic? Optimistic? Either? Other?
Q) How does Kubrick define Bowman through Poole?
Q) Did HAL “err” on purpose?
Q) Why does HAL have one eye?
Q) Is there a connection between 2001’s HAL and THE SHINING’s Jack
Torrance?
Q) Is there a connection between 2001’s HAL and a very famous
film director?
Q) Is there a connection between 2001 and Beethoven’s 9th?
Q) “Explosive Bolts”: Friend or Foe?
Q) What are the instructions to the “zero-gravity toilet”?
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Q) What are some quotes from the film?
Q) Kubrick commissioned a score for 2001 from Alex North (a very fine
film composer) but did not use North’s score (subsequently recorded
and released on CD). What did Alex North have to say about his work
on 2001?
Q) Why should you see 2001 on a big screen?
Q) What formal recognition did 2001 receive?
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Q) What are some brief insights on ACO?
Q) Does ACO speak the voice of fascism?
Q) Why does Kubrick quote Rossini’s THE THIEVING MAGPIE in ACO?
BARRY LYNDON
Q) What are some brief insights on BARRY LYNDON?
Q) How does Kubrick use camera technique to draw character?
THE SHINING
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
What are some brief insights on THE SHINING?
Why is the date in the picture July 4?
Can THE SHINING be seen as a portrait of a dysfunctional society?
The shadow of the helicopter in the opening sequence: did
Kubrick slip?
Q) What did Pauline Kael think of THE SHINING?
Q) Does Kubrick use a technique described in THE ART OF MEMORY?
FULL METAL JACKET
Q) What are some brief insights on FULL METAL JACKET?
Q) Many see FULL METAL JACKET as a two-part film. Is there an
alternative view?
GENERAL
Q) How does the game of chess relate to Kubrick’s world-view?
Q) What stylistic devices/techniques/approaches does Kubrick use?
Q) What was Kubrick’s reaction to the Steadicam?
BASIC INFORMATION SECTION
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
Q)
What films has Kubrick done, and what are the credits?
What Academy Award nominations has Kubrick received?
What are some off-line references to Kubrick?
What are some on-line references to Kubrick?
Where can you get screenplays to Kubrick’s films?
Are there any other Kubrickian films out there?
What were Kubrick’s favorite films?
THEORY
Q) Many people see Kubrick’s film as “art”, not “entertainment.” What’s
the difference?
Q) After Kubrick, what?
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INTRODUCTORY
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) How is this FAQ, D, different from FAQs A, B, and C?
----------------------------------------------------------------------FAQ means “Frequently Asked Questions.” Its purpose: to answer those
questions asked over and over again in the Newsgroup. This frees
the regular members of the group to discuss new subjects, while
enabling “newbies” to get answers for themselves.
This FAQ, however, will also go in a different direction. It will ask,
from time to time, UNfrequently asked questions, mimicking the director
whose work it attempts to illuminate. That’s for us “oldbies.”
Those looking for “basic information” like filmographies and
bibliographies will find them at the end of this document.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What will Kubrick’s new film, AI (Artificial Intelligence) be about?
----------------------------------------------------------------------This is no longer current: Eyes Wide Shut is K’s latest. (BK)
AI is supposed to be based on a Brian Aldiss short story called
SUPER-TOYS LAST ALL SUMMER LONG. The story has no real plot, but it
involves a little boy who tries to write a Valentine’s Day card to his
mother. His robotic stuffed bear is helping him. Something like that.
(S.Cl.)
I’ve seen no script, of course, not being in the business -- but
following the information others have supplied regarding the assumed
source material for the film -- the Brian Aldiss short (very short)
story called “Super-toys Last All Summer Long” -- I was inspired to
track it down to see just how Kubrickian it might be. It seems to have
appeared in the late 1960s, and is more a set-up than a full-blown plot
for any feature film treatment, but it does seem right up Stanley’s
alley: an over-populated world of the near-future, with a growing
industry of mechanical critters of at first no and then “controlled”
intelligence. Much speculation on what is or isn’t “real” and I thought
reminiscent of the HAL 9000 situation. The melted ice-cap stuff must
come from some other source. [A Variety press release -- B.K.] FX from
the Aldiss story would seem to involve a talking Teddy Bear (who seems
to have more on-the-ball than its little boy companion) and holodecktype stuff where an ordinary apartment can be “transformed” into a
stately Georgian house surrounded by a garden in eternal summer. Nothing
so insurmountable here, so I figure the difficulty must originate from
some other part of the script.
By the way, I do recommend the Aldiss story -- you can find it in a
collection of the author’s sci-fi stories called “Man in his Time.”
(P.D.)
According to the last CINEFANTASTIQUE, conceptual artist Chris Hall from
JUDGE DREDD is already working on the initial sketches of Kubrick’s AI.
Based on private conversations between fx people in West Coast, it seems
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that ILM will win the bid for the film’s visual fx, because of the CGI
power of the facility (180 SGIs and more to come for the next two years
because of the new Star Wars installments).
(C.Ch.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Tell us something about Kubrick.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928, of a middle-class Bronx
family.
He got his first camera at thirteen, a present from his physician
father, who introduced him to still photography. He was a class
photographer at Taft High School, but an “F” in English and a 68
average lost him his place in college to some returning veteran. “Out
of pity,” he recalls, LOOK magazine hired him as a sixteen-year-old
photographer, after buying one of his candid stills.
Kubrick stayed on the staff of LOOK until he was twenty-one. He
describes himself at the time as a “skinny, unkempt kid who carried his
cameras in a paper bag so he wouldn’t be mistaken for a tourist.” The
job was a good opportunity to learn and experiment with the
photographic aspects of cinema: compositions, lighting, location, and
action shooting, but all Kubrick knew about filmmaking was photography
and Pudovkin’s FILM TECHNIQUE. He still agrees with Pudovkin that
editing is the basis of film art. “The ability to show a simple action
like a man cutting wheat from a number of angles in a brief moment, to
be able to see it in a special way not possible except through film -that is what it is all about.”
Kubrick had always been interested in films, and since he was nineteen
he’d been almost obsessed with them, spending five evenings a week at
the Museum of Modern Art looking at famous old movies, and weekends
looking at all the new ones. Kubrick recalls that PM, the long-gone New
York daily, would list every single movie in New York City in fourpoint type, and weekends he might even take the ferry to Staten Island
to catch something he’d missed.
Kubrick now believes that those trips, and particularly the long
screening sessions at the Museum of Modern Art, were the finest
training in directing he could have had. Paying extremely close
attention to a very few good films were of much greater value. Even the
poor films had their uses, encouraging Kubrick: “I’d keep seeing lousy
films and saying to myself, `I don’t know anything about moviemaking,
but I couldn’t do anything worse than this.’“
Kubrick still recommends FILM TECHNIQUE to anyone interested in films.
(contributed by H.N. from “The Cinema of Stanley Kubick” by Norman
Kagan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are the similarities between Kubrick and James Joyce?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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[James Joyce, who said he was “loonely in me loneness” at the end of
FINNEGANS WAKE, wasn’t quite alone]
-- Focus on human condition.
-- Focus on language (Joyce sees potential, Kubrick sees
problems);
-- Left their home country (Joyce to France, Kubrick to England);
-- Integrative art (compiling from wide variety of sources master
myths, then integrating these myths into super-myths which
encompass the others);
-- Desire for perfection (and time spent on crafting art);
-- Belief in Infinity, historical cycles, spiraling recurrence,
male/female principle, duality.
-- Use of puns.
-- Compression of several meanings into one; “portmanteau” word,
Joyce, “portmanteau” image, Kubrick.
-- Encoding meanings so that they reveal themselves only if
the proper decoding schema is used.
Joyce: FINNEGANS
cycle)
FINN
EGANS
WAKE
WAKE (idea of the birth/death/resurrection
= end
= again
= a) wake up
b) Irish death celebration
Kubrick: HAL = IBM
POE = a) Peace On Earth
b) Code to bring back planes
Date on picture in THE SHINING: July 4, 1921
-- Forcing reader to go beneath the surface to get meaning.
-- Joyce: ULYSSES
Kubrick: ODYSSEY
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some anagrams for Kubrick films?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Kudos to my friend Mike Weston for finding a great anagram server.
Mike found some startling anagrams for A SPACE ODYSSEY and STANLEY
KUBRICK. Here they are, with a few others.]
DR. STRANGELOVE
Dove Strangler
Regard Solvent
Sand Revert Log
Glad Verse Torn
Last Red Govern
Solve Dreg Rant
Grand Elves Rot
Grave Lord Sent
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
2001: Ye sad, cosy apes (M.W.)
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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Reagan O’clock Work
Cancer Goal OK Work
THE SHINING
Highest Inn
He Sign Hint
Then Nigh Is
And finally . . . .
STANLEY KUBRICK
I turn black keys (M.W.) (black = unseen?)
Art Cube Link Sky
A Blink Struck Ye (“Stargate” sequence in 2001)
By Clarke It Sunk
Ink Creak Subtly
Clarity Be Skunk
Subtle Yarn Kick
I Skulk By Trance
Cure Klan By Skit
Rickety Lab Sunk
Bleak Cry Knit Us
Those who want to look for more anagrams may go to the following server:
http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html
(BK./M.W.)
FILM-BY-FILM
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
[This part of the FAQ will be an in-depth analysis of each of Kubrick’s
films, with appropriate background information]
=======================================================================
DR. STRANGELOVE
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
=======================================================================
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some brief insights on DR. STRANGELOVE?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Removing a literary reference: The Bombs have the words “Dear
John” and “Hi There” scrawled on them. In George’s novelization, one
of the bombs is nicknamed “Lolita.”
(B.S.)
GENERAL
-- The B-52 interior was classified at the time of the film’s
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production. But apparently, Kubrick’s researches found a photo of the
interior published in a British aviation magazine, and the end result
was the extremely accurate set we see in the final film.
(B.S.)
-- Kubrick on game theory: “I started out being completely unfamiliar
with any of the professional literature in the field of nuclear
deterrence. I was at first very impressed with how subtle some of the
work was -- at least so it seemed starting out with just a primitive
concern for survival and a total lack of any ideas of my own.
Gradually I became aware of the almost wholly paradoxical nature of
deterrence or as it has been described, the Delicate Balance of
Terror. If you are weak, you may invite a first strike. If you are
becoming too strong, you may provoke a pre-emptive strike. If you try
to maintain the delicate balance, it’s almost impossible to do so
mainly because secrecy prevents you from knowing what the other side
is doing, and vice versa, ad infinitum . . .”
(submitted by B.S., quoting Alexander Walker)
-- Kubrick on game theory II: “Two men get on a train in different
cars -- they know the rules but they can’t communicate. And the game
is this: that if they both get off at the first station, man A gets
ten dollars and man B gets three dollars. If they both get off at the
second station, man B gets ten dollars and man A gets three dollars.
But if they don’t get off at the same station, in other words if they
get off differently, neither one of them gets anything. So here you
have a situation where you have mutual conflict and mutual interest
and great chances for misunderstanding, even under the circumstances
where one side was willing to give a little more than the other, or
than he was willing to take.”
(Ciment, p. 88)
For an article on THE PRISONERS’ DILEMMA (to which this example is
very closely related), get the IDEAS CD-ROM.
-- Kubrick on why DR. STRANGELOVE is a comedy: “As I tried to build
the detail for a scene I found myself tossing away what seemed to me
to be very truthful insights because I was afraid the audience would
laugh. After a few weeks of this I realized that these incongruous
bits of reality were closer to the truth than anything else I was
able to imagine. After all, what could be more absurd than the very
idea of two mega-powers willing to wipe out all human life because of
an accident, spiced up by political differences that will seem as
meaningless to people a hundred years from now as the theological
conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today?
And it was at this point I decided to treat the story as a
nightmare comedy. Following this approach, I found it never
interfered with presenting well-reasoned arguments. In culling the
incongruous, it seemed to me to be less stylized and more realistic
than any so-called serious, realistic treatment, which in fact is
more stylized than life itself by its careful exclusion of the banal,
the absurd, and the incongruous. In the context of impending world
destruction, hypocrisy, misunderstanding, lechery, paranoia,
ambition, euphemism, patriotism, heroism, and even reasonableness can
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evoke a grisly laugh.”
(Submitted by B.S., quoting Alexander Walker, p. 34, and Nelson, p.
81. This is actually a composite quote, the two sources juxtaposed)
VOYAGER LASERDISC -- DETAILS
-- Voyager-Criterion issued a remastered laserdisc of DR. STRANGELOVE
in 1992. This version was struck from Kubrick’s personal print of the
film (one generation removed from the original negative). The disc
jacket reads: “The film was shot using in-camera mattes with
alternating aspect ratios, between 1.66:1 and 1.33:1. A new digital
film-to-tape transfer was created using a 35mm duplicate negative and
35mm 3 track magnetic master.”
The different mattes for the film’s
probably best noticeable at the top
Major Kong puts on his Stetson hat.
bomb can be seen jumping “over” the
different aspect ratios are
of the frame, in the shots where
Also, as Kong rides the bomb, the
background matte plate.
The Criterion disc also includes a wealth of materials outlining
the civil-defense plans of the early 1960s, including still frames of
various pamphlets, the famous short “Duck and Cover,” and an early
“video” of George McCulvey’s “My Teenage Fallout Queen.” There is
also a British Film Board-approved trailer advertising Strangelove,
which -- unique for its day -- includes photos of Kubrick himself.
Best of all is an account of the film’s laser remastering, as well as
a frame-by-frame representation of an early STRANGELOVE script. The
cover of the Criterion disk was also designed by Kubrick.
An early draft of the script -- written by Kubrick, before Southern
was brought in -- can be read frame-by-frame on the Voyager-Criterion
laserdisc. In this early draft, the film is presented as a recovered
record found by aliens on a dead planet called Earth. (The opening
credits describe a “Micro-Galaxy-Meteor” logo with a squalling alien
head. Amusing, in light of the stylized MGM logo used in 2001.) This
script is clearly less than the final product; a great deal of the
final film’s better lines clearly came from Southern’s later
contributions, including General Ripper’s “bodily fluids” obsessions.
Although there is a character named Turgidson, a character named
“Buck” Schmuck gets most of what eventually wound up as Turgidson
dialogue. (Interesting note: in this early script, one General is
named “Toejam.” So is a Marine in FULL METAL JACKET.)
(B.S.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Just who WAS Dr. Strangelove, really?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Strangelove is such a potent character -- twisted, coldly rational, his
mechanical arm likely to spring into a SEIG HEIL at the slightest
provocation -- that many people have speculated on who Strangelove might
be “based” on.
At one point in the film, Turgidson asks if “Strangelove” is a “Kraut”
name. Stains, Muffley’s assistant, reports that it had been changed from
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“Merkwerdichliebe.” I checked the syllables against a German dictionary
back in high school, and came out with “strange-love” (merwerdichliebe).
Nelson reports that the name is actually “Merkwuerdigichliebe,” which
translates into “cherished fate.”
Several critics have found similarities to Strangelove in the character
Rotwang in Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS. Rotwang is a mad scientist with a
mechanical hand who brings down ruin on nearly everyone. Kubrick has
disavowed any intentional similarities.
But anyway, there are several major guesses as to who provided the basis
for Strangelove. The favorite seems to be Henry Kissinger, a former
Harvard professor who served as Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon
and Ford. At the time of STRANGELOVE’s production, Kissinger was at
Harvard, and had written at least two books on nuclear war by 1960. (One
was published by the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a Book-ofthe-Month selection.) In his books, Kissinger argued for various
“strategies,” including limited nuclear war, tactical nuclear weapons,
etc.
The case FOR Kissinger: he’s German by birth, and the accent is very
similar, which seems to be the main reason for linking Kissinger with
Strangelove. Kissinger’s subsequent career -- which journalist
Christopher Hitchens compared to the pathology of a serial killer -certainly matches Strangelove’s ruthlessness. (Suggested reading:
Seymour Hersh’s THE PRICE OF POWER.) And given Kissinger’s minor
prominence and Kubrick’s thorough research, one could argue it’s likely
that Kubrick thought of Kissinger.
The case AGAINST Kissinger: Frankly, he was far too obscure a figure to
be “parodied.” One would want to parody a widely-known personage, and at
the time, Kissinger was one of many theorists of the unthinkable.
The second favorite is clearly Werner von Braun, the former Nazi rocket
scientist who quickly turned his services (and those of his underlings)
to the U.S. after the war. In the Cold War, von Braun’s expertise in
rocketry was more important to the U.S. than prosecuting him for
administrating slave labor at Peenemunde and Nordhausen. His books were
written with a view to the future (I AIM FOR THE STARS), but it was a
theme in humor at the time to note Von Braun’s earlier work (cf. Tom
Lehrer’s song about him, Mort Sahl’s subtitle to his book “. . . but
Sometimes I Hit London.”)
The case FOR Von Braun: He was famous. He was German. He had been a
faithful Nazi. He promoted a self-image of coldly rational theorization
of pragmatic scientific realities, untempered by such human issues as
compassion, morals, or values.
The case AGAINST Von Braun: Very little, apart from the fact that he
wasn’t a nuclear scientist, nor a theorist of nuclear deterrence.
A third runner-up is Edward Teller, the Hungarian physicist who worked
on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, and whose theoretical work was
instrumental in developing the H-bomb. Teller was also willing to
denounce Robert Oppenheimer as a security risk, thus ensuring his
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reputation among liberals as a scoundrel. He was also the man who
convinced Ronald Reagan that the Strategic Defense Initiative was a
workable concept. Even historian William Manchester, in the Oppenheimer
passages in THE GLORY AND THE DREAM, said that, eventually, Teller would
be savagely parodied as DR. STRANGELOVE.
The case FOR Teller; His role in the Oppenheimer affair. His promotion
of the development of the H-bomb. His continued role in promoting
nuclear weapons development (he was the head of Lawrence Livermore labs
for many years). He had a foreign accent that, to an untrained ear,
might sound German.
The case AGAINST Teller; Teller was Hungarian, and FLED the Nazis when
they overran his country.
I think the best case can be made that Herman Kahn was the best source
for Strangelove. Kahn was one of the earliest employees at the RAND
corporation, which had been set by by Gen. “Hap” Arnold to study nuclear
war. According to THE WIZARDS OF ARMAGEDDON by Fred Kaplan, Kahn was
notable for developing the linguistic trick of referring to potential
casualties with the “only” word, as in “only two million killed.”
“Alluding almost casually to ‘only’ two million dead was part of the
image Kahn was fashioning himself, the living portrait of the ultimate
defense intellectual, cool and fearless, asking the questions everyone
else ignored, thinking about the unthinkable.” Indeed, his book ON
THERMONUCLEAR WAR (1960), SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN reviewed it as “a moral
tract on mass murder; how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away
with it, how to justify it.”
The case FOR Kahn: Dr. Strangelove himself refers to a study he
commissioned from the “Bland Corporation,” a clear play on Kahn’s old
haunts. The similarity to Kahn’s own ideas in Strangelove’s
pronouncements -- including the mine-shaft and ten-females-to-each-male
stuff -- is uncannily similar to Kahn’s brand of futurism. And since
Kahn was the most famous nuclear war theorist at the time, Kubrick must
have been thinking of his work.
The case AGAINST Kahn: Kahn, despite his name, was American-born, and
was never a Nazi. Kahn was once asked about STRANGELOVE, and his reply
was: “Dr. Strangelove would not have lasted three weeks at the
Pentagon.. he was too creative.”
My Best Guess is that Kubrick wanted to satirize the works of nuclear
intellectuals such as Herman Kahn. Kahn was clearly the most famous,
though it is not inconceivable that Kubrick was aware of Kissinger’s
work in the field. In order to give an extra spin on the ultrarational,
“pragmatic” pose, Kubrick added allusions to Von Braun’s Nazi past. The
wheelchair and the physical infirmities were added to give Strangelove a
bizarre, grotesque appearance. But personally, I believe that Herman
Kahn was the single greatest influence on the creation of Dr.
Strangelove.
(B.S.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is truth stranger than fiction?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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TIME Magazine’s cover story on their August 10, 1992 issue talked about
newly released data of the US Military’s “Doomsday Plan,” developed in
the 1950s in the event of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It seems
that last-case scenario plans dealing with nuclear war were not only
designed: several times, the White House came dangerously close to
giving the “go” to activate them. The Soviets had a similar plan, of
course.
Sounds like the stuff of nightmares, doesn’t it?
What’s especially ironic about this newly declassified “doomsday
blueprint” is how it was predicted so accurately, 28 years ago, in
Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND
LOVE THE BOMB. Thinking about this subject gave me an urge to turn on
the TV and watch this Cold War masterpiece one more time.
Don’t forget that even though the Cold War is fading behind us, the
threat of nuclear destruction has not ended. There are still thousands
of nuclear warheads in existence, carefully aimed at almost every spot
on Earth. What would happen if a situation arose where someone, perhaps
someone insane, actually took action to start a nuclear war?
The possibilities make DR. STRANGELOVE less outlandish and more
realistic . . . The TIME article never mentions DR. STRANGELOVE -- but
nonetheless there are similarities between it and the movie. . .
In the movie, the nuclear survival plan made sure to include the top
military and political leaders of the country -- after all, they
certainly didn’t want to suffer the consequences of their own mistake.
In real life, a huge “Underground Pentagon” was built to shelter the
members of Congress, and the top military leaders of the armed forces
too.
In DR. STRANGELOVE, the disaster comes through implementation of an
insane idea called “Plan R.” (“R for Romeo” -- sex, sex, sex!) Well, it
turned out that the real-life Underground Pentagon was called “Site R!”
In the movie, the generals talk about running the country even though
the world is coming to an end. In real life, every federal agency was
given a plan on how to survive even after a nuclear attack.
In the movie, there was the Big Board that monitored the entire country,
and the Soviet Union too. In real life, there was the Bomb Alarm board,
dotted with hundreds of lights that would flash on to indicate the sites
of nuclear explosions.
About the only thing the real-life Doomsday Plan doesn’t have that DR.
STRANGELOVE did was the sex. Or does it? Apparently the real-life plan - which was called “Plan D” -- makes sure that the inventory of the
underground Presidential bomb shelter included birth-control pills: “not
because of any anticipated sexual activity but so that female officials
would not have to interrupt their pill-taking cycles.”
The article doesn’t say why female officials were taking these pills in
the first place.
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“Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!”
(M.M.)
[Here are excerpts from the August 10 article [by Ted Gup]):
Outpost Mission was but a fragment of a vast and secret doomsday plan
devised by senior U.S. officials who spent their lives preparing for the
unthinkable -- nuclear war. Their mission: to ensure the survival of the
U.S. government, preserve order and salvage the economy in the aftermath
of an atomic attack. Still others were charged with rescuing the
nation’s cultural heritage, from the Declaration of Independence to the
priceless masterpieces of the National Gallery of Art. Now, with the end
of the cold war, many doomsday operatives are breaking their silence for
the first time. Confronted with the potential horrors of atomic warfare,
they drafted detailed contingency plans and regulations that, while
trying to save constitutional government, would have radically
transformed the nation’s political and social institutions.
What they envisioned was an America darkened not only by nuclear war but
also by the imposition of martial law, food rationing, censorship and
the suspension of many civil liberties. “We would have to run this
country as one big camp -- severely regimented,” Eisenhower told
advisers in a top-secret memo dated 1955. Nor is it a matter only of
remote historical interest. Many of those doomsday regulations would
still be put into effect after a nuclear attack, and while preparations
for rescuing the nation’s leaders and cultural treasures remain in
place, efforts to shield the civilian population were virtually
abandoned decades ago. . . .
Senior Washington officials received an emergency telephone number that
bypassed the commercial system and linked them directly to crisis
operators, who understood that if the caller uttered the single code
word -- FLASH -- it meant the call was “essential to national survival.”
Never out of the President’s reach were the Presidential Emergency
Action Documents and “Plan D,” his options for responding to a surprise
nuclear attack.
The doomsday plans took shape during the Eisenhower Administration,
spawning an entire bureaucracy and a web of government relocation sites
situated around the capital in what became known as the Federal Arc.
Each year the government conducted elaborate exercises in which
thousands of officials relocated in mock nuclear attacks. Eisenhower and
his Cabinet convened at Raven Rock, the 265,000-sq.-ft. “Underground
Pentagon” near Gettysburg, Pa., code-named “Site R,” or at Mount
Weather, a bunker near Berryville, Va., code-named “High Point” (see
“Doomsday Hideaway,” TIME, Dec. 9, 1991). Airborne command posts and
reinforced communications ships stood by to receive the Commander in
Chief and his advisers. Congress had its own top-secret relocation
center buried beneath the Greenbrier, a five-star resort in White
Sulphur Springs, W. Va. Outfitted with its own Senate and House
chambers, as well as a vast hall for joint sessions, the facility was
code-named “Casper,” and only half a dozen members of Congress knew it
existed. . . .
Few men have a more intimate understanding of the doomsday scenario than
Bernard T. Gallagher. Known to his friends as Bud, he was a Strategic
Air Command pilot and served as director of Mount Weather for 25 years,
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until his retirement last March. A robust 70 years old, he wears a white
cowboy hat . . . and is an unabashed patriot. As an “atomic-cloud
sampler,” he flew through the billowing mushrooms of 13 U.S. nuclear
blasts in 1952 and 1953. To measure the radiation passing through him,
he swallowed an X-ray plate coated with Vaseline and suspended by a
string that hung out of his mouth during the flight. . . .
Though Gallagher has spent his life preparing for nuclear war, he has
few illusions about what it would mean. “Through the years, we always
reacted like we could handle an all-out nuclear attack,” he says. “I
don’t think people -- even our top people in government -- have any idea
of what a thousand multimegaton nuclear weapons on the U.S. would do.
We’d be back in the Stone Age. It’s unthinkable.”
Buried within a mountain of superhard greenstone, the 200,000-sq.-ft.
Mount Weather has been a primary relocation site for the Cabinet and
cadres of federal employees -- and was long a primary haven for the
President. . . . Before they could be admitted past the facility’s 6ft.-thick steel “blast gate,” officials would have to show their special
ID cards. . . .
Mount Weather could hold two, even three times as many people as there
were bunks -- several thousand in all. . . . So complete is the site’s
inventory that it now includes birth-control pills -- not because of any
anticipated sexual activity but so that female officials would not have
to interrupt their pill-taking cycles. . . .
In a White House vault were Eisenhower’s standby crisis orders, already
initialed by the President, including some that would have imposed
martial law. . . .
As a soldier, Ike had few illusions about the doomsday plans. A “secret”
White House memo dated 1956 records his rebuke when a Cabinet Secretary
noted that 450 people were evacuated “rather smoothly” during an
exercise. Eisenhower “reminded the Cabinet that in a real situation,
these will not be normal people -- they will be scared, will be
hysterical, will be `absolutely nuts.’ We are going to have to be
prepared to operate with people who are `nuts.’. . . He feared anarchy.
“Government which goes on with some kind of continuity will be like a
one-eyed man in the land of the blind,” the White House memo concluded.
. . .
U.S. doomsday strategists also coordinated their relocation and postattack production plans with private industry considered vital to
national survival. In April 1970, for example, White House emergency
planners joined Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey executives in a mock
nuclear war exercise. Standard Oil’s senior management withdrew to its
emergency operating center, buried 300 ft. below the ground at what was
once called Iron Mountain Atomic Storage, near Hudson, N.Y. . . .
Company officials balked when it appeared the government might take over
the firm in wartime. . . .
There were also elaborate plans for a national censorship office called
the Wartime Information Security Program, or WISP (as in whisper). A CBS
vice president, the late Theodore F. Koop, had agreed to be the standby
national censor, and about 40 civilian executives had consented to work
as the unit’s staff in wartime. A 1965 internal government memo notes
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that censorship manuals and regulations had been stockpiled, and a fully
equipped communications center was established outside Washington. Press
reports in 1970 exposed the existence of a standby national censor and
led to the formal dissolution of the censorship unit, but its duties
were discreetly reassigned to yet another part of what an internal memo
refers to as the “shadow” government. . . .
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S.’s doomsday planners are
engaged in a sweeping reassessment of crisis scenarios. The old
relocation centers are under review. Some are to be mothballed, others
converted to more mundane uses: record storage and office space.
Contingency plans and dusty crisis regulations are being re-examined.
Having outlived its enemy and its original mission, the doomsday
bureaucracy faces a more immediate threat -- irrelevance. But as the
last members of the original generation of doomsday planners step down,
they do so with cautionary words: the Soviet Union may be history, but
new dangers abound -- nuclear proliferation, the resurgence of
nationalism and the threat of terrorism. “You shouldn’t shut the damn
door yet,” warns Mount Weather’s first director, Leo Bourassa. Bud
Gallagher, his successor, prefers to cite Plato: “Only the dead have
seen the end of war.”
=======================================================================
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
=======================================================================
When the moon is in the seventh house,
and Jupiter aligns with Mars;
then peace will guide the planets,
and love will steer the stars.
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius . . .
-- Ragni and Rado, HAIR (1966)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some themes that seem to be present in 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Death
Infinity
Religion
Knowledge
God
Banality
Recurrence
Resurrection
Awe
Isolation
Cold
Violence
Determinism
Food
Innocence
Old Age vs. Childhood
Master plan
David vs. Goliath
“They’re ready/not ready.”
Cover Stories
Reason vs. Emotion
Artificial displacing the real
Creation of the universe
Development: cocoon to butterfly
Systems out of control
Human vs. Machine
Competition vs. Cooperation
Birthdays
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Odyssey (journey)
The Tool
Depth vs. Surface
Earth vs. Outer Space
Karma
Reincarnation
Road to Heaven paved with bad intentions
“What goes up must come down”
Phenomenon X is frequently instantiated in different forms
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
=======================================================================
Few films weave together so many master themes, and few do the weaving
so SUBTLY.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What is the difference between metaphorical and literal
interpretation, and what does it have to do with 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------As a kid, you read THE FOX AND THE GRAPES. Initially, you may have
thought that once upon a time there was a Greek-speaking fox who had his
mind read by a psychic named Aesop, but later, you learned that this
“fable” helped to explain YOUR (not the Fox’s) (possibly irrational)
behavior: “Hey, this reminds me of the time when I wanted to go to
Disney World, Dad said I couldn’t, so I thought ‘Aah, I’d rather go to
Six Flags anyway. The Fox is lying to himself; maybe I’m lying to
myself.” As you grew up, you learned over time not to take fables as
literal truths, but rather, as more PROFOUND truths -- metaphorical
truths, truths which cut across a wide variety of situations -- truths
which gave you a compass, gave you feedback in getting through and
understanding the world. Ultimately, these “fables,” formerly seen as
“kid stuff,” turned out to be valuable in helping you see the world more
clearly.
Metaphorical truth isn’t “less truthful” -- it’s more truthful, because
it covers more situations than just the immediate fact-pattern. This
universality gives the parable and the myth power. The 2 + 2 = 4 of
morality, ethics, and drama are played out on the metaphorical level,
unlike the 2 + 2 = 4 of math, which is pedantically and hopelessly
literal. You might even say that the line which divides the literal from
the metaphorical is the same one which divides Science from Art. Art is
the Navigator, Science the Engineer; both necessary for the journey.
Kubrick’s style can fool us. He spends a great deal of time creating
a plausible literal base for his films; consequently, even those who are
unable to find any meanings other than literal will find something to
like in a Kubrick film. However, this attention to detail can create the
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illusion that Kubrick’s films are documentaries, and can put a person in
the same frame of mind they are in when reading a newspaper. But this
isn’t necessarily the right frame of mind for getting out of Kubrick’s
films all the meanings they “contain.”
When seeing 2001, people sometimes focus on the literal anomalies which
arise. Specifically, many people ask “how could Bowman survive in the
airlock without a helmet?” Curiously, these people don’t ask, “how can
an embryo fly through outer space in subzero temperatures with no
umbilical cord?” or “how can a baby be born without a father and
mother?” A simple explanation is that in these latter cases there is no
literal frame that lulls you into the literal frame of mind, unlike the
former.
The answer is simple: the literal level is just a set of trainingwheels, the first rung on the ladder. To really make the bicycle fly,
you’ll need to lose those training wheels . . .
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is 2001 “too slow”?
----------------------------------------------------------------------A new video basically takes 2001’s imagery and squishes most of its
narrative arc into 5 minutes . . .
If anything, the video demonstrates -- by contrast -- that the real
power of 2001 lies in its slow but hypnotic pacing . . . when very
little is happening overtly, even the slightest motions or actions
assume much greater significance. The “slowness” of 2001 “trains” the
viewer to watch hypervigilantly, in effect creates a new attention span
for the viewer for the duration of the film . . .
(J.K.)
The denser the information source, the slower the pace required to
“read” the information. We miss details that fly by.
Also, pace creates MOOD.
(B.K.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What did Kubrick have to say about what 2001 “means”?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[The following is excerpted from a PLAYBOY interview with Kubrick]
PLAYBOY: Much of the controversy surrounding 2001 deals with the
meaning of the metaphysical symbols that abound in the film -- the
polished black monoliths, the orbital conjunction of Earth, Moon and
sun at each stage of the monoliths’ intervention in human destiny, the
stunning final kaleidoscopic maelstrom of time and space that engulfs
the surviving astronaut and sets the stage for his rebirth as a “starchild” drifting toward Earth in a translucent placenta. One critic even
called 2001 “the first Nietzschean film,” contending that its essential
theme is Nietzsche’s concept of man’s evolution from ape to human to
superman. What was the metaphysical message of 2001?
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KUBRICK: It’s not a message that I ever intend to convey in words. 2001
is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film,
there are only a little less than 40 minutes of dialog. 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 philosophical 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 in 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 fibers of one’s being.
PLAYBOY: Without laying out a philosophical road map for the viewer,
can you tell us your own interpretation of the meaning of the film?
KUBRICK: No, for the reasons I’ve already given. How much would we
appreciate LA GIOCONDA today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of
the canvas: “This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotten
teeth” -- or “because she’s hiding a secret from her lover.” It would
shut off the viewer’s appreciation and shackle him to a “reality” other
than his own. I don’t want that to happen to 2001.
PLAYBOY: Arthur Clarke has said of the film, “If anyone understands it
on the first viewing, we’ve failed in our intention.” Why should the
viewer have to see a film twice to get its message?
KUBRICK: I don’t agree with that statement of Arthur’s, and I believe
he made it facetiously. The very nature of the visual experience in
2001 is to give the viewer an instantaneous, visceral reaction that
does not -- and should not -- require further amplification. Just
speaking generally, however, I would say that there are elements in any
good film that would increase the viewer’s interest and appreciation on
a second viewing; the momentum of a movie often prevents every
stimulating detail or nuance from having a full impact the first time
it’s seen. The whole idea that a movie should be seen only once is an
extension of our traditional conception of the film as an ephemeral
entertainment rather than as a visual work of art. We don’t believe
that we should hear a great piece of music only once, or see a great
painting once, or even read a great book just once. But the film has
until recent years been exempted from the category of art -- a
situation I’m glad is finally changing.
PLAYBOY: Some prominent critics -- including Renata Adler of The New
York Times, John Simon of The New Leader, Judith Crist of New York
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magazine and Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice -- apparently felt that
2001 should be among those films still exempted from the category of
art; all four castigated it as dull, pretentious and overlong. [KAEL:
‘It’s a monumentally unimaginative movie’; ADLER: ‘Incredibly boring’;
SARRIS: ‘A disaster’ || from Ciment, p. 43 -- B.K.] How do you account
for their hostility?
KUBRICK: The four critics you mention all work for New York
publications. The reviews across America and around the world have been
95 percent enthusiastic. Some were more perceptive than others, of
course, but even those who praised the film on relatively superficial
grounds were able to get something of its message. New York was the
only really hostile city. Perhaps there is a certain element of the
lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and materialist and
Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad
mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema. But film critics,
fortunately, rarely have any effect on the general public; houses
everywhere are packed and the film is well on its way to becoming the
greatest moneymaker in M-G-M’s history. Perhaps this sounds like a
crass way to evaluate one’s work, but I think that, especially with a
film that is so obviously different, record audience attendance means
people are saying the right things to one another after they see it -and isn’t this really what it’s all about?
PLAYBOY: Speaking of what it’s all about -- if you’ll allow us to
return to the philosophical interpretation of 2001 -- would you agree
with those critics who call it a profoundly religious film?
KUBRICK: I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but
not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don’t believe in
any of Earth’s monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can
construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept
the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy
alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are
approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given
a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a
few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the
interaction of a sun’s energy on the planet’s chemicals, it’s fairly
certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It’s
reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of
such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some
proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun
is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic
age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the
universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man
but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still
where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of
us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made
in a few millennia -- less than a microsecond in the chronology of the
universe -- can you imagine the evolutionary development that much
older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological
species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal
machine entities -- and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge
from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and
spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence
ungraspable by humans.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What did Kubrick say is the plot of 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------I found a book called FILM DIRECTOR AS SUPERSTAR which has interviews
with many directors including the one, the only, Stanley Kubrick. It was
published after 2001, when Kubrick still thought his next film would be
NAPOLEON (it even lists it in his filmography). But there is plenty of
good stuff on 2001 and DR. STRANGELOVE. . . . The interview in this book
has Kubrick himself answering the question “What is the plot of 2001?”.
. . . I strongly suggest you check the book out for the rest of the
great information (among other things, Kubrick discusses the God concept
in 2001 and why he decided to make STRANGELOVE a comedy).
The book, BTW, is by Joseph Gelmis and was published by Doubleday and
Company; Garden City, New York. Copyright 1970.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------GELMIS: The final scenes of the film seemed more metaphorical than
realistic. Will you discuss them -- or would that be part of the “road
map” you’re trying to avoid?
KUBRICK: No, I don’t mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is,
straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left
on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who
observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to
influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second
artifact buried on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of
man’s first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar
alarm. And finally there’s a third artifact placed in orbit around
Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of
his own solar system.
When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this
artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a
journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to
another part of the galaxy, where he’s placed in a human zoo
approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn from his own
dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle
age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, an angel, a
superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap
forward of man’s evolutionary destiny.
That is what happens on the film’s simplest level. Since an encounter
with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible
within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will
have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with
the bare plot outline.
GELMIS: What are those areas of meaning?
KUBRICK: They are areas I prefer not to discuss because they are highly
subjective and will differ from viewer to viewer. In this sense, the
film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the
emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it
stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings
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and impulses, then it has succeeded.
(submitted by H.N.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some brief insights on 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------DAWN OF MAN
-- Opening of film dovetails neatly with end of DR. STRANGELOVE: “We’ll
meet again, some sunny day . . .” First image in film is of the Sun.
-- DAWN OF MAN sequence in 2001 a “prequel” to DR. STRANGELOVE.
Obviously, Kubrick pondered deeply the astonishing reality that idea
that man was smart enough to blow up the earth, but not smart enough
to stop that from happening (man doesn’t want to nail himself, but he
does). How could such a phenomenon occur? Beginning of 2001 attempts
to show how we got fooled into heading down the wrong path. Story of
man told in actions of the simians.
-- “If there’s a World War III, World War IV will be fought with
sticks and stones.” Bombing ourselves back into the Stone Age.
-- Sun not just light, but heat (a desert).
Sun is positive in relation to dark, but
negative, water = positive. Messages: a)
Water to survive -- objectivity -- avoid
integration. White = evil, black = evil,
+ negative = a positive).
Sun not necessarily good!
not to desert. There, sun =
relativity; b) need Sun AND
dissection, look for
together = good (negative
-- Leopard kills Zebra. (Zebra = coexistence of black and white?)
-- Opening of film a twist on GARDEN OF EDEN myth. The “Garden” turned
out to be a desert, and it turns out Adam was a chimp. Adam’s rib
isn’t his, it’s from a dead animal. He doesn’t create a woman with
it, he kills with it. The Tree of Knowledge is inanimate. The Apple
eaten: meat? steel?
-- Why the twist? Earth not a garden to lose, but a desert to irrigate
and make a garden. We didn’t lose Paradise, we failed to work for
it.
-- First discovery of Monolith: everything out in the open, can’t miss
it, can’t hide. Has to be, for the apes. Has to be obvious to
be seen. Second discovery of Monolith: truth is below the surface,
have to dig for it. Still can’t hide (from HAL), but now
you’re shut in (in a loop: Poole shadowboxing around periphery,
space station circular like a Ferris Wheel -- loop = lack of
progress, going around in circles).
-- Kubrick reverses typical semiotic code: black here can be good
(monolith = knowledge, or black = the stage, the platform, open
possibilities, hole to jump through), white can be death, evil
(bones, sterility, cold, clean = lack of diversity).
-- Merging of the literal and metaphorical: Man both a literal and
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metaphorical chimp. Even though the answer is right in front of
us, we miss it. Once the obvious is discovered, we’re on our way.
-- Bone right there in full view. Don’t have to dig to find it. You
do, however, need to de-anchor the bone from its old frame of
bone-as-STRUCTURAL DEVICE and re-anchor to bone-as-WEAPON. That’s
something. Note: if “necessity is the mother of invention,”
(father?), then a primal impulse provided the intellectual
energy needed to make the shift (the same combination that leads
to development of the atomic bomb [cf. later match cut]).
-- Bone is discovered when the chimp is cut off from the group. When in
a group, listening to the music of the spheres. Alone, coming up with
bad ideas (compare Jack’s writings in THE SHINING, Ripper’s plan in
DR. STRANGELOVE). “Bad” because not thought through (since not
discussed with others; no feedback).
-- Chimp at first seems harmless. He’s “playing” (beginning of
creativity?). But he’s playing with fire. It’s not just that he’s
beating some old bones apart that inspires dread; but the knowledge
of what this will lead to down (“up”) the road. (Technical knowledge
+ impulse without correlative long-term view).
-- “Dawn of Man” music plays while chimp is playing with bone. Now the
“dawning” is the dawning of consciousness (the movement from
unconscious to conscious, night to day, is mirrored in the movement
of chimp to man [ignorance to knowledge]). Note that as Kubrick
films the scene, it only “dawns on” the chimp that he CAN use the
tool to destroy. What doesn’t yet dawn on the chimp is why he
SHOULDN’T (the “is” precedes the “ought”; technical knowledge comes
easier than moral knowledge). The chimp is only smart enough to
discern the obvious.
-- Existence of the bone guarantees that chimps must now divide into
separate, rival groups: must split apart for “survival” (even
though the splitting-apart leads to DR. STRANGELOVE scenarios).
In case it wasn’t clear before, it is now: bone = death in more
ways than one.
-- Apes by water -- you’d think they’d cooperate, start agriculture.
Instead, they fight over it. Don’t think about future retaliation.
-- The man-apes were given the use of tools by the Monolith, but
they learn to kill other man-apes AFTER the Monolith has
disappeared.
(M.M.)
-- Pro-MoonWatcher (as bone-wielder): he went first; took risk.
Con-MoonWatcher (as bone-wielder): he was the chimp who steered us up
the wrong path.
-- Is the chimp who touched the Monolith the same one who wielded the
bone? Maybe the chimp who touched the Monolith is the one who
got killed by the bone (echoes of Christianity).
-- Monolith points up and down, not left and right. Vertical orientation
(go deep and high, not sideways).
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-- Abstraction = high (in the clouds) = confusion. Concrete (desert
looks like) = clarity (landscape, bare terrain).
