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SUPER LONG SUPER GREAT
By James Maynard Gelinas
Given the competition with commercial cinema, a director has a particular responsibility toward his audiences. I mean by this that because of cinema's unique power to affect an auditorium - in the identification of the screen with life - the most meaningless, unreal commercials film can have just the same kind of magical effect on the uncritical and uneducated cinema-goer as that derived by his discerning counterpart from a real film. The tragic and crucial difference that if art can stimulate emotions and ideas, mass-appeal cinema, because of its easy, irresistible effect, extinguishes all traces of thought and feeling irrevocably.
-Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time, First University of Texas, 1989, Pg. 179
Stanley Kubrick's most popular and enduring film is
2001: A Space Odyssey,
a work he co-wrote with noted Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. It's considered among the best in the genre. Which is strange when compared against popular science fiction fare like
Star Wars
,
Alien
, and the
Star Trek
franchises. For unlike typical character and plot driven narrative, its structure is that of an odyssey portraying the span of millennia. There is no central protagonist in conflict with