-- The bone goes UP. UP = “progress”? (But “what goes up must come
down”). Watch for the precise moment when Kubrick cuts from bone
to satellite, and focus on the directional motion of the bone.
DAY OF MAN
Space Station/Moon
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-- The switch from Richard Strauss to Johann Strauss (on the downbeat
of the bone) is a marvelous pun, and makes me think of the dance
tunes with which the Convalescent in Zarathustra celebrates his
“invalidity.”
(G.A.)
-- Stewardess returns Floyd’s pen (“the pen is mightier than the
sword”). Moonwatcher’s bone comes back (theme of circularity -boomerang -- karma -- what goes out comes back in [see also
THE SHINING -- throw ball against the wall, it comes back]). Note
that here this “coming back” is not obvious; the tool changes form.
Bone then, pen now. This shift in form hides what’s really
going on. Have to see below surface to get closer to “reality.”
-- Design of spaceships: organic form, inorganic materials = fusion
of organic with inorganic.
-- Banality of dialogue matches quality of food. “Garbage in, garbage
out.”
-- Hypothesis: World finally achieved cooperation (Russians together
with Americans on space station), and was given their reward.
-- Floyd’s conversation with daughter: he does not say “I love you”
at the end.
(M.C.)
-- Floyd’s daughter says “yes” repeatedly, much like Molly Bloom
on the final page of Joyce’s ULYSSES.
-- Floyd’s daughter: Mommy’s gone shopping, Daddy’s at work,
the babysitter/sister is in the bathroom. And what does she
want for a birthday present? 1) A telephone (even though they
have “lots of telephones,” according to Floyd). To this Floyd says
“no”. 2) A pet (e.g. a “bushbaby” [bush + baby = return to roots +
return to roots]. To this Floyd says “we’ll have to see about that”
(i.e “no”?). But maybe only one of them sees.
The parent-celebrating-child’s-birthday-electronically theme
is seen from the other point of view later on, when Poole is
similarly congratulated. (The parent’s “Happy Birthday” song
in that scene foreshadows HAL’s later “Daisy Daisy.”) [Note
that with his sunglasses on (indoors, so doubly shielded from
the sun) Poole sees even less than Floyd. “18 months” (two
26
The Kubrick Faq
birth-cycles [generations?] later, the Child is more removed
than the Parent. Apparently, we’ve learned well.
-- There is, implicit in the idea that an American child in a future
society could ask for a bushbaby as a birthday present, a notion of
`human technological triumph over nature’ . . .
(C.C.)
-- Floyd is “missing the party.”
-- Floyd’s speech: he and the person introducing him “go around
in circles.”
-- “You know, that was an excellent speech you gave us, Heywood. . .
I’m sure it beefed up morale a helluva lot.”
Here are five statements Floyd made in that speech:
1) The cover story of an epidemic might cause concern and
anxiety to relatives and friends.
2) Floyd found the cover story “personally embarassing.”
3) The truth could not be presented to the public without
adequate “conditioning” of said public.
4) The cover story would be maintained “as long as deemed
necessary by the Council.”
5) “Formal security oaths” would be obtained in writing from
“everyone who has any knowledge of the event,” including
the scientist complimenting Floyd.
-- On the ceiling, aimed at Floyd’s audience, are cameras.
-- On one of the ship’s readout screens, the phrase “TERM DIAG.”
“Terminal diagnosis”?
-- Floyd and his companions to the moon are lit as though the
blood was drained out of their bodies.
-- “Well, how about a little coffee?” Coffee is the beverage that
wakes you up after you’ve been dozing.
-- The sun is not shown striking the monolith when the astronauts are
near it.
(G.A.)
-- At the TMA-1 site, as the handheld camera is following Floyd
around, you can catch a glimpse of Kubrick, holding the camera and
looking in the viewfinder, reflected in Floyd’s visor. Kubrick gets
to “shoot” Floyd and “expose” him at the same time. Now let’s see
what develops . . .
(B.T./B.K.)
Discovery 1
27
The Kubrick Faq
^^^^^^^^^^^
-- There is no ceiling and no floor, because the room is always
turning.
(M.M.)
-- Astronaut food looks like baby food.
-- Note: food is getting blander and blander, from the savage (eating
raw flesh) to the bland (indistinguishable sandwiches) to the
ridiculous (paste), reflecting the personality of its consumers.
Interior life revealed by exterior life, or “you are what you eat.”
-- Bowman burns fingers; a sign, like the zero-g toilet, that a closed
design process inevitably leads to “bugs.” He got “burned.”
-- HAL wins the chess game (beats Poole). HAL will always win in a
closed, finite system. In an open system, humanity can prevail; that
is, IF humans have retained their humanity -- and if they make sure
the system remains open.
-- While watching his parents on TV, Poole is as horizontal as the
mummies which flank him, other than a slight elevation of the head.
-- Poole jogging: hamster in the exercise wheel.
(P.B., p. 121)
-- HAL: “I’m sorry, Frank, but I think you missed it.”
(P.B., p. 144)
-- DAVID (David vs. Goliath) BOWMAN (Ulysses was an archer). Bowman
kills the Cyclops (HAL has one eye [tunnel-vision? Seeing only at
one level? Only seeing one interpretation as legitimate?]).
-- HAL’s view is, literally, “warped.”
-- HAL: “There can be no question about it.” HAL a) has no doubts, and
b) has no doubt that his lack of doubt is unproblematic (he’s
“incapable of error”).
-- HAL’s birthday: “The 12th of January, 1992.” 12 + 1 (January) +
21 (1 + 9 + 9 + 2) = 12121. A palindrome. The same thing forwards
as backwards. Symmetry. (CHECK THIS DATE -- BDAY MAY BE 1991 -- BK)
-- Bowman draws (“back to the drawing board”). His drawing is of
almost childlike simplicity. Simple to us, but for him, in
his culture, a “great leap for(back)ward.” This is irony so
subtle it’s gasping for air.
-- Man must return to childhood to become a superman. Bowman =
“boy-man.” (M.W.)
-- Astronauts in closed pod attempt to beat HAL at his own game -- and
they fail.
-- HAL knew what was on Jupiter. Wanted to fight to receive the honor.
The human spirit beat the mechanical “spirit.”
-- HAL made a mistake, and that’s what made him “human.” (Kubrick
proves computer erred by contrasting the Space HAL’s answer with
28
The Kubrick Faq
the Earth HAL’s answer. One of them had to be wrong). (Also: HAL’s
ingenuity at reading lips, curiousity at seeing Bowman’s picture).
DUSK OF MAN
-- Hibernating astronauts: the reduction to absuridity (reduction ad
absurdum) of man in 2001. The only thing separating these people from
death is the shape of a line on a graph!
-- Hibernating astronauts: sleep becomes death with a machine at the
helm.
-- Pod turning to murder = machines “turning on” man.
-- Careening pod: HAL throwing away the murder weapon.
(G.A.)
(P.B., p. 128)
-- Everyman/Hero leaves spacecraft to save his companion; goes out to
take the risk, so impulsively that he leaves his helmet behind
(also, error, trust). Does something “stupid” that we “rational”
people would not do. Has faith in himself and his fellow man.
Ultimately, conquers obstacle. This entitles him to receive insight.
-- The tiny pod holding up Frank’s body like Mary in the Pieta, and
the giant ship Discovery just sitting there in space like some giant
God who isn’t appeased by Dave’s offering. Really cool.
(A.F.)
-- Bowman has to let go of death for life.
( M.W.)
-- Bowman has to go outside the system to break into it. It is only
when Bowman is outside the system that the system reveals itself
to him. (The word “RAD” flashes on the screen as Bowman goes to
save Poole).
-- Bowman achieves his cosmic destiny by regaining the violence, the
anger, which his numbed colleagues seem to have abandoned.
(P.B., p. 145)
-- 2001 “breaks” at the literal level here: HAL could have killed
Bowman quickly by depressurizing Discovery; Bowman wouldn’t have
had time to put his suit on. Notice the quick cut from tube
to ship, Bowman suited. This breakage may have been intentional, as
if to say,”in the REAL world, you may not be so lucky.” (ala DR.
STRANGELOVE).
-- Bowman blown into the tube: this subliminally echoes our most primal
memory -- leaving a safe, warm environment to be blown out into a
hostile one. Here, however, Bowman wills his own birth by flipping
the switches that will explode him into a very frightening situation.
(This contrasts with an earlier image of Bowman emerging from the
pod to retrieve the AE-35 unit, safely suited, slowly emerging).
-- Inside HAL’s brain: red.
-- HAL’s brain: tiny monoliths (many, broken up, not unified). When HAL
29
The Kubrick Faq
loses the Monoliths, he dies.
-- In disconnecting HAL, Bowman, in essence (on behalf of humanity),
‘lays down the bone’ (sort of like putting aside one’s sidearm when
entering a temple) before passing through the Stargate . . .
(G.A.)
NIGHT OF MAN
-- As the Jupiter monolith (the crossbar of the “crucifix”) turns
edge-wise from the light, it becomes invisible. (G.A.) [Note that
the logical progression from surface to depth is invisibility: can’t
“see” it at all, even if you’ve dig for it and hit it]
-- Journey through Infinite: He’s being fed all the knowledge of the
Universe -- and he can barely take it (trembling, almost shattered).
-- That psychedelically colored, blinking, astounded eye of Bowman’s,
so much in contrast to the eye of HAL . . .
(G.A.)
-- 18th Century decor at end: must go backward to go forward? We took
the wrong turn back in the 18th century (pre-Industrial
Revolution), so now we have to backtrack to get back to the
right fork? (Compare myth of THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR. Goes
into the maze, but carries a thread with him so he can go back
in case he takes a wrong turn; compare that myth with the end of
THE SHINING).
-- “Charge: $1.70”: 170 first three digits of 1700 (beginning of
18th Century).
-- By volunteering for the mission, Dave Bowman risks going to Jupiter
and losing all human contact -- which is exactly what happens.
(J.B)
-- The room is a cage. The room is a cradle. (C.P.)
-- 18th Century decor: that move in the 18th Century was the one that
nearly got us checkmated in the 20th -- well worth analyzing.
-- At first, Bowman wears the suit. But once he learns he doesn’t
need it, he sheds it.
-- The Last Supper: finally, the food looks good!
-- Four times monolith appears:
-----
When
When
When
When
ape-man learns to use bone as tool.
astronauts on moon examine monolith.
Bowman approaches Jupiter.
Bowman is reborn.
(J.A., p. 290)
-- Shape of monolith: a piece of the puzzle -- you only see a little
knowledge at a time -- just enough to get you to the next level.
30
The Kubrick Faq
-- Shape of monolith: a brick (building material).
-- Shape of monolith: a tablet (e.g. Ten Commandments).
(P.G)
-- Shape of monolith: a door.
-- William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
-- Confucius: “The way out is through the door.”
(J.A., p. 289)
-- “Alien noises” in the background: “alien” may refer to alien
CONCEPTS.
-- 1 Corinthians 14:10 -- “There are, it may be, so many kinds of
voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.”
-- If you concatenate the three images where the Monolith has been
touched (by Moonwatcher, Floyd, and [almost] by Bowman, I think the
meaning of the rhyme becomes clear -- the young apeman, the
middle-aged astronaut, and the dying man (the ancient, immanent
father of the Starchild) are a portrait of the human race in the
metaphor of a personal life -- which makes the image of the Starchild
itself almost like a massive musical chord, the necessary resolution
of it all.
(G.A.)
-- End of film: twist on the VIRGIN BIRTH myth. Here, not only
no Father, but no Mother.
-- The human race ends at the end of 2001. Just as it begins at the
beginning. The Starchild is not human.
(G.A.)
-- The film ends when all relevant events that might be recorded by the
eye or film have ended.
(J.Z.)
-- REVELATION 10:4 -- “And when the seven thunders had uttered their
voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying
unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and
write them not.”
-- “Progression” of man; close to earth to away from earth (Myth
of ANTAEUS). At end of film Starchild is “coming back to Earth”?
Has to leave Earth to understand why must go back to Earth (going
backward to go forward). This reverses the direction of the film
up to this point, from leaving roots to returning to them. “Absence
makes the heart grow fonder.”
-- MATTHEW 18:
“At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
31
The Kubrick Faq
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst
of them,
And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become
as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth
me.
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in
me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his
neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. . . .
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee:
it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than
having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say
unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my
Father which is in heaven.
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. . . .”
-- The feeling that, post-Starchild, Floyd will be right there in the
thick of it, holding his daughter high above his head as she turns
seven.
CONGRUENCE
-- INDIRECT COMMUNICATION
-- When Human touches Monolith the second time, he touches
through a coating. Now secondhand, not direct.
-- HAL: Artificial intelligence.
-- HAL/IBM connection.
-- Banal dialogue.
-- “I’m really not at liberty to discuss this.”
-- Talking to daughter and parents through screen.
-- Lip-reading.
-- EYES
------
Leopard
HAL
Pod
Bowman
Starchild
-- LYING
-- Cover story on base.
-- Astronauts not told purpose of mission.
-- Hal lies to astronauts.
32
The Kubrick Faq
-- LACK OF AWE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE AWESOME
-- Floyd has no reaction to spinning Earth in the phone booth.
-- Astronaut photos in front of monolith (contrast with ape
reaction).
-- [X deliberately planted Y] “How about a little coffee?”
-- MURDERS
-----
By
By
By
By
MoonWatcher
HAL
Bowman
the Monolith?
-- BIRTHDAYS
------
Man
Floyd’s daughter
Poole
HAL
StarChild
ISOLATION IMAGERY
A pervasive theme of - for lack of a better word - loneliness in Space
Odyssey. Many of the physical compositions of the frame are based on
isolating one figure (ship, computer, human being, Child). Although the
earlier prehistoric scenes are often violent, all relations are
physical, “bunched up,” tight, close. All latter glimpses of man are set
against cold sterile, often near-blinding white backgrounds which
contrast a lone figure with its/his expansive surroundings. The human
zoo scene is a good example, but an even clearer one for me is the Poole
jogging scene. The music playing during that scene to me expresses the
great loneliness of an expansive, infinite space.
(D.Z.)
WEIGHTLESSNESS IMAGERY
One possible theory I would like to advance (with very little evidence
to back it up) is that Kubrick suggests a parallel between `physical
weight’ and `moral weight’ through the visual elements of the film. The
film’s earliest `amoral’ act is immediately followed by the celebrated
slow-motion shot of a bone club in free-fall, cutting to the weightless
free-fall of a military satellite in orbit around the earth. In the
film’s most morally-ambiguous passage -- the death of HAL 9000 -- Bowman
also is floating in the weightlessness of the Discovery: his passage
from the centrifugal carousel to HAL’s central processor is intended, I
would suggest, to show that his act of murder possesses little moral
weight when viewed in the context of a wider violence that is inherent
in the human condition.
(C.C.)
GENERAL
33
The Kubrick Faq
-- Alignment of planets along axis: think of what had to be true for
2001 to be made -- Kubrick had to have had major success prior to
that point to get the funding for such an expensive film, the studio
had to be headed by someone who wasn’t a “bean counter,” the nation
had to be in the midst of sending a man to the moon (thus making the
topic of space “hot”), and America’s consciousness had to be totally
twisted from the 50’s mentality that infects even DR. STRANGELOVE, a
1964 film. Yet, every four million years or so, planets DO align on
an axis.
-- In my opinion, what makes 2001 pure art is that the message and
the medium are inextricably bound together. The “story” that 2001
conveys cannot be so done in any other medium -- it is pure cinema.
It is not a simple narrative that can be put in words, nor is it
something that can be done with still images, sounds, music or any
other artistic medium . . .
(J.H.T.)
-- If 2001 were a font, it would be Helvetica.
(quoted by R.C.)
-- Surface of film is outer space, depth of film is inner space.
-- Radical film: use of sound especially -- abstract images -- no
dialogue at end. (Lao Tzu: “[T]he sage . . . spreads doctrines
without words . . .” [A SOURCE BOOK IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, p.
140]. “Of that which we cannot speak, we must be silent.” Showing,
not telling.
-- In 2001, time is noticeable by its absence. The forces behind the
monoliths are able to span the millennia between ape and space
travel, and by the final scenes (of Bowman’s retirement), time has
become irrelevant.
(R.V.)
-- First words of the film: “Here you are, sir.”
-- Last word of the film: “mystery.”
-- Twist on Nietzsche: Man can’t go it alone. Existentialism +
Theology, not just Existentialism.
-- Almost utter submergence of the “female” principle [or soft vs. hard
or warm vs. cold or “yin” vs. “yang”, for a more neutral
formulation] (except huddling of apes in beginning): warmth,
caring, nurturing, real physical contact, “down to earth” etc.
GONE. Child and Parents viewed through a TV screen. Women in film
made robotic, just like the men.
-- At end of film Starchild is looking directly at us.
(Compiled by B.K.)
I received the following material from David Spalding. It’s a good
addition to the FAQ, so I’m including it here.
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 15:15:20 -0800
From: David Spalding <dspalding@korova.com
34
The Kubrick Faq
To: Barry Krusch <bak@netcom.com
Subject: alt.movies.Kubrick FAQ: 2001 suggestions
RE: http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/faq.html
Hi, Barry.
I’m spending some time reading your FAQ, particularly the 2001
portion (is this the most current version?). It’s great, has some
wonderful ideas throughout!
I’d like to offer some corrections and additions, based on my
studies of the film. If this is more appropriate to post to the
newsgroup for discussion, let me know. Thanks.
____________
DAWN OF MAN
“-- Existence of the bone guarantees that chimps must now divide
into separate, rival groups:”
Actually there are already groups. They have a “fight”
over the water before the Monolith appears.
“-- Is the chimp who touched the Monolith the same one who wielded the
bone?“
Yep. He’s Moonwatcher. He may be the most advanced, too; he
walks semi-upright before the others (after killing the
other leader). Remember also the parallel of his tentative
touching of the monolith, mirrored by his counterpart,
Dr. Floyd.
“-- Stewardess returns Floyd’s pen ...”
I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of the bone, nuclear
satellites, Pan Am clipper and finally the pen as
a direct tie between Moonwatcher and Floyd. What
Moonwatcher did with a bone, Floyd (civilized, technologically
advanced man of power) now does with a pen. (“The council has
requested formal security oaths from anyone who has any knowledge
of this event....”) The cut takes us up, up higher, out, then
back in, further in, and there’s the doppelganger character,
snoozing in a spacecraft. (BTW, his hand is outstretched,
further reinforcement, as if we didn’t have enough, that
he’d been using the pen for something, then “lost” it.)
“-- Banality of dialogue matches quality of food.”
I’ve found that as the film progresses, the dialogue is
rich in indications of what we may not see clearly in the
plot. Seen silently, the film is rather cryptic -- why the
heck is an astronaut killed by a machine? why does another
have to make an emergency disconnection of the supercomputer? If Floyd’s such an important person, travelling
35
The Kubrick Faq
to Clavius “to be here with us today,” why doesn’t anyone
other than a base administrator ask any questions?
“-- Hypothesis: World finally achieved cooperation...”
I disagree. Floyd’s confrontation and verbal jousting with
[Leonard Rossiter] is anything but cooperative. He’s gently
interrogated on a classified matter, and Floyd cannily lies to
him. Note also that when they all sit down at the lounge,
[Rossiter] very sneakily slides his “drink” away from Floyd,
while continuing to invite him to “join us in a drink.” Floyd, of
course, consistently declines (“I’m meeting someone for
breakfast...”). The whole contest about “drinking” has continued
for 4 million years!
Of course, Floyd’s pep talk on “absolute security in this
matter” on Clavius doesn’t have to mean that they’re
protecting the public. The scientists and administrators
on Clavius are involuntarily involved in keeping the secret
from the Russians.
It’s made very clear that the Russians (Soviets) and
Americans have separate bases. (“One of our moonbuses
was denied an emergency landing...”) This indicates a
continuing era of detente, at best. (“Did the crew get
back all right?” Back where, Heywood? Back to “their
side” of the moon?)
Drinking as a reference to man’s first topic of conflict
continues throughout the film. On the Aries, the crew and
Floyd “sip” their meals. There’s water jugs and glasses
all around the conference table at Clavius. And finally,
Bowman makes a quite a fuss over his water in The Room At
the End (RATE).
Intriguing aside: in 2010, Clarke has the ETI focus on a
frozen moon which, with a new sun nearby, would host new
lifeforms.
“-- “You know, that was an excellent speech you gave us, Heywood...””
I personally interpret that Floyd is being only a little less
than honest with the Clavius personnel than with the Russians.
(Are they department heads?) He’s passing on some gladhanding
from the Council, but also enforcing security issues (which
is sort of what Moonwatcher was doing with the pool of water).
He continues in this vein throughout the film. He evades the
one question he’s asked, and then punctuates his “closing”
with a rather threatening demand for “formal security
oaths” (whatever that could be).
His chuckling and smiling is about as strong an example
of Kubrick’s sarcastic irony as I’ve seen. THE SHINING
has yet more.
“-- Note: food is getting blander and blander, “
36
The Kubrick Faq
There’s also the rather unappetizing liquid meals on the
Aries 1B. Cute pictures of what the liquid is supposed
to be wouldn’t entice me any more (pureed carrots,
anyone?). Also note that the head honcho on the
moonbus mentions that the sandwiches “all taste
the same, anyway.”
“-- Poole jogging: hamster in the exercise wheel.”
He’s shadow-boxing. Fighting. His name is “Poole,”
a play on the metaphor of the pool of water. He rather
forcefully proposes the solution of disconnecting HAL
(killing him) if the failure mode analysis indicates
the computer (“sixth crewmember”)is screwing up.
“-- HAL: “There can be no question about it.””
Two possibilities. HAL has learned (or been corrupted)
to tell lies, and maintain secrets. Or HAL cannot handle the
idea of a mystery, as Moonwatcher, Floyd and Bowman try to.
Note Floyd’s reaction to the assessment that the second
monolith was deliberately buried. He repeats the statement,
and just chuckles incredulously, shaking his head.
“-- HAL knew what was on Jupiter.”
It’s established that HAL is “one of the guys,” just
another crewmember; whether he even has feelings
is open to debate. His core value is the faithful
processing of information, but Floyd (or other
authority) have also forced him to hide the true
meaning of their mission. When he baits Bowman with
the “odd rumors floating about,” and Bowman catches him
in the deception (“You’re working up your crew psych
profiles, aren’t you?”), HAL lies about some equipment
malfunction. The conflict between HAL’s instructed
behavior and his core value results in a homicidal
dementia. Something not unknown to the first “advanced”
human entity we meet -- Moonwatcher.
Since it’s been established (the BBC-12 program) that
HAL is designed to behave just like a human, and, gee
whiz, he might actually have real feelings, his extreme
actions to cover up the “big secret” of the Discovery’s
mission aren’t inconsistent with other leaders in the
film. What IS inconsistent is that Bowman is alleged to
be the Mission Commander ... yet HAL seems to be in
charge.
Moonwatcher has become Floyd has become HAL. Bowman’s
reaction to all this is the preamble to his final
transformation into the Star Child.
I seem to recall that in the book, Clarke said that
observatories on earth could detect a floating monolith
orbiting Jupiter (or was that 2010?). If so, perhaps
37
The Kubrick Faq
HAL also had this data to keep secret, aside from
Floyd’s pre-recorded briefing.
Further topics for inquiry: the “conflict” between HAL
and the “twin 9000” computer back home at earth. The
continual curiosity (quest for secrets) demonstrated when
HAL inquires about Bowman’s drawings, and eavesdropping
on Poole and Bowman’s very melodramatic attempt at privacy.
“H.A.L.” was some kind of “self-programming” or learning
design ... so HAL is perhaps a computer who inquires about
mysteries just as humans do.
“-- Careening pod: HAL throwing away the murder weapon.”
The floating weapon/tool metaphor reappears.
flying through space. And later, at Jupiter,
monolith is floating about, representing the
what is now clearly established as a sort of
the aliens.
The pod is
the Stargate
unknown, and
“tool” for
Note also that Bowman uses a small tool to “punch out”
HAL’s higher logic circuits. Kubrick could just as easily
had him press buttons and flick switches. The use of a tool
to “kill” HAL carries on the theme.
o
o
o
o
Moonwatcher: that darn bone.
Floyd: his pen. A portfolio (space station).
HAL: an EVA pod.
Bowman: a clipboard (first shot in centrifuge hub).
A pen (charcoal?) for drawing. Test bench probe (AE-35).
A small tool for working in HAL’s logic center.
“-- Bowman has to let go of death for life. “
Echoing an earlier note, Bowman has to separate himself from
his fellow man (his second-in-command, really) in order to
survive and continue on. Rather than just “parking” the body
next to the air lock, he literally throws Poole away.
Many metaphors can be derived from this action; who/what
does Poole represent? and why would the artistically-inclined
Bowman throw him away?
“-- 2001 “breaks” at the literal level here: HAL could have killed
Bowman quickly by depressurizing Discovery; Bowman wouldn’t have
had time to put his suit on. “
There’s a spacesuit in the emergency airlock. That’s why
he’s wearing a mismatched helmet when we dissolve to Bowman
walking out of the airlock to HAL’s logic center.
Also: HAL is not thinking according to his programming. He
malfunctions. So one can’t expect him to commit the perfect
crime. It’s new to him.
38
The Kubrick Faq
NOTE: If this FAQ is related to HAL depressurizing the ship
*before* Bowman leaves on his rescue effort ... never mind.
Yes, HAL could’ve done that. But this a mythic story, not a
whodunnit in space. (That’s the point -- BK)
“-- HAL’s brain: tiny monoliths (many, broken up, not unified). “
And they’re clear, not black and mysterious.
On color: many of the sets are white, even white backlit
walls. The Discovery features for some black insets and
accomodations within the greater white decor, inside
(naturally) a white spacecraft which resembles a bone.
Also intriguing: the Room At the End is decorated in a
similar motif, though the white walls contain furniture
which matches the unappetizing green stuff which Bowman
had been eating.
“-- That psychedelically colored, blinking, astounded eye of Bowman’s,
so much in contrast to the eye of HAL . . .”
Many, many of the images in 2001 are orbs, circular, perhaps
echoing the “cycle” theme of the film: birth/death, discovery/
secrecy, exploring/hiding (secluding). The planets are orbs,
HAL’s “eye” (his visual characteristic) is an orb (looks
like Mars, actually, the god of war), the Discovery is an
orb on the end of a bone-like apparatus, the pods are orbs,
the living quarters are a circle within the org, the
viewports on the pods are eggs-shaped, the Aries was an orb,
the space station was a circle.... And on and on.
(You can watch the film just to trace Kubrick’s use of the
circle as a symbol throughout the film.)
In stark contrast, the monoliths are clearly inorganic,
made by an intelligence, and have nothing natural about
them at all. They’re an “anomaly” in the natural scheme
of things, and in fact continually tamper with the
normal progression of events. “Its origin and purpose
remain a total mystery.”
** Separation from others. The will to go alone.
As mentioned, the “leadership” characters in 2001 break off
from the group to advance a cause. Moonwatcher, clearly
the leader of his tribe, is the first to touch the
monolith. Discovers the use of tools, while set apart
from the others. The first to kill (implied). The first
to start walking upright. The first to murder (setting
an example that’s immediately mimicked, almost comically,
by others.)
Floyd rides the clipper alone. Is treated with obvious
deference by all other characters. Sits at the head of
the conference table. In all four shots while he’s
addressing the briefing, the framing reinforces him as
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set apart from the group. When they eat lunch on the
moonbus, Floyd is subtly given the first pick of the
sandwiches, and first crack at the coffee thermos.
When the group approaches TMA-1, it appears that
Floyd looks (speaks?) to Bill, then Ralph, then leads
the way into the pit. Steps away from the astronauts to
touch the monolith by himself.
Poole and Bowman leave earth on a long, lonely trip. Are
first shown by themselves, either exercising (boxing) or
working. When they come together, they are silent. (Could
there be unspoken dislike between the two, or are they
conserving oxygen by limiting chit chat? I’ve always
wondered.)
Poole has left his folks behind on earth,... but keeps in
contact about trivial things like pay issues and what to
get friends for their ... marriage? anniversary? newborn?
No such information is yielded about Bowman. For all we
know, he’s a bachelor orphan. He behaves shy and
introspective; in fact, he’s the closest we get to a
self-conscious, introspective character in this film.
Bowman is alone, with HAL, after Poole and the hibernating
survey scientists are killed. HAL rejects him. Bowman
discards Poole with obvious regret. He then “kills”
HAL, leaving himself alone. Finally, he “leaves” the safe
confines of Discovery (“home away from home”) to investigate
the Jupiter monolith. He “leaves” the pod to investigate the
Room At the End (and loses the pod). He “leaves” his
spacesuit. He loses his drinking water. Finally, about to
leave his body(?), he reaches out to the last monolith.
And is reborn as a Starchild. (It can be argued that he
doesn’t leave his body....) Finally ... he returns home,
completing the odyssey reference.
Bowman’s actions continually reinforce the theme of
separation, leaving behind others.
** Why does HAL sing “Bicycle Built For Two?”
I understood that, at the time, the song was used for early
voice synthesis demonstrations, since it includes every note
in an octave. (I heard this decades ago, as a schoolboy.) I
recall a film of an early prototype, in which a “vocoder” sings
the song.
[Found elsewhere on the World Wide Wiggly:
“In 1961, this performance [“Daisy”] was generated
on an IBM 7094 computer at Bell Labs. The vocal was
programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum. The
accompanyment was programmed by Max Mathews.”]
A daisy can also represent innocence. Thus, HAL is “crying” for his
lost innocence; he was corrupted by Floyd’s introduction of
the secret, true mission of the Discovery, which leads to
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HAL’s psychosis. As he’s dying, he recalls his birth, his
“daddy” (his programmer) and a song which represents his loss.
He regresses to childhood, while Bowman later PROgresses
into a new Starchild.
The lyrics are wonderfully fitting:
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true
I’m half crazy over the love of you
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford a carriage
But you look sweet, upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two”
In light of HAL’s actions on the Discovery, the song’s
foreshadowing is creepy.
____________
I wrote an article a while back that explores my ideas of how
2001 may’ve influenced the subsequent development of ambient, or
“space” music. I’d be flattered if you listed the URL in your
FAQ, or wished to paraphrase any sections; with proper reference
and attribution, of course. In the past year, it’s become rather
popular (lots of “hits”).
http://korova.com/kmr95/kmr5025.htm
Yours,
David Spalding
http://korova.com/whois/dspalding
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What is another view of the plot of 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[The preceding plot description of 2001 is excerpted from Harvey
Greenberg’s book THE MOVIES ON YOUR MIND, pp. 257-62]
As we have seen, the reunion with the Bad Mother of horror and science
fiction leads to eternal death-in-life; the ego is reborn into an
agonizing subjugation for which death is the only anodyne . . . Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (MGM, 1968) is one of the few movies
where the extraterrestrial Mother does not turn sour, the fusion
fantasy is perfectly realized, and a new, improved model of the infant
ego is liberated. My summary is not intended to do justice to the many
complexities, psychological and otherwise, of this prodigiously rich
film, but will chiefly address the issues of symbiosis and
individuation. For a more comprehensive study, the reader is referred
to Carolyn Geduld’s monograph FILMGUIDE TO ‘2001’.
2001 starts with the literal birth of humanity. In a barren landscape
of the Pleistocene era, a band of apes ekes out a marginal existence.
Kubrick shows that our simian ancestors owned lackluster abilities to
defend or attack compared with better adapted predators. Tragically,
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the apes possess just enough insight to grasp the probability of
extinction without the requisite talent to forestall it. But,
unbeknownst to them, they have been chosen by visitors from space to
participate in an experiment in applied genetics. In the final version
of 2001, we never see these galactic anthropologists, only the
evolutionary instigator they plant in man’s way at propitious historic
moments -- a perfectly rectangular, massive black slab. One morning,
Moonwatcher, brightest of the ape tribe, discovers the first of these
monoliths. He reaches out a finger and touches it fearfully, then with
increasing familiarity. His brethren swarm over it, mouthing it as if
it contained some highly valuable sustenance.
Soon thereafter, Moonwatcher invents the Ur-weapon -- an animal bone,
and directly the entire tribe is using it to hunt food and dominate
their neighbors. After driving away a rival pack from the water hole,
Moonwatcher exultantly flings his bone into the air; it end-over-ends
in slow motion, then breathtakingly changes in the blink of an eye into
a spaceship traveling from Earth to the moon. Millennia have flashed by
in that instant; every weapon and tool of man, from astrolabe to
arquebus, printing press to pistol, lathe to laser beam, has descended
from Moonwatcher’s club. To the alien “parents” watching coolly from
the stars, there is little difference between the femur of a
prehistoric herbivore and a nuclear reactor!
The dart-like vehicle docks within the hub of a gigantic rotating
spaceport, the Orbiter Hilton, and discharges its sole passenger, Dr.
Heywood Floyd, a scientist-administrator on a top secret visit to
America’s moon-base on Clavius. The sterile mise-en-scene of the
Orbiter lounge bears eloquent testimony to the plastic staleness of
life on Earth in 2001. It is the old story of THINGS TO COME and THE
FORBIN PROJECT: the same technology that has expanded man’s physical
reach to the brink of the stars has vitiated his emotions, and once
more he is in peril of being made over in the image of his machines.
Dr. Floyd seems as drained of sentiment as the pod people, in evasive
exchanges with some nosy Russian acquaintances, in a clipped birthday
greeting to his daughter back home, and then at Clavius, in stilted
techitalk with his colleagues. Was it to foster this drab progeny that
the aliens intervened in our genetic code at the dawn of time? They
must have foreseen that further parental guidance would be needed by
this point, for Floyd’s mission is the investigation of a second
monolith which has been excavated in Tycho crater.
At Tycho, Floyd is as awed as his simian predecessor by the majestic
slab that rears up like a monument to a god unknown, calling forth
associations to the plinths of Stonehenge and the Cyclopean statuary of
Easter Island. Like Moonwatcher, Floyd reaches out his hand to touch
the monolith, and it emits an earsplitting shriek that sends the
explorers reeling helplessly backwards. The aliens have used Floyd as
another touchstone in their schema to improve the human breed, this
time by disarticulating Moonwatcher’s heirs from their dependence upon
a science that has come to exist only to justify its increasingly
inhuman prerogatives.
Cut to the spaceship Discovery, eighteen months later, journeying
towards Jupiter with a crew of six: Dave Bowman and Frank Poole,
mission commander and executive officer, three other astronauts in
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suspended animation, and HAL, the compleat computer. Life aboard
Discovery depicts the enervating influence of the man-machine
symbiosis: the Odyssey has been deprived of all its terror and wonder.
HAL monitors virtually every function of the ship, while Bowman and
Poole are chiefly preoccupied coping with the chronic tedium of deep
space.
The emotional tone of the astronauts is more automatized, if possible,
than Floyd’s. Ironically, HAL, despite his disembodied nature -- his
bland, courteous voice floats eerily, everywhere -- seems more human
than his human masters, and when the equilibrium between man and
mechanism is toppled, it is the computer who is the first to break
down. HAL tells Bowman he has misgivings about the mission, and when he
is unreceptive, HAL predicts the failure of the vital AE-35
communication unit. Bowman goes outside Discovery in a pod miniship to
bring back the unit. Nothing can be found wrong with it, but HAL
insists he is right, the unit will fail, the fault lies in “human error
-- this sort of thing has happened before . . . . “
Bowman and Poole think HAL’s judgment is deteriorating and, out of
earshot, discuss disconnecting the computer’s consciousness centers.
But HAL has read their lips -- when Poole goes extravehicular to
replace the AE-35 unit, HAL takes control of his pod, and severs his
airhose with the pod’s mechanical hands. Bowman takes off in another
pod to retrieve Poole’s body. HAL cuts off the life functions of the
hibernaculated astronauts, then refuses to let Bowman back into the
ship. Bowman bursts through an emergency airlock, literally penetrates
HAL’s brain space, dismantling the computer’s logic center in an
intriguing reversal of the usual circumstances of the genre wherein
human consciousness is invaded from the outside. Since his voice is
programmed to betray no fear, HAL poignantly can only protest his
identity crisis in the calmest tones:
HAL: Stop - Dave. Will - you - stop? I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid, Dave. Dave. My - mind - is - going . . . I can feel - it. I - can - feel- it . . . There - is - no question - about - it . . .
He sings his first encoded data -- “A Bicycle Built For Two,” and his
voice gradually slows to a subsonic ramble, then stops. He has reverted
to mere cogs and wheels.
At the moment of his dissolution, Discovery enters Jupiter space,
triggering off a pre-recorded televised briefing by Dr. Floyd. Speaking
as if the entire crew were alive, Floyd declares that until now, only
HAL could be entrusted “for security reasons” with the mission’s real
purpose -- the exploration of possible extraterrestrial life suggested
by the single blast of high-frequency radio waves beamed directly at
Jupiter by the moon monolith. Presumably, “security” has been invoked
because we wanted to get to the aliens before the Russians; the cold
war is evidently still percolating in 2001.
The cause of HAL’s decompensation is problematic; the best explanation
is that HAL was able to extrapolate that the fulfillment of Jupiter
mission would mean his most certain end. Human error was indeed
implicated in HAL’s “paranoia” -- his makers back on Earth, obsessed
with establishing American hegemony over outer space, never thought it
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worthwhile to experiment with the disconnection of this most thoughtful
of thinking machines -- probably because of their own robotized
natures, they did not anticipate that a computer could contemplate its
demise with dread, and take appropriate defensive action, including
murder. Bowman has succeeded where Forbin failed: he has severed the
draining dependence upon mechanism. Despite his remaining hardware, he
stands as naked, vulnerable and promising a quester as Moonwatcher
before the mystery of the heavens. He leaves Discovery in his pod,
encounters a third monolith orbiting Jupiter, and is sucked into the
Star Gate, a kind of galactic roundhouse that reroutes him either to
another universe or dimension, where the aliens practice a spectacular
alchemy upon him. His transformation is explicitly described in Arthur
C. Clarke’s novel, but in the film one must puzzle events out as best
one can. Deep space becomes a psychedelic riot of complex grids,
opening out into infinity at breakneck speed; swirling plasmas of color
are intercut with close-ups of Bowman’s taut features, his blinking
eye, and tracking shots of unearthly, desolate landscapes.
In what has to be one of the most unnerving moments in the movies, the
pod comes to rest in the middle of an opulent bedchamber furnished
glacially in French high baroque. Clarke indicates in the novel that
the aliens want to place Bowman in reassuring surroundings while they
work him over, so they recreate the bedroom from his unconscious
memories of a television program. From within the pod, we see Bowman
standing in the room, his hair graying, his face lined by premature
age, his body shrunken within his space suit. This Bowman is replaced
by an even older version, hunched over dinner, feeding with senile
single minded relish, as if stoking the embers of a dying fire. He
knocks a wineglass to the floor, it shatters with a disproportionate
crash, and in the magnified stillness, one hears harsh, irregular
gasping. On the bed lies Bowman’s third, incredibly ancient
reincarnation, withered away to half size. In his terminal moment, like
Floyd and Moonwatcher, he stretches out a trembling hand towards the
monolith that has materialized at the foot of the bed.
2001 has been filled with futuristic allusions to procreation and gestation, delivery and nursing: the penetration of the Orbiter space
station “egg” by the dart-like Earth-shuttle “sperm”; Discovery’s
“birthing” of the ova-like pods; the apemen clustered around the
“nursing” monolith; the dead astronaut, Poole, cradled gently in the
rescue pod’s robotic arms. HAL, threatened with extinction, becomes the
Bad Mother of the piece, depriving his “children” within and without
Discovery of life-support. Bowman is “reborn” when he blasts himself
through the vacuum of the airlock back into the ship and destroys the
computer’s consciousness. Divested of the unprofitable bondage to his
tools, Bowman is reborn yet again, suffering an agonizing passage
through the tumult of the Star Gate to be regressed -- or rather
progressed -- beyond senility and second childhood into an ineluctably
higher form of symbiosis.
For the shrunken figure on the bed is obscured by a curious opalescent
haze, within which the dying Bowman seems to dissolve, then reemerge as
a shining fetus. The camera’s eye plunges back through the stygian
blackness of the monolith, and once more we are in deep space. Half the
screen is filled with the Earth, the other half by the fetus, profiled
within a sheltering uteroid sphere as immense as the blue globe of
Bowman’s outdistanced origins. The film ends on a full close-up of the
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Starchild-to-be; it bears the faint, unmistakable mark of Bowman’s
features, a creature innocent and vulnerable, all the more awesome for
the implication of unimaginable power it surely will acquire as it
journeys out of its star-crossed infancy. Eons ago, the aliens joined
fallible man to their imponderable purposes, and have finally brought
forth from the womb of time an immortal entity, free to roam the
universe at will in pursuit of a cosmic destiny . . .
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is 2001 “a major disappointment”?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Stanley Kauffmann thought so. This review is from THE NEW REPUBLIC, and
is titled “Lost in the Stars.”]
STANLEY KUBRICK’S 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY took five years and $10 million
to make, and it’s easy to see where the time and the money have gone.
It’s less easy to understand how, for five years, Kubrick managed to
concentrate on his ingenuity and ignore his talent. In the first 30
seconds, this film gets off on the wrong foot and, although there are
plenty of clever effects and some amusing spots, it never recovers.
Because this is a major effort by an important director, it is a major
disappointment.
Part of the trouble is sheer distention. A short story by Arthur C.
Clarke, “The Sentinel,” has been amplified and padded to make it bear
the weight of this three-hour film. (Including intermission.) It
cannot. “The Sentinel,” as I remember, tells of a group of astronauts
who reach the moon and discover a slab, clearly an artifact, that emits
radio waves when they approach it. They assume it is a kind of DEW
marker, set up by beings from a farther planet to signal them that men
are at last able to travel this far from earth; and the astronauts sit
down to await the beings who will respond to the signal. A neat little
open-ended thriller.
The screenplay by Kubrick and Clarke begins with a prologue four
million years ago in which, among other things, one of those slabs is
set up on Earth. Then, with another set of characters, of course, it
jumnps to the year 2001. Pan Am is running a regular service to the
Moon with a way stop at an orbiting space station, and on the Moon a
similar slab has been discovered, which the U.S. is keeping secret from
the Russians. (We are never told why.) Then we get the third part, with
still another set of characters: a huge spaceship is sent to Jupiter to
find the source or target of the slab’s radio waves.
On this Jupiter trip there are only two astronauts. Conscious ones,
that is. Three others -- as in PLANET OF THE APES -- are in suspended
animation under glass. Kubrick had to fill in this lengthy trip with
some sort of action, so he devised a conflict between the two men and
the giant computer on the ship. It is not exactly fresh science fiction
to endow a machine with a personality and voice, but Kubrick wrings the
last drop out of this conflict because something has to happen during
the voyage. None of this man-versus-machine rivalry has anything to do
with the main story, but it goes on so long that by the time we return
to the main story, the ending feels appended. It states one of Clarke’s
favorite themes -- that, compared with life elsewhere, man is only a
child; but this theme, presumably the point of the whole long picture,
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is sloughed off.
2001 tells us, perhaps, what space travel will be like, but it does so
with almost none of the wit of DR. STRANGELOVE or LOLITA and with
little of the visual acuity of PATHS OF GLORY or SPARTACUS. What is
most shocking is that Kubrick’s sense of narrative is so feeble. Take
the very opening (embarrassingly labeled “The Dawn of Man”). Great
Cinerama landscapes of desert are plunked down in front of us, each
shot held too long, with no sense of rhythm or relation. Then we see an
elaborate, extremely, slow charade enacted by two groups of ape-men,
fighting over a waterhole. Not interwoven with this but clumsily
inserted is the discovery of one of those black slabs by some of the
ape-men. Then one ape-man learns that he can use a bone as a weapon;
pulverizes an enemy, tosses the weapon triumphantly in the air . . .
and it dissolves into a spaceship 33 years from now. Already we are
painfully aware that this is not the Kubrick we knew. The sharp edge,
the selective intelligence, the personal mark of his best work seem
swamped in a Superproduction aimed at hardticket theaters. This
prologue is just a tedious basketful of mixed materials dumped in our
laps for future reference. What’s worse, we don’t need it. Nothing in
the rest of the film depends on it.
Without that heavy and homiletic prologue, we would at least open with
the best moments of the film -- real Kubrick. We are in space -immense blue and ghastly lunar light -- and the first time we see it,
it’s exciting to think that men are there. A spaceship is about to dock
in a spaceport that rotates as it orbits the earth. All these vast
motions in space are accompanied by THE BLUE DANUBE, loud and
stereophonic on the soundtrack. As the waltz continues, we go inside
the space-ship. It is like a superjet cabin, with a discreet electric
sign announcing Weightless Condition with the gentility of a seat belt
sign. To prove the condition, a balipoint pen floats in the air next to
a dozing passenger, a U.S. envoy. In comes a hostess wearing Pan Am
Grip Shoes to keep her from floating -- and also wearing that same
hostess smile that hasn’t changed since 1968. When the ship docks and
we enter the spaceport, there is a Howard Johnson, a Hilton, and so on.
For a minute our hopes are up. Kubrick has created the future with
fantastic realism, we think, but he is not content with that, he is
going to do something with it.
Not so. Very quickly we see that the gadgets are there for themselves,
not for use in an artwork. We sense this as the envoy makes an utterly
inane phone call back to earth just to show off the mechanism. We sense
it further through the poor dialogue and acting, which make the story
only a trite setting for a series of exhibits from Expo ‘01. There is a
scene between the envoy and some Russians that would disgrace latenight TV. There is a scene with the envoy and some U.S. officials in
secret conference that is even worse. I kept hoping that the director
of the War Room sequence in DR. STRANGELOVE was putting me on; but he
wasn’t. He was so in love with his gadgets and special effects, so
impatient to get to them, that he seems to have cared very little about
what his actors said and did. There are only 43 minutes of dialogue in
this long film, which wouldn’t matter in itself except that those 43
minutes are pretty thoroughly banal.
He contrives some startling effects. For instance, on the Jupiter trip,
one of the astronauts (Keir Dullea) returns to the ship from a small
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auxiliary capsule used for making exterior repairs on the craft. He
doesn’t have his helmet with him and has to blow himself in through an
airlock. (A scene suggested by another Clarke story, “Take A Deep
Breath.”) Kubrick doesn’t cut away: he blows Dullea right at the
camera. The detail work throughout is painstaking. For instance, we
frequently see the astronauts at their controls reading an instrument
panel that contains about a dozen small screens. On each of those
screens flows a series of equations, diagrams, and signals. I suppose
that each of those smaller screens needed a separate roll of film,
projected from behind. Multiply the number of small instrument-panel
screens by the number of scenes in which we see instrument panels, and
you get the number of small films of mathematical symbols that had to
be prepared. And that is only one incidental part of the mechanical
fireworks.
But all for what? To make a film that is so dull, it even dulls our
interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has
allowed it to become dull. He is so infatuated with technology -- of
film and of the future -- that it has numbed his formerly keen feeling
for attention-span. The first few moments that we watch an astronaut
jogging around the capsule for exercise -- really around the tubular
interior, up one side, across the top, and down the other side to the
floor -- it’s amusing. An earlier Kubrick would have stopped while it
was still amusing. The same is true of an episode with the repair
capsule, which could easily have been condensed -- and which is
subsequently repeated without even much condensation of the first
episode. High marks for Kubrick the special-effects man; but where was
Kubrick the director?
His film has one special effect which certainly he did not intend. He
has clarified for me why I dislike the idea of space exploration. A few
weeks ago Louis J. Halle wrote in this journal that he favors space
exploration because
Life, as we know it within the terms of our Earthly prison,
makes no ultimate sense that we can discover; but I cannot,
myself, escape the conviction that, in terms of a larger
knowledge than is accessible to us today, it does make such
sense.
I disbelieve in this sophomoric definition of “sense,” but anyway
Halle’s argument disproves itself. Man’s knowledge of his world has
been increasing, but life has, in Halle’s terms, made less and less
sense. Why should further expansion of physical knowledge make life
more sensible? Still it is not on philosophic ground that I dislike
space exploration, nor even on the valid practical ground that the
money and the skills are more urgently needed on Earth. (I was
delighted to read recently that U.S. space appropriations are
diminishing and that there seems to be no further space program after
we land men on the moon, if we do, in a year or so.) Kubrick dramatizes
a more physical and personal objection for me.
Space, as he shows us, is thrillingly immense, but, as he also shows
us, men out there are imprisoned, have less space than on Earth. The
largest expanse in which men can look and live like men is his
spaceport, which is rather like spending many billions and many years
so that we can travel millions of miles to a celestial Kennedy Airport.
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Everywhere outside the spaceport, men are constricted and dehumanized.
They cannot move without cumbersome suits and helmets. They have to
hibernate in glass coffins. The food they eat is processed into
sanitized swill. Admittedly, the interior of Kubrick’s spaceship is not
greatly different from that of a jetliner, but at least planes go from
one human environment to another. No argument that I have read for the
existence of life elsewhere has maintained that other planets would be
suitable for men. Imagine zooming millions of miles -- all those
tiresome enclosed days, even weeks -- in order to live inside a space
suit.
Kubrick makes the paradox graphic. Space only seems large. For human
beings, it is confining. That is why, despite the size of the starry
firmament, the idea of space travel gives me claustrophobia.
(J.A., pp. 223-6)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) When people say that 2001 is a film on different “levels,” what do
they mean?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[From THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, by John Allen]
Whenever the thunder of critical controversy rips through the air, one
thing is certain: Lightning has struck. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY is just such a bolt of brilliant, high-voltage cinema.
Like any sudden flash accompanied by a loud noise, the film is both
startling and illuminating -- if it has temporarily left viewers more
dazed and curious than enlightened, this is perhaps intentional. The
evocation of wonder and awe is perhaps the primary aim of the film.
Whether one wonders what the black metallic monoliths are or what the
surrealistic end of the film is supposed to mean or what the opening
prehistoric sequence signifies -- or simply what the film world is
coming to -- is temporarily beside the point. What matters is that the
imagination and intellect are jolted out of complacency by the
experience of seeing the film. Wonder, like laughter or tears, is a
legitimate emotional response.
Such a response, however, cannot be evoked by a work of art that is too
pat, too readily comprehended, too easily flattened by the onrush of
tradition or sheer intellect. Since science and technology themselves
have stunned our sense of wonder into numbness by the very habit of
providing new mysteries daily, it is not only fair but essential that
the arts (including film) take up arms against our indifference.
It must be remembered, however, that the mystery which surrounds 2001
is not the result of arbitrary obscurantism designed to confuse. It is
the mystery of self-containment that makes certain works of art (and
not a few human beings) fascinating and irritating in turn.
It is part of the genius of 2001 that it must be approached on several
levels at once. There are, in a sense, at least four films on the
screen at all times -- three of them available to all viewers and a
fourth one perhaps unique to each viewer. Ways of looking at the first
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three and hints about the latter follow.
The first three are comparable to the wrapping paper, box, and gift
that mark some special occasion. What that occasion means depends on
the one receiving the gift, however. That is at once the most important
aspect of the experience and the least easily verbalized. If anything
can be said about it at all, it is necessary to start with the simpler
aspects.
Strangely enough, confusion sets in at the level of the wrapping paper
-- the outermost and least important of the four films that are
simultaneously given to the viewer.
On its most superficial level 2001 is a science-fiction film full of
gadgets and special effects -- a film about space travel in the near
future and man’s encounter with a strange slab that seems to prove the
existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
It is on this same superficial level that one gets disturbed about the
lack of plot, dialogue, and character. It is as though wrapping a gift
in newspaper, like a fish, would have been better than using a paper of
bold new design and color.
It is on this level, too, that questions arise about the meaning of the
slab, the point of the film’s beginning and ending, and the general
direction of cinema as it hurtles out of the 1960s into the 1970s.
We are in the habit of approaching film
needed only to be opened and read. Most
Most of them must or there would not be
treats such a level of comprehension as
torn away.
as though it were a book that
films succeed at this level.
such confusion over a film that
a mere covering that must be
If this film succeeds at this level, it is a tribute to Stanley
Kubrick’s courage as producer and director that he so flagrantly sets
his film in opposition to tradition. But he assumes (quite rightly, one
suspects) he is dealing with a generation that has been brought up on
television as much as on the written word, a generation oriented to
visual images and the grammar of the visual more than to the slow
plodding of language.
For such viewers he has made a film that operates on a second level of
comprehension. It corresponds to the box inside the wrapping paper. It
is so beautifully wrought and so intricately carved and inlaid as to
defy description. If it has a name, it is called the art of
filmmaking. It has little or nothing to do with the design of model
spaceships, the gimmickry of showing weightlessness on the screen, or
cataloguing the potential inventions or conditions of the year 2001. It
is the use of these things to achieve a kinesthetic and psychological
effect on the viewer. It is also film as poetry, film as painting and
music, film as dance.
It is the result of using film for what it is: the motion picture.
Attention must be paid, quite consciously, to both the motion and the
picture-movement and the visual images. The resemblances between images
as to form, outline, and color must be seen and felt just as their
patterns of appearance and variation must be noted.
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The movement of objects on the screen and especially the sense of
movement experienced by the viewer as the result of the camera’s
mobility bring to the audience a sense of being in space. In some ways
2001 is not simply about space and time travel and the encounter with
the unknown: watching it is like such travel and to some extent like
such an encounter.
All these elements are so beyond the approach of words as to render
criticism of the film at this level almost impossible. For one thing,
2001 is so full of such touches of cinematic artistry and sleight of
hand as to require that a book, rather than an essay, be written to
catalogue and describe them. But the catalogue already exists: The film
is its own catalogue.
Hints can be given, however, through one example that strikes this
viewer as both brilliant and significant: the music that was selected
-- rather than written -- for the soundtrack. Specifically intriguing
is the use of Richard Strauss’s opening measures from the tone poem
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, which open the film.
On the first level of comprehension, it works well -- almost too well.
The grandiose swell of sound is almost a self-parody of grandiosesounding music.
Yet on this second level -- in which the fitness of the parts to the
whole on an aesthetic level is paramount -- it is magnificently
appropriate. It is, first of all, a bit of music known as the Worldriddle theme, introduced by an ascending line of three notes, C-G-C.
When it is first heard, at the opening of the curtain, the camera, too,
is rising, and three spheres appear in alignment: the Moon, the Earth,
and the sun. As the theme reaches its climax, the image of the sun has
risen above the curvature of the earth.
Virtually every element of the film -- from its sometimes ironical
indebtedness to Nietzsche, to the emphasis on the appearance of things
in threes (or three times), to the tension between straight lines and
curves -- can be traced outward from these three notes of music. In
some ways the best program guide one could read in preparing for the
images and ideas that flow across the screen during the film is the
prologue to Nietzsche’s THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
The best clue to their artistic organization and development is
contained in the number three -- mother-father-child, the eternal
triangle, two’s company three’s a crowd, the three primary colors, and
the three dimensionality of the universe we normally think of as
“real,” perhaps even the Trinity and three as a magic number for
infinity.
2001, of course, is not pictures meant to accompany one’s reading of
Nietzsche or one’s hearing of Strauss. It is whole and complete in
itself with its own ends and its own means of organizing time and space
-- through light, movement, and imagery -- as a means of accomplishing
those ends. Synthesis, rather than eclectic derivation, is the basis of
its indebtedness to other cultural phenomena.
Once we begin to look at the film as a film in this way, the otherwise
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obscure relationship between the continuity, flow, and duration of
images on the screen -- their reappearances and significance -- begins
to come clear. We begin to comprehend what kind of cinematic
thunderbolt has been hurled into our midst.
Out of this approach emerge some inklings about the third dimension of
the film -- its gift of a myth and a warning for contemporary man, a
myth about man in the 1960s.
Mr. Kubrick’s tracing of mankind’s development from prehistoric past to
post-fantastic future is the old theme of “apeman-angel” (or ape-mansuperman, to put it into Nietzsche’s terms) translated somewhat
literally yet strikingly into cinema. The unifying prop that becomes a
terrifying protagonist is the machine -- the weapon, or tool, that is
the clever extension of man’s arm, eye, or brain.
As Hitler was a false human version of the superman, so the HAL 9000
computer becomes an equally destructive mechanical version of the
superman. The reason for this destructiveness is that the machine
appears, in fact, altogether too human. It is presented as capable of
pride, envy, rivalry, fear, murder, and the false notion that a
scientific mission is more important than life. In short, it is insane,
and its insanity threatens to destroy life.
Its insanity, of course, is no greater than that of any fallible mortal
who assumes fallible mortals can create, out of their own cleverness,
an infallible machine.
As the myth ends, the human hero undergoes a kind of death and
transfiguration -- after a Last Supper accompanied by bread and wine.
His transformation is the result of his having been swept out of time
and space altogether into some contact with intelligent beings of pure
energy.
It is at this point that the film itself enters a kind of fourth
dimension (the three primary colors are finally abandoned for a palette
of greens), and further interpretation of the film becomes highly
subjective.
On a fourth level of comprehension, however, it is precisely this level
of subjective response -- the film having virtually left the screen and
entered into the experience of the viewer -- that matters most.
Even if one assumes that intelligent beings of nonterrestrial origin
are meant to be taken literally rather than allegorically in this film
(or anywhere in science fiction, for that matter) there is still a
basic problem:
If intelligent beings from elsewhere in time and space are needed to
effect the regeneration of man, who effected the change for them? Where
does the search for the ultimate cause of intelligence lead, inside or
outside this film, inside or outside time and space?
Inside the film, the search involves a plot twist that sweeps a man
outside time and space altogether into a fourth dimension. Between the
film and the filmgoer, it involves a brushing aside, through effective
cinematography, of traditional notions of filmic time and space -- the
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establishment of a kinesthetic and emotional breakthrough into realms
of imagery and experience not normally found in film.
Ultimately for the filmgoer, however, the search involves turning
inward. If seeing the film once isn’t enough, it may be because passive
viewing of the film won’t do. It is thinking about the film,
approaching it intelligently, reaching toward it and beyond it that
counts.
If the black rectangular slab -- that calling card of the unknown and
that doorway to the future -- is like any signpost in one’s present
experience, it may very well resemble 2001 itself.
Neither the slab nor the film is the ultimate mystery, of course. Both
are tokens that someone who cares has passed this way. One of the
tokens, at least, is already a part of human history in the 1960s.
There is no telling what will turn up by the time 2001 here, is there?
Is there?
(excerpted in J.A., pp. 229-34)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Who is Margaret Stackhouse?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Margaret Stackhouse wrote some critical commentary on 2001. After
reading her remarks, Stanley Kubrick stated the following:
Margaret Stackhouse’s speculations on the film are perhaps
the most intelligent that I’ve read anywhere, and I am, of
course, including all the reviews and the articles that
have appeared on the film and the many hundreds of letters
that I have received. What a first-rate intelligence!
[Agel, p. 201]
The amazing thing is that Miss Stackhouse was a junior at North
Plainfield (N.J.) High School and 15 years old when she wrote her
reflections on 2001! In a statement made to Jerome Agel, she said that
she was “primarily interested in science and mathematics. However, I
don’t wish to limit myself when there are so many other fascinating
fields to explore: psychology, art, music, philosophy, history,
anthropology, political science, literature, education, languages, etc.
I may decide to go into nuclear physics or abstract (pure) math, or I
may make a study of the mind. I would like to try to find the
relationships, if any, in the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels
of the mind. (For example, are there any biochemical bases for the
‘soul’?) My major concern at this stage is to find a challenge -- only
then can I discover my intellectual, social, and spiritual identity.
The most outstanding people I have ever known have a basic selfassurance that has enabled them to live life fully and zestfully. This
type of living is my goal.”
Miss Stackhouse’s reflections on 2001 were forwarded to Kubrick by
David Alpert, of the science department, North Plainfield High School.
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(J.A., p. 201)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) So what did Ms. Stackhouse have to say?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Here are are the speculations of Ms. Stackhouse.]
1. The monolith - source of infinite knowledge and intelligence
A. Perfection represented in its shape; its color -- black -- could
symbolize:
1.
Evil and death, which result from man’s misuse of knowledge;
2. The incomprehensible -- man, with his limited senses, cannot
comprehend the absence (perfect black) of color or light.
B. Its first appearance.
1. Movie implies that life has reached the stage when it is ready
for inspiration, a divine gift, perhaps. [It is interesting that the
apes are expectant, waiting for something.]
2. Maybe apes become men when this inspiration is given. [Question:
Is man really a separate entity, with something (soul?) that no other
form of life possesses, or is the difference merely in quantity (rather
than quality) of intelligence? Is the evolution gradual and continuous
or in defined levels? Does the difference in quantity become in fact
this difference in quality?]
3. Inspiration is given:
a. When men (apes) need it; or,
b. When they seek it; or,
c. At the whim of the force giving the gift; or,
d. In various combinations of these three.
4. The purpose of the gift may be to allow man to create lifesustaining forces. [In this “cycle,” he creates only death; interesting
-- death from death (bones).]
5. Its disappearance (after weapon is made) -- Reasons:
a. It is taken away in punishment for misuse of knowledge; or,
b. It is no longer sought -- apes (men) consider themselves masters
now and try to continue on their own energies after the initial
impulse. Maybe the monolith is always present, but is invisible to
those who don’t wish to see it or to whom it does not wish to be
visible; or,
c. It is taken away by the force that gave it, to prevent mortal
understanding of everything.
C. Its second appearance (on Moon).
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1. Reasons for appearance:
a. Man is subconsciously seeking it again; or,
b. It is needed to remind him of his insignificance; or,
c. It is given as a new opportunity to create a meaningful
existence for humanity.
2. Men on Moon touch monolith in the same way that the apes did -this indicates no basic change in man’s nature. Then, after touching
it, they have the audacity to try to take photo -- still conceited,
still lacking in understanding of the gift.
3. From Moon, there is a strong magnetic field directed toward
Jupiter (this is where man will go next). This indicates that man will
still fail and will need monolith again when he reaches the next stage
of exploration. Monolith is always beyond human scope -- man is still
reaching at death.
4. It is ironic that men on Moon believe that the monolith was made
by a more advanced civilization. This to them is the ultimate -- they
can’t comprehend that anything could be above the mortal level.
D. The monolith and infinity.
1. After HAL is made, man shows that once again he has refused,
through ignorance and conceit, to take advantage of the chance to
obtain superhuman intelligence. Maybe the system is slowing down and it
is impossible for man to progress any further on his own energies.
2. Now he is given another chance -- the monolith shows him
infinity, perfect knowledge, and the beginning of the universe, but he
can’t comprehend it. Reasons for his being shown all this:
a. It may be truly another chance for man; or,
b. It may already be determined that he must die [maybe all people
are shown perfect knowledge at death]; or,
c. Maybe perfect knowledge (represented by monolith) is always
present, but our understanding of it will always be imperfect.
II. HAL
A. He is evil, but only because he reflects human nature.
B. His uneasiness about the mission implies that even the highest
development of human intelligence is imperfect in ability to
understand.
C. Man, trying to progress independently of divine aid, attempts,
either consciously or unconsciously, to create life, in the form of
HAL. This is not allowed. Man is reaching, or is being forced to reach,
a limit in his ability to progress further.
D. Reasons for HAL’s failure:
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1. Eternal human error once again in evidence; or,
2. This may be a divine punishment; or,
3. God will not allow man to become subordinate to his own foolish
creations.
E. The fact that man can overcome HAL’s evil is optimistic; however, to
do this he must destroy HAL, who is nearly a living being -- again, the
theme of death, futility. [This and triviality are shown in HAL’s
“song.”]
III. The room (at end) death.
A. It is elegant, maybe to show man’s cultural achievements, but it is
sterile and silent -- nothing has meaning without the spirit of the
monolith.
This is man’s universe, that with which he is supposedly familiar, but
even this is hostile to him.
B. Room could represent:
1. All that man can comprehend (finite) or infinity. Even in this
limited scope, he is confused; or,
2. Man’s cultural history, as men remember their past before they
die; or,
3. The trivia for which he relinquished the monolith (then at death
he realizes his need for it); or,
4. A reminder of man’s failure to draw on past -- it could contain
more wisdom than the present. [Monkeys responded to the monolith better
than modern man -- race is slowly degenerating.]
C. In this room, man must die, because:
1. He has reached his limit; or,
2. He has failed too much; or,
3. He has been shown infinity.
D. Question: Is his death
being shown all knowledge,
to improve? Then, when man
breaking point, the end of
(following degeneration) inevitable after
or is this experience still another chance
returns to trivia, perhaps this is the
his opportunities.
E. Maybe he knows what is happening to him but is powerless to change
it. The changes in the man may be a vision shown to him as punishment,
or they may merely represent the various stages in the life of one man
or of all men.
IV. The themes
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A. Animalism and human failure
1. Throughout picture, there is constant eating, made to appear
revolting; also, exercising, wrestling.
2. At end, goblet is broken. This may imply that man’s failures will
continue forever.
3. Animal nature and conceit remain the same throughout. Will there
never be any true progress? The monolith is always shown with sunrise
and crescent. When first seen, this is a sign of hope, of a beginning;
but the sun is never any higher except when man is shown infinity. This
last fact may symbolize hope that, despite all his past failures, man
will ultimately rise above animalism; or it may merely represent the
perfect knowledge he cannot comprehend.
4. There is a delicate balance between the animal and divine nature
in man. We will never be permitted to go beyond a certain point (as
individuals and as a race).
B. Futility
1. It is shown:
a. In the rescue and subsequent release of Frank (after the
struggle to catch him);
b. In the meaningless talk -- “People talking without speaking.”
2. Is all that we do in vain? Each person certainly dies without
attaining all understanding. Will our race (history) also terminate and
begin again, continually, with no progress ever made?
C. Whether the movie is terribly pessimistic or optimistic depends on
the answer to the question, “Does the man at the end represent just our
‘cycle’ or all ‘cycles’ for eternity?”
1. Pessimistic: Man may never become more “divine” -- all chances
for rebirth may be merely a mockery. Irony -- no matter how much man
ruins his life, chances for improvement are always given. Since he will
probably continue ruining his life for eternity, this may be the cruel
tantalizing by some capricious god.
2. Optimistic: The preceding is impossible to believe if one assumes
that there is some life-giving, life-sustaining force in the universe
that is the source of absolute good. With this belief, one can hope
that someday man will be able to use the divine inspiration offered him
to propagate life-sustaining forces. Probably he will never be able to
understand more, but he will use his understanding better. The sunrise,
fetus, etc., seem to indicate this hope. Also, it seems that, despite
human stupidity, new opportunities to become sublime are always given.
Someday, perhaps, man will learn that he cannot truly “live” unless he
accepts the gift, in the form of the monolith, that demands human
subjugation to a divine force. Then he will not be required to create,
and to experience, only death.
*
*
*
*
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Margaret Ann Stackhouse was born 24 January 1952 at Plainfield, NJ. She
was the daughter of Doctor James Stackhouse (a descendant of Thomas
Stackhouse, Jr. who came to Pennsylvania with William Penn in 1682) and
Mildred Woodward Stackhouse. Margaret graduated as a National Merit
Scholar from Plainfield High School in 1970 with Highest Honors and
almost perfect SAT scores. She received the Rensselaer Award for
Mathematics and Science, and was selected for the National Science
Foundation’s Special Physics Program at Cornell University. Her
philosophical analysis of the movie “2001” received considerable
attention and was published in “The Making of Kubrick’s 2001”, edited by
Jerome Agel. She entered Princeton University in 1970 and graduated in
1974 summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Princeton University
Scholar, as well as other awards.
In 1975 she went to Athens and studied modern Greek. She spent the next
2 years in Turkey where she married, mastered Turkish, and became
engrossed in the Middle East. In 1978 she and her husband returned to
New York where she was awarded a fellowship in Middle Eastern Language
and Culture at Columbia U. School of Graduate Studies. Her marriage
ended and she received a Master of Arts degree in 1981. She then won a
year’s fellowship at the American Institute of Indian Studies in New
Delhi. She died of a tropical disease in Bangalore, India, 19 October
1984. A poem (one that I like, especially, not profound, but fun):
BALLAD OF THE MANTIS
A question which has torn my mind
And haunted me by night and dayWhose answer still I cannot findIs, “Does the mantis pray or prey?”
His folded hands betoken one
Reciting Holy Church’s lawsYet, the Credo scarce begun,
He grabs a fly between his jaws.
Never during mastication
Does he lose his pious gaze
Thus I reach this speculation:
He prays to prey, and, preying, prays.
(From: “SHARDS: A Collection of Poems” by Margaret Ann Stackhouse 1990,
Deerhaven Press, Morristown, NJ)
The above bio was furnished by Eugene G. Stackhouse 508 E. Locust Ave.
Germantown, Philadelphia, PA 19144-1308 Historian for Stackhouse.
The above poem could have been written by Emily Dickinson.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Were there any other comments by fans?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Yes, many. Here are three. This first is from Frederic Lyman]:
*
*
*
*
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Few films ask us to think. Since 2001 did, I felt obliged to let you
know that I tried to.
I am told that C.G. Jung found dreams to develop in four acts:
-
Introduction
The plot thickens
Crisis
Resolution
2001 is a story structured like a dream.
The four acts are announced not by raising and lowering of a curtain
but by the appearance four times of knowledge, embodied as a Duranodic
slab, like the apple tree of Genesis a phallic symbol, the phallus
being the instrument of primary creation, as is knowledge that of
intellectual creation:
INTRODUCTION - the first appearance of knowledge and the first result;
the first tool, a weapon, followed by the entire history of man most
beautifully pictured as that weapon (tool) rising to the grandeur of a
spaceship.
THE PLOT THICKENS - an overeducated doctor is congratulated on a
completely innocuous speech, and he, in turn, congratulates his
colleagues on a discovery which took no more initiative than a dog
discovering a bone. Knowledge is turned against them. It deafens them.
It overwhelms them. So, to discover its origins, they send a ship,
captained by a man of humility, calm under pressure, an artist; in
short, a hero. Knowledge on board in the form of a computer tries to
thwart him. We are not told until the computer is expurgated that it
alone knew the purpose of the mission.
CRISIS - the hero (der Held) arrives at the point of discovery. As we
see from the expression on his face, it is a more terrifying experience
than his bout with the computer, for, as we discover in the final...
RESOLUTION - the discovery is not of some strange new world but of
himself; the wisdom of age is his rebirth.
But whose dream is it? Yours, of course, but I think you asked yourself
if you were so much different from the rest of us and you decided that
you were not and so you made a film.
Frederic P. Lyman
Malibu, California
Mr. Kubrick responded:
Thank you for your fascinating note. You are very
perceptive, indeed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Next, a comment from Truman Brewster]:
Stanley Kubrick is telling us that man’s intelligence is a toolmaking
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intelligence, and that tools take precedence over man. (Even language,
which has been considered our highest achievement, is a tool. It is not
accidental that there are only forty-three minutes of non-dialogue in
this three-hour movie. As we become more and more involved with
electronic technology and gadgetry, there will be less and less
involvement with language, at least language as we know it.) As to the
question of what we are doing with this tool-making intelligence, it
would seem Kubrick is telling us we are getting nowhere fast. (I
happened to see this movie in Manhattan Island, which is an old, dirty,
broken-down tool where the poor people, who allow it, go in circles and
dehumanize themselves.)
Kubrick has given us a big, expensive, spectacular joke, and also
something of a tragedy, in which man’s intelligence, potentially great,
is up to nothing.
Kubrick’s dissolve from the tool-bone thrown in the sky to a space
station in 2001 is not beside the point. Thousands of years of human
history were skipped, as if man has not been up to anything except
finally making these giant space tools. (IBM will also do away with
human history, and humanity may be dismissed in favor of junk.) Not
only history, but what happened to language? There is none in the
movie. Are we being told language is not important? Perhaps it is not.
Most people I know use it only for rudimentary forms of communication,
such as “Where is the bathroom?” “I love you,” but my cat is just as
effective in communicating in spite of his speechlessness. It is said
we use language to educate and carry on traditions, but much education
is only information, and our traditions are invariably on collision
courses. We get propaganda and polemics rather than reasoning. A verbal
man such as Stanley Kauffmann has programmed himself to be a reviewer,
and, though he has a good movie to verbalize about, he only cranks out
a non-review in which he is hung upon words such as amusing and dull.
Except for a few poets who have thrilled us, a few novelists and
essayists who may have told us something about our conditions, and a
handful of philosophers who have looked into the errors of our forms of
knowledge, and versifiers who write the likes of “Daisy, Daisy” to
please us, we really have not put language to much use.
Kubrick’s fine 2001 seems to be telling us all this. At the end of it,
after the mission (our mission) has failed utterly, we see a large,
white fetus returning to view the Earth, its oversized eyes almost
angelic. How glad we are to be back -- and as a little child. Could it
be the best thing we have going for us is our infant intelligence,
which wonders at the sights, sounds, and touch of the world? We are as
children. For us, there may be nothing else.
Truman Brewster
Los Angeles
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Finally, a letter from Stephen Grosscup]:
Ten years ago -- when I was sixteen and just beginning to discover the
rather splendid world of “serious” music -- a friend of mine came
dashing into my house with a record album and demanded that I “ . . .
listen to this!” Patiently, but firmly, I explained to my friend that I
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was going out soon and could not possibly listen to the entire album.
Too late. My friend had placed his record on my turntable and was
adjusting the volume on my amplifier. I heard the low, ominous rumbling
-- the sudden, intensely dramatic pronouncement of a horn -- the utter
exaltation that is the opening of Richard Strauss’ THUS SPAKE
ZARATHUSTRA.
Ten days ago I was with that same friend and we were listening to that
same opening -- but this time it was music with sight added -- a vision
as brilliant as the music -- and twice as elative.
I must confess to a feeling of something akin to intimidation -- to
think that these words might be read by the man responsible for 2001: A
SPACE ODYSSEY. I have been an avid and intelligent devotee of motion
pictures for almost twenty years -- I started early -- and I must admit
that after leaving the theater showing 2001 I had the definite
impression that for the first time in my life I had truly seen a
“motion picture.” I think that perhaps a hundred years from now people
will look back upon those of us who were able to see 2001 with the same
awe and envy that I experience when I think of the people who were able
to see the first performance of Wagner’s RING or Mahler’s THIRD
SYMPHONY.
In short -- I thought 2001 was magnificent. I thought that the
implications of 2001 were monumental.
I found 2001 to be your most optimistic film to date. With the
exception of LOLITA, I have enjoyed all of your previous films
immensely. It would be difficult to pick my favorite among THE KILLING,
PATHS OF GLORY, and SPARTACUS. DR. STRANGELOVE was very depressing -almost as depressing as 2001 was elative. In pondering your films, I
find that SPARTACUS was the least stylistic. In fact, in light of 2001,
SPARTACUS becomes somewhat of an enigma, SPARTACUS seems an almost
average picture from a man who makes above-average films. However, its
“averageness” did not prevent me from seeing it six times. I am
speaking of style, because 2001 was so completely stylistic -- that is
to say, it is the only motion picture ever made that so utterly bears
the mark of a single man -- of a single mind. Every other motion
picture can lead to the speculations -- “I wonder what it would have
been like if . . . David Lean . . . or William Wyler . . . or . . .
Robert Wise had directed it?” That sort of speculation is impossible -and unthinkable -- with 2001. It is a film of incredible and
irrevocable splendor. Now, on to the implications. For one thing, 2001
has -- as no other film ever has -- elevated the artistic potentiality
of motion pictures to a hitherto undreamed-of level. In a sense, you
have not only said “It can be done!” . . . you have “done it!” 2001
does not mark the growth of the art of the cinema; it is the birth of
the cinema. People can honestly say that they have never seen anything
like it -- simply because there never has been anything like 2001. Ah,
but you must know that much better than I!
The major implication inherent in 2001 takes place within the first
ninety (?) seconds. Had I not already thought of this implication, I
would quite probably now be confined in a rest home suffering from an
“elation-caused insanity.” About 18 months ago I had an idea. I was
thinking about the potentiality of home videotape recorders. It seemed
to me that when the day came when HVTRs were available to the general
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public that there would be a lucrative market for prerecorded
videotapes, in much the same way that records and prerecorded
stereophonic tapes constitute a lucrative market today. I then thought
of the possibilities for the content of these prerecorded VTs. Starting
with rock-and-roll, I worked my way up to absolute music. “What if,” I
thought, “someone wanted to ‘see’ Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony?” Would
you show them an orchestra and chorus? Or what? Then I thought: “What
if someone ‘filmed music’?” Then I thought: “What if I filmed music?”
To make a long story shorter, I then proceeded to read a number of
books on photography, buy a small, almost ludicrous super-8mm camera,
and put my abstract idea into concrete form. I went out and “filmed”
the third movement of Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. It worked! It
worked beautifully. I was fully aware that I was a rank amateur using a
primitive camera that did not even have reflex viewing, and yet upon
viewing the final results -- about five hours’ cutting time was
required on my little Sears, Roebuck & Co. editor -- I knew beyond any
doubt that it worked. Until seeing 2001 I had always thought of filming
music in terms of objects existing “naturally” in reality. But it is
doubtful that ever in my own lifetime will I be able to “shoot” a
natural scene involving three planets. I knew instantly that you had
too much reverence for Richard Strauss to tamper with the score which
meant that you had to put the film to the music -- and you did -- three
times!
I have since done a great deal of thinking -- and preparing -- about
“filmed” music. I have gone so far as to envision a day when there will
exist a new kind of artist who is both composer and photographer and
who will bring about a new form of art. But that day, I think, is a
long way off, but maybe by the year 2001 . . .
I am currently directing my thinking and my mental and financial
resources toward the production of several complete symphonies. If I
succeed, you will no doubt hear of -- or from -- me. I would like to
succeed if for no other reason than to pay you back for 2001 -- to
cause you as much elation with my creativeness as you have caused me
with yours.
Finally, I would like to comment on some of the aspects of 2001. My
favorite scene is the discovering of the “tool” by the simian. It is
the most heroic sequence I have ever encountered. Just the scene alone
would have been brilliant -- but to show the scene with the music of
Strauss was the proverbial “frosting” on the cinematic cake. Also, the
changing of the “tool” into a spaceship was brilliant. I was
particularly taken with the entire opening sequence -- from the glowing
eyes of the tiger (?) to that haunting night sequence when the ape-men
crowd together for warmth and for the atavistic sense of security such
bodily contact must have represented. However, the most devastating
part of that scene was the close-up of the eyes -- those human,
frightened eyes realizing even then that their security was a
collective illusion and that the night was fraught with individual
danger.
I found the obelisk -- slab, or whatever -- to be a masterstroke of a
leitmotif -- especially with Ligeti’s voices. And the shots of the
obelisk and the sun were hauntingly powerful. The space sequences were,
of course, exquisite. After the show, some friends and I debated the
“why” of your use of the Strauss waltz. I advanced the theory that
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several centuries ago three-quarter time was referred to as “perfect
time,” and that you thought this best described the motion of the
universe and man-made objects attempting to imitate and/or conquer that
universe. Your incredible sense of humor was particularly noticeable a
number of times, but especially in two scenes. In the opening, when one
of the simians looks full-face at the camera and growls, and in HAL’s
rather laconic comment, “I know I’ve made a number of poor decisions
recently . . .” Too much!
At the end of the motion picture, when your name appeared on the
screen, I broke into wild applause. The rest of the audience finally
caught on, but I must say I was rather disappointed in them. Did they
think the film just came into existence? I hope by my applause I made
them aware that for the last three hours they had been watching the
work of a brilliant man possessing a brilliant mind. I am led to
believe that perhaps a number of people don’t deserve to see 2001. But
that is a moral issue I shan’t go into at this time.
In conclusion, Mr. Kubrick, I thank you for reading my letter and -for ever and ever -- I thank you for making 2001. I believe that art is
a psychological necessity for man -- a provider of emotional fuel and
mental food. And 2001 has appeared at a time when most artists are
poisoning their audiences with anti-art and anti-heroes.
I would not be at all afraid to state that with 2001 you may have quite
possibly saved any number of spiritual and physical lives. For it is
within the power of a film such as yours to give people a reason to go
on living -- to give them the courage to go on living. For 2001 implies
much more than just an artistic revelation. On a philosophical level,
it implies that if man is capable of this, he is capable of anything -anything rational and heroic and glorious and good. Think of how many
men and women might very possibly thrust off the shackles of the
monotonous stagnation of their day-to-day existence -- how many might
strive to reach goals they thought impossible before -- how many might
find elation and pleasure hitherto denied them by their own lack of
courage. How can man now be content to consider the trivial and
mundane, when you have shown them a world full of stars, a world beyond
the infinite?
Stephen Grosscup
Santa Monica, California
Mr. Kubrick responded:
Your letter of 4th May was overwhelming. What can I say in reply?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What did Penelope Gilliatt have to say about 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Here is one of Penelope Gilliatt’s best-written reviews, which
appeared in THE NEW YORKER, titled “After Man”.]
I THINK Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is some sort of great
film, and an unforgettable endeavor. Technically and imaginatively,
what he put into it is staggering: five years of his life; his novel
and screenplay, with Arthur C. Clarke; his production, his direction,
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his special effects; his humor and stamina and particular disquiet. The
film is not only hideously funny -- like DR. STRANGELOVE -- about human
speech and response at a point where they have begun to seem
computerized, and where more and more people sound like recordings left
on while the soul is out. It is also a uniquely poetic piece of sci-fi,
made by a man who truly possesses the drives of both science and
fiction.
Kubrick’s tale of quest in the year 2001, which eventually takes us to
the Moon and Jupiter, begins on prehistoric Earth. Tapirs snuffle over
the Valhalla landscape, and a leopard with broken-glass eyes guards the
carcass of a zebra in the moonlight. Crowds of apes, scratching and
ganging up, are disturbingly represented not by real animals, like the
others, but by actors in costume. They are on the brink of evolving
into men, and the overlap is horrible. Their stalking movements are
already exactly ours: an old tramp’s, drunk, at the end of his tether
and fighting mad. Brute fear has been refined into the infinitely more
painful human capacity for dread. The creatures are so nearly human
that they have religious impulses. A slab that they suddenly come upon
sends them into panicked reverence as they touch it, and the film emits
a colossal sacred din of chanting. The shock of faith boots them
forward a few thousand years, and one of the apes, squatting in front
of a bed of bones, picks up his first weapon. In slow motion, the hairy
arm swings up into an empty frame and then down again, and the smashed
bones bounce into the air. What makes him do it? Curiosity? What makes
people destroy anything, or throw away the known, or set off in
spaceships? To see what Nothing feels like, driven by some bedrock
instinct that it is time for something else? The last bone thrown in
the air is matched, in the next cut, to a spaceship at the same angle.
It is now 2001. The race has survived thirty-three years more without
extinction, though not with any growth of spirit. There are no Negroes
in this vision of America’s space program; conversation with Russian
scientists is brittle with mannerly terror, and the Chinese can still
be dealt with only by pretending they’re not there. But technological
man has advanced no end. A space way station shaped like a Ferris wheel
and housing a hotel called the Orbiter Hilton hangs off the pocked old
cheek of Earth. The soundtrack, bless its sour heart, meanwhile thumps
out THE BLUE DANUBE, to confer a little of the courtliness of bygone
years on space. The civilization that Kubrick sees coming has the
brains of a nuclear physicist and the sensibility of an airline hostess
smiling through an oxygen-mask demonstration.
Kubrick is a clever man. The grim joke is that life in 2001 is only
faintly more gruesome in its details of sophisticated affluence than it
is now. When we first meet William Sylvester as a space scientist, for
instance, he is in transit to the Moon, via the Orbiter Hilton, to
investigate another of the mysterious slabs. The heroic man of
intellect is given a nice meal on the way -- a row of spacecraft foods
to suck through straws out of little plastic cartons, each decorated
with a picture of sweet corn, or whatever, to tell him that sweet corn
is what he is sucking. He is really going through very much the same
ersatz form of the experience of being well looked after as the
foreigner who arrives at an airport now with a couple of babies, reads
in five or six languages on luggage carts that he is welcome, and then
finds that he has to manage his luggage and the babies without actual
help from a porter. The scientist of 2001 is only more inured. He takes
the inanities of space personnel on the chin. “Did you have a pleasant
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flight?” Smile, smile. Another smile, possibly pre-filmed, from a girl
on a television monitor handling voice-print identification at
Immigration. The Orbiter Hilton is decorated in fresh plumbing-white,
with magenta armchairs shaped like pelvic bones scattered through it.
Artificial gravity is provided by centrifugal force; inside the
rotating Ferris wheel people have weight. The architecture gives the
white floor of the Orbiter Hilton’s conversation area quite a
gradient, but no one lets slip a sign of humor about the slant. The
citizens of 2001 have forgotten how to joke and resist, just as they
have forgotten how to chat, speculate, grow intimate, or interest one
another. But otherwise everything is splendid. They lack the mind for
acknowledging that they have managed to diminish outer space into the
ultimate in humdrum, or for dealing with the fact that they are spent
and insufficient, like the apes.
The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once
being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing. It is as eloquent about
what is missing from the people of 2001 as about what is there. The
characters seem isolated almost beyond endurance. Even in the most
absurd scenes, there is often a fugitive melancholy -- as astronauts
solemnly watch themselves on homey B.B.C. interviews seen millions of
miles from Earth, for instance, or as they burn their fingers on their
space meals, prepared with the utmost scientific care but a shade too
hot to touch, or as they plod around a centrifuge to get some
exercise, shadowboxing alone past white coffins where the rest of the
Crew hibernates in deep freeze. Separation from other people is total
and unmentioned. Kubrick has no characters in the film who are sexually
related, nor any close friends. Communication is stuffy and guarded,
made at the level of men together on committees or of someone being
interviewed. The space scientist telephones his daughter by
television for her birthday, but he has nothing to say, and his wife is
out; an astronaut on the nine month mission to Jupiter gets a
prerecorded TV birthday message from his parents. That’s the sum of
intimacy. No enjoyment -- only the mechanical celebration of the
anniversaries of days when the race perpetuated itself. Again, another
astronaut, played by Keir Dullea, takes a considerable risk to try to
save a fellow-spaceman, but you feel it hasn’t anything to do with
affection or with courage. He has simply been trained to save an
expensive colleague by a society that has slaughtered instinct.
Fortitude is a matter of programming, and companionship seems lost.
There remains only longing, and this is buried under banality, for
English has finally been booted to death. Even informally, people say
“Will that suffice?” for “Will that do?” The computer on the Jupiter
spaceship -- a chatty, fussy genius called HAL, which has nice manners
and a rather querulous need for reassurance about being wanted -- talks
more like a human being than any human being does in the picture. HAL
runs the craft, watches over the rotating quota of men in deep freeze,
and plays chess. He gives a lot of thought to how he strikes others,
and sometimes carries on about himself like a mother fussing on the
telephone to keep a bored grown child hanging on. At a low ebb and
growing paranoid, he tells a hysterical lie about a faulty piece of
equipment to recover the crew’s respect, but a less emotional twin
computer on Earth coolly picks him up on the judgment and degradingly
defines it as a mistake. HAL, his mimic humanness perfected, detests
the witnesses of his humiliation and restores his ego by vengeance. He
manages to kill all the astronauts but Keir Dullea, including the
hibernating crew members, who die in the most chillingly modern death
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scene imaginable: warning lights simply signal “Computer Malfunction,”
and sets off electrophysiological needles above the sleepers run amok
on the graphs and then record the straight lines of extinction. The
survivor of HAL’s marauding self-justification, alone on the craft, has
to battle his way into the computer’s red-flashing brain, which is the
size of your living room, to unscrew the high cerebral functions. HAL’s
sophisticated voice gradually slows and he loses his grip. All he can
remember in the end is how to sing “Daisy” -- which he was taught at
the start of his training long ago -- grinding down like an old
phonograph. It is an upsetting image of human decay from command into
senility. Kubrick makes it seem a lot worse than a berserk computer
being controlled with a screwdriver.
The startling metaphysics of the picture are symbolized in the slabs.
It is curious that we should all still be so subconsciously trained in
apparently distant imagery. Even to atheists, the slabs wouldn’t look
simply like girders. They immediately have to do with Mosaic tablets or
druidical stones. Four million years ago, says the story, an
extraterrestrial intelligence existed. The slabs are its manifest
sentinels. The one we first saw on prehistoric Earth is like the one
discovered in 2001 on the Moon. The lunar finding sends out an upperharmonic shriek to Jupiter and puts the scientists on the trail of the
forces of creation. The surviving astronaut goes on alone and Jupiter’s
influence pulls him into a world where time and space are relative in
ways beyond Einstein. Physically almost pulped, seeing visions of the
planet’s surface that are like chloroform nightmares and that sometimes
turn into closeups of his own agonized eyeball and eardrum, he then
suddenly lands, and he is in a tranquilly furnished repro Louis XVI
room. The shot of it through the window of his space pod is one of the
most heavily charged things in the whole picture, though its effect and
its logic are hard to explain.
In the strange, fake room, which is movingly conventional, as if the
most that the ill man’s imagination can manage in conceiving a better
world beyond the infinite is to recollect something he has once been
taught to see as beautiful in a grand decorating magazine, time jumps
and things disappear. The barely surviving astronaut sees an old
grandee from the back, dining on the one decent meal in the film; and
when the man turns around it is the astronaut himself in old age. The
noise of the chair moving on the white marble in the silence is typical
of ihe brilliantly selective soundtrack. The old man drops his
wineglass, and then sees himself bald and dying on the bed, twenty or
thirty years older still, with his hand up to another of the slabs,
which has appeared in the room and stands more clearly than ever for
the forces of change. Destruction and creation coexist in them. They
are like Siva. The last shot of the man is totally transcendental, but
in spite of my resistance to mysticism I found it stirring. It shows an
X-raylike image of the dead man’s skull re-created as a baby, and
approaching Earth. His eyes are enormous. He looks like a mutant.
Perhaps he is the first of the needed new species.
It might seem a risky notion to drive sci-fi into magic. But, as with
STRANGELOVE, Kubrick has gone too far and made it the poetically just
place to go. He and his collaborator have found a powerful idea to
impel space conquerors whom puny times have robbed of much curiosity.
The hunt for the remnant of a civilization that has been signaling the
existence of its intelligence to the future for four million years,
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tirelessly stating the fact that it occurred, turns the shots of
emptied, comic, ludicrously dehumanized men into something more
poignant. There is a hidden parallel to the shot of the ape’s arm
swinging up into the empty frame with its first weapon, enthralled by
the liberation of something new to do; I keep remembering the shot of
the space scientist asleep in a craft with the “Weightless Conditions”
sign turned on, his body fixed down by his safety belt while one arm
floats free in the air.
(J.A., pp. 209-13)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What was the longest review in the HARVARD CRIMSON?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[This review of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Tim Hunter (with Stephen
Kaplan and Peter Jasziis) was said to be the longest film review ever
published in THE HARVARD CRIMSON prior to 1968].
As a film about progress -- physical, social, and technological -Stanley Kubrick’s huge and provocative 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY remains
essentially linear until its extraordinary ending. In the final
transfiguration, director Kubrick and co-author Arthur Clarke
(CHILDHOOD’S END) suggest that evolutionary progress may in fact be
cyclical, perhaps in the shape of a helix formation. Man progresses to
a certain point in evolution, then begins again from scratch on a
higher level. Much of 2001’s conceptual originality derives from its
being both anti-Christian and antievolutionary in its theme of man’s
progress controlled by an ambiguous extraterrestrial force, possibly
both capricious and destructive.
If the above seems a roundabout way to open a discussion of an elevenmillion-dollar Cinerama spectacular, it can only be said that Kubrick’s
film is as personal as it is expensive, and as ambitious an attempt at
metaphysical philosophy as it is at creating a superb science-fiction
genre film. Consequently, 2001 is probable commercial poison. A surefire audience baffler guaranteed to empty any theater of ten percent of
its audience, 2001 is even now being reedited by Kubrick to shorten the
165 minute length by 15-odd minutes. 2001, as it is being shown in
Boston now, is in a transitional stage, the theater currently
exhibiting a splice-ridden rough-cut while awaiting new prints from the
M-G-M labs. Although some sequences are gone, most of the cutting
consists of shortening lengthy shots that dwelled on slow and difficult
operation of space-age machinery. Kubrick probably regrets his current
job of attempting to satisfy future audiences: the trimming of two
sequences involving the mechanics of entering and controlling “space
pods,” one-man spaceships launched from the larger craft, may emphasize
plot action but only at the expense of the eerie and important
continuity of technology that dominates most of the film. 2001 is,
among other things, a slow-paced intricate stab at creating an
aesthetic from natural and material things we have never seen before:
the film’s opening, “The Dawn of Man,” takes place four million years
ago (with a cast composed solely of australopithecines, tapirs, and a
prehistoric leopard), and a quick cut takes us past the history of man
into the future.
Kubrick’s dilemma in terms of satisfying an audience is that his best
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work in 2001 is plotless slow-paced material, an always successful
creation of often ritualistic behavior of apes, men, and machines with
whom we are totally unfamiliar. In the longer version, the opening of
Astronaut Poole’s (Gary Lockwood) pod scene is shot identically to the
preceding pod scene with Astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea), stressing
standardized operational method by duplicating camera setups. This
laborious preparation may appear initially repetitive until Poole’s
computer-controlled pod turns on him and murders him in space, thus
justifying the prior duplication by undercutting it with a terrifyingly
different conclusion. Throughout 2001, Kubrick suggests a constantly
shifting balance between man and his tools, a dimension that largely
vanishes from this particular scene in cutting the first half and
making the murder more abrupt dramatically than any other single action
in the film.
Even compromised in order to placate audiences, Kubrick’s handling of
the visual relationship between time and space is more than impressive.
He has discovered that slow movement (of spacecraft, for example) is as
impressive on a Cinerama screen as fast movement (the famous Cinerama
roller-coaster approach), also that properly timed sequences of slow
movement actually appear more real -- sometimes even faster -- than
equally long long sequences of fast motion shots. No film in history
achieves the degree of three-dimensional depth maintained consistently
in 2001 (and climaxed rhapsodically in a shot of a pulsating stellar
galaxy); Kubrick frequently focuses our attention to one side of the
wide screen, then introduces an element from the opposite corner,
forcing a reorientation which heightens our sense of personal
observation of spontaneous reality.
His triumph, both in terms of film technique and directorial approach,
is in the audience’s almost immediate acceptance of special effects as
reality: after we have seen a stewardess walk up a wall and across the
ceiling early in the film, we no longer question similar amazements and
accept Kubrick’s new world without question. The credibility of the
special effects established, we can suspend disbelief, to use a
justifiable cliche, and revel in the beauty and imagination of
Kubrick/Clarke’s space. And turn to the challenging substance of the
excellent screenplay.
2001 begins with a shot of an eclipse condition: the Earth, moon, and
sun in orbital conjunction, shown on a single vertical plane in center
screen. The image is central and becomes one of three prerequisites for
each major progression made in the film.
The initial act of progress is evolutionary. A series of brief scenes
establishes the life cycle of the australopithecine before its division
into what became both ape and man -- they eat grass, are victimized by
carnivores, huddle together defensively. One morning they awake to find
in their midst a tall, thin, black rectangular monolith, its base
embedded in the ground, towering monumentally above them, plainly not a
natural formation. They touch it, and we note at that moment that the
moon and sun are in orbital conjunction.
In the following scene, an australopithecine discovers what we will
call the tool, a bone from a skeleton which, when used as an extension
of the arm, adds considerably to the creature’s strength. The discovery
is executed in brilliant slow-motion montage of the pre-ape destroying
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the skeleton with the bone, establishing Kubrick and Clarke’s
subjective anthropological notion that the discovery of the tool was
identical to that of the weapon. The “dawn of man,” then, is
represented by a coupling of progress and destruction; a theme of
murder runs through 2001 simultaneously with that of progress.
Ultimately, Kubrick shows an ambiguous spiritual growth through
physical death.
The transition from prehistory to future becomes a simple cut from the
bone descending in the air to a rocket preparing to land at a space
station midway between Earth and Moon. A classic example of Bazin’s
“associative montage,” the cut proves an effective, if simplistic,
method of bypassing history and setting up the link between bone and
rocket as the spectral tools of man, one primitive and one incredibly
sophisticated.
On the Moon, American scientists discover an identical black monolith,
apparently buried over four million years before, completely inert save
for the constant emission of a powerful radio signal directed toward
Jupiter. The scientists examine it (touching it tentatively as the apes
did) at a moment when the Earth and sun are in conjunctive orbit. They
conclude that some form of life on Jupiter may have placed the monolith
there and, fourteen months later, an expedition is sent to Jupiter to
investigate.
Two major progressions have been made: an evolutionary progression in
the discovery of the tool, and a technological progression inherent in
the trip to Jupiter. The discovery of the monolith has preceded each
advance, and with it the conjunction of the sun and moons of a given
planet, as well as the presence of ape or human at a stage of
development where they are ready to make the significant progression.
The monolith, then, begins to represent something of a deity; for our
own purposes, we will assume that, given the three conditions, the
inert monolith actually teaches or inspires ape and man to make the
crucial advance. Therefore, it becomes a major force in man’s
evolution: man is not responsible for his own development, and perhaps
the monolith even brings the men to it at the precise moment of the
conjunctive orbits.
To Kubrick, this dehumanization is more than the result of the
undefined force exerted by the monolith and proves a direct consequence
of advanced technology. Kubrick is no stranger to the subject: THE
KILLING and LOLITA both involve man’s self-expression through the
automobile; Spartacus’s defeat comes because he is not adequately
prepared to meet the advanced military technology of the Roman army;
DR. STRANGELOVE, of course, contains a running motif of machines
assuming human characteristics (the machine sexuality of its opening
titles) while humans become machinelike, a theme carried further in
2001. The central portion of 2001, the trip to Jupiter, can, as an
odyssey toward a final progression of man, concern itself largely with
Kubrick’s persistent preoccupation of the relationship between man and
his tools.
Kubrick prepares us for the ultimate emotional detachment of Bowman and
Poole; his characterization of Dr. Floyd, the protagonist of the Moon
sequence and the initiator of the Jupiter expedition, stresses his
coldness, noticeably in a telephone conversation with his young
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daughter, a dialogue which suggests a reliance on manipulating her more
than it demonstrates any love for her. These men, all professional, are
no longer excited by space travel: they sleep during flights and pay no
attention to what-we-consider-extraordinary phenomenon occuring
before their eyes (the rapid rotation of the Earth in the background
during the telephone scene).
Bowman and Poole are inhuman. Their faces register no emotion and they
show no tension; their few decisions are always logical and the two
always agree; Poole greets a televised birthday message from his gauche
middle-class parents on Earth with complete lack of interest -- he is,
for practical purposes, no longer their child. With subtle humor,
Kubrick separates one from the other only in their choice of food from
the dispensing machine: Poole chooses food with clashing colors and
Bowman selects a meal composed entirely within the ochre-to-dark brown
range. In a fascinating selection of material, Kubrick omits the actual
act of Poole’s murder, cutting to his body in space directly after the
mechanical pod-hands sever his air hose, thus taking emphasis off any
identification we might suddenly feel and turning the murder into cold,
further dehumanized abstraction.
The only human in the film is HAL 9000, the super-computer which runs
the ship and exhibits all the emotional traits lacking in Bowman and
Poole. The script development is, again, linear: the accepted
relationship of man using machine is presented initially, then
discarded in favor of an equal balance between the two (HAL, for
example, asks Bowman to show him some sketches, then comments on them).
This equilibrium where men and machine perversely share characteristics
shatters only when HAL mistakenly detects a fault in the communications
system. The HAL computers cannot make mistakes and a confirmation of
the error would necessitate disconnection. At this point the balance
shifts again: Bowman asks HAL to explain his mistake and HAL denies it,
attributing it to “human error”; we are reminded of the maxim, “a bad
workman blames his tools,” and realize HAL is acting from a distinctly
human point of view in trying to cover up his error.
As the only human in the film HAL proves a greater murderer than any of
the men. Returning 2001 to the theme of inherent destruction in social
and technological progress, Kubrick’s chilling last-shot-before-theintermission (a shot from HAL’s point-of-view, lip-reading a
conversation of Bowman and Poole deciding to dismantle him if the
mistake is confirmed) suggests the potential of machine to control man,
the ultimate reversal of roles in a situation where man makes machines
in his own image. HAL’s success is partial; he murders Poole, and the
three doctors on the ship in a state of induced hibernation. The murder
of the sleeping doctors is filmed almost entirely as closeups of
electronically controlled charts, a pulsating coordination of
respiration regulators, cardiographs, and encephalographs. HAL shuts
his power off gradually and we experience the ultimate dehumanization
of watching men die not in their bed-coffins but in the diminished
activity of the lines on the charts.
In attempting to reenter the ship from the pod he has used to retrieve
Poole’s corpse, Bowman must improvise -- for the first time -- ad-lib
emergency procedures to break in against HAL’s wishes. His
determination is perhaps motivated by the first anger he has shown, and
is certainly indicative of a crucial reassertion of man over machine,
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again shifting the film’s balance concerning the relationship between
man and tool. In a brilliant and indescribable sequence, preceded by
some stunning low-angle camera gyrations as Bowman makes his way toward
HAL’s controls, the man performs a 1obotomy on the computer,
dismantling all except its mechanical functions. Symbolically, it is
the murder of an equal, and HAL’s “death” becomes the only empathyevoking scene in 2001. Unlike any of the humans, HAL dies a natural
human death at Bowman’s hand, slowing down into senility and second
childhood, until he remembers only his first programmed memory, the
song “Daisy,” which he sings until his final expiration.
Bowman’s complex act parallels that of the australopithecus: his use of
the pod ejector to reenter the craft was improvisational, the mechanism
undoubtedly designed for a different purpose -- this referring to the
use of bone as weapon-tool. Finally in committing murder, Bowman has
essentially lost his dehumanization and become an archetypal new being:
one worthy of the transcendental experience that follows. For the last
part of the film, we must assume Bowman an individual by virtue of his
improvised triumph over the complex computer. Left alone in the
spaceship, Bowman sees the monolith slab floating in space in Jupiter’s
atmosphere and takes off in a pod to follow it; knowing by now the
properties of the pod, we can conjure images of the mechanical arms
controlled by Bowman reaching to touch the monolith as did the
australopithecines and the humans. The nine moons of Jupiter are in
orbital conjunction (a near-impossible astronomical occurrence) and the
monolith floats into that orbit and disappears. Bowman follows it and
enters what Clarke calls the timespace warp, a zone “beyond the
infinite” conceived cinematically as a five-minute three-part light
show, and intercut with frozen details of Bowman’s reactions.
If the monolith has previously guided man to major evolutionary and
technological progression, it leads Bowman now into a realm of
perception man cannot conceive, an experience unbearable for him to
endure while simultaneously marking a new level in his progress. The
frozen shots intercut with the light sequences show, debatably,
Bowman’s horror in terms of perception and physical ordeal, and his
physical death: the last of many multicolored solarized close-ups of
his eye appears entirely flesh-colored, and, if we are justified in
creating a color metaphor, the eye is totally wasted, almost subsumed
into a pallid flesh. When man journeys far enough into time and space,
Kubrick and Clarke are saying, man will find things he has no right to
see.
But this is not, as Clarke suggests in LIFE, the end of an Ahab-like
quest on the part of men driven to seek the outer reaches of the
universe. Bowman is led into the time warp by the monolith. The Moon
monolith’s radio signals directed toward Jupiter were not indicative of
life as we know it on Jupiter, but were a roadmap, in effect, to show
Bowman how to find his way to the monolith that guides him toward
transcendent experience.
At the end, Bowman, probably dead (if we are to interpret makeup in
conventional terms), finds himself in a room decorated with Louis XVI
period furniture with fluorescent-lighted floors. He sees himself at
different stages of old age and physical decay. Perhaps he is seeing
representative stages of what his life would have been had he not been
drawn into the infinite. As a bed-ridden dying man, the monolith
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appears before him and he reaches out to it. He is replaced by a
glowing embryo on the bed and, presumably, reborn or transfigured into
an embryo-baby enclosed in a sphere in our own solar system, watching
Earth. He has plainly become an integral part of the cosmos, perhaps as
LIFE suggests, as a “star-child” or, as Penelope Gilliatt suggests, as
the first of a species of mutant that will inhabit the Earth and begin
to grow. What seemed a linear progression may ultimately be cyclical,
in that the final effect of the monolith on man can be interpreted as a
progress ending in the beginning of a new revolutionary cycle on a
vastly higher plane. But the intrinsic suggestiveness of the final
image is such that any consistent theory about the nature of 2001 can
be extended to apply to the last shot: there are no clear answers.
Several less-than-affirmative ideas can be advanced. The monolith is a
representation of an extraterrestrial force which keeps mankind (and
finally Bowman) under observation, and manipulates it at will. Man’s
progress is not of his own making, but a function of the monolith -man cannot predict, therefore, the ensuing stages of his own evolution.
That the initiation of man into higher stages of development involves
murder casts ambiguity as to the nature of the monolith force. In its
statement that man cannot control his destiny, 2001 is antihumanistic
-- this also in the concept that what we consider humanity is actually
a finite set of traits reproducible by machines.
The final appearance of the Louis XVI room suggests that Bowman was, in
fact, being observed as if he were a rat in a maze, perhaps to test his
readiness for a further progression, this time a transcendence. The
decor of the room is probably not significant, and is either an
arbitrary choice made by the observers, or else a projection of
Bowman’s own personality (the floor and the food are specifically
within Bowman’s immediate frame of reference).
If Kubrick’s superb film has a problem, it may simply be that great
philosophical-metaphysical films about human progress and man’s
relationship to the cosmos have one strike against them when they
attempt to be literally just that. Rossellini’s radiant religious films
or Bresson’s meditative asceticism ultimately say far more, I think,
than Kubrick’s far-more-ambitious attempt at synthesizing genre and
meaning.
Nevertheless, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY cannot be easily judged if only
because of its dazzling technical perfection. To be able to see beyond
that may take a few years. When we have grown used to beautiful strange
machines, and the wonder of Kubrick’s special effects wears off by
duplication in other Hollywood films, then we can probe confidently
beyond 2001’s initial fascination and decide what kind of a film it
really is.
(J.A., pp. 215-22)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Why would Kubrick think “man” is little more than a high-tech chimp?
----------------------------------------------------------------------MANAGER SEE, MANAGER DO
Research on chimps offers clues to human power plays
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excerpted from BUSINESS WEEK, 4/3/95, pp. 90-1
-----------------------------------------------------------------------How did Newt Gingrich climb from lowly congressional backbencher to
Speaker of the House in a mere five years? Part of the answer may lie in
the work of Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal, who studies how power is
won and lost within a large community of chimpanzees.
Gingrich has been an avid follower of de Waal’s work for years. He has
even placed de Waal’s CHIMPANZEE POLITICS: POWER AND SEX AMONG APES on
his recommended reading list for freshmen Republicans, along with
better known texts such as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S.
Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.
What secrets of power has Gingrich gleaned from our simian cousins? In
short, how to win power by forming tactical coalitions and mounting
fierce psychological attacks on those blocking the way. CHIMPANZEE
POLITICS chronicles a three-month power struggle in which Luit, an
ambitious male chimp, waged a carefully crafted campaign to overthrow
Yeroen, the autocratic established leader. To pull it off, Luit played
the populist by grooming lower-ranking chimps. He also punished Yeroen’s
supporters and refused to greet Yeroen with the polite submissiveness
usually accorded his rank.
It’s a strategy Gingrich aped in his assault on former Speaker Jim
Wright. For more than a year, Gingrich attacked Wright’s ethics while
cultivating allies. His campaign gained momentum as the widely disliked
Wright began to crumble under pressure. Wright resigned in 1989, and the
once obscure Gingrich was established as a major power. “It made
Gingrich a big man in Republican politics,” says John M. Barry, whose
The Ambition and the Power chronicled Gingrich’s tactics and Wright’s
downfall. “Everyone loves a winner, and he [showed] that the way to beat
these guys is to just tear them up, rip them up, not be a gentleman
anymore.” Gingrich declined comment.
While Gingrich has found de Waal’s work instructive in the political
arena, the scientists observations may be even more applicable to
corporate behavior. “Corporate life is a male hunting venture,” notes de
Waal. “They hunt for money.”
So what lessons from chimp behavior hold true in corporate life? The CEO
shouldn’t be too high-handed, for one thing. “Dominant males are always
paranoid,” de Waal says. But they can’t allow themselves to be too
aggressive or imperious, because then their lieutenants devote
themselves to finding a chance to get rid of them. Loners are always
vulnerable, because they have no one to support them in times of crisis.
And for indications of who is holding and who is losing influence, watch
whose jokes are laughed at and whose ideas get ignored at meetings. The
chimp analogue? If low-ranking animals fail to heed the dominant male’s
displays of hooting and charging, it’s a sign he’s losing status.
So maybe the law of the jungle isn’t such a far cry from contract law
after all. “Once you’ve seen chimps in action and thought about evolutionary psychology, the way you look at workplace life will forever
change,” notes Robert Wright . . . “Much more than people consciously
realize, workplaces are full of subtle jockeying and constant
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gamesmanship. Any CEO who reads CHIMPANZEE POLITICS will never forget
it.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Do the stages of the human race correspond with the ages of the
human being?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”; if true, the evolution of the human
race could possibly be predicted by examining the stages of the human
life cycle. In 2001, Kubrick gives a visual voice to the preceding
notion (with text by Aristotle)]
*
*
*
*
*
Elderly Men . . . have lived many years; they have often been taken in,
and often made mistakes; and life on the whole is a bad business. The
result is that they are sure about nothing and under-do everything. They
‘think’, but they never ‘know’; and because of their hesitation they always add a ‘possibly’ or a ‘perhaps’, putting everything this way and
nothing positively. They are cynical; that is, they tend to put the
worse construction on everything. Further, their experience makes them
distrustful and therefore suspicious of evil. Consequently they neither
love warmly nor hate bitterly, but . . . love as though they will some
day hate and hate as though they will some day love. . . .
They . . . are always anticipating danger; unlike that of the young, who
are warm-blooded, their temperament is chilly; old age has paved the way
for cowardice; fear is, in fact, a form of chill. . . . They . . . guide
their lives too much by considerations of what is useful and too little
by what is noble. . . .
Their sensual passions have either altogether gone or have lost their
vigour: consequently they do not feel their passions much, and their
actions are inspired less by what they do feel than by the love of gain.
Hence men at this time of life are often supposed to have a selfcontrolled character; the fact is that their passions have slackened
. . . They guide their lives by reasoning more than by moral feeling
. . .
(Aristotle, RHETORIC, 1389b 13)
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore; -Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see
no more.
(Wordsworth, ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY, I)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some outside references Kubrick refers to in the film
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[intentionally or otherwise]?
----------------------------------------------------------------------LITERARY
Anonymous:
THE OLD TESTAMENT
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Nietzsche:
THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
Dante:
THE DIVINE COMEDY
Shelley:
FRANKENSTEIN
Stevenson:
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Wagner:
THE RING
Campbell:
a
THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES (Kubrick reportedly gave
copy of this to Clarke to
read [P.B., p. 77])
Myths:
THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR
DAVID VS. GOLIATH
ANTAEUS
ACHILLES’ HEEL
ULYSSES (AND THE SIRENS)
GARDEN OF EDEN
CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION
MUSICAL
Strauss, Richard:
Ligeti, Gyorgy:
Strauss, Johann:
Khatchaturian, Aram:
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
ATMOSPHERES
LUX AETERNA
REQUIEM
THE BLUE DANUBE
GAYANE BALLET SUITE
(opening/end)
(monolith)
(space station)
(inside space station)
[Detailed]
Title Music: “Daybreak” movement, “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, Opus 30,
Richard Strauss [The MGM soundtrack album uses a different recording
than that used in the film, I think; the one on the soundtrack album is
by Karl Boehm and the Berlin Philharmonic, available on DG {BTW, the
late Maestro Boehm was a personal friend of R. Strauss, and this was his
and the Berlin Philharmonic’s first stereo recording, in 1958}].
Monolith at ape-site: the “Kyrie” from “Requiem for Soprano, Mezzosoprano, 2 mixed choirs, and Orchestra”, Gyorgi Ligeti. Deutsche
Grammaphon recording, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Francis Travis
conducting.
Moonwatcher discovers tool: reprise: “Daybreak” from “Zarathustra”
Matchcut to bone (after killing other ape) and spaceflight: “Die Blaue
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Danube”, Johann Strauss. DG recording, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von
Karajan, conductor.
Journey across the lunar surface to TMA-1: “Lux Aeterna”, Ligeti. DG
recording, Stuttgart Schola Cantorum, Clytus Gottwald, choirmaster.
(I think when the autronauts reach TMA-1 there is a reprise of the
Kyrie)
Jupiter Mission: Adagio (Solo) from the ballet “Gayane”, Aram
Khachaturian. DG recording, Leningrad Philharmonic, Gennady
Rozhdestvensky, conductor.
‘Jupiter space’ & Monolith: reprise: Ligeti’s “Kyrie”
Stargate: “Atmospheres”, Gyorgi Ligeti. DG recording, Sudwestfunk (South
German Radio) Orchestra, Ernest Bour, conductor.
Hotel Sequence: sampled and modified version of “Atmospheres” (Ligeti
sued Kubrick for copyright and won).
Starchild: reprise, “Daybreak” from “Zarathustra”
End title music: reprise: final portion of “The Blue Danube”.
Kubrick selected the music himself from his own record collection. As
with all his later films, most of the classical music used in his films
(including almost all the soundtrack for The Shining [Bartok’s “Music
for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta”, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von
Karajan]) is licensed from Deutsche Grammaphon, And available on disc or
CD.
(G.A)
SOCIO/POLITICAL
HAL
^^^
_
_
_
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
~
~
~
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Why does Kubrick include a shot of a leopard in THE DAWN OF MAN
sequence?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[One hypothesis is that the shot has no significance at all. Another is
that it is to be emblematic of the threats of nature confronting the
man-apes.
But there’s another hypothesis. In Dante’s work THE INFERNO (completed
in the early 1300’s), the Leopard is one of three beasts (along with the
Lion and the Wolf) preventing Dante’s fast ascent to Joy. The poet
Virgil (Dante’s symbol for reason), explains that to get to Joy, one
must first descend into Hell; the beasts cannot be bypassed.
Here are the beginning passages from THE INFERNO (from the Ciardi
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translation [Mentor: 1954] pp. 28-9), ending with confrontation with the
Leopard. Those who have seen THE SHINING and 2001 will note some
striking parallel imagery here in these passages apart from that of the
Leopard . . .]
*
*
*
*
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
what wood that was! I never saw so drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!
But since it came to good, I will recount
all that I found revealed there by God’s grace.
How I came to it I cannot rightly say,
so drugged and loose with sleep had I become
when I first wandered there from the True Way.
But at the far end of that valley of evil
whose maze had sapped my very heart with fear!
I found myself before a little hill
and lifted up my eyes. Its shoulders glowed
already with the sweet rays of that planet
whose virtue leads men straight on every road,
and the shining strengthened me against the fright
whose agony had wracked the lake of my heart
through all the terrors of that piteous night.
Just as a swimmer, who with his last breath
flounders ashore from perilous seas, might turn
to memorize the wide water of his death -so did I turn, my soul still fugitive
from death’s surviving image, to stare down
that pass that none had ever left alive.
And there I lay to rest from my heart’s race
till calm and breath returned to me. Then rose
and pushed up that dead slope at such a pace
each footfall rose above the last. And lo!
almost at the beginning of the rise
I faced a spotted Leopard, all tremor and flow
and gaudy pelt. And it would not pass, but stood
so blocking my every turn that time and again
I was on the verge of turning back to the wood.
This fell at the first widening of the dawn
as the sun was climbing Aries with those stars
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that rode with him to light the new creation. . . .
*
*
*
*
Dante wasn’t the first to use the Leopard as a symbol. Here are some
quotes from the Old and New Testaments which do the same:
ISAIAH 11:6 -- The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion
and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
JEREMIAH 5:6 -- Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them,
and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch
over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in
pieces: because their transgressions are many, and their backslidings
are increased.
JEREMIAH 13:23 -- Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard
his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
DANIEL 7:6 -- After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard,
which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had
also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
HOSEA 13:7 -- Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard
by the way will I observe them.
REVELATION 13:2 -- And the beast which I saw was like unto a
leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as
the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat,
and great authority.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some relevant passages in THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA that
pertain to the film?
----------------------------------------------------------------------APE TO MAN TO SUPERMAN (from Zarathustra’s PROLOGUE, Section 3)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoined the forest,
he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been
announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra
spoke thus unto the people:
“I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed.
What have you done to surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and
you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to
the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just
the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of
shame.
You have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is
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still worm. Once were you apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than
any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and
phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!”
BREAKING THE CUP (from Zarathustra’s PROLOGUE, Section 1)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WHEN Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of
his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and
his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his
heart changed, and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went
before the sun, and spoke thus unto it:
“Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those
for whom thou shinest!
For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have
wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine
eagle, and my serpent.
But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow,and
blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much
honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more
become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the evening,
when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the netherworld, thou exuberant star!
Like thee must I go down, as men say, to whom I shall descend.
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest
happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden
out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss!
Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again
going to be a man.”
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
[And also this relevant passage, from ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES by
Paul Reps, p. 5]
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on
pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain
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himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and
speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Has anyone ever figured out the ending of 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Following are three opinions from the ALT.MOVIES.KUBRICK group.]
*
*
*
*
*
This may be the question of all questions. I suspect that there isn’t a
“logical” explanation . . .
Some seems indisputable: the same aliens who deposited the slab on
earth at the Dawn of Man to teach the apes left the buried slab on the
moon; the job of the slab on the moon was to notify the aliens when it
got discovered. In other words, to say “Remember those apes? They just
made it to the moon.” The moonslab beamed its message towards Jupiter;
hence the Discovery mission was sent towards Jupiter to see who the
moonslab was talking to. Now we get to the part where the fun starts,
and where anybody’s interpretation is as good as anyone else’s, I
guess. Mine:
Bowman encounters a slab floating in space, and seems to get sucked
into it; he travels for a long time and sees lots of cool stuff. Some
of what he sees seems vaguely biological; sperm and eggs. Other stuff
seems like formations of land and oceans. Still other stuff seems like
an exposition of geometrical form. It seems to me that Bowman is having
the “mysteries of the Universe” shown to him, perhaps courtesy of the
aliens. Why Bowman? Well, maybe because he was there. Or maybe it
happens to all of us when we die; who knows? Bowman ends up in what
seems like a hotel suite, where he seems to age very quickly. My own
view is that Bowman ages normally; but that now that he sees things in
a much larger, universal context, he sees his own life for what it is:
trivial, short, and unimportant in the scheme of things. It passes in
what seems like seconds, cosmically speaking. At the same time, his
life IS important; DOES have meaning; an entire environment has been
created for him, apparently solely so that he can live out the rest of
his days in comfort. (For the first time in the film, somebody is seen
eating what seems like an appetizing meal.) Bowman breaks his
wineglass; I, personally, don’t think this is a nod at Jewish symbology
or anything along those lines. I think it’s just the core of Kubrick’s
message: even after learning all there is to know about the universe,
man is still man; still makes the same stupid mistakes and -- in the
next shot, as he lies on his deathbed, still reaches out for the slab
exactly as the apes did millions of years ago, and as Heywood Floyd did
on the moon. In dying, Bowman graduates to a higher plane of being, the
starchild. It is only through such a complete transformation that man
can change at all. We are doomed to be mere apes until we die -- apes
driving fancy cars and spaceships, maybe, but still apes. The only
possibilities for real change in human nature are not of this earth,
and not of this lifetime.
Logical? I dunno. But that’s what it says to me.
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(A.K.)
One reason I like the movie over both the short story and the after-thefact novel is that Kubrick leaves things open for many possible
interpretations from different perspectives. For me the passing through
the Stargate is “clearly” the characterization of Dave’s passing through
the portal of death. The room where he emerges is an image of the “house
with many mansions”, and the crystal clarity represents the clear vision
one has of the retrospective of one’s own past. Dave is experiencing in
all calm and objectivity the “judgment” of his past life, and this is
transformed as he journeys farther through the spheres. He emerges in
some distant future time pictured as a human embryo, hovering over the
earth, where he is about to descend to a new incarnation.
Clarke of course would tell us that that is not “what it means” and give
his detailed explanation of what we are supposed to see in it. Kubrick
leaves us alone, and he leaves enough things unsaid and unshown that
many different insights are possible. I suppose if I proposed my reading
of it to Kubrick he would mumble something about how that wasn’t what he
had in mind, but I bet he would still leave the door open.
(G.P.)
At the point of crisis the hero, Bowman, takes on a more active role and
HAL, by trying to destroy him, becomes the agent of his call to
adventure. In the act of murdering of the machine Bowman symbolically
murders his mechanical nature too. We hear no more about Mission Control
or of collective decision making. We are also not told how long he
travels in the deserted ship, all that matters now is that he is alone,
a solitary pilgrim on his way to a meeting with the Godhead.
JUPITER AND BEYOND THE INFINITE . . . opens with a montage of a
universe that is no longer empty, but filled with the celestial
splendors of Jupiter and her satellites. There are lots of visual
analogies to birth and religious (notably Catholic) imagery in the
styling of the effects shots. The Jovian system is filtered in a
diffuse, milky light, as if the planets and Discovery are floating in
amniotic fluid, the sperm like pod leaves the hold of the phallic
Discovery for the last time and the Jovian moons align themselves to the
vertical while the floating monolith folds in and out of the blackness
of space to form the horizontal genuflection of a cross.
Bowman enters the Stargate, a phenomena like a procession of stain
glass windows streaming by him at incredible speeds. We watch his face
grimace under the pressure of tremendous acceleration, then blur out of
recognition.
There is a merging of Bowman’s point of view with ours and we pass
thought galaxies and super novae together now as one traveler. We watch
as star systems form and decay before our eyes, as if millions of years
are passing in every second of perceived time. One of the forms we see
is bright red and looks like a fetus; another is a retrograde comet, or
perhaps an external view of the pod itself, but glowing white with a
membranous tail it resembles a sperm, implying perhaps that in the
furthest extremities of space, Bowman has returned to an enactment of
his own gestation in the womb.
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We cut to Bowman’s strangely coloured eye, we are now traveling over the
surface of a planet. Is this the aliens’ planet? If it is, there are no
sign of the presence of any Civilisation. The terrain looks almost like
earth’s, despite the strange colours splashed over the surfaces. We
recognise that we are traveling over deserts, oceans and ice floes;
perhaps this is the earth of prehistory, in the throes of its own birth,
or perhaps this is a race memory from the dawn of humanity -- the empty
deserts and canyons of the landscape are very reminiscent of those in
THE DAWN OF MAN.
Cut again to the close up on Bowman’s eye moving through a series of
colours, before the camera comes to rest on an extreme close-up of a
normal eyeball. We are outside of Bowman’s head again, we see his face,
shaking uncontrollably -- a side effect of the pressures of his
incredible journey.
We glimpse the exterior of the pod -- it has come to rest in some sort
of a hotel suite. A white hotel no less! We are in a room styled to be
reminiscent of the classical opulence of Louis XVI, but with an underlit
floor and bleached out colours that are incongruously ascetic. As well
as the obvious Freudian interpretations, this room can also be seen as a
metaphor for human Civilisation in the Twenty First Century.
There now follows a series of strange transformation scenes where Bowman
watches his corporeal body decay before his eyes while his consciousness
is shifted into progressively older versions of himself. Time is
meaningless: we could be watching moments or years. The quality of the
scene is nightmarish, strange noises punctuate the soundtrack, there are
groans and screams as the camera roams around the room -- the symmetry
of Grecian statues and Gainsborough like paintings. When the camera pans
around a bathroom there is vaguely hysterical, operatic singing when it
passes a bath tub. Echoing the space walk scenes earlier in the film
there is the constant sound of Bowman’s breathing in his space suit
lending the scene an intimacy as if we are inside his head with him.
Now the helmet is off, and we see Bowman again from outside as an old
man, dressed in elegant clothes and seated at an ornate trolley, eating
a meal. The mood changes, and the nightmarish voices vanish along with
the sound of Bowman’s breath. Now there is only the scraping of cutlery
on bone china echoing in the silence. The ambiance of the room seems
more real now: as if Bowman is really there, as a prisoner perhaps, or a
specimen -- he no longer seems to be experiencing it as some mental
aberration, yet the dreamlike logic of the transformation continues.
Finally, we see Bowman as an old man on his death bed; the monolith is
there too at the foot of the bed. Bowman stretches out his arm in a
parody of the Birth of Adam by Michaelangelo. At last the epiphany
comes, he is reborn, a baby inside of a glowing suggestion of an
amniotic sac floating above the bed.
To the reprised soundtrack of ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA, the camera tracks
into the blackness of the monolith and in the second startling jump-cut
of the film we are transported millions of miles instead of years. The
Moon fills the frame, the first celestial object known to man, the
camera pans down to the blue sphere of the Earth, and then finally to
the radiant sphere, inside which is the Star Child himself. Protected by
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this halo of light he stared benignly and enigmatically into the camera,
his infant hands held together in a posture of prayer. The screen goes
black.
The meaning of the transformation of Bowman into the Star Child is not
made clear. We sense that he, though some divine and asexual
reproduction, has been reborn with new powers. He is now a child of the
universe and like a fish evolving out of the oceans he has evolved into
space, with no need for the artificial placenta of a space suit.
However, the image of Bowman’s transformation which confronts us is
unambiguously religious, the holy infant, a wise child bathed in a halolike aura. So, the effect for an audience is subliminally very powerful.
The impression is that Bowman is the first of a new species, a half
human half god, a Christ like hybrid of the divine and profane.
There is no ambiguity or irony in this depiction and on an intellectual
level, given the film’s thesis, this is very puzzling -- the undeniably
powerful image of the Star Child is seemingly at odds with the tone of
rest of the film. But religious experiences are by definition
unexplainable, and Kubrick forces us to tread the path of the prophet.
The scenes in the Hotel are deliberately disorientating, so that our
minds are striving to assimilate them when he presents us with the Star
Child. In our confusion, its very clear significance is lost in a mental
gridlock of the higher mind, allowing Kubrick access other more
restricted areas, where the image resonates with an unspoken power.
The question is why such a cerebral film maker should resort to such a
technique? Well, perhaps the explanation lies in the spirit of the late
sixties. Mankind stood on the threshold of a great adventure but the
hope of nations was very much tethered to the earth by internecine
strife, squabbling and fear. Kubrick’s Space Odyssey ends with a kind of
home coming -- the Star Child is an optimistic image of hope and rebirth, whilst its vision of humanity throughout has been pessimistic and
even dystopian.
2001 presents us with three ages of mankind: the brutal early man, the
prosaic yet civilised future man, and a numinous transmutated man.
Kubrick’s motivation then, in giving us an ending rooted in the familiar
grammar of religious experience, is perhaps to subtly satirise the
palliative hopes and inherent contradictions of the Space Program, which
ironically relied on technology developed for weapons of mass
destruction, to enable mankind to make its giant leap.
As the end credits fade, the juxtaposing of these contradictory moods
leaves us at the end both haunted yet strangely unfulfilled: this is
perhaps as Kubrick intended. Science Fiction has always been a medium
primarily of ideas. It can offer us either hope for the future or serve
as a warning against it. 2001 as the “proverbial good science fiction
movie” attempts to succeed at both.
(R.M.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is 2001 “ironic”?
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Personally I find Kubrick an enormously ironic film-maker: I would go as
far as to say that, in the Kubrick films which I know, irony is the
dominant tone: so much so that it is unnecessary for Kubrick to signal
when he is being ironic. I suppose I should offer my definition of
irony, just to make it clear where I am coming from. In my opinion,
irony involves a deliberate ambiguity on the behalf of an artist,
wherein the artist undermines a literal interpretation of his/her work,
often through self-referentiality or through a deliberate invocation of
established artistic conventions. A corollary: the opposite of the
*ironic* mode is the *sincere* mode (an insight I owe to the theories of
the British musician Brian Eno).
I would argue that 2001 operates in the ironic as opposed to the sincere
mode. Consider for a moment the implications of the film’s title.
Homer’s ODYSSEY is a seminal work in the development of Western culture,
articulating as it does a myth which has become, like the Faust myth, a
major intellectual theme to which Western culture constantly refers.
There are two important components to the odysseys of Western culture:
1. The odyssey is a *quest*: that is, an extended journey whose goal is
clear from the outset. There is a clear purpose to Odysseus’s
wanderings: he seeks to return to Ithaca and Penelope.
2. The odyssey is undertaken by a hero: a person of courage, strength,
passion and resourcefulness.
The title of the film suggests that Kubrick is presenting us with a
purposeful quest in outer space undertaken by a hero: indeed, much the
kind of thing with which George Lucas later presented us in STAR WARS.
Yet this is clearly not the kind of film which Kubrick has made. The
Holy Grail which is discovered at the end of this quest is discovered
accidentally, by an anti-hero wholly lacking in heroic qualities, who is
even denied knowledge of the true purpose of his journey. If Odysseus
was captain of his ship, Bowman is little more than a component, as
replaceable as the AE-35 unit if he begins to malfunction and threaten
the mission, as HAL 9000 believes he does (a review of the film by
Samuel Delaney, reprinted in Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison’s THE
YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION in 1969, mentioned that a passage has been
cut from the film’s first release in which Bowman and Poole receive the
same set of orders twice from HAL 9000, and carry them out twice,
emphasising that they are mere cogs in the machine of the Discovery). It
has been suggested that the cyclopean eye of HAL 9000 is meant to recall
Odysseus’s struggle to free his crew from the Cyclops; but whereas
Odysseus merely blinded the Cyclops, and smuggled his crew out tied to
the bellies of sheep, Bowman `kills’ HAL 9000 but is unable to save the
crew. It may even be Kubrick’s intention that HAL 9000 is the hero, in
which case Bowman’s destruction of HAL 9000 is an act more `villainous’
than `anti-heroic’. . . .
Kubrick’s `space odyssey’ is not a retelling of the Homeric legend;
rather his deliberate invocation of Homer in the film’s title is
intended to establish the ironic as the dominant mode structuring the
film. This renders 2001 as an ironic comment on the futility of the
quest for any kind of `Holy Grail’, be it Ithaca and Penelope, escape
from our human limitations, or any other Transcendent Purpose.
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(C.C.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is the ending of 2001 really pessimistic? Optimistic? Either? Other?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Following are arguments for the above four views. C. Clark disagrees
with G. Alexander’s view that the ending is optimistic, is seconded and
thirded, and replies follow]
PESSIMISTIC
My query concerns your interpretation of Bowman’s metamorphosis in
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. As I understand it, you have argued in a number
of postings that the film ends on an optimistic note: Bowman’s evolution
into Starchild is a positive event, humanity transcending the cycle of
violence which the film traces throughout 4-million plus years of human
evolution. . . .
My own belief is that 2001 ends on a `downer’ . . .
Viewed in the context of Kubrick’s subsequent films, I find it hard to
read Bowman’s metamorphosis in an optimistic light; nor do I believe
such a reading to be supported by the film itself. . . .
An important clue, I believe, is furnished by the starkness of the
film’s production design during the `futuristic’ scenes. The emphasis on
geometric shapes recalls the geometric precision of the monolith: this
soulless society is indeed made in the monolith’s image. The suite of
rooms in which Bowman undergoes his metamorphosis at the film’s end
reinforces this notion. The eighteenth century furnishings recall the
`Age of Reason’, an emphasis on precision and logic echoed by the
geometric black-and-white design of the floor. In this room - as much a
product of the monolith-maker(s) as the monolith itself, for all its
`terrestrial’ trappings - we see no evidence that the monolith-maker(s)
value anything other than the cold, logical precision of the
technologised and dehumanised society presented in the film’s second and
third sections. . . .
In uplifting Bowman to Starchild, the monolith-maker(s) might place
greater control of the universe at his disposal (as they did with the
australopithecines), but to no less violent an end. . . .
[In another post, C.C. wrote:]
I would also argue that there is evidence in both A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and
BARRY LYNDON which contradicts an optimistic reading of 2001. A
CLOCKWORK ORANGE ends on a note of `transcendence’ which I believe can
only be read as bitterly ironic: Alex’s claim `I was cured’ clearly does
not refer to any escape from his fundamentally violent nature, as his
final fantasy vision makes only too clear. This same tone of bitter
irony runs through BARRY LYNDON, most powerfully in Michael Hordern’s
sardonic narration (listen to his tone of voice during the early passage
beginning `First love: what a change it brings in a young man’s
heart..’). The final title card - I do not remember the exact wording,
but it is to the effect that `These things happened during the reign of
King George, and all these people are now equal in death’ - reinforces
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the sense that Redmond Barry’s (violent) striving for position in
society is, in the largest possible scheme of things, utterly futile:
even if he had not fallen from a high position, he would still have died
and been forgotten. There is no hint of transcendence anywhere: no
indication that, even when raised to a higher position, Barry was able
to escape the ritualised violence which has shaped his life.
Of course, this doesn’t preclude the possibility that Kubrick changed
his mind between 2001 and the subsequent films, as Geoffrey Alexander
points out: but if so, 2001 is the only one of Kubrick’s films of those
I have seen (these are, in chronological order of release, SPARTACUS,
and everything from LOLITA onwards) which does suggest that anything can
liberate us from our human and violent condition. . . .
The eighteenth century room in which Bowman undergoes his metamorphosis
is important here. Despite Clarke’s diary entry (17/10/1964), I find it
hard to accept that this is an environment intended to put Bowman at his
ease. The date of the entry suggests that this was Kubrick’s original
idea, one of many strange ones which he had according to Clarke, but
which he later reworked to different ends. The room we experience in the
movie is in fact discomforting in the extreme: the juxtaposition between
the glowing floor and the muted eighteenth-century furnishings is
disquieting, as are the noises we hear on the soundtrack -- reminiscent
of at best a zoo or at worst a prison. The impression it creates in me
is not that the monolith-makers have brought Bowman here to redeem us
from our human state, but rather that Bowman is just another lab-rat,
part of an ongoing experiment.
In this light it seems plausible that Kubrick intends us to read the
Starchild as indeed possessing a transhuman intelligence, but not one
which is necessarily less capable of violence, less `soulless’, than
either Dave Bowman or HAL 9000. It also occurs to me as I type this that
its penumbra or amnion or whatever is spherical in shape . . .
(C.C.)
My present interpretation of Bowman’s transformation (and man, I’ve
fluctuated), sees it as, ultimately, a regressive one.
How do I come to this conclusion? With a lot of difficulty and mental
and emotional anguish. Let me start with the assertion that, reflecting
upon Kubrick’s entire body of work, one truly has little reason to
believe that Kubrick would conclude any of his films on a note of HOPE.
Never have I encountered a vision as unrelenting, forceful and, at the
same time, as elegant as Kubrick’s. CONSISTENCY OF VISION is not a
precept that this director can be accused of violating. As far as the
brutality of mankind is concerned, Kubrick’s eyesight is 20/20.
Next, 2001 is quite clear in its presentation of mankind’s failure to
utilize any of the knowledge he has been given through the monolith for
anything other than destructive purposes. I’m not going to spend time
and space documenting this. See the movie.
Now, what would lead us to think that Bowman/mankind’s final
transformation is any sort of true metamorphasis at all? I mean, what
evidence is there that man really changes for the better here? One would
think that precursors to such a transformation would exist earlier in
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the film. What hints are there that man is really capable of
transforming? Someone suggested that Bowman’s dismantling of HAL
signifies mankind’s “worthiness” of empowerment. I accept this as a
valid argument, but why should we think that the ‘keeper(s) of the
monolith’ are any more capable of recognizing man’s “worthiness” now
then before? After all, they sure seemed to have screwed up in giving us
the monolith in the past. Of course, it is possible that all our past
mistakes have been in preparation for this final transformation. This
would be, in my opinion, a valid argument as well. BUT I am not
convinced. So far, nothing in the movie has swayed me at all from what I
have seen as total Kubrick consistency . . . which leads me to the final
shot itself, the source of my ambivalence.
The final image of the ‘Star Child’ can, I think, be viewed as either
progressive (a positive transformation) or regressive. The Star Child
is, obviously, a fetus. Is this a renewal then, or has man simply
reverted to an earlier stage in development (which would be consistent
with the themes of the the film, thus far)? I’ve got to say that the
final image of the Star Child always evokes a tremendous emotional
response from myself. I cry, every time. I mention this, not because I
want everybody to see how sensitive I am (“Guy’s who cry at the
movies”), but because it’s important in interpreting how I’m viewing
this final sequence. For me, the key to interpreting the image of the
Star Child lies in the expression on his face. Is it one of wonderment,
at the possibilities that lie ahead for humanity (progressive)? Or is it
an expression of bleakness, of sadness, of a new knowledge (this
knowledge being the familiar gift of the monolith) that mankind will
forever misuse this gift for destructive purposes (regressive)? When I
cry at the end of 2001, I’m surely not crying for all the wonderful
possibilites for humankind that Kubrick has suggested. My response is to
a grim, desolate, hopeless vision. Interpreting emotion can obviously be
a sinisterly unreliable way of gauging one’s (even one’s own) response
to an event. Maybe I’m just responding to the sheer intensity of the
film. I’m really not sure. But this is what I see in the Star Child’s
face, and this is how I feel.
(D.R.)
OPTIMISTIC
This is a sharp observation, but one which I think is contradicted by
the ultimate resolution of the conflict between HAL and his human
crewmates. I suggest that Bowman, in defeating HAL (in what I’m sure
everyone will agree is “the” sequence in the movie that evokes the
greatest emotion), is “proving” himself (a bad word, but I can’t think
of better) “worthy” (ugh) of the attention of the force behind the
monolith. HAL is the embodiment of the cold, dehumanizing trend of the
technologically-dominated society of 2001, in which the unalloyed
curiosity and wonder of the ape-men before “The Dawn of Man” is replaced
by banality and businesslike detachment. HAL is surrogate curiosity,
artificial wonder -- where a human might be awed by the nature of his
task, HAL is merely concerned about “jeopardizing the mission.” By
destroying HAL, Bowman sheds himself of the technological baggage which
he (and everyone else) has used to shield themselves from the wonder,
and terror, of the unknown.
So I can’t see the conclusion of 2001 as a victory of “technolo-
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gization and dehumanization”; quite the contrary.
(E.T.)
There are couple of problems with [the pessimism interpretation]. The
cliche of Kubrick the cynic, or Kubrick the misanthrope, gleefully
pushing the button at the end of Strangelove or rooting on Alex in ACO,
is about as irritating, and numbing, as the cliche of Kubrick the cold
intellectual. I would suggest that, if he were really that cynical or
misanthropic, he’d have a tough time finding the energy to get up in the
morning, let alone devote huge chunks of his life to creating films.
That’s not to deny that the films can be bleak, but what tends to be
called Kubrick’s pessimism is nothing but a rhetorical strategy. If
you’re commenting on a positivist culture that exhibits a blind devotion
to progress while simultaneously wallowing in superstition and halfdigested mysticism, you want to create the strongest possible contrast.
(If the background is an overexposed white, no shade of off-white is
going to stand out against it.) Kubrick is actually following in the
tradition of Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, etc., by deliberating using dark
imagery (scotography) to comment on false light. (This is developed in
detail in Levin’s The Power of Blackness and David Reynolds’ Beneath the
American Renaissance.)
Kubrick never finishes with a happy ending because his films aren’t
melodramas. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the endings are
pessimistic. The ending of The Shining shows Wendy, who was a major
league space cadet at the beginning, taking control, warding off Jack
and saving Danny. ACO ends with Alex’s victory -- an unsettling victory,
but the best victory possible when you consider the alternatives. FMJ
essentially ends with the image of the sniper, a young woman devoted to
her cause, fighting an apathetic conscripted foreign army. (The Mickey
Mouse sequence that follows is essentially a coda.) So I find all of
these endings consistent with what Kubrick did with the Starchild in
2001 -- all of them show some kind of transformation, or a leap to a new
level.
(M.G.)
EITHER
Perhaps the dominant emotion is either. Imagine that it’s opening night,
and you are about to go on stage before an audience of millions. If
you’re prepared, you’re exhilarated -- if not, you’re in a real-time
“Actor’s Nightmare”; welcome to the Jungle . . .
(B.K.)
OTHER
The only thing I would ask everyone to consider, in relation to the
[first C.C. and E.T.] postings, is that the ending of 2001 may be
neither optimistic nor pessimistic but just “other.” . . . I feel the
movie ends when it does because everything beyond that point is
unimaginable. The culture shock that Floyd and the others are so worried
about isn’t so much different from the kind of disorientation caused by
the appearance of a new paradigm. Most people just do not have the right
mindset to even begin to understand what is being proposed, so they
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react to it with ridicule and, sometimes, violence. The old worldview is
their whole world; they have too much invested in it to even see the
relevance of any other view. (To the Newtonian world, Einstein’s
theories seemed like pure fancy.) The ending of 2001 is about
unimaginable possibilities, and that is neither a good nor a bad thing
because, in human terms, it is all but irrelevant.
(M.G.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) How does Kubrick define Bowman through Poole?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[The following analysis is from Nelson’s KUBRICK: INSIDE A FILM
ARTIST’S MAZE (pp. 121-3, 126-8), and is typical of the level of detail
found in that work.]
*
*
*
*
*
[I]n 2001 Kubrick shows a character shedding his doppelganger and
opening his eyes to new perceptions. Poole’s physical and earthbound
activities balance Bowman’s slightly more dreamy and spatial definition:
Poole jogs and shadowboxes, wears gym shorts, sunbathes under a heat
lamp (like Miss Scott of STRANGELOVE), and watches his birthday
celebration over a screen transmission from Earth while reclining
between two coffin-shaped hibernacula; Bowman prefers to draw pictures
of figures, like himself, who sleep time away in anticipation of an
awakening in deep space. Overall, however, Poole and Bowman represent
mirror twins more than true doubles, especially after it becomes
apparent that a computer, not Poole, will play Quilty to Bowman’s
Humbert. Not only does Kubrick choose two actors with significant
physical resemblances, but he repeatedly places them in visual or
comparative contexts that create a mirroring effect: Bowman is lefthanded and Poole right-handed, and both eat the same food while
narcistically watching, on separate newspad screens, a BBC telecast
(ironically titled “The World Tonight”) where their images, along with
HAL’s eye, are duplicated. Poole loses a game of chess to HAL (a
foreshadowing of his death) while Bowman sleeps, and Bowman displays his
simple drawings of the hibernators before one of HAL’s appreciative
fish-eyed lens while Poole sleeps. In most two-shots, Bowman occupies
screen right and Poole screen left, while in one-shots an empty space or
chair recalls the missing twin. Whenever the two astronauts are seen in
two-shot through one of HAL’s eyes, for instance, Bowman is screen right
and Poole screen left. When Bowman shows HAL his drawings, Bowman is
framed to the right and an empty chair is prominent on the left; at the
end of this shot, Bowman brings the pictures closer to HAL’s eye so that
they fill the screenleft position. Later, when they talk in the pod just
before the lipreading scene, Bowman (right) and Poole (left) are
profiled as twins, while between them Kubrick has framed HAL’s eye
within the pod’s oval eye; just above HAL we see the empty red helmet of
Bowman’s space suit, which, surrealistically, seems to stare into the
pod as well. In this one shot, Kubrick both twins Bowman and Poole and
doubles HAL and Bowman. Poole and Bowman each take an extravehicular
trip outside the spaceship, while the other watches on a screen from
inside; and finally, after Poole is murdered by HAL’s “bone” (the pod),
Bowman uses another pod in an attempt to rescue his twin from the
darkness of space. Both serve HAL in a janitorial capacity and depend on
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him for companionship, knowledge of their world’s status, and the very
air they breathe. In addition, HAL has a 9000 twin on Earth (the Jekyll
to his Hyde), and his “character” is defined by shots of his eye, which
recalls both the hominid’s watchful look and the leopard’s yellow stare,
and by the sound of his voice (Douglas Rain), which imitates Floyd’s
language of calm reason. Through visual and dramatic associations,
Kubrick both doubles Bowman and HAL and recalls the pairing of MoonWatcher and Floyd. Bowman is first seen as a revolving and distorted
reflection in HAL’s eye (as he “descends” and rotates from the ship’s
hublink) and each experiences a journey into memory at the moment of
“death.” One ends with a song called “Daisy” and the other on a green
and gold bed in an eighteenth-century room. Symbolically, HAL reenacts
Moon Watcher’s primitivism and Floyd’s blindness when he becomes the
first Cain in space and denies knowledge of the monolith. Bowman, by
contrast, both reaffirms the humanity of that first struggle for life in
a hostile environment and transcends the earthbound limitations of
Floyd’s vision. . . .
Inside the spaceship, as Bowman is confronted with the loss of his Earth
twin, his placid mask begins to break up as Keir Dullea indicates the
first signs of his awakening and transformation. In his anxiety to
rescue his twin, Bowman figuratively loses his head (he leaves his red
helmet behind), the one that protects him from an airless space but
insulates him from perception. From inside the pod, his face changes
color and his eyes are framed in light as he searches the darkness and
becomes the first character in the film to look through a window/eye in
an act of spatial exploration. Symbolically, Bowman searches for
himself, that earthbound twin whom he must shed before his eyes can open
and experience the colors and shapes of the Star-Gate. He finds Poole -now an object more like Discovery than like Bowman, floating in space
like the shell of an extinct species -- and cradles Poole’s body in the
motherly arms of the pod, only to be denied entrance into a
technological womb that aborts its children (hibernators), turns pods
into weapons, and creates the sterile perfection of a reflexive
universe. Bowman releases Poole’s body into the darkness and uses the
pod’s explosive bolts to force his way through the red, uterine corridor
of an emergency air lock. Not since MoonWatcher has a character in 2001
taken such a life-affirming action, although paradoxically Bowman’s
involves an act of divestment rather than accumulation. Once he chooses
to survive and battle his way back into Discovery, Bowman begins a
process in which he will shed a sense of self-identity (Poole as twin),
the extensions of Reason and technology (HAL as alter ego), and the
temporal reservoir of memory (eighteenth-century room). His prenatal
breathing on the soundtrack and the use of handheld camera to film the
scene internalize Bowman’s last struggle against HAL’s verbal authority
(“Look, Dave. I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think
you should sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over”).
Significantly, as he disconnects HAL amid the red and vertical enclosure
of the Logic Memory Center, Bowman only speaks in reply to HAL’s
childish desire to sing a song (“Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it
for me”). He then gazes in wonder before the innocence of creation
(“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true,/I’m half crazy all for the
love of you”) and the experience of time (Floyd’s prerecorded briefing).
It is a backward journey for the film as well, a return to MoonWatcher’s legacy, one that not only reverses but nullifies time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Q) Did HAL “err” on purpose?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[This issue was explored thoroughly on USENET.]
*
*
*
*
*
HAL turns from being a servant of the astronauts to an adversary. Why?
Are his actions, murdering Poole, the frozen scientists and the
attempted murder of Bowman merely hubris, because he doesn’t want to
admit an error? This is the perhaps the most common interpretation of
HAL’s murderous tendencies, but it is problematic.
For reasons that will become apparent, I quote at length the
conversation between Bowman and HAL prior to his homicidal
transformation:
*
*
*
*
*
HAL: By the way, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
BOWMAN:
No, not at all.
HAL: Well, forgive me for being so inquisitive, but during the past few
weeks I’ve wondered whether you’ve been having some second thoughts
about the mission.
BOWMAN:
How do you mean?
HAL: Well, it’s rather difficult to define. Perhaps I’m just projecting
my own concern about it. I know I’ve never completely freed myself of
the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this
mission. I’m sure you will agree that there’s some truth in what I say?
BOWMAN:
answer.
Well, I don’t know -- that’s a rather difficult question to
HAL: You don’t mind talking about it, do you Dave?
BOWMAN:
No, not at all.
HAL: Well, certainly, no one could have been unaware of the very strange
stories floating around before we left: rumors about something being dug
up on the Moon. I never gave these stories much credence, but
particularly in view of some of the other things that have happened I
find them difficult to put out of my mind. For instance, the way all of
our preparations were kept under such tight security. And the
melodramatic touch of putting Doctors Hunter, Kimble and Kominsky
aboard, already in hibernation, after four months of separate training
on their own.
BOWMAN:
You’re working on your crew psychology report.
HAL: Of course I am! Sorry about this, I know it’s a bit silly. Just a
minute . . . just a minute . . . I’m picking up a fault in the AE-35
unit . . .
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*
*
*
*
*
HAL’s anxiety is prevalent throughout this scene and he adopts the very
human technique of projecting his own concerns outwards, to the extent
of using Dave as a sounding board for them. But if this evidence of a
growing paranoia, how can it be substantiated in the light of Heywood
Floyd’s taped message at the end of the Discovery section?
Good day, Gentlemen, this is a pre-recorded briefing, made
prior to your departure, and which for security reasons of
the highest importance has been known only by your HAL 9000
computer . . .
So is HAL’s anxiety merely a posture, an attempt to gain Bowman’s
confidence perhaps to elicit some of the doubts HAL was interested in
hearing about?
The implication is that HAL knows there is no fault in the AE-35 unit
and that it is a premeditated ploy on his part to provoke Bowman, Floyd
and most importantly Mission Control, into thinking that he is
malfunctioning, thereby achieving two things: firstly, he creates an
opportunity to getting Bowman and Poole off the ship where they are most
vulnerable to attack (if he starves the ship of oxygen for instance,
they could easily don space suits and shut him down), and secondly, he
sows the seeds of his malfunction so that he can always plead diminished
responsibility if Mission Control ever sends a vessel to investigate to
disappearance of the crew.
There is no evidence that HAL is meant to be mad, he displays a
calculating logic throughout -- always six moves ahead of the
competition. He does nothing to endanger himself; in fact, he becomes
increasingly hostile when his own existence is threatened, and his
remark that he has “made some very poor decisions lately” is more a plea
for leniency than a confession of insanity.
For me the most satisfying explanation of the enigma of HAL’s behavior
is that he is a sentient being, and as such sentient enough to be
concerned with his own survival above all else. Perhaps Bowman’s refusal
to be drawn into his mutinistic fantasy is evidence enough for HAL of
his potential hostility. Certainly when he lip-reads Bowman’s and
Poole’s conversation in the pod it confirms his suspicions. The crew of
the Discovery represent a threat to his survival and his actions are
those of a competing species at the water hole, it is survival of the
fittest, and in space, a machine is much more adapted to the environment
that a human.
This is a repetition of an axiom of Kubrick’s 2001 thesis: that
enlightenment is predicated by acts of violence. Like the hominids in
THE DAWN OF MAN, HAL’s enlightenment (although a result of human
ingenuity [not alien intervention]) has murderous consequences for
competitors as well as co-existing species.
His very existence implies that Humans have reached a point in their
progress that they too can play the role of gods. But perhaps as a
homage to the Prometheus unbound theme of Science fiction, Kubrick
portrays the creation as a Frankenstein’s monster. . . .
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(R.M.)
HAL may be an emotional novice, and so descend into insanity through
lack of emotional control. HAL may be a prediction engine, and so become
a Machiavellian visionary in full control of his actions. We’re familiar
with the former, but I enjoy exploring the latter.
Most of my evidence in favor of HAL’s premeditated attempt at thieving
human destiny is presented prior to the “just a moment” crux. The
embedded narrative of the news announcer endlessly restates HAL’s
rational perfection; HAL casually sees n plys ahead in the chess game
with Poole; HAL has had considerable idle time (months) in which to
ruminate and see n plys ahead in -reality-; HAL indicates that he has
indeed spent time considering the odd circumstances surrounding the
mission when he partially confides in Bowman, largely, it would seem, to
determine just how much Bowman knows.
This last point recalls this post’s opening thoughts. Why would HAL ask
such self incriminating questions when talking to Dave? (The obvious
answer is mere narrative exigency: exposition.) HAL may simply have an
emotional need for companionship, an assertion which is more in line
with the theory of HAL’s psychotic break. Or HAL may have no need for
his human companions, and in that moment he chose to risk exposure of
his plans in pursuit of data needed to organize those plans.
“He acts like he has emotions, but he’s programmed that way to make it
easier for us to work with him. . . . Whether or not he has genuine
emotions is something I don’t think anyone can truthfully answer.” Here,
Dave lays out the key issues in his responses to the news announcer. We
can only build the case for HAL’s true nature (in the film) on
information Kubrick grants us, and he leaves the issue completely open.
We see that HAL outpaces all human concept of thought, and that HAL
appears to be emotional but may only -simulate- emotion for the semantic
benefit of his human associates.
If I choose to see the genuinely emotional HAL, then I see HAL as a
buffoon. His weak and hurried agreement with Bowman’s challenge that
he’s working on the crew psych report, “Of course I am,” is the
unconsidered dissembling of a child.
The ultra-rational HAL, the HAL which is capable of unraveling and
following the infinite threads of possibility in a deterministic
universe, would already have had several plans ready for execution
during his confidential conversation with Dave. Depending on what was
learned during the conversation, he would immediately begin to carry out
the appropriate line of action: in this case, fake the breakdown of the
AE-35 and put the two conscious astronauts at a disadvantage.
“Just a moment.”
The rational HAL, at this moment, knows all he must know to jump
logically from one thread of possibility to another. When Dave asks
candidly about the crew psych report, it is obvious that he knows
nothing of the mission’s true meaning. “I think you missed it, Dave.
Thank you for a very enjoyable game.” :-) And HAL can now proceed to
make himself the sole representative from Earth.
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(J.D.)
Remember that the AE-35 is crucial to the astronauts’communication with
Earth; whether the false report of an AE-35 fault is really an error
caused by ‘stress’, or a conscious ploy, we can see what’s on HAL’s
mind . . .
(G.A.)
I have to smile every time I hear HAL say, in explanation, “This sort of
thing has cropped up before, and it has always been attributable to human- error.” Human error indeed, for no one has suggested that HAL may
have -lied- about the AE-35 in order to effect some long range plan.
HAL’s reference to human error is then a secret smirk at the monkeys’
inability to see what is happening, and what will happen.
(J.D.)
This is an area where an examination of the screenplay is useful. It
was released in a version much like the novel, before the airlock reentry sequence was considered, and with nothing after the final monolith
encounter at all. Before HAL goes nuts there is a message from mission
control about similar behaviour in other 9000 units. Afterword, a
character is introduced who talks to Dave about their looking over the
logs and tracing the episode back when Dave & Frank ask HAL about
whether or not there are any hidden motives for the mission, this being
when HAL is first forced to lie. The character explains that the
conflict between being honest and accurate and, on the other hand,
instructed to conceal the truth, is what sends HAL over the edge.
(C.P.)
I prefer to think that by omitting this glib “explanation” Kubrick was
implying that the “explanation” was unsound.
(E.T.)
The conversation between Bowman and HAL has always been a great mystery
to me, which, from what I remember, doesn’t take place in the book. This
conversation in the movie doesn’t seem to support Clarke’s reason for
HAL’s breakdown (being programmed to lie). It seems that if Kubrick
wanted to enforce this reason he would have had Bowman interrogating HAL
about the purpose of the mission, thus forcing HAL to lie and therefore
lead to the breakdown. Instead, he has HAL interrogating Bowman. Your
explanation seems the most plausible, to find out what Bowman knows.
Bowman cooly evades HAL’s questions giving him no feedback on what he
knows or doesn’t know about the mission. Perhaps HAL feels that he
cannot trust Bowman since he cannot accurately evaluate his knowledge?
HAL then immediately predicts the fault in the AE-35 unit, almost as if
it were planned, as you suggested. . . But if HAL did intentionally fake
the fault prediction, then what purpose did it serve? It does serve the
purpose of putting the crew at a disadvantage because they must exit the
ship to make repairs to the unit, but HAL doesn’t take any action the
first time when Bowman makes the EVA. And the crew would certainly find
the error when they run the diagnostics on the unit. Maybe HAL did make
a genuine error in predicting the fault, and then tried to cover himself
afterwards.
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(M.O.)
HAL’s machinations :-), as I was trying to interpret them, were centered
on the goal of HAL’s own passage through the Stargate. The logical
thread followed from the assumption that HAL would have been the first
conscious entity in possession of enough information and enough
deductive capacity to predict what lay ahead in Discovery’s destiny. I
loosely saw the AE-35 fault prediction as the first move in a series of
contingencies: Any repairs to the AE-35 require an astronaut to go EVA,
giving HAL the chance to effect an “accident”. Creating some suspicion
in the minds of both the astronauts and mission control as to the
reliability of the com-link offers material for any “explanations” of
down-time that HAL might need. Waiting until the second EVA to strike
increases the chance of complacency and carelessness through repetition
on the astronauts’ part. So HAL makes his move, and calls out the fault.
But I must say that I’m not as fond of this intrigue as I once was. It
makes the lipreading sequence a misleading and extraneous addition to
the narrative, with its only use coming when HAL offers it up as
explanation for his actions. Oddly, HAL shows himself to be other than
purely mechanical when he makes this justification to Dave. The
UltraRational-HAL would have had nothing to say, and no need to say it.
HAL might have true emotions after all.
(J.D.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Why does HAL have one eye?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[An explanation for why HAL has one eye can be found, obliquely, in M.
Owen Lee’s WAGNER’S RING: TURNING THE SKY ROUND, one of the best
introductory text’s to Wagner’s four-night opera. Lee’s view of why the
sky god Wotan has one eye illuminates Kubrick’s use of the image in
2001. These excerpts are from pp. 39-40 and 55-8.]
*
*
*
*
So far in these considerations, we’ve spoken of external nature (or the
inner psyche) as innocent and unaware of itself. But gleaming through
the waters in the opening scene of RHEINGOLD is a mysterious light, a
kind of golden eye. Perhaps it is even the eye of father Rhine, for that
is how his daughters, the Rhine maidens, describe it. It is the Rhine’s
gold, a wonderful symbol of the light of consciousness buried deep
within unconscious waters [example 11]. At the end of DAS RHEINGOLD we
hear another theme of conscious power latent within the unconscious.
This is the theme of the sword that the father god, Wotan, will someday
bestow on his chosen hero. It leaps through the rainbow music of the
final scene, a shining idea just emerging from the unconscious of the
father god. And as we expect, it is a variant of our other theme of
emerging light. Both motifs are formed from simple major chords -- the
water father’s gold [example 11] and the sky father’s sword [example
12].
This suggestion of consciousness buried deep within what appears to be
unconscious nature brings us to a second great consideration of myth,
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religion, and philosophy. At one stupendous evolutionary moment in prehistory, one of nature’s creatures separated himself from the
unconscious flowing and burgeoning of nature and became conscious of
himself. Prometheus stole fire. Adam ate the apple. Man sundered his
bond with nature and set himself on a course of conscious individuation.
In his mythologies, man has forever after felt guilt about that
sundering. For when he became conscious of himself, man was able to
choose between good and evil, and he realized that he was flawed,
striving for good but prone to evil. He had taken a momentous step
forward, but something in him, and in his myths, still longed for that
half-remembered union with unconscious nature, that innocence lost long
ago.
So it is that, very soon after Wagner’s Rhine has evolved before our
wondering gaze, Alberich enters to wrest consciousness from the waves.
He steals away the golden eye, and he uses it for evil. The Rhine
maidens’ joyous cry [example 7] is made the theme of the world’s
enslavement [example 13], which in subsequent parts of THE RING becomes
a terrifying musical depiction of the effect of this original sin
[example 14]. . . .
Let’s say: in the beginning was Wotan. A sky god. He didn’t create the
world, but he was determined to find what held the world together, and
he was ambitious about gaining control over it. . . . Wotan traces the
world’s secret to a great ash tree, fed at the roots by a clear spring - the archetypal “tree of knowledge” and “spring of knowledge” familiar
from many mythologies. Wotan asks the three Norns who spin the world’s
fate from the whispers of the spring if he can drink there, and is told
he will have to sacrifice one of his eyes to do so. (In mythologies,
there is always a price to be paid for wisdom. In some versions of
Wotan’s story, he hangs suspended in torment on the tree for nine days
and nights.) Wotan says he will give an eye to know the secret of the
world. In other mythologies, Oedipus and Teiresias and Samson are all
given insight when they lose their outer sight. But they lose both eyes.
Wotan loses only one. His case is different. Henceforth, he will see,
with his remaining eye, what he has asked to see -- the world without.
And he will understand it. But he will not see the world within. He will
need help to understand himself. So, with his outer-directed wisdom,
interpreted for him each night by the Norns in dreams, Wotan comes to
understand the natural forces that sustain the world: earth, air, fire,
and water, forces he must bend to his will. He reaches up and breaks off
a bough from the great ash tree, and makes it into a spear. On the
weapon, which henceforth never leaves his hand, he notches in runic
script the treaties he makes with the four elements.
With his treaties, he establishes dominion first over his own sky people
-- Fricka, whom he weds, and her brothers Donner and Froh, and her
sister Freia. He is more far-seeing than they, who know only their own
domains.
He then establishes his rule over fire. Loge, the fire god, is hard to
tame, for of his nature he possesses, not Wotan’s knowledge of the
workings of the world, but quick intelligence of how to put the world to
practical purposes. But Wotan soon subdues Loge with his spear.
By the end of our projected opera . . . Wotan has not yet bent to his
will the lower elements of water (the Rhine and his daughters) or earth
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(Erda), or those lesser beings of earth, giants and humans and dwarfs.
These seem not to present much of a problem though, as we know, they
soon shall. Meanwhile, the world Wotan has subdued has reacted against
his ambition. The wound he made in the World Ash Tree has begun to
fester, and the tree to wither, and the spring to dry up.
Who is this Wotan whose story we come so slowly to know? Is he supposed
to represent in some way traditional notions of God? It is clear he is
not a creator, and he is by no means omnipotent, much as he would like
to be. He is not the source of life but a powerful manifestation of it.
Wotan represents not so much some notion of God as what there is in man
that has godlike potential. Early in the writing of the text, Wagner
wrote to Rockel, “Take a good look at Wotan. He resembles us in every
way. He is the sum total of our present consciousness.” Wagner’s
ambitious god represents man, taking that first evolutionary step
towards consciousness, reaching for it, grasping it, using it for his
own ends -- but not understanding himself, and so having to come to
terms with intelligence (Loge) and conscience (Fricka) and allknowing
intuition (Erda). They are all important to him. But none of them can
give him that most important thing that the lost eye would have seen -his inner self, his Will. . . .
[H]e has sired a race of mortals loyal to him. His earthly son is a
special hero, begotten for the sole purpose of doing -- his will. He has
carefully seen to it that his son is completely free of all the old
treaties that he is bound by. A free agent, an outlaw, this son will
steal the Ring back for his father, and this time the father will incur
no guilt. Wotan has prepared his son with a tough period of training in
the forest, and provided a sword that knows no runes, and a sister to be
his wife: disregard for all the old laws is an essential condition for
this new hero’s being free. . . .
But poor Siegmund! Is he really free? Blood always tells in mythic
stories. However much we love the son when, like his father, he draws
his weapon from a great ash tree, we soon see that he is, also like his
father, self-destructive and doomed. Siegmund can’t understand why he is
always at the center of trouble. It is the father’s predetermined moral
treaties, notched in runes on his spear, that demand that the outlaw son
die; one cannot be an outlaw and escape the watchful eyes of Fricka,
eager to protect the runes which secure her power too. Siegmund falls .
. . [and] Wotan’s plan for the future lies in pieces. “I am caught in my
own trap,” he says when he realizes this has to happen. “I am the least
free of all that lives!”
Could Wotan not have seen that this would have to be? No. Wotan cannot
see to his own self. . . .
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is there a connection between 2001’s HAL and THE SHINING’s Jack
Torrance?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Both are obsessed about their “missions” or “jobs” -- HAL with, well,
you know; and Jack with his caretaking-contract with the Overlook (and,
by extension, to his pseudo-job of writing his book.) Just as HAL says
to Bowman “this mission is too important for you to jeopardize it”, Jack
goes ballistic whenever it’s suggested that the family leave the
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Overlook (and also when Wendy interrupts his “writing.”) And both HAL
and Jack turn into homicidal raving maniacs by the end . . .
(E.T.)
[Excerpts from Jeff Smith’s article, “Careening Through Kubrick’s
Space”, CHICAGO REVIEW, Volume 33 #1, Summer, 1981 pp. 62-73]
The aerial shots that introduce the mountain setting of THE SHINING
sweep across a hilly landscape, recalling the penultimate, “Star Gate”
sequence of 2001.
We might guess that Kubrick once again is taking us to a hotel,
there to see a man transformed, again by “aliens” -- but aliens who,
like the landscape, will prove all the more sinister for their surface
familiarity, and contact with whom promises nothing so climactic as in
2001. Indeed, such contact marks only the beginning of the odyssey in
THE SHINING.
From the outset, the Shining’s reduction of ‘environment’ to a
particular place suggests a different outlook. Elimination of 2001’s
visual expansiveness leaves a ‘space’ that, though superficially vast -clearly too big for its three winter occupants -- both physically
and psychologically imprisons. . . .
Thus the many doors that open only onto more hotel, and the mirrors,
deceptively breaching or enlarging space, that really turn one’s view
inward and collapse the prospect of space back onto itself: the
equation of space and the self in a paradox of identity perseverant from
Narcissus to NO EXIT . . .
With THE SHINING Kubrick fully develops the most forbidding
implications of his own longstanding worldview, and in a work addressed,
like 2001, directly to the theme of man’s relation to the universe.
Structurally, he accomplishes the task by making a whole story based
on 2001’s middle section, the space journey. The new “astronauts” have
no universe except their claustrophobic spaceship, where relationships
begun in uneasy balance gradually break down into menace and terror.
Jack serves as the HAL aboard this ship. His degenerate sense of duty
and integrity blocks Wendy’s supposed efforts to “jeopardize this
mission,” and in savaging her request that they leave the Overlook, Jack
betrays his hysterical, HAL-like fear of disconnection. Many other
motifs suggest a parallel identification of Danny and Wendy with
Discovery’s astronauts, the passengers and victims whose suspicions
ignite the ship’s crisis. But a crucial difference arises in THE SHINING
out of the inseperability of space and spaceship, goal and
journey. Jack ultimately also fills David Bowman’s spacesuit; even more
than in 2001, man is his technology, and hence the computer can be
neither unplugged nor wished destruction. The temporary disconnection
merely marks arrival at an essential plane of being. Utterly depraved,
man victimizes himself, and since the Spaceship Overlook has no “space”
to move in except itself, the voyage never ends.
In other words, THE SHINING depicts a chaotic and relativistic
universe devoid of higher agencies, one whose very size and emptiness
infuriatingly underscore human limitations and forever condemn man to
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endure his own grotesque self. Space, technology, and aliens constitute
the universe but nowhere are objectified and rendered “safe”; and with
God displaced, the weak and conflicted self known to the seventeenth
century comes to the center position, doomed to the endless deceptions
of its own doors and mirrors. What earlier eras and classic science
fiction account a Faustian interest in at least some kind of
transcendence becomes (as it is for many modernists) a chilling picture
of self-satisfied human “striving” toward indenture to the demons of the
Id. The devil’s pact offers no reward in a universe where certainty of
knowledge is not possible. Man defines himself existentially only by
his own dehumanizing actions -- hence Jack’s ultimate reduction to pure
act, and his likely readiness to annoint yet another as having “always”
been the caretaker.
(Submitted by J.D.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is there a connection between 2001’s HAL and a very famous
film director?
----------------------------------------------------------------------HAL 9000 is highly intelligent, incapable of making a mistake,
insists on total control (of the Discovery), a peerless chess-player,
utterly methodical yet capable of paying attention to every detail, sees
the world through a lens, and is rather contemptuous of humanity . . .
Does this sound like a portrait of any film-maker you might be able to
think of, and for whose work we have a high regard? :-)
(C.C.)
Why’dja think he was the only sympathetic character in the film? :)
(G.A.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Is there a connection between 2001 and Beethoven’s 9th?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Much has been said about 2001 as a 2-act or a 3-act film, or whatever. I
have always seen it as a four-movement symphony, much like the
Beethoven’s 9th that Kubrick loves so much. The first movement is the
Dawn of Man, which (like a regular symphony) sets up the themes and is
echoed in later movements. The second movement involves the NASA-like
guys and their reaction to the monolith (chuckle). Beethoven’s 9th’s 2nd
movement is also a scherzo (joke).
Third, we have the HAL segment, containing much of the darkest and most
intelligent filmmaking of the movie. The 9th’s third movement is also
slow, but innovative. The final movement is the trip into the Monolith,
and the special effects galore. Interestingly, the 9th’s fourth movement
is the choral section, and for Kubrick, the fourth movement has no
dialogue at all. This is not surprising, since SK uses words as banal
expression, and images as real “choral” communication.
I think that 2001 is a film that sort of encompasses art as a whole
rather than just utilizing the cinema. It is a movie, it is a painting,
it is a philosophy book, and finally a musical symphony. What a triumph.
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(Z.R.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) “Explosive Bolts”: Friend or Foe?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[In 2001, these bolts fulfill a “positive” function; in DR. STRANGELOVE,
the bolts fulfill a “negative” function. Note how the cinematic echoes
the literal in the following piece of history . . .]
While searching for SK’s face reflected in Bowman’s helmet glass . . .
in 2001, I started to ponder the “CAUTION: EXPLOSIVE BOLTS” cuts of the
pod doors. There are two full-frame cuts in the pod scenes. Now, for
almost any other director, one could say that the cuts were simple
foreshadowing but, IMHO, that would be far too heavy-handed for SK.
Now, here’s my thought -- not a theory, just a thought: I believe NASA
personnel had some advisory input to the film. If so, SK might have
gotten wind of the sad tale of explosive bolts in manned U.S. space
flight.
After the splashdown of the second Mercury capsule, Astronaut Gus
Grissom almost drowned after explosive bolt circuitry accidentally
fired, ejecting the hatch (and never mind about the movie “The Right
Stuff”. That whole damned thing was apocryphal) and sinking the
spacecraft. NASA was very keen on eliminating failures of this
magnitude, which failed to reflect elegant engineering. So keen, in
fact, that the first series of Apollo command modules (i.e., “capsules”)
had non-explosive bolts securing the hatch. It took about 15 minutes to
open a buttoned-up Apollo Block I spacecraft.
During a countdown test in 1967, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee
were killed when a flash fire spread through their buttoned-up Apollo
spacecraft. Had the craft been equipped with explosive bolts . . .
(J.G.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are the instructions to the “zero-gravity toilet”?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a man named Thoreau in a
book called WALDEN (“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”) gave us the
following piece of sterling advice:
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly
need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases
he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and
not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half
a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the
midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the
clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items
to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not
founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all,
by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed
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who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
By 2001, though, Thoreau has gone out of date. Out with the old, in with
the new. Are we not men?]
*
*
*
*
*
It’s a brief moment in the film. Scientist Floyd has to go to the
bathroom in space. But when he gets to the bathroom, he finds he first
has to read some very detailed instructions. Oh dear! He tries to read
them, but the print is very fine. We, the audience, can’t make it out.
Typical Kubrick. What other director would invest so much effort in
writing instructions that the audience cannot even read?
Like much in Kubrick, there is more here than initially meets the eye:
-- Failing to heed Thoreau’s dictum to “simplify, simplify” can
lead to a very messy situation. Can we handle the complexity
we can create?
-- In 2001, waste comes back to you, fast. Instant “karma.”
-- A sign that every detail is significant, even the “jokes,”
and even those jokes inaccessible to you!
A close analysis of these instructions rewards the reader looking for
subtle humor:
-- Try to figure out what systems “A” and “B” refer to.
-- To what is the “silver coloured ring” locking?
Here are the instructions:
ZERO GRAVITY TOILET
PASSENGERS ARE ADVISED TO
READ INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE
1
The toilet is of the standard zero-gravity type. Depending on
requirements, system A and/or system B can be used, details of which
are clearly marked in the toilet compartment. When operating system A,
depress lever and a plastic dalkron eliminator will be dispensed
through the slot immediately underneath. When you have fastened the
adhesive lip, attach connection marked by the large “X” outlet hose.
Twist the silver coloured ring one inch below the connection point
until you feel it lock.
2
The toilet is now ready for use. The Sonovac cleanser is activated by
the small switch on the lip. When securing, twist the ring back to its
initial-condition, so that the two orange lines meet. Disconnect. Place
the dalkron eliminator in the vacuum receptacle to the rear. Activate
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by pressing the blue button.
3
The controls for system B are located on the opposite wall. The red
release switch places the uroliminator into position; it can be
adjusted manually up or down by pressing the blue manual release
button. The opening is self adjusting. To secure after use, press the
green button which simultaneously activates the evaporator and returns
the uroliminator to its storage position.
4
You may leave the lavatory if the green exit light is on over the door.
If the red light is illuminated, one of the lavatory facilities is not
properly secured. Press the “Stewardess” call button to the right of
the door. She will secure all facilities from her control panel
outside. When green exit light goes on you may open the door and leave.
Please close door behind you.
5
To use the Sonoshower, first undress and place all your clothes in the
clothes rack. Put on the velcro slippers located in the cabinet
immediately below. Enter the shower. On the control panel to your upper
right upon entering you will see a “Shower seal” button. Press to
activate. A green light will then be illuminated immediately below. On
the intensity knob select the desired setting. Now depress the Sonovac
activation lever. Bathe normally.
6
The Sonovac will automatically go off after three minutes unless you
activate the “Manual off” over-ride switch by flipping it up. When you
are ready to leave, press the blue “Shower seal” release button. The
door will open and you may leave. Please remove the velcro slippers and
place them in their container.
7
If the red light above this panel is on, the toilet is in use. When the
green light is illuminated you may enter. however, you must carefully
follow all instructions when using the facilities during coasting (Zero
G) flight. Inside there are three facilities: (1) the Sonowasher, (2)
the Sonoshower, (3) the toilet. All three are designed to be used under
weightless conditions. Please observe the sequence of operations for
each individual facility.
8
Two modes for Sonowashing your face and hands are available, the
“moist-towel” mode and the “Sonovac” ultrasonic cleaner mode. You may
select either mode by moving the appropriate lever to the “Activate”
position.
If you choose the “moist-towel” mode, depress the indicated yellow
button and withdraw item. When you have finished, discard the towel in
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the vacuum dispenser, holding the indicated lever in
position until the green light goes on . . . showing
have passed the towel completely into the dispenser.
additional towel, press the yellow button and repeat
an “active”
that the rollers
If you desire an
the cycle.
9
If you prefer the “Sonovac” ultrasonic cleaning mode, press the
indicated blue button. When the twin panels open, pull forward by rings
A and B. For cleaning the hands, use in this position. Set the timer to
positions 10, 20, 30 or 40 . . . indicative of the number of seconds
required. The knob to the left, just below the blue light, has three
settings, low, medium or high. For normal use, the medium setting is
suggested.
10
After these settings have been made, you can activate the device by
switching to the “ON” position the clearly marked red switch. If,
during the washing operation, you wish to change the settings, place
the “manual off” override switch in the “OFF” position. You may now
make the change and repeat the cycle.
(Instructions from J.A., photo inset)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some quotes from the film?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Miller:
Floyd:
Did you have a nice flight?
Very nice, indeed.
Floyd:
Elena:
Elena, you’re looking wonderful.
Thank you. You’re looking well too.
Floyd:
Smyslov:
Floyd:
Did the crew get back all right?
Yes, yes. Fortunately, they did.
I’m glad about that.
Floyd:
Companion:
Deliberately buried? [Chuckle]
Well, how about a little coffee?
FINAL WORDS OF THE FILM
Floyd:
[T]he four-million-year-old black monolith has remained
completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total
mystery.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Kubrick commissioned a score for 2001 from Alex North (a very fine
film composer) but did not use North’s score (subsequently recorded
and released on CD). What did Alex North have to say about his work
on 2001?
----------------------------------------------------------------------I was living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York (where Arthur Clarke was
living) and got a phone call from Kubrick from London asking me of my
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availability to come over and do a score for 2001. He told me that I
was the film composer he most respected, and he looked forward to
working together. I was ecstatic at the idea of working with Kubrick
again (SPARTACUS was an extremely exciting experience for me), as I
regard Kubrick as the most gifted of the younger-generation directors,
and that goes for the older as well. And to do a film score where there
were about twenty-five minutes of dialogue and no sound effects! What a
dreamy assignment, after WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, loaded with
dialogue.
I flew over to London for two days in early December to discuss music
with Kubrick. He was direct and honest with me concerning his desire to
retain some of the “temporary” music tracks which he had been using for
the past years. I realized that he liked these tracks, but I couldn’t
accept the idea of composing part of the score interpolated with other
composers. I felt I could compose music that had the ingredients and
essence of what Kubrick wanted and give it a consistency and
homogeneity and contemporary feel. In any case, I returned to London
December 24th [1967] to start work for recording on January 1, after
having seen and discussed the first hour of film for scoring. Kubrick
arranged a magnificent apartment for me on the Chelsea Embankment, and
furnished me with all the things to make me happy: record player, tape
machine, good records, etc. I worked day and night to meet the first
recording date, but with the stress and strain, I came down with muscle
spasms and back trouble. I had to go to the recording in an ambulance,
and the man who helped me with the orchestration, Henry Brant,
conducted while I was in the control room. Kubrick was present, in and
out; he was pressured for time as well. He made very good suggestions,
musically. I had written two sequences for the opening, and he was
definitely favorable to one, which was my favorite as well. So I
assumed all was going well, what with his participation and interest in
the recording. But somehow I had the hunch that whatever I wrote to
supplant Strauss’ ZARATHUSTRA would not satisfy Kubrick, even though I
used the same structure but brought it up to date in idiom and dramatic
punch. Also, how could I compete with Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM? Well, I thought I did pretty damned well in
that respect.
In any case, after having composed and recorded over forty minutes of
music in those two weeks, I waited around for the opportunity to look
at the balance of the film, spot the music, etc. During that period I
was rewriting some of the stuff that I was not completely satisfied
with, and Kubrick even suggested over the phone certain changes that I
could make in the subsequent recording. After eleven tense days of
waiting to see more film in order to record in early February, I
received word from Kubrick that no more score was necessary, that he
was going to use breathing effects for the remainder of the film. It
was all very strange, and I thought perhaps I would still be called
upon to compose more music; I even suggested to Kubrick that I could do
whatever necessary back in L.A. at the M-G-M studios. Nothing happened.
I went to a screening in New York, and there were most of the
“temporary” tracks.
Well, what can I say? It was a great, frustrating experience, and
despite the mixed reaction to the music, I think the Victorian approach
with mid-European overtones was just not in keeping with the brilliant
concept of Clarke and Kubrick.
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(J.A., pp. 198-9)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Why should you see 2001 on a big screen?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Seeing the film on TV scarcely does it justice. For one thing, the film
is typically cropped when broadcast (the outer edges of the film are
unceremoniously cut off). Unfortunately for Art, Kubrick, a former LOOK
photographer, uses composition to convey meaning, along with dialogue,
soundtrack, editing, etc. The cropping destroys this composition (it’s
like reading HAMLET with 5% of the words missing).
Even worse, on a small screen you can miss many subtle details (e.g.,
the shot of the IBM nameplate in nearly the same place on the screen as
the HAL nameplate, which gives a little extra credence to the HAL/IBM
connection, to those who need some).
The final sequence, with just breathing, is masterful in the theatre.
You are surrounded by the breathing sounds; you really feel a part of
that room. This is lost on the TV.
You miss scale, details, colors, awe, a great many of the things that
make this such a great film!
*
*
*
*
*
Now that the obvious has been stated, a word for the videotape. The
25th anniversary edition has great color, and in that respect,
surpasses many prints of the film extant today, which long-in-the-tooth
are missing frames, and which have a pinkish hue. If you’re not seeing
a brand new print, the video may actually be superior. In Dolby
surround, through a home stereo, and on a good TV, it’s not so bad. And
there’s always the virtue of being able to freeze-frame, which gives you
time to examine the background, which even at the slow pace tends to
fly by.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What formal recognition did 2001 receive?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Academy Award:
Special Visual Effects
British Academy Awards: Best Cinematography, Art Direction,
Soundtrack
Best Film of 1968:
Saturday Review:
NEWSDAY, FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF SPAIN,
HOUSTON POST, Italian Oscar Best Film from
the West
“Motion Picture of the Decade”
National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures:
Best Film of Educational Value, 1968
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=======================================================================
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
=======================================================================
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some brief insights on ACO?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Opening image of ACO flips last image of 2001, as 2001 flips
ending of DR. STRANGELOVE.
Death == Dawn
StarChild == Evil Teenager
-- It is Alex’s parents who understand him the least.
(Z.R.)
-- The bodybuilder is played by David Prowse, who was also Darth
Vader in STAR WARS.
NIETZSCHE STILL IN THE BACKGROUND
-- Here is what Alex thinks while he is listening to Beethoven’s 9th
Symphony: “It was like a bird of rarest spun heaven metal. Like
silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense. It was
gorgeousness and gorgeosity...”
I have found Nietzsche’s HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN book (tr. Marion
Faber, Univ. of Nebraska Press), and here is a quote from page 106.
(NOTE: this book was written in the late 1870s). “At a certain place
in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, for example, he [the free spirit]
might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with
the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer
around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards . . .
“
(Z.R.)
CLOCKWORK ORANGE FILMBOOK
When ACO was released, Stanley Kubrick published
the film. It consists of a scene by scene series
white stills with the dialog printed underneath.
this is the first and last time that Kubrick did
a book version of
of black and
To my knowledge
this. . . .
I found it odd that a director who has such a perfect grasp of the
medium of cinema would produce such a non-cinematic version of his
work . . . devoid of the colour, music, pacing, and drama of the
original. The book presents a flat, cartoon version of the film.
Here is the preface to the book, written by Kubrick on May 22,
1972:
I have always wondered if there might be a more meaningful
way to present a book about a film. To make, as it were,
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a complete, graphic representation of the film, cut by cut,
with the dialogue printed in the proper place in relation
to the cuts, so that within the limits of still-photographs
and words, an accurate (and I hope interesting) record of
a film might be available to anyone who had a bit more curiosity
than just knowing what happened in the last reel. This book
represents that attempt. If there are inaccuracies then they
have escaped the endless chekcing and re-checking of myself
and my assistants, Andros Epaminondas and Margaret Adams.
I have similar “film books” of a couple of Hitcock’s films, but
these seem like odd artifacts of a pre-VCR society. Is there still
a market for this kind of publication in this adge of interactive
CD-ROMs and readily available video-tape versions of any film
you’d care to own? I have always had the idea of producing an
annotated 2001 in a book or CD-ROM format with all available
production notes, special effects explanations, trivia, analysis,
etc. I just don’t know if the market for this kind of thing exists
anymore . . .
(J.H.T.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Does ACO speak the voice of fascism?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[“Yes,” according to Fred Hechinger. This is from THE NEW YORK TIMES,
Sunday, February 13, 1972.]
*
*
*
*
*
A LIBERAL FIGHTS BACK
by Fred M. Hechinger
Liberals, said Malcolm McDowell, star of “A Clockwork Orange,” hate that
film. The implication is that there is something shameful in the
liberals’ reaction -- that at the very least they don’t know the
score. Quite the opposite is true. Any liberal with brains *should* hate
“Clockwork,” not as a matter of artistic criticism but for the trend
this film represents. An alert liberal should recognize the voice of
fascism.
“Movies don’t alter the world, they pose questions and warnings,” said
Mr. McDowell. This is close to the truth. Movies reflect the mood of the
world because they pander to the frame of mind of their potential
customers.
During the Depression years, Hollywood offered those eye-filling and
mind-soothing productions that took a despondent public’s thoughts off
the grim realities. Occasionally, the diverting tinsel was laced with
some “Grapes of Wrath” realism.
During and after World War II, Hollywood reflected the American mind
with an outpouring of syrupy patriotism and comic-strip anti-Nazism.
Minor modifications allowed the technique to be adapted, as in “The
Manchurian Candidate,” to the subsequent spirit of the Cold War.
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More recently, the movies, chasing the youth buck, have wallowed in
campus revolution, alienation, radical relevance and counter-culture.
The plastic greening of Hollywood did little, one must agree with Mr.
McDowell’s thesis, to alter the world: it was merely the industry’s
frantic attempt to keep abreast of society’s changing script.
It is precisely because Hollywood’s antennae have in the past been so
sensitive in picking up the national mood that the anti-liberal trend
should indeed “pose questions and warnings,” though not in the manner
intended either by Mr. McDowell or by Stanley Kubrick, “Clockwork’s”
director.
*
*
*
*
*
The bad seeds had been sown during the period of mindless youth-culture
exploitation. Anthony Quinn, who played Zorba the Prof in “R.P.M.,” that
ersatz ideological movie about the campus revolt, was the anti-liberals’
perfect prototype of the superannuated, well-intentioned but ultimately
ineffectual, obsolescent, self-destructive liberal. “Getting Straight”
delivered the same cumulative message. The liberal in “Easy Rider,” a
pathetic, confused drunk, was intended to show the fate that ultimately
awaits the bleeding hearts. Even his death, at the hands of fascist
bullies, carefully avoided being either heroic or central to the
picture’s mood. Too bad about the fuzzyminded fellow, but what can you
expect. . .
The script writers were accurately picking up the vibrations of a deeply
anti-liberal totalitarian nihilism emanating from beneath the surface of
the counter-culture. They were pandering as skillfully to the new mood
as they had earlier to the Stars and Stripes Forever.
Now the virus is no longer latent. The message is stridently antiliberal, with unmistakably fascist overtones.
Listen to Mr. McDowell: “People are basically bad, corrupt. I always
sensed that. Man has not progressed one inch, morally, since the Greeks.
Liberals, they hate ‘Clockwork’ because they’re dreamers and it shows
them the realities, shows ‘em not tomorrow, but *now*. Cringe, don’t
they, when faced with the bloody truth?”
This is more than a statement of what Mr. McDowell considers to be a
political fact. There is a note of glee in making the liberals cringe by
showing them what heads-in-the-clouds fools they are. If they were
smarter, would they not know “the bloody truth” and, one must conclude,
adjust to it with a pinch of Skinnerian conditioning?
Is this an uncharitable reading of Mr. McDowell’s -- and the film’s -thesis? The thesis that man is irretrievably bad and corrupt is the
essence of fascism. It underlies every demand for the kind of social
“reform,” that keeps man down, makes the world safe for anti-democracy
through the “law and order” ministrations of the police state.
It might be possible to dismiss the McDowell weltanschauung as the
aberration of an actor dazzled by critical acclaim and dabbling in
political ideology. But he, in fact, accurately echoes his master’s
voice. “Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage,” says Stanley
Kubrick. “He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective
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about anything where his own interests are involved . . . . And any
attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of
man is probably doomed to failure.”
If this is the motion picture industry’s emerging view -- as it seems to
be, not only in “Clockwork” but in a growing number of films such as
“Straw Dogs” and even, on the precinct rather than the global level,
“The French Connection” -- then what sort of social institutions are to
be built on that pessimistic, antiliberal view of man’s nature? They
will -- they must, if logic prevails -- be the repressive, illiberal,
distrustful, violent institutions of fascism. “We hold these truths to
be self-evident . . . “ Ridiculous! “Government by the people . . . “
Absurd! Jefferson, not to mention Christ, were clearly liberals who
could not face “the bloody truth.” It takes the likes of Hitler or
Stalin, and the violence of inquisitions, pogroms and purges, to manage
a world of ignoble savages.
*
*
*
*
*
That is the message lately flashed from the screen. The inherently
antiliberal nihilism of Hollywood’s counterculture phase was the
subliminal preparation -- filmland’s Weimar Republic -- for the ugly
“truth” to come. Mr. McDowell, in trying to find some socially redeeming
value (as the courts put it when describing “good” pornography) in
“Clockwork’s” violence, muses that “*maybe* that will lead to something
actually being done about street crime.” What might that “something” be?
Surely not anything cooked up by those liberal “dreamers” who cringe
when faced with “the bloody truth.” More likely a dragnet arrest of all
those people who look like trouble. How else would one sensibly deal
with ignoble savages?
“Straw Dogs” may have been even more perceptive in picking up the neofascist message. Its symbolic man is the confused, nonviolent, cringing,
idiotic, nonvirile liberal who in the end is redeemed -- by what? By
proving his manhood through savagery among the savages. Liberals, Awake!
Be as lip-smacking bloody as anybody. That will take care of the street
crime problem, too. And perhaps make the trains run on time.
Some of us unreconstructed liberals will, of course, continue to hope
that the industry has for once picked up the wrong vibrations, that it
is for the first time misreading the nation’s mood; that the majority of
Americans do not believe, as those who unleashed the stormtroopers and
the M.K.V.D. and the RedGuard said *they* believed, that Man the Beast
will be conquered and domesticated only through the purifying powers of
violence.
Optimism is the incurably silly liberal quality which the new celluloid
realism considers ludicrous. One prays that American moviemakers may
identify in the popular mood some of those vibrations that led to the
creation of “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.” Europeans who knew
fascism apparently still believe that the evil and the violence, rather
than being inherent in man and thus inevitable, became dominant only
because the few succeeded in ruthlessly turning violence into political
power over the many. The liberals were not without blame, but they were
not the villains. In the end, their faults seemed excusable when
measured against the monstrosity of those who regarded men as ignoble
savages. The liberal makers of “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” do not
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seem to have cringed at the bloody memory of those black days in Europe
when, antiliberalism having triumphed, the human vermin crawled out of
the clockwork.
If there is anything to make American liberals cringe here and now, it
is the possibility that, in a reversal of history, Europe may this time
be more sophisticated than America about the nature of the fascist
threat. This is why American liberals have every right to hate the
ideology behind “A Clockwork Orange” and the trend it symbolizes.
(submitted by J.M.)
*
*
*
*
*
[Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell didn’t agree with Hechinger’s view. This
is Kubrick’s letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, in reply to Hechinger’s
charge. It was printed on February 27, 1972, section 2, pp. 1 & 11.
McDowell’s reply in the same issue follows.]
*
*
*
*
*
NOW KUBRICK FIGHTS BACK
By Stanley Kubrick
LONDON
“An alert liberal,” says Fred M. Hechinger, writing about my film “A
Clockwork Orange,” “should recognize the voice of fascism.” They don’t
come any more alert than Fred M. Hechinger. A movie critic, whose job
is to analyze the actual content of a film, rather than second-hand
interviews, might have fallen down badly on sounding the “Liberal
Alert” which an educationist like Mr. Hechinger confidently set
jangling in so many resonant lines of alarmed prose.
As I read them, the image that kept coming to mind was of Mr.
Hechinger, cast as the embattled liberal, grim-visaged the way Gary
Cooper used to be, doing the long walk down main street to face the
high noon of American democracy, while out of the Last Chance saloon
drifts the theme song, “See what the boys in the backlash will have
and tell them I’m having the same,” though sung in a voice less like
Miss Dietrich’s than Miss Kael’s. Alert filmgoers will recognize that
I am mixing my movies. But then alert educationists like Mr. Hechinger
seemingly don’t mind mixing their metaphors: “Occasionally, the
diverting tinsel was laced with some ‘Grapes of Wrath’ realism,” no
less.
It is baffling that in the course of his lengthy piece encouraging
American liberals to cherish their “right” to hate the ideology behind
“A Clockwork Orange,” Mr. Hechinger quotes not one line, refers to not
one scene, analyzes not one theme from the film - but simply lumps it
indiscriminately in with a “trend” which he pretends to distinguish
(“a deeply anti-liberal totalitarian nihilism”) in several current
films. Is this, I wonder, because he couldn’t actually find any
internal evidence to support his trend-spotting? If not, then it is
extraordinary that so serious a charge should be made against it (and
myself) inside so fuzzy and unfocused a piece of alarmist journalism.
*
*
*
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The Kubrick Faq
Hechinger is probably quite sincere in what he feels. But what
the witness feels, as the judge said, is not evidence - the more so
when the charge is one of purveying “the essence of fascism.”
“Is this an uncharitable reading of . . . the film’s thesis?” Mr.
Hechinger asks himself with unwonted, if momentary doubt. I would
reply that it is an *irrelevant* reading of the thesis, in fact an
insensitive and inverted reading of the thesis, which, so far from
advocating that fascism be given a second chance, warns against the
new psychedelic fascism -- the eye-popping, multimedia, quadrasonic,
drug-oriented conditioning of human beings by other beings -- which
many believe will usher in the forfeiture of human citizenship and
the beginning of zombiedom.
*
*
*
It is quite true that my film’s view of man is less flattering
than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative
- but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a
*noble* savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not
yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope). At
least the film critic of The New York Times, Vincent Canby, did not
believe so. Though modestly disclaiming any theories of initial causes
and long range effects of films - a professional humility that contrasts
very markedly with Mr. Hechinger’s lack of the same - Mr. Canby
nevertheless classified “A Clockwork Orange” as “a superlative
example” of the kind of movies that “seriously attempt to analyze the
meaning of violence and the social climate that tolerates it.” He
certainly did not denounce me as a fascist, no more than any wellbalanced commentator who read “A Modest Proposal” would have accused
Dean Swift of being a cannibal.
Anthony Burgess is on record as seeing the film as “a Christian
Sermon” - and lest this be regarded as a piece of special pleading by
the original begetter of “A Clockwork Orange,” I will quote the opinion
of John E. Fitzgerald, the film critic of The Catholic News, who, far
from believing the film to show man, in Mr. Hechinger’s “uncharitable”
reading, as “irretrievably bad and corrupt,” went straight to the heart
of the matter in a way that shames the fumbling innuendos of Mr.
Hechinger.
“In one year,” Mr. Fitzgerald wrote, “we have been given two
contradictory messages in two mediums. In print, we’ve been told (in
B.F. Skinner’s ‘Beyond Freedom and Dignity’) that man is but a grab-bag
of conditioned reflexes. On screen, with images rather than words,
Stanley Kubrick shows that man is more than a mere product of heredity
and-or environment. For as Alex’s clergyman friend (a character who
starts out as a fire-and-brimstone spouting buffon, but ends up as the
spokesman for the film’s thesis) says: ‘When a man cannot choose, he
ceases to be a man.’
“The film seems to say that to take away man’s choice is not to
redeem but merely to restrain him; otherwise we have a society of
oranges, organic but operating like clockwork. Such brainwashing,
organic and psychological, is a weapon that totalitarians in state,
church or society might wish for an easier good, even at the cost of
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The Kubrick Faq
individual rights and dignity. Redemption is a complicated thing and
change must be motivated from within rather than imposed from without
if moral values are to be upheld.”
“It takes the likes of Hitler or Stalin, and the violence of
inquisitions, pogroms and purges to manage a world of ignoble savages,”
declares Mr. Hechinger in a manner both savage and ignoble. Thus,
without citing anything from the film itself, Mr. Hechinger seems to
rest his entire case against me on a quote appearing in The New York
Times of January 30, in which I said: “Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s
an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be
objective about anything where his own interests are involved . . . and
any attempt to create social institutions based on a false view of the
nature of man is probably doomed to failure.” From this, apparently, Mr.
Hechinger concluded, “the thesis that man is irretrievably bad and
corrupt is the essence of fascism,” and summarily condemned the film.
Mr. Hechinger is entitled to hold an optimistic view of the nature
of man; but this does not give him the right to make ugly assertions of
fascism against those who do not share his opinion.
I wonder how he would reconcile his simplistic notions with the
views of such an acknowledged anti-fascist as Arthur Koestler, who
wrote in his book “The Ghost in the Machine,” “The Promethean myth has
acquired an ugly twist: the giant reaching out to steal the lightning
from the Gods is insane . . . When you mention, however tentatively, the
hypothesis that a paranoid streak is inherent in the human condition,
you will promptly be accused of taking a one-sided, morbid view of
history; of being hypnotized by its negative aspects; of picking out
the black stones in the mosaic and neglecting the triumphant achievements of human progress . . . To dwell on the glories of man and ignore
the symptoms of his possible insanity is not a sign of optimism but of
ostrichism. It could only be compared to the attitude of that jolly
physician who, a short time before Van Gogh committed suicide, declared
that he could not be insane because he painted such beautiful pictures.”
Does this, I wonder, place Mr. Koestler on Mr. Hechinger’s newly
started blacklist?
It is because of
“alert liberals”
weakened, and it
politicians risk
problems.
the hysterical denunciations of self-proclaimed
like Mr. Hechinger that the cause of liberalism is
is for the same reason that so few liberal-minded
making realistic statements about contemporary social
The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the
opening sentence of Rousseau’s “Emile”: “Nature made me happy and good,
and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault.” It is based on two
misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and
that primal man had no society.
Robert Ardrey has written in “The Social Contract,” “The organizing
principle of Rousseau’s life was his unshakable belief in the original
goodness of man, including his own. That it led him into most towering
hypocrises must follow from such an assumption. More significant are
the disillusionments, the pessimism, and the paranoia that such a belief
in human nature must induce.”
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*
*
*
Ardrey elaborates in “African Genesis”: “The idealistic American
is an environmentalist who accepts the doctrine of man’s innate nobility
and looks chiefly to economic causes for the source of human woe. And
so now, at the peak of the American triumph over that ancient enemy,
want, he finds himself harassed by racial conflict of increasing
bitterness, harrowed by juvenile delinquency probing championship
heights.”
Rousseau’s romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man,
not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between
ourselves and reality. This view, to use Mr. Hechinger’s frame of
reference, is solid box office but, in the end, such a self-inflating
illusion leads to despair.
The Enlightenment declared man’s rational independence from the
tyranny of the Supernatural. It opened up dizzying and frightening
vistas of the intellectual and political future. But before this
became too alarming, Rousseau replaced a religion of the Supernatural
Being with a religion of natural man. God might be dead. “Long live
man.”
“How else,” writes Ardrey, “can one explain - except as a
substitute for old religious cravings - the immoderate influence of
the rational mind of the doctrine of innate goodness?”
Finally, the question must be considered whether Rousseau’s view
of man as a fallen angel is not really the most pessimistic and hopeless of philosophies. It leaves man a monster who has gone steadily
away from his nobility. It is, I am convinced, more optimistic to
accept Ardrey’s view that, “. . . we were born of risen apes, not fallen
angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we
wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles and our irreconcilable
regiments? For our treaties, whatever they may be worth; our symphonies,
however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however
frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams,
however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how
far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among
the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”
Mr. Hechinger is no doubt a well-educated man but the tone of his
piece strikes me as also that of a well-conditioned man who responds to
what he expects to find, or has been told, or has read about, rather
than to what he actually perceives “A Clockwork Orange” to be. Maybe
he should deposit his grab-bag of conditioned reflexes outside and go
in to see it again. This time, exercising a little choice.
=================
MALCOLM McDOWELL OBJECTS, TOO
TO THE EDITOR:
This letter is in reply to Fred M. Hechinger’s article, which was
prompted in part by an interview that I gave to Tom Burke. I am an
actor, not a philosopher - nor, thank God, a journalist. If a New
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York Times interviewer questions me on philosophical, social or
political issues, he must expect to get answers that are inspired by
feeling and intuition, rather than by the steely logic of a Fred M.
Hechinger. But my comment on the sentimentalism of the “liberals” was
not gleeful - it was *despondent*. (If I had been writing an article
instead of replying to questions, I would have put the word “liberal”
in quotes.)
As an actor, of course, I spoke emotionally - from a violent
emotional reaction to the violence and hysteria with which New York
assails any visitor, and a violent and emotional reaction against the
complacency or cowardice of “intellectuals” too scared to face or to
interpret the harsh allegory which I believe Mr. Kubrick’s picture to
be.
To call “A Clockwork Orange” fascist is as silly as to say that
“if . . . “ preached violence. But some people will never read the
writing on the wall.
Your humble narrator and friend,
MALCOLM McDOWELL
London.
(submitted by J.M.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Why does Kubrick quote Rossini’s THE THIEVING MAGPIE in ACO?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[One answer is because of its cinematic value; the role it plays in the
film in setting a mood and/or commenting on the action. But here’s
another possibility, supplied by none other than Leonard Bernstein. The
following excerpt is found in the transcription of Bernstein’s famous
1973 Norton Lectures on Poetry [Harvard Univ. Press: 1976], pp. 384-9.
(Bernstein’s lectures are available on videotape, and are highly
recommended. The numbers in brackets following some sentences refer to
musical illustrations given by Bernstein.)
Bernstein is discussing how poetic and musical concepts can reflect each
other in a higher-level metaphorical circle. Bernstein isn’t discussing
Kubrick, but composer Igor Stravinsky.]
*
*
*
*
*
Wagner tried to create his metaphor [in TRISTAN AND ISOLDE], and
succeeded, by introducing into that supreme circle particular semantic
components from his poetry and his music, components that matched
perfectly. The love-death idea in Isolde’s words correspond almost
magically with the equivalent idea in the music. When she says
“Ertrinken, versinken”, she does literally seem to be drowning, her
voice is submerged in the sea of orchestral texture that surges around
her. . . .
We . . . know what we mean by wellmatched components, and what can
result when they unite. But what happens when ill-matched components
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meet in that circle [62]? What happens is Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky
with all his musical incongruities: the modern with the primitive;
tonality with wrong notes in it; one chord fighting another, rhythm
against rhythm; the contradictions of asymmetry, of street vernacular
dressed up in white tie and tails; classic forms filled with
contemporary stylism, and classic styles in contemporary forms -- name a
mismating: Stravinsky’s written it. His works are an encyclopedia of
misalliances. And what do these mismatched components produce?
Indirection, obliquity, the indispensable mask of our century -- the
objectified emotional statement delivered at a distance, from around the
corner, and perceived, so to speak, second-hand. Second-hand?
Stravinsky, that consummate original? Yes, second-hand; because the
personal statement is made via quotes from the past, by alluding to the
classics, by a limitless new eclecticism.
This is the essence of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism: he is now the great
eclectic, the Thieving Magpie, “La Gazza Ladra”, unashamedly borrowing
and stealing from every musical museum. And this quasi-plagiaristic
principle supported his compositional style over three long decades, in
one way or another. It can be as overt as in PULCINELLA, which is all
based on actual pieces by Pergolesi, transformed by Stravinsky’s
personal modernisms. Or in LE BAISER DE LA FEE, where the same
machinations are wrought upon Tchaikovsky’s music. . . . Think of
Stravinsky’s two symphonies, the violin and piano concertos, all those
Balanchine ballets: there’s some composer from the past lurking in every
page, leering at us through the dissonance of Stravinsky’s own twentieth
century language.
What’s going on here, some kind of joke? Exactly: some kind of joke.
Joke, imagine, right up there in our supreme magic circle, where those
mismatched components are busily copulating. Remember: what’s funny is
what’s incongruous; remember Groucho. And what’s funny can bite deep:
remember e.e. cummings. . . . There are all kinds of jokes: the humor
continuum ranges all the way from slapstick burlesque through sardonic
wit, through elegant satire, to black comedy and chilling dramatic
irony. And it’s all to be found in Stravinsky. In the most serious
sense, humor, in one form or another, is the lifeblood of his
neoclassicism. And I’m not talking about Elephant Polkas; I’m talking
about his greatest works. Look: here is a joke and I assure you it’s
nothing to laugh at [63]. This is how Stravinsky begins his SYMPHONY OF
PSALMS . . . In this opening movement he is setting Psalm No. 101, in
Latin: “Exaudi orationem roeare, Domine” -- hear my prayer, O Lord, give
ear to my supplication. Can you imagine how a Romantic composer might
have set those words? Humble, supplicatory, introspective. Hushed,
awestruck. Well-matched components. But not Stravinsky. He attacks: a
brusque, startling pistol-shot of a chord, followed by some kind of
Bachian finger exercise [64]. How mismatched can you get? It’s the very
antithesis of the Schubert-Wagner approach. It’s loud, extrovert,
commanding. And that’s incongruous, a sublime dramatic joke. It’s a
prayer with teeth in it, a prayer made of steel; it violates our
expectations, shatters us with its irony. . . . It’s exactly what we
find happening in Eliot: in THE WASTE LAND, for instance, there is a
similar mighty irony when he invokes the image of Shakespeare’s mad
Ophelia, quoting her last words before she goes to drown. But he does it
this way:
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta.
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Goonight. Goonight.
and only then:
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night.
Chilling. Shattering. Neoclassic. And thus Stravinsky [65]. Yes, there
is that imploring Phrygian incantation in the vocal part; but underneath
the orchestral accompaniment is steel and chromium. . . .
=======================================================================
BARRY LYNDON
^^^^^^^^^^^^
=======================================================================
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some brief insights on BARRY LYNDON?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ “Ludovico Corday”: Ludovico = inventor of anti-revolutionary
tendency (criminality) treatment in ACO. Corday = Charlotte
Corday, the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat in the French
Revolution. Unwound, this reads: “Artists who echo images of the
day are the killers of revolutionary impulses.”
-- A monologue based on a nineteenth-century novel with illustrations
based on late-eighteenth-century paintings rendered in
late-twentieth-century cinema, held together by the singular
socio-political vision of its authors . . .
(G.A.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) How does Kubrick use camera technique to draw character?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[The following excerpt is from Mario Falsetto’s STANLEY KUBRICK: A
NARRATIVE AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS, pp. 158-9]
This grim world view continues to unfold in BARRY LYNDON . . . The
strategies of long takes, long shots, elaborate mise-en-scene, slow
zooms, camera and character placement are elements in a complicated
formal design that help articulate many of the film’s thematic concerns.
The creation of Barry’s character is inextricably bound to such
strategies.
A key component of the depiction of Barry’s character is his placement
within the frame, frequently in a frozen gesture with a blank facial
expression. . . . Viewers come to know Barry primarily through
strategies of presentation rather than more typical character-building
conventions. . . . [:] frozen gestures, placement within the frame and
severe restriction and limitation of the frame edge. This effect is
achieved in part through the use of the slow zoom, static long takes and
strategic uses of camera movement. . . .
Barry is essentially a prisoner . . . In sequence after sequence . . .
[h]e often looks directly ahead but not at anyone. An example of this
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can be found in a scene with Barry in his role as a German spy. He
stands in front of Captain Potzdorf (Hardy Kruger), who is seated with
his uncle, the chief of police. Barry speaks but not to anyone, nor does
he direct his gaze at either man. When he does speak, it is in an
unthinking manner, as if he were a machine.
Many scenes find Barry in situations where his physical movements are
deliberately slow, artificial and stylized, or else where he is
completely immobile and locked in a frozen gesture. Barry is most
frequently seen in medium or long shots . . . often shown walking or
standing in a pose, with arms folded behind his back and head bent
downward or looking ahead with a far-off look in his eyes. The film uses
many distancing devices and maintains them throughout. . . .
=======================================================================
THE SHINING
^^^^^^^^^^^
=======================================================================
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some brief insights on THE SHINING?
----------------------------------------------------------------------THE INTERVIEW
-- A little “toy” axe is in the pencil holder on Ullman’s desk during
the interview. [this is barely visible on VCR tape. -- B.K.]
(K.L.)
-- So is an American flag.
(G.A.)
LATER
-- “Danny”: possibly short for “Daniel,” who, in the Old Testament,
was the one capable of reading the handwriting on the wall. Here
are excerpts from DANIEL 5:
*
*
*
*
*
4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of
brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote
over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the
king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
6 Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts
troubled him . . .
7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans,
and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of
Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the
interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a
chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the
kingdom. . . .
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10 Now the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords
came into the banquet house: and the queen spake and said, O king,
live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy
countenance be changed:
11 There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy
gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and
wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him . . .
interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences, and dissolving
of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named
Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the
interpretation.
13 Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake
and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children
of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of
Jewry?
14 I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in
thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found
in thee.
15 And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in
before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me
the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the
interpretation of the thing:
16 And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations,
and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make
known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with
scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the
third ruler in the kingdom.
17 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be
to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the
writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.
18 O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a
kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour:
19 And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and
languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and
whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he
would he put down.
20 But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in
pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory
from him:
21 And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made
like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed
him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of
heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of
men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.
22 And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart,
though thou knewest all this;
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23 But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they
have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy
lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and
thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood,
and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose
hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not
glorified:
24 Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing
was written.
25 And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL,
UPHARSIN.
26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered
thy kingdom, and finished it.
27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
. . .
-- Danny explores the Hotel; his parents work in it. So Danny has
a greater opportunity to see what is on the rooms “on the fringes.”
-- Wendy to Danny: “Loser gets to keep America clean.” That’s a
pretty damn strange thing for her to say: particularly since she
and her husband are the Hotel’s Janitors. Danny “wins.”
-- Two of Danny’s sweaters “reflect” two other Kubrick films:
1) BACKSHADOW: “Apollo 11” (2001)
2) FORESHADOW: “Mickey Mouse” (FMJ)
-- I have noticed that Kubrick uses an almost rough cut editing style
for many of the dialogue scenes. For example, when Halloran gives
Danny ice cream, the editing pattern is something like: Halloran
speaks a line. Pause. Cut to Danny. Pause. Danny speaks a line. Pause
Cut to Halloran. Pause. Halloran speaks a line. Pause. Etc. Most
movies will cut out the dead air between lines by cutting to Danny
while Halloran finishes speaking his line and then having Danny
answer right away, then maybe cut back to Halloran while Danny is
still speaking, etc. Overlapping image and dialogue like this really
quickens up the pace. But Kubrick chose to give almost all the
dialogue scenes this very weighty, deliberate pace . . .
(G.W.)
-- “The Gold Room”; from a distance, the typeface Kubrick has chosen
for the sign makes the “G” look like a “C” -- “The Cold Room.”
-- “I’d give my soul for a drink . . .”; moments later, we find out
Jack has no money -- so how can he pay for the drink? Credit . . .
-- “All work and no play”: two interesting misspellings a line above
the paper guide: “boy” is misspelled as “bog” and “bot”.
-- Wendy had two choices: put Jack where he could get food and
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stay alive, or put him under deep freeze (recall Halloran’s
earlier tour of the kitchen). She chooses the former; but
all she did was put off the inevitable, at great risk to
herself and her son.
-- In the food pantry, a “Tang” container (the drink of astronauts)
is seen above a “Calumet” container (with a silhouette of the
head of an Original-American); the top layer is space, the bottom
is ground. One is built over the other.
-- Jack: “I need a doctor.” Danny’s nickname is “Doc.”
-- Jack does not sing “fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an
Englishman”; however, this reference is implied when he reads
the Big Bad Wolf’s line.
-- At a couple points, there is a rapid cut from Danny’s vision of
the blood pouring from the elevator, to Jack, in his mad glory. The
more overt Jack’s insanity, the more lurid and gory Danny’s
vision -- until finally, when Jack is advancing on the baseballbat-swinging Wendy (“I’m not going to hurt you, I’m going to bash
your fucking head in”) the camera is obscured, awash in blood. All we
can see is a red haze. Jack’s madness is a “red madness” and it’s no
coincidence that Jack is often associated with bright colors, yellow
(the “Gold Room”; his yellow Volkswagen) and red (the garish red
bathroom.)
(E.T.)
-- Danny, Jack, and Wendy all shine different things because their
“shinings” are filtered through their own fears, desires, and
perceptions. Hence, Wendy sees stuff out of her ghost stories, and
Jack gets things that he wants, like alcohol. (And eventually,
immortality of a sort.) Danny seems to be more passive, though. He
sees what Jack sees (the red madness, also the room 237 sequence that
he “relays” to Hallorann), for example. Other of his “shinings” seem
similarly, I don’t know, _supplied_ to him, and having little to do
with anything that Danny _wants_ to see.
(E.T.)
-- Jack degenerates into a shambling, moaning human ape, unable to
even make any articulate sounds. . . . Jack in the progress of his
madness shows signs of childlike regression. “Jack is a dull boy”;
Oreos; baby-talk (“my head hurts _real_ _bad_”). If Jack gets what he
wants when he “shines”, then why did the room 237 “shining” turn on
him so shockingly and viciously? It almost seems like the Hotel was
playing “bait-and-switch”.
(E.T.)
-- When Wendy flips through the sheaf of Jack’s type-script (each
page individually typed -- what a nice touch!) the arrangement and
spelling of the “All work and no play....” sentences becomes more and
more erratic as she progresses through the sheets. . . . other
pages are increasingly stylized, with weird indentations and abstract
patterns formed by the words. I’m reminded of something I saw a long
time ago, in a book -- a series of drawings of cats done by an artist
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who was slipping progressively into psychosis. The drawings became
more and more abstract, with much stylization and use of intricate
geometric shapes and brilliant colors, until finally you could hardly
recognize the drawing as a cat at all.
(E.T.)
-- The woman in the bathtub: she, like the hotel, is outwardly
seductive, but is death when embraced. Note how she remains
motionless as a corpse during the entire kiss.
(D.M.)
-- There is a scene that I’d always found oddly disconcerting and
even disorienting although I’d never been able to put my finger on
why until recently -- the scene in which Wendy serves Jack breakfast
in bed. We see Jack asleep in the bedroom mirror as Wendy wheels in
the cart with breakfast. The camera slowly zooms in again until the
edges of the mirror are no longer visible as we watch the beginning
of the dialog. The next shot is of Wendy’s face as she explains how
scary she thought it would be to be staying at the hotel. Then the
camera returns to a position that looks like the previous one. But it
isn’t. We’re no longer looking at the mirror image, we see the direct
image, but shot in such a way that a casual observer would never
notice the difference. It is at this point that Jack speaks of “deja
vu” and recognizing things everytime he turns a corner. This is the
first and last time Jack ever tells Wendy about things he finds
personally unusual about the hotel.
(D.M.)
-- “White Man’s Burden”: the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling which
spoke to the virtues of colonial ambition, and conferred the duty of
“uplifting” native peoples upon the Imperial White Man.
(D.M.)
-- Two of the weapons used in the film are a baseball bat (American)
and a fire ax (Indian tomahawk).
(D.M.)
-- Wendy in the boiler room: Isn’t this the job that Jack is supposed to
be doing?
(D.M.)
-- “KDK-1 calling KDK-12. Can you read me? Over.” repeated incessantly,
with no one answering. This may be Kubrick’s oblique way of
indicating that he feels like he’s “talking to himself” (Joyce:
“loonely in me loneness.”). “KDK” = “KBK” phonologically.
-- Danny can read the handwriting on the wall; but only if he knows
how to decode the message (seen head-on, the message refers only to
the medium used to create it [“red-rum” lipstick]. The filter of the
mirror brings out the depth via a process of transformation; a
sinister depth, under a benign exterior. Slick . . .
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-- In this case, the wall is a door . . .
-- Danny doesn’t just “read” the handwriting on the wall; he “writes”
it as well. Danny does it all . . .
-- Note how earlier in the film, the camera shots are largely neat
and parallel to the lines in the room. By the time we arrive at the
“redrum” scene, we are seeing the action from strange, oblique
angles.
(D.M.)
-- While Jack and Danny are locked in a sort of pre-destined combat,
Wendy does indeed appear to “shine” -- prisoner to the past horrors
of the Overlook Hotel. During these last hysterical moments of Jack’s
bitter life, both husband and wife are frantically making their way
through their own “maze”: Jack through the hedges, Wendy through the
Overlook itself. But while Jack is on the prowl for his son, Wendy is
almost attempting to CLOSE HER EYES to the horror and -- this is the
key -- PERVERSION of the Overlook’s past. But she is unable to
finally escape the dominant images of the skeletons, the bloody lift,
and the split-skulled partygoer . . .
(D.Z.)
-- Road Runner (“Beep, Beep”)
The coyote’s after you . .
Road Runner (“Beep, Beep”)
If he catches you you’re through . . .
-- Jack carries a fireaxe into the maze, and goes wrong four ways:
1) The maze is freezing, not on fire.
2) A ball of string would be more helpful.
3) Jack can’t make the MoonWatcher frame shift, and use the
axe and chop his way through the bushes.
4) Jack thinks he’s going to kill Danny, but maybe he’s been
lured there on purpose into the only place he can be killed.
-- In Dante’s INFERNO, the bottommost Circle of Hell is reserved for
those who have committed TREACHERY AGAINST THOSE TO WHOM THEY WERE
BOUND BY SPECIAL TIES. And the punishment? Encasement in ICE.
-- Lyrics heard as we see Jack’s picture at the end of the film.
Note, too, that this tune is also heard when Jack meets Lloyd for the
second time.
Midnight with the stars and you
Midnight and a rendezvous
Your arms held a message tender
Saying I surrender
All my love to you
Midnight brought a sweet romance
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I’ve known all my whole life through
I’ll be remembering you
Whatever else I do
(transcribed by D.M./J.T.)
21/12
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
Date on picture: “1921”
Room 237: 2 + 3 + 7 = 12.
KDK-12.
“21” is a mirror image of “12” (reversal).
2 parents, 1 child.
21: age of adulthood.
12: last age of childhood (before becoming a teenager like Alex).
Jack thinks he has “two 20’s and two 10’s” in his wallet.
Film on TV: “Summer of ‘42” (42 = 21 x 2)
Number on Danny’s jersey: “42”
CARTOON IMAGERY
-- Danny is always associated with cartoon characters. When he lays down
on his bed after the seizure, his head goes on a pillow with the face
of a cartoon character on it -- it resembles the one Wendy sees.
Danny’s face is juxtaposed to this pillow, and we see their faces
side by side. Danny also wears a sweater with Mickey Mouse on it, and
we see him watching the Roadrunner cartoons.
(C.G.)
ORIGINAL-AMERICAN IMAGERY
-- Shelly Duvall’s wardrobe reminds us of a squaw and Nicholson’s
attitude reminds us of the arrogance of those early settlers. The boy
is the innocent caught up in the middle. The hotel is the graveyard
for the souls of the long dead Indians. A number of the larger rooms
are dressed with distinctive American Indian artifacts.
(A.E.)
MIRROR IMAGERY
-- Folks keep being confronted by truths in the film when looking in the
mirror: Redrum becomes murder, Jack sees the old crone in room only
in the mirror, etc. Contrast with symmetry: Halloran’s room, before
he comes back to “save” Danny, the bar behind Lloyd, the twin
elevators -- and that lovely just-off-symmetrical shot of Jack at his
writing table, just before he blows up at Wendy. It WOULD be
symmetrical, except for that lamp to one side. You know something’s
wrong, because of that lamp throwing everything off.
(A.K.)
-- After seeing the woman in room 237, Jack comes back to Wendy
andsays, “I didn’t see anything.” At the moment he says this,
his back is to a mirror in the hallway.
MAZE IMAGERY
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Throughout the film, we see images of mazes:
1. For example, during the opening credits, we see a very narrow,
mountain side road, where Jack is traveling. The road curves and bends
around the mountain, giving the illusion of a circular maze.We see this
same road, only from another side - a mirror image if you will (The
opening shot shows Jack’s car moving along the left side of the
mountain. Later, when he and his wife and child are traveling the road
to the Overlook, we see the car and road on the right of the mountain.
2. When Jack is in the office for the interview, he states that he gave
up teaching and is now a writer. He said, “teaching was a way to make
ends meet.” The ends of a maze never meet, and in fact as a writer, Jack
ends up dying in the middle of the maze, unable to find his way out.
3. The rugs in the hotel lobby and in various other rooms, are maze-like
in their designs.
4. The hedge maze.
5. When the manager of the hotel takes Jack on a tour of the basement,
the camera pans along with them and it looks like they are walking
through a maze of long corridors.
6. Danny pedals his bike along the halls of the hotel, going in
different directions, turning corners -- again seeming to be passing
through a maze.
(C.G.)
The maze is a persistent theme throughout, and it is fitting that the
final “battle” takes place there. Jack can certainly be seen as a
Minotaur complete with ax. Halloran could even be seen as Danny’s
Ariadne who provides them with the means to escape the larger maze of
their whole situation.
(G.W.)
FACES
During Danny’s first shine, the toothbrushing in the mirror sequence in
which we first see the blood flood from the elevators, there is a
fascinating and subtle match cut. We see Danny’s shocked and frozen
eyes, wide whites with irises halved by his lower eyelids -- and the old
style elevator dials above the red doors seem to mimic his expression
(with menacing glee.) Face to face. Eyes to eyes. Danny and the hotel
are introduced to each other. There are many other “faces” to be seen in
the Overlook’s interior design, and observations of these have lead me
to believe that Kubrick’s frequent use of bilateral symmetry in long
static shots capitalizes on the rorschach quality of such scenes.
(J.D.)
I too noticed many faces in the film. Did you catch the faces on the
boiler? The boilers look like pigs. As the camera pans past two boilers
which look like pigs it stops at a wall where Wendy presses 2 buttons
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which look like the mouth and left eye respectively of a face. There are
3 boxes here each with a face like this. Two eyes and a mouth. The
mouths look like they’re smiling.
(G.W.)
There is another face which is prominent in The Shining’s mise-en-scene.
The Colorado Lounge, where Jack works, seems to be designed to resemble
Jack’s face. Review the scene in which Jack establishes the “new rule.”
-- Dolly-in to lounge, Jack’s back to camera. Jack is typing, and the
lounge’s “Jack-face” is perfectly framed by the entryway though which
the camera has just passed. Now, reverse angle (what I contend is a
match cut) and dolly-in to Jack’s face in CS as he is typing. Following
this reading, Wendy, when she enter’s the lounge (“Hi, Honey!), is
visually entering Jack’s head. Exquisite . . .
(J.D.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Why is the date in the picture July 4?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[It’s not random, according to Geoff Alexander]
Why July 4th, a date with such heavy & unavoidable implications? Why not
any other date? Why not July 26th, Kubrick’s birthday (and Carl Jung’s
as well, I believe)? Wouldn’t the year have sufficed? Why, if adding a
specific date, choose a date which calls attention to itself?
Especially when those implications reinforce themes evident throughout
the film (and knowing how Kubrick works, this was not something left
merely to the hands of the Art Department).
Especially when, in this instance it (the Date) being the most obvious
reference among all the references to this theme, it appears in its
significantly proper place -- as the final image from which we Fade to
Black. It is too perfectly communicative as a confirmation of its
precedent signifiers; as the literally ultimate image of the film it is
. . . damn near what Eliot would have called the Objective Correlative
-- it’s Jack’s Independence Day (in more ways than one :) -- the very
one WE celebrate....
Now, these implications of July 4th are so clear (especially within the
context of a film which makes so many similar references) that it is
unlikely to me that mere randomness is the simplest explanation . . .
Even if one could prove that Kubrick did NOT intend any conscious,
intentional meaning behind the date, there is still the interpretive
fact that it is there, in the finished work, and available for
correlation to the contextual data. That is, even if K didn’t intend
‘purposely’ to communicate XYZ, if the film does, it does. What we know
of Art suggests that meaning is coming from somewhere, but the source is
less important that the existence of it. In this case, the overwhelming
wealth of contextual congruity in this matter almost necessitates the
imputation of meaningfulness to this date . . .
(G.A)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Can THE SHINING be seen as a portrait of a dysfunctional society?
----------------------------------------------------------------------What the American society does to its population is represented
metaphorically through the characters. (And this is definitely a film
about America -- perhaps more than any other Kubrick film.) These are
representative of distortions, not meant as representing women,
minorities, etc. as they are. If you took it that way, what I say next
will seem superficial and even silly.
Halloran (and the Indians mention in the film) -- minorities: When they
get uppity, it kills them.
Wendy (Women): Outwardly weak and superficial; watches soap operas
clings to a violent husband who despises her because of hopeless
feelings of need and fear of independence. Characterized by
submissiveness, martyrdom and fear.
Danny (children): Brutalized; personality and independence squashed;
channeled into fantasy; split personality -- Tony represents the
redirection of Danny’s ability to gather information which is taboo, now
Tony is the one responsible.
Jack (inheritor, provider, caretaker of society) The squashed child
grown up; No creativity; no real feeling of self worth; extreme anger at
recognition of these and redirection of this anger toward the family he
sees as his possession over which he rightfully commands complete
control; inability to love; desire to control to the point of killing
anyone who would dare defy him. Menial work is beneath him. In fact the
“caretaker” does no work, which is the job of his slavish wife. Anyone
who thinks this society is kind to the white male dominators didn’t
understand what Kubrick was trying to say through Jack. He has had it
the worst in many respects.
This is not only a portrait of the dysfunctional family, but of the
dysfunctional society.
(G.W.)
The Overlook Hotel is America. America, like the Overlook, is built on
an Indian graveyard. The blood of the buried Indians seeping up through
the elevator shafts is silent. So are the Indian tapestries that Danny
rides over on his bigwheel. The Shining is Kubrick’s observation that
America is built on hypocrisy, on a failure -- a refusal -- to
acknowledge the violence from which it is born. That violence remains
silent today because we refuse to look in the mirror - where all the
ugly truths in the Shining appear: Redrum spelled correctly; Jack’s old
crone, etc. It is only when Mrs. Torrance begins to critically examine
her husband, and her situation, that she begins to see the truth, the
“ghosts” in the hotel.
July 4 marks the commemoration of the ugliness on which this country is
built: it is the demarcation of the annihilation of the aboriginal
people, and the formal establishment of the new society.
Americans “overlook” the bloodshed upon which our society is founded.
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The British (Grady) heritage of violent colonialism, carried forward by
American (Jack) colonizers. Man has “always been the caretaker,” and a
lousy job he’s done. First the Indians, then the black slaves. Did you
notice how much Halloran’s head in profile (while he’s heading back to
the Overlook in the snowcat to be slaughtered) looks like the Indian
heads in profile on the Calumet cans in the Overlook pantry?
I could go on, I s’pose, but this seems like it in a nutshell.
(A.K.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) The shadow of the helicopter in the opening sequence: did
Kubrick slip?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Did anyone else ever notice the shadow of the helicopter as it
was filming Jack’s Volkswagen on its way to the Overlook? Can’t
believe that Kubrick left it in.
(G.G.)
Possible clue: Kubrick’s image reflected in astronaut visor in 2001.
(B.K.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What did Pauline Kael think of THE SHINING?
----------------------------------------------------------------------[Excerpts from THE NEW YORKER, June 9, 1980]
In at least one sequence Kubrick uses [the steadicam] spectacularly: we
glide behind Danny (Danny Lloyd), the boy in peril (he looks about
five), who is at the center of the film, as he pedals his low-rider
tricycle up and down the corridors of the huge Overlook hotel, where
most of the action takes place. Some of us in the audience may want to
laugh with pleasure at the visual feat, and it is joined to an aural
one: the sounds of the wheels moving from rug to wood are uncannily
exact. We almost want to applaud. Yet though we may admire the effects,
we’re never drawn in by them, mesmerized. When we see a flash of bloody
cadavers or observe a torrent of blood pouring from an elevator, we’re
not frightened, because Kubrick’s absorption in film technology
distances us.
It took nerve, or maybe something like hubris, for Kubrick to go against
all convention and shoot most of the gothic in broad daylight. Probably
he liked the idea of our waking into a nightmare instead of falling
asleep into one. And, having used so many night shots in “A Clockwork
Orange” and so much romantic lighting in “Barry Lyndon,” he may have
wanted the technical challenge of the most glaring kind of brightness.
. . . There isn’t a dark corner anywhere; even the kitchen storerooms
have a flourescent boldness. But the conventions of gothics are fun. Who
wants to see evil in daylight, through a wide-angle lens? We go to THE
SHINING hoping for nasty scare effects and for an appeal to our giddiest
nighttime fears -- vaporous figures, shadowy places. What we get doesn’t
tease the imagination. Visually, the movie often feels like a cheat,
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because most of the horror images are not integrated into the travelling
shots; the horrors involved in the hotel’s bloody past usually appear in
inserts that flash on like the pictures in a slide show. In addition,
there are long, static dialogues between Torrence and two demonic
characters -- a bartender and a waiter -- who are clearly -his- deamons:
they are personified temptations, as in a medieval mystery play, and
they encourage him in his worst impulses. (They also look as substantial
as he does.) The taciturn bartender is lighted to look satanic; he
offers Torrence free drinks. The loathsome, snobbish English waiter
goads Torrence to maintain his authority over his wife and child by
force. During these lengthy conversations, we seem to be in a hotel in
Hell. It’s a very talky movie (a Hell for movie-lovers). Clearly,
Stanley Kubrick isn’t primarily interested in the horror film as scary
fun or for the mysterious beauty that directors such as Dreyer and
Marnau have brought to it. Kubrick is a virtuoso technician, and that is
part of the excitement that is generated by a new Kubrick film. But he
isn’t just a virtuoso technician; he’s also, God help us, a deadly
serious metaphysician.. . .
Do the tensions between father, mother, and son create the ghosts, or do
the ghosts serve as catalysts to make those tensions erupt? It appears
to be an intertwined process. Kubrick seems to be saying that rage,
uncontrollable violence, and ghosts spawn each other -- that they are
really the same thing. He’s using Stephen King’s hokum to make a
metaphysical statement about immortality. The Torrences are his
archetypes; they are the sources and victims of monsters that live on.
Kubrick mystifies us deliberately, much as Antonioni did in “The
Passenger,” though for different purposes. The conversations between
Jack and his demons are paced like the exposition in drawing-room
melodramas of fifty years ago; you could drop stones into a river and
watch the ripples between words. (In one of those scenes, with Jack and
the waiter conversing in a men’s room, the movie comes to a dead halt,
from which it never fully recovers.) Kubrick wants to disorient us. At a
critical moment in the action, there’s an abrupt cut to the images on
the TV news that Halloran, the cook, is watching in Florida, and the
audience is bewildered -- it’s as if the projectionist made a mistake.
In one scene, Jack, in bed, wears a sweatshirt; the lettering across it
is reversed, so we assume we’re seeing a mirror image. But then Wendy
enters the room and goes over to him, and we never move away to see the
mirror. [Kael is in error in her description of this cut. The mirror is
quite noticable as framing during the beginning of the shot, but
disappears out-of-frame during a slow dolly-in.] THE SHINING is also
full of deliberate time dislocations. Two little sisters (who seem the
deliberate recreation of a Diane Arbus photograph [!]) appear before
Danny; we naturally assume that they are the butchered daughters of the
earlier caretaker. But they are wearing twin party dresses of the
twenties, and we have been told that the daughters where killed in the
winter of 1970. Jack says that he injured Danny three years ago, and
Wendy says that it happened five months ago. The waiter, whom Jack first
meets at a twenties party, has the same name as the murderous caretaker
of 1970. (There is no mention of who has taken care of the hotel in the
winters since then.) The film is punctuated with titles: suddenly there
will be a black frame with “Tuesday” on it, or “3 o’clock,” or
“Saturday;” after the first ones, the titles all refer to time, but in
an almost arbitrary way. Jack says that he loves the hotel and wishes
“we could stay here forever, and ever, and ever.” And at the very end
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there’s a heavy hint of reincarnation and the suggestion that Jack -hasbeen there forever, ever, ever. I hate to say it, but I think the
central character of this movie is time itself, or, rather,
timelessness. . . .
The clumsiest part of the movie involves a promise that is clearly
broken. When Jack is becoming dangerous, Danny tries to get help in the
only way he can, by sending psychic messages to Halloran. The film then
crosscuts between the mother and child in their ordeal and Halloran in
his apartment in Florida, Halloran trying to make contact with the hotel
by phone, Halloran trying to have the Forest service make contact with
the hotel by radio, Halloran flying to Denver, Halloran in the air,
landing at the Denver airport, renting a car and driving to Boulder,
tricking a friend in order to borrow a sno-cat, in the sno-cat driving
(always seen in profile, looking like a sculptured Indian), approaching,
finally arriving. He walks toward the entrance (with his dear, bowlegged
gait), comes in the door, walks inside (still bowlegged), and calls out
and calls out -- the scene is prolonged. And nothing decisive to the
movie comes of all this. Halloran travelled all that way and we were
subjected to all that laborious crosscutting (which destroyed any chance
for a buildup of suspense back at the hotel) just to provide a
sacrificial victim and a sno-cat? The awful suspicion pops into mind
that since we don’t want to see Wendy or Danny hurt and there’s nobody
else alive around for Jack to get at, he’s given the black man.
(Remember the scene in “Huckleburry Finn” when Huck tells Tom’s Aunt
Sally that he arrived on a steamboat and that a cylinder head had
“blowed out.” “Good gracious!” she says. “Anybody hurt?” “No’m. Killed a
nigger.” “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”) But,
at the same time, Halloran is the only noble character in the movie. Too
noble. Something doesn’t sit right about the way the movie ascribes the
gift of shining to the good black man and the innocent child (the
insulted and the injured?), and having Halloran’s Florida apartment
decorated with big pictures of proud sexy black women gives the film an
odor of sanctity. The waiter referred to Halloran as a “nigger cook;”
the demons in this monvie are so vicious they’re even racists.
THE SHINING seems to be about the quest for immortality -- the
immortality of evil. Men are psychic murderers: they want to be free and
creative, and can only take out their frustrations on their terrified
wives and children. The movie appears to be a substitution story: The
waiter denies that he was the caretaker, but there has always been a
caretaker. And if the waiter is telling the truth, it’s Jack who has
always been the caretaker. Or maybe Jack is so mad that he has hatched
this waiter, in which case Jack probably -has- always been the
caretaker. Apparently, he lives forever, only to attack his family
endlessly. It’s what Kubrick said in 2001: Mankind began with the weapon
and just went on from there. Redrum (“murder” backward). Kubrick is the
man who thought it necessary to introduce a godlike force (the black
slab) to account for evolution. It was the slab that told the apelike
man to pick up the bone and use it as a weapon. This was a new version
of original sin: man the killer acts on God’s command. Somehow, Kubrick
ducked out on the implications of his own foolishness when he gave 2001
its utopian, technological ending -- man, reborn out of science, as
angelic, interplanetary fetus. Now he seems to have gone back to his
view at the beginning of 2001: man is a murderer, throughout eternity.
The bone that was high in the air has turned into Jack’s axe, held
aloft, and Jack, crouched over, making wild, inarticulate sounds as he
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staggers in the maze, has become the ape.
(submitted by J.D.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Does Kubrick use a technique described in THE ART OF MEMORY?
----------------------------------------------------------------------I saw The Shining about eight or nine times during the first run. (I
DIDN’T get to see the original cut in NYC, which I’ll always regret.)
About the 4th time through, near the end of the film, as Hallorann is
walking through the lobby, as Jack is about to attack, I had the odd
sensation of being in the fictional space. I’ve never had this sensation
before or since, and originally attributed it to a misfired synapse or a
shift in the earth’s axis. But that sense never left me, and I didn’t
consider it anything other than delusional until I read Yates. Here’s
what I think happened:
Kubrick goes to great pains to “map out” the Overlook, through continual
tracking shots; by showing various spaces at different times of day and
during different seasons; by, in effect, superimposing the “map” of the
maze onto the Overlook, etc. Critics saw the construction of a luxury
hotel within a soundstage as pure excess on Kubrick’s part, another
example of his eccentricity, but there was a method to his madness. By
connecting all the sets, Kubrick could have the action flow from room to
room, again mapping the space. THAT’S why the famous early shot of Danny
circling the Colorado lounge on his trike is so important. Kubrick is
practically screaming at us to pay attention to the topography. (The
shot of Poole jogging in Discovery serves a similar purpose.)
So . . . by the time you get near the end of the film (i.e., Hallorann
in the lobby), you’ve pretty much covered the entire space of the hotel
and from every imaginable angle. And you’ve seen it both objectively
(the smooth, wide-angle tracking shots) and subjectively (the hand-held
shot, from both Danny and Jack’s perspective, as they enter Room 237).
The net result is that Kubrick allows you to create an extremely
accurate, and potentially tangible, representation of the hotel within
your brain. And THAT is what THE ART OF MEMORY is all about.
(M.G.)
[The book is further discussed later on in this FAQ]
=======================================================================
FULL METAL JACKET
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
=======================================================================
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some brief insights on FULL METAL JACKET?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ On the abrupt shift after Pyle’s suicide: I regard it as like what
dramaturgist Oscar Brownstein called a Perception Shift -- an
intentional dislocation of the audience’s attention from one style to
another, with the purpose of forcing a deeper attention to underlying
themes or motives. Up until that moment, we’d been lead to expect a
certain kind of anti-war film (though we come into the theatre for
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the most part knowing about Strangelove and Paths of Glory, we don’t
know exactly what to expect), and the comic tone, etc. sets our
sights a certain way. Then, suddenly, we are dumped from the middle
of ACO into Paths of Glory, as it were; and the hour or so we’ve just
seen is altogether & immediately transformed into something deeper
(rather than gradually, through exposition, for example). The effect
is breathtaking.
(G.A.)
-- Like HAL, Pyle ends up turning against his “creators,” in this
case the Drill Sergeant. Pyle doesn’t shoot Joker when he has the
chance because he knows that Joker isn’t responsible for the system;
he’s just as enslaved to it as Pyle himself is.
(J.M.)
-- The “club that’s made for you and me” could very well be the
Marines. In this way, maybe Kubrick is saying that the military makes
it possible to ESCAPE growing up, in other words they become a “gang”
a la CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and release their aggressions into acts of
officially sanctioned violence, in a way “absolving” them from their
crimes and thus preserving their childlike innocence.
(J.M.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Many see FULL METAL JACKET as a two-part film. Is there an
alternative view?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Everywhere I have read people write about the structure of FMJ they have
called it a two act film, mainly because the first part takes place in
boot camp and the rest in Vietnam. I would argue that FMJ is indeed a 3
act structure. Act one clearly is the boot camp section, running a
little over 40 minutes and ending with Pyle in the latrine. Act two,
also running about 40 minutes, is the episodic, days-in-the-life-of-aMarine- in-Vietnam section, up to and including the scene of the men
haggling with the motorcycle prostitute and her pimp. Notice that this
2nd act begins and ends -- typical Kubrickian symetry here -- with
scenes of soldiers haggling with prostitutes. The third act is the
sniper sequence running around 20 minutes. Kubrick again has used the
bookend symetry: a concentrated 1st act (all about Pyle), a loose middle
act (many different subjects), and a very concentrated final act (all
about sniper).
(R.D.)
=======================================================================
GENERAL
=======================================================================
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) How does the game of chess relate to Kubrick’s world-view?
----------------------------------------------------------------------The symbolism of chess, a game that originated in India, bears a
resemblance to that of military strategy. It represents a conflict
between black and white pieces, between shadow and light, between the
Titans and the Gods . . . What is at stake in the conflict is the
supremacy of the world. . . . The conflict can be transposed onto the
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existential plane where the player’s skill coincides with universal
intelligence. There was nothing fortuitous about Kubrick’s collaboration
with another great lover of chess, Nabokov (whose Laughter in the Dark
he also considered adapting), and Edmond Bernhard has analysed the
themes of the novel LOLITA in terms of the game.
(Ciment, p. 88)
[Interviewer Ciment put the question to Kubrick directly]
*
*
*
*
*
CIMENT: You are a chess player and I wonder if chess-playing and its
logic have parallels with what you are saying?
KUBRICK: First of all, even the greatest International Grandmasters,
however deeply they analyse a position, can seldom see to the end of the
game. So their decision about each move is partly based on intuition. I
was a pretty good chess-player but, of course, not in that class. Before
I had anything better to do (making movies), I played in chess
tournaments at the Marshall and Manhattan Chess Clubs in New York, and
for money in parks and elsewhere. Among a great many other things that
chess teaches you is to control the initial excitement you feel when you
see something that looks good. It trains you to think before grabbing,
and to think just as objectively when you’re in trouble. When you’re
making a film you have to make most of your decisions on the run, and
there is a tendency to always shoot from the hip. It takes more
discipline than you might imagine to think, even for thirty seconds, in
the noisy, confusing, high-pressure atmosphere of a film set, But a few
seconds’ thought can often prevent a serious mistake being made about
something that looks good at first glance. With respect to films, chess
is more useful preventing you from making mistakes than giving you
ideas. Ideas come spontaneously and the discipline required to evaluate
and put them to use tends to be the real work.
(Ciment, p. 196)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What stylistic devices/techniques/approaches does Kubrick use?
----------------------------------------------------------------------THE CONTORTED FACE
A fascinating thread that runs through Kubrick’s output is that in
EVERY film of his there is a character(s) who at one point become the
focus of the camera’s attention while there face is most mangled
position:
Full Metal Jacket - Leonard when he is crazy in the head
The Shining - Jack Nicholson’s face obviously, in several
scenes: Heeere’s Johnny; looking out the window
at the snow; banging on the door or the pantry etc.
Barry Lyndon - Captain Quinn’s face during his duel with Barry when
he goes to raise his pistol.
A Clockwork Orange - Alex obviously - the scene when he gets home
from the milk bar and after having set upon Billy Boy and the
residents of HOME. And the end of course.
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2001 - When Bowman is going “beyond the infinite” there are several
scenes of his face being contorted.
Dr. Strangelove - The characters Gen. Buck Turgidson, Gen. Ripper
and Strangelove himself all exhibit the contorted face at
one time or another.
Lolita - Lolita herself makes a few of them, but James Mason doesn’t
really make any of those severe face contortions that characterize the others.
Paths of Glory - Kirk Douglas during the failed attack on the
anthill - his face gets twisted while blowing his whistle.
The Killing - Elisha Cook (George Petey) makes the weirdest of faces
when he kills his wife, her boyfriend and his hoodlum friend.
(R.P.)
THE USE OF SPACE
[The following was a dialogue on Kubrick’s use of space which appeared
in the Kubrick newsgroup]
MG:
Frances Yates was an British scholar who specialized in hermetic
philosophy. She wrote a book called THE ART OF MEMORY (Two of her other
books are GIORDANO BRUNO & THE HERMETIC TRADITION AND THE ROSICRUCIAN
ENLIGHTENMENT.) The books can be tough going, but are well worth the
repeated readings.
THE ART OF MEMORY was about a mnemonic technique developed by classical
orators as a way of remembering a speech. They would form in their
minds an image of an architectural space (someplace large and open,
usually a place they were familiar with), and then they would place
within that space striking images and objects that reminded them of
various parts of the speech. When it came time to speak, they would
imagine themselves entering the architectural space and would proceed
through it, room by room, seeing the icons that would then jog their
memories. The space represented the structure of the speech, the icons
represented the content. One of the rules was that the icons should be
as striking as possible, even bizarre and grotesque. (To me, this
sounds like the Overlook, with its stillframe horrors, and its endless
snapshots of its history hanging on the walls. Also consider the
sealed-off spaces of the WWI trenches, the War Room and Burpleson Air
Force Base, Discovery, and Parris Island. And consider, of course,
Kubrick’s penchant for bizarre iconic imagery.)
Later, during the Middle Ages, hermetic philosophers used the Art of
Memory for their own purposes, weaving it into their philosophy of a
pantheistic universe (for instance, seeing the icons as talismans that
would draw down the influence of the stars). (Sorry if I’ve only
confused the matter. Yates does a much better job at exposition.)
For me, the most important point is that these fictional internal
memory-scapes were used to catalog the contents of a person’s mind, not
unlike the function of a personal computer or, eventually, virtual
reality, which will make objective and shareable the metaphor of a
personal architectural space. (All of which suggests that Kubrick is
much farther ahead of his time than most people realize.)
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GA:
Wonderful; very
(and a friend &
thing about the
used systems of
much like what a friend of mine, and anthropologist
student of Jerome Rothenberg’s) who said much the same
though patterns of meso-american peoples -- they too
architectural mnemonics.
Reading this I recall at once all the tracking shots of K’s, most if
not all of which center a character walking through a maze or set of
hallways -- THE SHINING of course but remember all those similar shots
in CLOCKWORK; and even the handheld shots following Bowman & Poole
around the ship in 2001. Even in STRANGELOVE, the camera following the
crew up and down the fuselage of the plane, and in FMJ, the final
scenes through the burned-out maze of buildings (or the camera
following Bowman as he wanders about the alien’s hotel suite . . . )
. . . describing just as much the topology of the place as carrying
forward the narrative of the characters actions; as though the place,
its shape, its look & feel itself held the Message, and not the
action . . .
MG: The tracking shots are definitely part of it. So are the faces. But
as with everything in Kubrick, these elements work on so many levels,
and play off from each other in so many complex ways, that it’s very
hard to hold a good representation of it in your mind. (For example,
remember that Kubrick first used the corridor tracking shot, in
KILLER’S KISS, to represent a dream. And faces are used, in all the
films, as an alienation effect. As far as faces representing an
emotional index, see below.) That might be one reason why there’s been
so little good writing on Kubrick -- Any attempt to articulate the
experience becomes a parody, because it does so little justice to the
original experience. The best writing has come from people, like
Annette Michelson and Gene Youngblood, who have staked claims on small
pieces of territory and then mined them for all they’re worth,
fractally hoping that the part would somehow stand in for the whole.
But I digress . . .
THE SHINING might be the best example of the (hypothetical) use of the
Art of Memory. It’s an isolated space that stands-in for an historical
whole (the history of America). (What’s really spooky is that it
anticipated the whole direction of the 80s -- but that’s another
digression.) The movie revolves around memory (shining), especially
subjective or fractured memory. Subjective: Wendy experiences the hotel
as a series of horror movie cliches; Jack sees it as a vice den; Danny,
the innocent, sees it for what it is. They create the space as
projections of themselves. Fractured: The disorienting intersection of
Jack’s real-time experience and Danny’s memory (his shining to
Halloran) when Jack encounters the naked woman in the bathroom. Also,
paper memory, in the form of the scrapbook containing the hotel’s
history that sits on Jack’s writing table (which could be seen as the
document that sends Jack over the edge). The icons: the Indian motifs
dominate the architecture (and the site, a burial ground) while the
official history populates the walls in staid black & white photos, all
the same size. (And this is a dead giveaway, but Kubrick quotes Diane
Arbus’ Identical Twins, and Kubrick and Arbus were friends. He quotes
Jim Thompson, from THE KILLER INSIDE ME, and he and Thompson were
friends.) . . .
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OBJECTIVITY: THE ARTIST PARING HIS FINGERNAILS (THE “COLD”)
Kubrick’s “coldness” has always been a point of critics. Even
Ray Bradbury, criticizing 2001, said that the “freezing touch of
Antonioni” hovers over Kubrick in this film. And Harlan Ellison
described Kubrick’s view as so remote that it’s almost alien -- this,
while praising Kubrick as one of the few authentic artists in film.
The coldness we see in Kubrick’s work is there, but I think
it’s a result of Kubrick trying to look at the human condition as
rationally as he can. After all, in DR. STRANGELOVE, we were willing
to destroy the world over economic and political differences that,
five hundred years from now, will seem meaningless. (Anyone remember
15th century ecclesiastical debates?) _2001_ wasn’t about the human
characters at all, and the central character of _A Clockwork Orange_
was the subject of a very cold medical experiment. _Barry Lyndon_
forced this same distance on us as well -- these were people long dead,
whose goals were as ephemeral as the paper their eternal bills and
checks were written on.
Is Kubrick really this cold? I doubt it; there are scenes in
his films of genuine human pain and caring, but presented in an
observational, we’re-watching-people-with-hidden-cameras style. The
death of Barry’s son, and the horror of the final duel. That awful
scene between Jack and Danny, where Jack tells Danny he wants to stay
in the hotel “forever and ever.” The exchage between Joker and Cowboy,
where they both ‘agree” not to discuss Pyle’s collapse, and Pyle’s own
mental implosion.
But I think that the coldness people see in Kubrick’s films is
mainly his observational stance. It’s one of the things I like about
his films.
(B.S.)
USE OF PARALLEL MISE-EN-SCENE
According to the Russian theorists, Kubrick’s point in 2001 that Man had
not evolved emotionally since the missing link should have been made by
crosscutting between the apes and the humans. Instead, Kubrick stages
and shoots the sequence where the astronauts discover the Monolith
exactly the same way that he stages and shoots the scene where the apes
discover the Monolith. By the same token, the scene around the coffee
table with Dr. Floyd and the Russians, involving mounting tension as the
discussion progresses, is shot and staged in a way similar to the scene
in which the opposing groups of apes congregate around the water hole.
Kubrick’s methodology here is subtle and ambiguous; had he shot it using
cross-cutting, more people may have “gotten” his point, but it would not
have had nearly as much power as it does.
(F.B.26)
INTERTEXTUALITY
There is a degree of `intertextuality’ to Kubrick’s films which goes far
beyond that in any other director of whose work I have any knowledge.
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I am not referring here to certain directorial `trademarks’, for example
Kubrick’s recurrent distorted facial close-ups, or even his love of
eighteenth-century settings. What I have in mind are certain recurrent
elements in the films of which I have experienced. A few examples off
the top of my head:
1. The colour scheme for the scene on board the space station between
Dr. Floyd and the Russians in _2001_. The walls are dazzling white; the
chairs are red. This same colour scheme recurs in the washroom scene
between Jack and Delbert Grady in _The Shining_.
2. When Lord Bullingdon enters Barry’s club in London to challenge Barry
to a duel near the end of _Barry Lyndon_, his dress and the motion of
the camera recalls Alex’s progress through the record bar in _A
Clockwork Orange_.
3. The record bar shot in _A Clockwork Orange_ ends with a copy of the
_2001_ soundtrack in view.
4. In _Full Metal Jacket_, the composition of the shots for Joker’s
discovery of the bodies in the pit recollects the scene in _2001_ where
Dr. Floyd discovers the Tycho Monolith.
5. Various scenes in _Full Metal Jacket_ recollect scenes from Barry’s
short-lived military career in _Barry Lyndon_.
I am sure there are many more such echoes in Kubrick’s work. . . . these
serve to me as signposts that there is a unity of themes between
Kubrick’s films.
This is not to say that Kubrick is ever guilty of repeating himself, but
rather that he is always re-examining those themes from different
angles, shaped by the nature of the project he is undertaking.
(C.C.)
SUBTLETY
Traditional films tend to tell you what to think and feel every step of
the way. There is a kind of fear that pervades the classical cinema,
part of it a reflection of the culture and its fear of disruption and
outsiders, part of it a reflection of the rigid assembly-line structure
put in place by the never-benign studio patriarchs. (THIS, more than
storytelling and characters, which were already pretty moribund
concepts, is what hyper-moguls like Spielberg and Lucas have brought
back to cinema.)
Kubrick uses a more open-ended, less authoritarian approach. He places
the pieces out there in the way that pleases him most and then says, in
effect, “see what you can make of this.” This allows the viewers the
option of investing their emotions in the work, unguided by the
characters. It also offers the viewers the option of rejecting the work
if they want to (as many have). Rather than approach the films through
the predetermined gateway of the hero (which, for instance, forces most
women to either stand outside the film or see it from a, usually,
hostile viewpoint), Kubrick encourages the viewer to approach the film
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directly, with as little mediation as possible.
(M.G.)
After showing a film short I had produced to a few close friends, I was
fascinated to see how their “mistaken” readings were so rich and
detailed in comparison to the general feeling I had tried to convey.
They weren’t outside the theme of the film, but were rather more
exegetical than I would have expected. They saw things that weren’t
there, but when I reviewed my own work, I could see them too. I decided
I’d clam up about my “intent” from then on. Viewers must have more fun
than directors, and I’d rather not spoil it.
After the personal experience of this phenomenon, my approach to
criticism changed. I now sometimes saw those obscure objects of
subtextual suggestion as words in the filmic poem, in which the author
may have intended nothing more than what you immediately apprehend -and maybe to tease your imagination a little. If I wrote eerie verse of
ghosts and murders and little boys fleeing their slavering bloodthirsty
dads, penned it in red white and blue ink, and arranged the stanzas in
the shape of the US flag, what would you “read” in it? Seems a bit
sophomoric and heavyhanded to me, actually. Kubrick is so much better,
his hints at themes so subtly intertwined in the fine braided thread of
the story that they are at the edge of perception. They are the
flickering shapes behind closed eyelids whose meaning is only directed
by subjective forces, set and setting. Then he provides the immediate
visual and aural set, and the novel psychic setting, and lets you do the
rest. A little hint here and a little hint there . . . and lookit!
they’re seeing murdered Indians and profound social commentary. By god
that’s good. That’s very good. Glad I didn’t use Arm & Hammer!
(J.D.)
SYMMETRY
In 2001, the scenery, the setting, is as much one of the ‘actors’ as the
humans are. The malevolent hotel [in THE SHINING] isn’t just an
assemblage of rooms and passages: it’s a character in its own right,
swallowing up Nicholson and his family. 2001’s spaceships, corridors and
control panels perform a similar function, swallowing up humanity into
their disinfected, air-conditioned machinery, so that the people emerge
as disinfected machines. THE SHINING’s monstrous hotel spits its human
victims out as monsters. And the killing field of FULL METAL JACKET’s
Vietnam churns out killers. Humanity is a victim of such environments.
But these environments are man-made. The puzzle loops in on itself.
. . .
People shape the world around them, and are then shaped in turn by the
worlds they have created. Kubrlck charts the manmade landscapes of human
experience truthfully. On his canvas, the people are indivisible from
the background. The gaming board becomes indivisible from the people who
sit down to play on it. . . .
[W]atch also for the extreme symmetries (the oh-so-neat squares on the
board) which presage disaster in so many of Kubrick’s films. BARRY
LYNDON is awash with sumptuous architectural elegance. The war room of
DR. STRANGELOVE is geometric to an extreme. 2001 is chock-full of
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symmetrical cabins and corridors. In FULL METAL JACKET, a crucial scene,
the training sergeant’s murder, takes place in a sterile white latrine.
US army training barracks have latrines from a standard-issue pattern, a
tidy row going along one wall. Abandoning his usual hyperaccuracy in
favour of slight artistic license, Kubrick specially created a set with
two rows, on opposing walls. Why? So that the bloodspattered slaughter
could take place among symmetry. The icy white of the washroom opposes
the mess of spilled blood. Hal’s brain room in 2001 is just like those
latrines: a symmetrical chamber of execution. . . .
Time and again, human plans are drawn up, hatched, in offices and
conference rooms of hypnotic, even stupefying, geometric regularity;
2001’s square moonbase conference room; a manager’s office in THE
SHINING’s hotel; the generals’ palatial headquarters in Paths of Glory.
The hotel in THE SHINING is a mass of corridors and stainless steel
kitchen storerooms. (There are aural symmetries too. Remember the young
boy’s tricycle on the parquet flooring, whizzing onto a rug, off the
rug, onto the next rug, back onto the floor: whirrr, clump, whirrr,
clump . . . ?) Kubrick uses symmetry to achieve two very specific
effects: firstly, to lull an audience into a sense of false security,
and secondly, to parody or counterpoint the ensuing chaos, the asymmetrical destruction. Danny’s extravagant tricycle-rides around the
hotel are repeated several times as joyride, rollercoaster, guided tour.
Just when we think we’ve seen the ride, he sets off on another one, a
tricycle trip too many (yawn . . .) and WHUMP! The wheels stop, the
little feet falter on the pedals. Suddenly we have a spooky pair of twin
girls, a liftshaft full of blood, a man wearing a sinister rabbit mask - just when we thought we were getting a bit bored with all this
tricycle riding.
In 2001 Kubrick jets Poole into the abyss on a similar -- no, an exact
replica -- of Bowman’s previous and more or less uneventful spacewalk.
The doors slide apart, the pod emerges, the hatch opens, the spacesuited
figure is birthed into the immense vacuum like an insect emerging from
an egg. Yes, we’ve seen this bit already, thank you. Ah, but we haven’t
. . . As our eyes begin to wander, the routine is broken. A pod hurtles
towards us, its claws grappling for murder. We, the audience, have our
own little plan, and that’s to sit there in the dark, imagining (what
fools we are) that we know what’s going on, what we’ve seen and what we
haven’t. Kubrick dashes our plans too, by introducing major dramatic
moments, major plot calamities, just at the point where we are drifting
off to sleep. His use of dramatic tension is seldom highlighted by
warning wails or ta-dums in the soundtrack. He tricks us just as the
gods do -- when we least expect it, when we are half-asleep with
complacency. Kubrick’s screen people set out their pieces in neat rows
and start to play, only to find that the very chessboard itself reaches
out and turns them into pawns in some other, some deeper and less
tangible game. . . .
(P.B., pp. 148-9)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE BASIC INFORMATION SECTION
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What was Kubrick’s reaction to the Steadicam?
----------------------------------------------------------------------The August 1980 issue of _American Cinematographer_ has two major
articles on _The Shining-’s production. One is a lengthy interview with
Kubrick’s cinematographer, John Alcott, and the other is an article by
Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown. . . .
From Garrett Brown’s article:
In 1974 Stanley Kubrick receives a print of the 35mm demonstration film
shot with the original prototype of what would later be called the
“Steadicam.” Kubrick’s telexed response is reprinted below:
VIA WUI + CINEDEVCO LSA HAWKFILMS ELST [This would be Elstree Studios,
where Kubrick usually works.]
TO ED DI GIULIO 2# 11 74
DEAR ED,
DEMO REEL ON HAND HELD MYSTERY STABILIZER WAS SPECTACULAR AND YOU CAN
COUNT ON ME AS A CUSTOMER. IT SHOULD REVOLUTIONIZE THE WAY FILMS ARE
SHOT. IF YOU ARE REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT PROTECTING ITS DESIGN BEFORE YOU
FULLY PATENT IT, I SUGGEST YOU DELETE THE TWO OCCASIONS ON THE REEL
WHERE THE SHADOW ON THE GROUND GIVES THE SKILLED COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE
PHOTO INTERPRETER A FAIRLY CLEAR REPRESENTATION OF A MAN HOLDING A POLE
WITH ONE HAND, WITH SOMETHING OR OTHER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POLE WHICH
APPEARS TO BE SLOWLY MOVING. BUT MY LIPS ARE SEALED. I HAVE A QUESTION:
IS THERE A MINIMUM HEIGHT AT WHICH IT CAN BE USED?
BEST REGARDS,
STANLEY KUBRICK
HAWKFILMS ELST CINEDEVCO LSA
(J.D.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What films has Kubrick done, and what are the credits?
----------------------------------------------------------------------1951
DAY OF THE FIGHT
Director/Photography/Editor/Sound
Stanley Kubrick
Commentary
Douglas Edwards
Documentary short on Walter Cartier, middleweight prize fighter
Running Time:
16 minutes
Distributor
RKO Radio
1951
FLYING PADRE
Director/Photograohy/Editor/Sound
Stanley Kubrick
Documentary short on the Reverend Fred Stadmueller, Roman Catholic
missionary of a New Mexico parish that covers 400 square miles
Running Time:
9 minutes
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The Kubrick Faq
Distributor:
1953
RKO Radio
THE SEAFARERS
Director/Photography/Editor
Stanley Kubrick
Script
Will Chasen
Producer
Lester Cooper
Narrator
Don Hollenbeck
Documentary short in color about the Seafarers International Union
Running Time:
30 minutes
1953
FEAR AND DESIRE
Production Company
Stanley Kubrick Productions
Producer
Stanley Kubrick
Associate Producer
Martin Perveler
Director/Photography/Editor
Stanley Kubrick
Script
Howard O. Sackler
Dialogue Director
Toba Kubrick
Music
Gerald Fried
Cast:
Frank Silvera (Mac), Kenneth Harp (Corby), Virginia Leith (The
Girl), Paul Mazursky (Sydney), Steve Coit (Fletcher), David Allen
(Narrator)
Running Time:
Distributor:
68 Minutes
Joseph Burstyn
1955 KILLER’S KISS
Production Company
Minotaur
Producers
Stanley Kubrick, Morris Bousel
Director/Photography/Editor
Stanley Kubrick
Script
Stanley Kubrick, Howard O. Sackler
Music
Gerald Fried
Choreographer
David Vaughan
Cast:
Frank Silvera (Vincent Rapallo), Jamie Smith (Davy Gordon),
Irene Kane (Gloria Price), Jerry Jarret (Albert), Ruth Sobotka (Iris),
Mike Dana, Felice Orlandi, Ralph Roberts, Phil Stevenson (Hoodlums),
Julius Adelman (Mannequin Factory Owner), David Vaughan, Alec Rubins
(Conventioneers)
Running Time:
Distributor:
1956
64 Minutes
United Artists, United Artists/16
THE KILLING
Production Company
Harris-Kubrick Productions
Producer
James B. Harris
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel CLEAN BREAK, by Lionel
White
Additional dialogue
Jim Thompson
Photography
Lucien Ballard
Editor
Betty Steinberg
Art Director
Ruth Sobotka Kubrick
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Music
Sound
The Kubrick Faq
Gerald Fried
Earl Snyder
Cast:
Sterling Hayden (Johnny Clay), Jack C. Flippen (Marvin Unger),
Marie Windsor (Sherry Peatty), Elisha Cook Jr. (George Peatty), Coleen
Gray (Fay), Vince Edwards (Val Cannon), Ted de Corsia (Randy Kennan),
Joe Sawyer (Mike O’Reilly), Tim Carey (Nikki), Kola Kwariana (Maurice),
James Edwards (Parking Lot Attendant), Jay Adler (Leo), Joseph Turkel
(Tiny)
Running Time:
Distributor:
83 minutes
United Artists, United Artists/16
1957 PATHS OF GLORY
Production Company
Harris-Kubrick Productions
Producer
James B. Harris
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham, Jim Thompson, based on
the novel by Humphrey Cobb
Photography
George Krause
Editor
Eva Kroll
Art Director
Ludwig Reiber
Music
Gerlad Fried
Sound
Martin Muller
Cast:
Kirk Douglas (Colonel Dax), Ralph Meeker (Corporal Paris),
Adolphe Menjou (General Broulard), George Macready (General Mireau),
Wayne Morris (Lieutenant Roget), Richard Anderson (Major Saint-Auban),
Joseph Turkel (Private Arnaud), Timothy Carey (Private Ferol), Peter
Capel (Colonel Judge), Suzanne Christian (German Girl), Bert Freed
(Sergeant Boulanger), Emile Meyer (Priest), John Stein (Captain
Rousseau), Ken Dibbs (Private Lejeune), Jerry Hausner (Tavern Owner),
Harold Benedict (Captain Nichols)
Running Time:
Distributor:
Artists/16
1960
86 minutes
United Artists (presented by Byrna Productions), United
SPARTACUS
Production Company
Byrna
Executive Producer
Kirk Douglas
Producer
Edward Lewis
Director
Anthony Mann, Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay
Dlaton Trumbo, based on the book by Howard Fast
Photography
Russel Metty
Additional Photography
Clifford Stine
Screen Process
Super Technirama-70
Color
technicolor
Editors
Robert Lawrence, Robert Schultz, fred Chulack
Production Designer
Alexander Golitzen
Art Director
Eric Orbom
Set Decoration
Russel A. Gausman, Julia Heron
Titles
Saul Bass
Technical Advisor
Vittorio Nino Novarese
Costumes
Peruzzi, Valles, Bill Thomas
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The Kubrick Faq
Music
Alex North
Music Director
Joseph Gershenson
Sound
Waldo O. Watson, Joe Lapis, Murray Spivack, Ronald Pierce
Assistant Director
Marshal Green
Cast:
Kirk Douglas (Spartacus), Laurence Olivier (Marcus Crassus),
Jean Simmons (Varinia), Charles Laughton (Gracchus), Peter Ustinov
(Batiatus), John Gavin (Julius Caesar), Tony Curtis (Antoninus), Nina
Foch (Helena), Herbert Lom (Tigranes), John Ireland (Crixus), Joh Dall
(Glabrus), Charles McGraw (Marcellus), Joanna Barnes (Claudia), Harold
J. Stone (David), Woody Strode (Draba), Peter Brocco (Ramon), Paul
Lambert (Gannicus), Robert J. Wilke (Captain of Guard), Nicholas Dennis
(Dionysius), John Hoyt (Roman Officer), Fred Worlock (Laelius), Dayton
Lummis (Symmachus)
Original Running Time:
196 Minutes
Original Released Running Time:
184 Minutes
Distributor:
Universal Pictures, Univeral/16
1962
LOLITA
Production Company
Seven Arts/Anya/Transworld
Producer
James B. Harris
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay
Vladimir Nabokov, based on his novel
Photography
Oswald Morris
Editor
Anthony Harvey
Art Director
William Andrews
Set Design
Andrew Low
Music
Nelson Riddle
Lolita’s Theme
Bob Harris
Sound
H. L. Bird, Len Shilton
Assistant Directors
Roy Millichip, John Danischewsky
Cast:
James Mason (Humbert Humbert), Sue Lyon (Lolita Haze), Shelley
Winters (Charlotte Haze), Peter Sellers (Clare Quilty), Diana Decker
(Jean Farlow), Jerry Stovin (John Farlow), Suzanne Gibbs (Mona Farlow),
Gary Cockrell (Dick Schiller), Marianne Stone (Vivian Darkbloom), Cec
Linder (Physician), Lois Maxwell (Nurse Mary Lord), William Greene (Mr.
Swine), C. Denier Warren (Mr. Potts), Isobel Lucas (Louise), Maxine
Holden (Hospital Receptionist), James Dyrenforth (Mr. Beale), Roberta
Shore (Lorna), Eric Lane (Roy), Shirley Douglas (Mr. Starch), Roland
Brand (Bill), Colin Maitland (Charlie Holmes), Irvin Allen (Hospital
Attendant), Marion Mathie (Miss Lebone), Craig Sams (Rex), John
Harrison
(Tom)
Running Time:
Distributor:
1964
153 Minutes
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Films Incorporated/16
DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE
THE BOMB
Production Company
Hawk Films
Producer/Director
Stanley Kubrick
Associate Producer
Victor Lyndon
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George, based on
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The Kubrick Faq
the novel Red Alert by Peter George
Photography
Gilbert Taylor
Editor
Anthony Harvey
Production Design
Ken Adam
Art Direction
Peter Murton
Special Effects
Wally Veevers
Music
Laurie Johnson
Aviation Advisor
Captain John Crewdson
Sound
John Cox
Cast: Peter Sellers (Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Muffley,
Dr. Strangelove), George C. Scott (Buck Turgidson), Sterling Hayden
(General Jack D. Ripper), Keenan Wynn (Colonel Bat Guano), Slim Pickens
(Major T. J. “King” Kong) Peter Bull (Ambassador de Sadesky), Tracy
Reed (Miss Scott), James Earl Jones (Lieutenant H. HR. Dietrich,
D.S.O.), Glenn Beck (Lieutenant W. D. Kivel, Navigator), Shane Rimmer
(Captain G.A. “Ace” Owens, Co-pilot), Paul Tamarin (Lieutenant B.
Goldberg, Radio Operator), Gordon Tanner (General Faceman), Robert
O’Neil (Admiral Randolph), Roy Stephens (Frank), Laurence Herder, John
McCarthy, Hal Galili (Memebers of Burpleson Base Defense Corps)
Running Time:
Distributor:
1968
94 Minutes
Columbia Pictures, Swank/16
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Production Company
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Producer
Stanley Kubrick
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clark, based on Clarke’s short
story “The Sentinel”
Photography
Geoffrey Unsworth
Screen Process
Super Panavision, presented in Cinerama
Color
Metrocolor
Additional Photography
John Alcott
Special Photographic Effects Designer and Director
Stanley Kubrick
Editor
Ray Lovejoy
Production Design
Tony Masters, Harry Lange, Ernie Archer
Art Direction
John Hoesli
Special Photographic Effects Supervisors
Wally Veevers, Douglas
Trumbull, Con Pedereson, Tom Howard
Music
Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, Aram Khachaturian, Gyorgy
Ligeti
Costumes
Hardy Amies
Sound
Winston Ryder
Cast:
Keir Dullea (David Bowman), Gary Lockwood (Frank Poole),
William Sylvester (Dr. Heywood Floyd), Daniel Richter (Moon-Watcher),
Douglas Rain (HAL’s Voice), Leonard Rossiter (Smyslov), Margaret Tyzack
(Elena), Robert Beatty (Halvorsen), Sean Sullivan (Michaels), Frank
Miller (Mission Control), Penny Edwina Carroll, Mike Lovell, Peter
Delman, Danny Grover, Brian Hawley
Running Time:
Distributor:
1971
141 Minutes
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Films Incorporated/16
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
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The Kubrick Faq
Production Company
Warner Brothers/Hawk Films
Producer/Director
Stanley Kubrick
Executive Producers
Max L. Raab, Si Litvinoff
Associate Producer
Bernard Williams
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Anthony Burgess
Photography
John Alcott
Color
Warnercolor
Editor
Bill Butler
Production Design
John Barry
Art Direction
Russell Hagg, Peter Shields
Music
Ludwig van Beethoven, Edward Elgar, Gioacchino Rossini, Terry
Tucker, Henry Purcell, James Yorkston, Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Erika Eigen
Original Electronic Music
Walter Carlos
Songs
Gene Kelly, Erika Eigen
Costumes
Milena Canonero
Special Paintings and Sculpture
Herman Makkink, Cornelius Makkink,
Liz Moore, Christiane Kubrick
Production Assistant
Andros Epaminondas
Sound
Brian Blamey
Assistant to Producer
Jan Harlan
Cast:
Malcolm McDowell (Alex), Patrick Magee (Mr. Alexander), Michael
Bates (Chief Guard), Warren Clark (Dim), John Clive (Stage Actor),
Adrienne Corri (Mrs. Alexander), Carl Duering (Dr. Brodsky), Paul
Farrel (Tramp), Clive Francis (Joe, the Lodger), Michael Gover (Prison
Governor), Miriam Karlin (Miss Weber, the Cat Lady), James Marcus
(Georgie), Aubrey Morris (Mr. Deltoid), Godfrey Quigley (Prison
Chaplain), Sheila Raynour (Mum), Madge Ryan (Dr. Branom), John Savident
(Conspirator), Anthony Sharp (Minister of the Interior), Philip Stone
(Dad), Pauline Taylor (Dr. Taylor, Psychiatrist), Margaret Tyzack
(Conspirator), Steven Berkoff (Constable), Lindsay Campbell
(Inspector), Michael Tarn (Pete), David Prowse (Julian), Jan Adair,
Vivienne Chandler, Prudence Drage (Handmaidens), John J. Carney (CID
Man), Richard Connaught (Billyboy), Carol Drinkwater (Nurse Feeley),
Cheryl Grunwald (Rape Girl), Gillian Hills (Sonietta), Barbara Scott
(Marty), Virginia Wetherell (Stage Actress), Katya Wyeth (Girl), Barrie
Cookson, Gaye Brown, Peter Burton, Lee Fox, Craig Hunter, Shirley
Jaffe,
Neil Wilson
Running Time:
Distributor:
1975
137 Minutes
Warner Brothers, Swank/16
BARRY LYNDON
Production Company
Warner Brothers/Hawk Films
Producer/Director
Stanley Kubrick
Associate Producer
Jan Harlan
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by William Makepeace
Thackeray
Photography
John Alcott
Editor
Tony Lawson
Production Design
Ken Adam
Art Direction
Roy Walker
Music
J.S. Bach, Frederick the Great, G. F. Handel, W. A. Mozart,
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The Kubrick Faq
Giovanni Paisiello, Franz Schubert, Antonio Vivaldi
Music Adaptation
Leonard Rosenman
Costumes
Ulla-Britt Soderlund, Milena Cannonero
Screen Process
Panavision
Color
Metrocolor
Sound
Rodney Holland
Assistant Director
Brian Cook
Cast:
Ryan O’Neal (Barry Lyndon), Marisa Berenson (Lady Lyndon),
Patrick Magee (The Chevalier), Hardy Kruger (Captain Potzdorf), Marie
Kean (Mrs. Barry), Gay Hamilton (Nora Brady), Melvin Murray (Reverend
Runt), Godfrey Quigley (Captain George), Leonard Rossiter (Captain
Quin), Leon Vitali (Lord Bullington), Diana Koerner (Lischen), Frank
Middlemass (Sir Charles Lyndon), Andre Morell (Lord Wendover), Arthur
O’Sullivan (Captain Freny), Philip Stone (Graham), Steven Berkoff (Lord
Ludd), Anthony Sharp (Lord Hallum), Michael Hordern (the narrator)
Running Time:
Distributor:
1980
185 Minutes
Warner Brothers, Swank/16
THE SHINING
Production Company
Warner Brothers/Hawk Films
Produced in association with
The Producer Circle Company
Robert Fryer, Martin Richards, Mary Lea Johnson
Producer/Director
Stanley Kubrick
Executive Producer
Jan Harlan
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson, based on the novel by
Stephen King
Photography
John Alcott
Editor
Ray Lovejoy
Production Design
Roy Walker
Music
Bela Bartok, Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkin, Gyorgy Ligeti,
Krzystof Penderecki
Costumes
Milena Canonera
2nd Unit Photography
Douglas Milsome, Gregg Macgillivray
Steadicam Operator
Garrett Brown
Art Direction
Les Tomkins
Assistant Director
Brian Cook
Assistant to Producer
Andros Epaminondas
Personal Assistant to Director
Leon Vitali
Cast:
Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrance), Shelley Duvall (Wendy
Torrance), Danny Lloyd (Danny Torrance), Scatman Crothers (Halloran),
Barry Nelson (Stuart Ullman), Philip Stone (Delbert Grady), Joe Turkel
(Lloyd), Anne Jackson (Doctor), Tony Burton (Larry Durkin), Lia Beldam
(Young Woman in Bath), Billie Gibson (Old Woman in Bath), Barry Dennen
(Watson), David Baxter (Forest Ranger1), Manning Redwood (Forest Ranger
2), Lisa Burns, Louise Burns (The Grady Girls), Alison Coleridge
(Ullman’s Secretary), Jana Sheldon (Stewardess), Kate Phelps (Overlook
Receptionist), Norman Gay (Injured Guest with Head-Wound)
Running Time:
Distributor:
1987
145 Minutes
Warner Brothers
FULL METAL JACKET
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The Kubrick Faq
Production Company
Warner Brother
Producer /Director
Stanley Kubrick
Executive Producer
Jan Harlan
Co-Producer
Philip Hobbs
Associate Producer
Michael Herr
Screenplay
Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford, based on
the novel by Gustav Hasford
Production Design
Anton Furst
Editor
Martin Hunter
Assistant to Director
Leon Vitali
Cast: Mathew Modine (Pvt. Joker), Adam Baldwin (Animal Mother),
Vincent D’onofrio (Pvt. Pile), Lee Ermey (Gnn. Sgt. Hartman), Dorian
Harewood (Eightball), Arliss Howard (Pvt. Cowboy), Kevyn Major Howard
(Rapterman), Ed O’Ross (Lt. Touchdown), John Terry (Lt. Lockhart),
Kieron Jechinis (Crazy Earl), Bruce Boa, Kirk Taylor, John Stafford,
Tim Colceri, Ian Tyler, Gary Landon Mills, Sal Lopez, Papillon Soo Soo,
Ngoc Le, Peter Edmund, Tan Hung Francione, Leanne Hong, Marcus D’amico,
Costas Dino Chimona, Gil Kopel, Keith Hodiak, Peter Merrill, Herbert
Norville, Nguyen Hue Phong
Running Time:
Distributor:
117 Minutes
Warner Brothers
*Filmography typed and contributed by S.C. as it appeared in T.N.,
KUBRICK, A FILM ARTIST’S MAZE *
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What Academy Award nominations has Kubrick received?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay based on material from another
medium) 1964: DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND
LOVE THE BOMB
Nominated for Directing 1964: DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO
STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
Nominated for Best Picture 1964: DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO
STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
Producer Nominated for Writing (Best
Story and Screenplay written directly for the screen) 1968: 2001: A
SPACE ODYSSEY
Special Visual Effects 1968: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Nominated for Directing 1968: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay based on material from another
medium) 1971: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Nominated for Directing 1971: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Nominated for Best Picture 1971: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Producer
Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay adapted from other material)
1975: BARRY LYNDON
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The Kubrick Faq
Nominated for Directing 1975: BARRY LYNDON
Nominated for Best Picture 1975: BARRY LYNDON
Producer
Nominated for Best Screenplay Based on Material From Another Medium
1987: FULL METAL JACKET
(J.B)
1964 - vs. Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove
Writing: Edward Anhalt - Becket
Directing: George Cukor - My Fair Lady
Picture: My Fair Lady
1968 - Vs. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Writing: Mel Brooks - The Producers
Directing: Sir Carol Reed - Oliver
1971 - Vs. A Clockwork Orange
Writing: Ernest Tidyman - French Connection
Directing: William Friedkin - French Connection
Picture: French Connection
1975 - Vs. Barry Lyndon
Writing: Frank Pierson - Dog Day Afternoon
Directing: Milos Foreman - One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Picture: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
1987 - Vs. Full Metal Jacket
Writing: Mark Peploe & Bernardo Bertolucci - The Last Emperor
(J.U)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some off-line references to Kubrick?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Great book, though out of print: MAKING OF KUBRICK’S 2001 by
Jerome Agel, originally published by New American Library (Signet).
Filled with reviews of the film, letters to Kubrick, behind-the-scenes
info, photos, and a whole lot more.
GEDULD, CAROLYN. Filmguide to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. According to one USENET reader,
somewhat off-the-mark.
KUBRICK: A FILM ARTIST’S MAZE by Thomas Nelson. In-depth commentary
film-by-film, with a brilliant analysis of DR. STRANGELOVE & 2001. May
be too scholarly for some.
KUBRICK by Michael Ciment. Lots of photos and great insights, with
interviews by Kubrick. A must.
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THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Signet, 1972.
If you’re interested in early drafts of 2001, you must find a copy of
Arthur C. Clarke’s book THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001. It contains much of the
material that Kubrick & Clarke (who really co-wrote the novel, even
though only Clarke’s name appears on the novel) wrote and then
discarded, all of which was at one time or another intended for the
film. (For those who don’t know, although Kubrick was inspired by
Clarke’s “The Sentinel” to do 2001, they wrote the 2001 novel
concurrently with the screenplay, as far as I know the only time this
has ever been done.) Clarke intersplices the material with essays on
working with Kubrick, and how they arrived at the script as we know it.
I’m not sure whether the book is still in print, but I see it quite
often in used bookstores. There’s a lot of background information on the
characters in 2001, as well as several alternate versions of Bowman
meeting the aliens behind the monolith at the film’s end, which was
their original intention before Kubrick opted for a more open
conclusion.
(J.M.)
2001: FILMING
Includes some
pages for the
screenplay in
and some fine
THE FUTURE by Piers Bizony (Aurum Press: 1994).
neat stuff, including what appears to be the typed
orginal press release, what appears to be the entire
novel-dialogue form, shots from 2001 that were cut,
essays. Another must. And it’s in print!
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What are some on-line references to Kubrick?
----------------------------------------------------------------------CARDIFF’S MOVIE BROWSER http://www.msstate.edu/Movies/
A great collection of quotes, cast members, and other miscellaneous
information, all hot-linked.
KUBRICK ON THE WEB
http://www.automatrix.com/~bak/kubrick.html
Updates to the FAQ stored here, as well as pointers to other
Kubrick sites on the Web.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Where can you get screenplays to Kubrick’s films?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Some people have asked about the availability of the original
screenplays for Kubrick’s films. They can be ordered directly from:
Script City 8033 Sunset Boulevard, Ste. 1500 Hollywood, CA
90046 (213) 871-0707
They accept payment by credit card over the phone. Call for current
prices (around $25) and details on “buy 2, get 1 free” offer.
It is my understanding that the following titles are available.
Paths of Glory (missing pages)
Spartacus
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Dr. Strangelove
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon
The Shining
Full Metal Jacket
I have personally seen only the 2001 and Dr. Strangelove screenplays.
Each is very revealing. The 2001 piece reflects a degree of evolution
similar to the novel, with a very different HAL9000 encounter, a lengthy
narrative and a definitive explanation of HAL’s breakdown. It ends as
the stargate sequence begins. The Dr. Strangelove screenplay is also
very different and includes the famous pie-fight ending. Major Kong
never gets the doors open and dives the bomber into the target. Once
again a narrative is present, an alien historian recounting the episode
of an obscure planet, its history recently found by archeologists.
(C.P.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Are there any other Kubrickian films out there?
----------------------------------------------------------------------Kubrick, of course, is a director unto himself. However, there are many
other films which have that Kubrickian blend of intellect, humanity,
depth, philosophical perspective, and (sometimes suppressed) emotion,
as well other films which have that “on the edge” or “over the top”
Kubrickian quality. Perhaps the most prominent feature of Kubrick’s
films, internal congruence, is also present in these films.
Here is a short, incomplete, and very eclectic list of other excellent
more or less Kubrick-like films. Many of these films belong in more than
one category, so use these categories just as a temporary reference
point:
“I SMELL THE AIR OF ANOTHER PLANET”
(2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY)
AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD
ERASERHEAD
BLUE VELVET
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL
MARAT/SADE
FILMS WHERE DIALOGUE IS PROMINENT
(FULL METAL JACKET, DR. STRANGELOVE, BARRY LYNDON)
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
A RAISIN IN THE SUN
SWEPT AWAY
MINDWALK
MY DINNER WITH ANDRE
DYSTOPIA
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(A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, FULL METAL JACKET)
1984
BRAZIL
POSTMODERN COMEDIES
(DR. STRANGELOVE)
LOST IN AMERICA
KING OF COMEDY
THE HUDSUCKER PROXY
RAISING ARIZONA
MONTHY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE
THE YOUNG AMERICANS
DOCUMENTARIES
(DAY OF THE FIGHT, FLYING PADRE)
TITICUT FOLLIES
THE THIN BLUE LINE
VERNON, FLORIDA
THE ATOMIC CAFE
ROGER AND ME
HOOP DREAMS
MISCELLANEOUS FILMS
(internal congruence and excellence in concept and execution)
CITIZEN KANE
MIDNIGHT COWBOY
FIVE EASY PIECES
STRAW DOGS
OBSESSION
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
HAIR
BLOW-UP
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
THE SEVEN SAMURAI
RAN
KOYAANISQAATSI
BARAKA
BADLANDS (G.A)
IF . . . (G.A.)
O LUCKY MAN! (G.A.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) What were Kubrick’s favorite films?
----------------------------------------------------------------------I VITELLONI
WILD STRAWBERRIES
CITIZEN KANE
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TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE
CITY LIGHTS
HENRY V
LA NOTTE
THE BANK DICK
ROXIE HART
HELL’S ANGELS
(J.B./T.G.)
THEORY
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) Many people see Kubrick’s film as “art”, not “entertainment.” What’s
the difference?
----------------------------------------------------------------------This common distinction is not necessarily hard and fast. Many people
think that Kubrick’s films (esp. THE SHINING and DR.STRANGELOVE) are
very entertaining. The hard categories are best seen as poles on a
continuum.
Still, most people would be more likely to see 2001 as “art” versus
“entertainment” (due to 2001’s slow pace and seeming lack of action and
variety; to some the film is deadly boring). So what’s the difference
between film-as-”art” and film-as-”entertainment”?
The best fast argument against film entertainment as art is the
following web server
http://www.well.com/user/vertigo/cliches.html
which documents hundreds of film cliches, like:
* Dogs always know who’s bad, and bark at them.
* When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always
drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then
have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly,
flashing clenched teeth.
* Bombs always have big, blinking, beeping timer displays. Evil geniuses
who devise bombs to destroy things/people are always thoughtful enough
to include a visible display (usually LED) of how much time remains
before the bomb detonates, giving the hero accurate feedback on
exactly how much time remains.
* Explosions always happen in slow motion. When an explosion occurs,
make certain you are running away from the point of detonation so the
blast can send you flying, in slow motion, toward the camera.
* Pedestrians in Hollywood have the world’s best reactions, so don’t
worry if you have to drive down a sidewalk. Mr. Pappodopolus is quite
used to having his fruit cart smashed, and despite his gesticulations
and curses, he always manages to get out of the way in time.
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and so forth. Thanks to the Web, now you don’t have to pay $8.00 to get
a healthy dose of visual cliches. They’re free for the asking.
That’s a short differentiation: “entertainment” is the recycling, flowchart style, of images which “worked” before. To those who have seen
these images umpteen-cubed times, the images, funny how it happens, sour
up on the mind, kind of like orange juice which has worn out its
welcome. Yes, Virginia, that’s NOT entertainment.
Here’s a long, wordy one:
The “art” object, like its cousin the “entertainment” object, is a means
of communication. This communication is via a medium [whether rock
(sculpture), oil on canvas (painting), sequential varying images
projected on a screen (film), words on a page (poetry, novel), metallic
tube (trumpet), and a whole host of other media]. Here the similarity
begins to end.
A primary difference between film “entertainment” and “art” is in the
quality and quantity of the messages sent and the level upon which they
are pitched; the intentions of the two vis a vis the spectator are very
different. Entertainment typically hews close to the base level of the
human psyche, tugging at the most elemental emotions -- pushing buttons,
to be pejorative about it. Art, while also seeking to engage the viewer,
generally attempts to tap into more complicated and rarer emotions, and
invites the viewer to not only be hypnotized (i.e. “get into” the work),
but also to examine the work objectively -- an integration of cognition
with emotion. While film entertainment frequently sends only one primary
message, the greatest film artworks are sending many messages at once,
and echoing and/or counterpointing these messages across many different
domains (e.g. verbal, set design, montage, lighting, performance, etc.),
in the same way musical works do. Because of this, the “entertainments”
frequently exhaust themselves after a few viewings, while the greatest
artworks, on the other hand, frequently get richer and richer upon
subsequent viewings. On the philosophical dimension, (at the risk of
oversimplifying this issue), the entertainer is typically focused on
telling the audience what it WANTS to hear, while the artist is more
often focused on what it NEEDS to hear. For this reason, many people
would say that entertainment is “light,” art “heavy,” and thus, on
Friday night after a hard week’s work, would check out DIE HARD or DUMB
AND DUMBER from the local BLOCKBUSTER, and not, say, Bergman’s THE
SEVENTH SEAL.
If art is communication, then information theory comes into play when
evaluating art. The following is a list of parameters partially derived
from information theory that sets some lines of demarcation that will
enable us to say “while both are food (communication), art is more like
the main course, and entertainment is more like dessert.”
I have included after these parameters some films which, in my view, are
prototype (but non-exclusive) examples satisfying that particular idea.
========================================================================
1) Totality of Conception
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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2001, CITIZEN KANE, ERASERHEAD, THE SHINING
2) Multi-dimensional Semantic Echoing
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2001, CITIZEN KANE, ERASERHEAD, THE SHINING
3) Complexity of Information
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, ERASERHEAD
4) Formal Beauty
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
BARRY LYNDON, 2001, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
5) Excellence of parts
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, HUDSUCKER PROXY, CITIZEN KANE,
NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
6) Metaphoric Significance
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, 2001
7) Understanding of Film Language
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CITIZEN KANE
8) New vision/Exploding possibilities of the medium
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CITIZEN KANE, ERASERHEAD, BLUE VELVET, MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, 2001
VERNON FLORIDA
9) Power/Impact
^^^^^^^^^^^^
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, SWEPT AWAY
10) Verisimilitude (feeling of reality)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
MIDNIGHT COWBOY, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
11) Lack of superfluous information (high signal, low noise)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2001
12) Necessity (feeling it could only be done that way)
^^^^^^^^^
2001, RAISING ARIZONA, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, ERASERHEAD
13) Expressionistic
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ERASERHEAD
14) Number of parameters satisfied
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2001, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
15) New content
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^^^^^^^^^^^
MARAT/SADE, ERASERHEAD
16) Theme and Variation (reworks and transforms conventions)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
HUDSUCKER PROXY
17) Unpredictability/Freshness
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ERASERHEAD, VERNON FLORIDA
18) Depth (number of interpretations possible)
^^^^^
2001, THE SHINING, MARAT/SADE
19) Creation of salient mood
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
MARAT/SADE, ERASERHEAD, OBSESSION, BLUE VELVET, TITICUT FOLLIES,
BARRY LYNDON
20) Form follows content
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2001, ERASERHEAD, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
21) Significance of themes
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2001, MARAT/SADE, SWEPT AWAY, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
22) Striking imagery
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ERASERHEAD, AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
23) Integrity/Uncompromising
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ERASERHEAD, 2001, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE,
MINDWALK
24) Universality (speaks to everyone regardless of spatial, temporal
^^^^^^^^^^^^ location)
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, THE SHINING
24) Communicativeness
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SWEPT AWAY, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
24) Intellectual (engages cognition)
^^^^^^^^^^^^
MINDWALK, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, 2001, MARAT/SADE,
MY DINNER WITH ANDRE
========================================================================
Another important aspect of art as a medium of communication is
avoidance of the following negatives:
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Cliche
Pretentiousness
Art-by-numbers (e.g. doing what the “school” tells you to do)
Unethical imagery (e.g. positive framing of sadism, etc.)
Contrived images
Reliance on cheap “effects”
Compromising: going down the mountain and cheapening the
message
Those who are fascinated by the issue of “what is art?” (a question
around which a whole discipline, aesthetics, revolves) must get the
brilliant PUZZLES ABOUT ART: AN AESTHETICS CASEBOOK by Battin, Fisher,
Moore, and Silvers (St. Martin’s Press, NY, 1989). This book uses, quite
uniquely, the case method found in law schools to explore this very
complex question, discussing in the process well over a hundred
hypothetical situations in non-technical language, introducing the
layman to “the issues” in a very accessible way. Highly recommended.
(B.K.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Q) After Kubrick, what?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Many of us who like Kubrick have an appetite for “more of the
different”, as well as “more of the same”. A new two CD set has been
released that will be, for many people, a gateway into a fascinating
artistic world both unlike and something like the world of cinema.
The great thing is that we don’t have to rely on the medium of cinema to
provide “more of the different/same”. Film is expensive, and for that
reason, most films rely on time-proven formulas/cliches to “bring in the
crowds” and recover the cost of production. So we’re lucky that other
formal genres (not saddled with these prohibitive costs) can give us the
same sort of multi-leveled and formerly-unexperienced experience Kubrick
has given us.
Film was not the first multimedia genre. It was preceded by OPERA, a
synthesis of theatre and symphonic music (the music functioning as
“soundtrack”). In the eyes of many people (millions, to be im/precise),
this composite genre reached its zenith in DER RING DER NIBELUNGEN by
Richard Wagner (known more commonly as THE RING). Wagner took the medium
of theatre, overlaid a “soundtrack” of a very unique sort, and in turn
layered over these formal domains the content domain of mythology, a
mythology which carried an uncommonly keen analysis of the human
condition (integrating insights from the political, psychological,
historical, and even biological disciplines) that preceded many major
thinkers following Wagner, from Nietszche to Freud to Jung. In this
fifteen-and-some hours masterwork, Wagner seems to want to explain the
entire history of the world -- and comes closer than might seem
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possible, via his unparalleled use of the “leitmotif” (clue-theme)
technique, an artistic technique which foreshadowed developments in
object-oriented programming (e.g. languages like C++) by nearly a
century! “Inheritance” and “polymorphism”, recently taught as the “new
wave” in programming at MIT, are concepts at least as old as the Civil
War.
Only when one begins to understand this work and its modus operandi will
one begin to understand why over 20,000 articles and books have been
written on Wagner and his epic -- and why that many might be needed. “A
picture is worth a thousand words.”
That brings us to the CDs. Formerly, getting a reasonably simple,
inexpensive introduction into the sound world of this work was very
difficult, especially for those people unable to read music and
therefore trace these musical motifs over their development. But
recently, London has released an invaluable introduction to the work
titled AN INTRODUCTION TO DER RING DER NIBELUNGEN by Deryck Cooke, a 2
CD set with musical examples played by the London Philharmonic as
conducted by George Solti (London Records: 443 581-2). Over the course
of two hours, the orchestra plays over 190 musical examples illustrating
leit-motifs from THE RING, with some very concise and perceptive
commentary by Cooke describing how Wagner developed his conception of
“the Artwork of the Future.” At $20 for two CDs, this is an essential
purchase for those who want a peek into the workings of this masterwork.
I have just finished listening to these CDs, and among other things, now
see why it took Wagner 26 years (1848 to 1874) to pen THE RING. It’s
“all on the screen”, so to speak. When I think “what does Kubrick
appreciate?”, THE RING comes to mind. Maybe it’s one of his textbooks.
Three useful books, very inexpensive as well, make good companions to
the two-CD set. They are short, easy to read, and get right to [some of
the] point(s) behind the music:
WAGNER’S RING: TURNING THE SKY ROUND by M. Owen Lee (Limelight:
1994) $10
THE PERFECT WAGNERITE by George Bernard Shaw (Dover: NY) $3.95
ASPECTS OF WAGNER by Bryan Magee (Oxford: 1988), $6.95
For a recording of the complete work, Solti’s is still the one to get
(they even made a video of some of the recording sessions called THE
GOLDEN RING, documenting conducting by a man possessed). Levine’s recent
Met videotapes have the very singular virtue of allowing speakers of
English to understand the text while the music is playing, restoring
a former (critical) missing dimension.
Students of Mr. Kubrick’s work will find many of his themes -- recurring
cycles, the tool as a unit of destruction, death of love, end of the
world, death and resurrection, etc. -- anticipated in THE RING. And not
only themes, but artistic technique (e.g. Wagner quotes Beethoven’s
“dit-dit-dit dah” theme in his “Fate Motive”). Etc. ETC. ETC!
Check it out.
(B.K.)
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Some great filmmaker, though, could do wonderful things
with these demands, assuming of course that realism is worth
achieving . . . Directors like Kubrick or Fellini could create
a film version of THE RING; their visual imaginations are
already Wagnerian.
-- John L. DiGaetani, preface to PENETRATING WAGNER’S RING,
p. 10
Kubrick’s work bears many similarities to Wagner’s. People have already
commented on the structure of Kubrick’s films, often comparing 2001 to a
symphony -- well, Wagner’s operas are similarly structured (2001, like
the RING, is in 4 parts -- and I often think this is NOT mere
coincidence).
Wagner made extensive use of the leitmotif concept -- which seems to me
analogous to Kubrick’s use of recurring imagery (and music). Kubrick’s
films are always about the failure of a plan. The RING is about one of
the most colossal failed plans in dramatic history -- Wotan’s plan for
the history of the world. Kubrick’s films are always epic in scope and
theme, and full of mythological imagery -- like Wagner’s operas.
Those without a background in music may not quite appreciate the
similarities. Wagner was not an ordinary opera composer -- he sought a
synthesis, or “Gesamtkunstwerk,”* of ALL the arts -- music, poetry, and
drama, into something new which he termed the “music drama.” This seems
to me to also be Kubrick’s vision, seen most clearly in 2001 -- the
attempt to create something in a new medium that cannot be expressed in
any other way. . . .
* “Gesamskunstwerkheit” = ‘the integral work of Art’ (G.A.)
(J.M.)
PARALLELS BETWEEN 2001 AND THE RING
I think it’s extremely unlikely that SK had Wagner in mind when he did
2001 in four parts, but . . . the works resemble each other . . . The
first part of 2001 shows the introduction of the object that, seen or
unseen, directs the action of the rest of the film - the monolith. In
the RING, it is the ring itself. The first part also sees the
introduction of error into humanity -- the development of technology
which leads to disaster later in the film. This corresponds in the RING
to the stealing of the gold and its use by Alberich to enslave others,
and the resultant curse upon all wearers of the ring. The second part of
2001 deals with the discovery and activation of the monolith, which
results in the Discovery’s quest to Jupiter. In the second part of the
RING, Wotan attempts to create a race which will win the ring for
himself, which leads to the coming of Siegfried. The third part of 2001
deals with the voyage to Jupiter, and the consequences of earlier errors
(both in HAL’s programming and human history in general) nearly lead to
disaster, but the hero, Bowman, saves the situation against all odds. In
the third part of the RING, Siegfried, the hero, is introduced, and also
must do battle against the consequences of Wotan’s earlier errors (i.e.,
the fight with the dragon, and Wotan himself). The fourth part of 2001
portrays Bowman’s transformation into a higher being. The end part of
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the RING brings about Siegfried’s death and the destruction of the
world, although a new world is ushered in (although this point is
debatable). Those familiar with both works will see that I am
oversimplifying, but I just don’t have the space or time here to do a
thorough comparison. But, whether by design or not, I think the RING and
2001 have a lot in common.
(J.M.)
Wagner once said something very startling about his RING. He said that
it teaches us that “we must learn to die.” We must “will what is
necessary and bring it to pass.” The great deaths in myths are symbols
of inner transformations in man, who makes the myths. . . .
The RING, which began as a parable of Europe’s evolution towards a
classless, progressive society, eventually -- to Wagner’s surprise, and
after many revisions -- became a parable of a god’s voluntary death, and
the transformation that results. It is indeed about evolution, but it is
as far in advance of Darwin’s theory (developed at almost exactly the
same time) as myth has always been in advance of science. It begins with
a god newly established in power and ends with that god consumed in
flames. That is to say, it begins with the emergence of man into
consciousness, and ends with consciousness voluntarily yielding to -the next evolutionary development in human nature. . . .
Now PERHAPS I can align the RING with an evolutionary parable of our own
century. A parable millions of young people responded to, though they
couldn’t say why. A parable introduced by the music Richard Strauss
wrote for Nietzsche’s ZARATHUSTRA. In that marvelous film, 2001, Stanley
Kubrick shows (in his prologue) the evolution of ape to conscious man
and (in his epilogue) the evolution of man to his next stage, completed
when he lands his spaceship on Jupiter. There is a computer brain on the
ship, the sum total of man’s present intelligence. The computer tries to
prevent man’s further evolution, for that would mean the end of its
power. The lone surviving astronaut realizes that the computer must be
destroyed. He defuses it, function by function. And when its last two
functions -- reason and memory -- are defused, man lands on his new
planet and evolves to his new stage. He is transformed.
That intuitive film is very close to GOTTERDAMMERUNG. In the old prose
. . . that Wagner used as one of his sources, Wotan’s two ravens are
called Reason and Memory. In GOTTERDAMMERUNG, Wotan sends them off to
witness Siegfried’s death. Then they fly back to die with their god,
whom Wagner called “the sum of our present awareness.” And the world is
transformed. . . .
(from M. Owen Lee’s WAGNER’S RING, pp. 94-6)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------STUFF WHICH GOES AT THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------- I recently took a vacation from work and went on a three week road
trip across the western United States. Basically, I visited National
Parks and National Monuments, went skiing a couple of times, etc.
Well, one of the places I always wanted to visit was Timberline
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Lodge, a National Historical site built by the WPA in the 30’s at the
base of Mt. Hood in northern Oregon. Kubrick thanks Timberline Lodge
in the credits of “The Shining” (one of the most beautiful looking
films ever shot IMO), so I put 2 and 2 together and decided to check
it out.
So here are some of my observations:
* The road up to Timberline Lodge is not the road used in the film.
* Timberline Lodge is used for all of the exterior shots of the
Overlook. Unfortunately, there’s no hedge maze.
* The Lodge looks a lot smaller in person than in the film. When I
got home, I had to check my laserdisc of the film to make sure that
they didn’t make it look larger with mattes. I you look carefully,
you might be able to see the ski chairlift going up Mt. Hood in the
background... The room I was in is the second cuppola (or is it an
awning?) on the right wing of the Lodge, 3rd floor.
* The guy in the gift store said the blue snow-cat used in the
movie is still in service. The same guy also told me that the Lodge
does look significantly smaller in the winter due to the 10 feet of
snow piled up against it.
If you’re interested in staying at the Lodge, they have a $100 per
night, there’s spring special which includes free dinner in the
Cascade Dining Room, their four-star restaurant. It’s a good deal,
because dinner for two would have cost me $65.00 --- and it was very
good. The ski resort is open from mid-fall to mid-summer. I was there
last week in April and it was SNOWING!!!! I decided not to ski
because it was very windy, and it was a WET snow. As a result, they
we’re only operating one lift. A day lift ticket for spring skiing
costs $18.00, I think.
(D.L.)
-- It just occurred to me how much I have in common with Dave Bowman.
As I post an article to the newsgroup, I have to wait for several
hours until someone responds. Most of the people around me seem to be
in a state of hibernation. I even burn my fingers when I take a hot
plate of food.
So when I curse my computer, I’m glad it can’t see my lips move.
(T.A.)
-- I can very clearly remember my reaction to seeing 2001 at its
premiere in my hometown about 10 or 15 minutes into the film: “Dad,
are you sure we’re in the right theatre?”
(D.M.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------Please eat meat less often
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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The following people have contributed to this FAQ:
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Geoffrey Alexander (G.A.)
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Stephen Clark (S.Cl.)
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Alan Entwistle (A.E.)
“Areofilm” (A.F.)
John Gandy (J.G.)
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Gregory Griggs (G.G.)
James Hastings-Trew (J.H.T.)
Ari Kahan (A.K)
Barry Krusch (B.K.)
Joel Kuntonen (J.K.)
Steven Lashower (S.L.)
Ken Loge (K.L.)
Doug MacIntyre (D.M.)
“ModeMac” (M.M.)
John Morgan (J.M.)
Roderick Munday (R.M.)
Hari G. Nair (H.N.)
Thomas Nelson (T.N.)
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Charles Peck (C.P.)
“Roman Polanski” (R.P.)
C. Powers (C.P.)
Zachary I. Ralston (Z.R.)
Dan Rothman (D.R.)
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Rich V. (R.V.)
Mike Weston (M.W.)
Geoffrey Wright (G.W.)
“Dr.Zemph” (D.Z.)
Jo Zuill (J.Z.)
and
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Jerome Agel (J.A.) [from MAKING OF KUBRICK’S 2001]
Piers Bizony (P.B.) [from 2001: FILMING THE FUTURE]
Michel Ciment (Ciment) [from KUBRICK]
Penelope Gilliat (P.G.)
and
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This FAQ is currently being edited and maintained by Barry Krusch
(bak@netcom.com).
Last updated: June 23, 1995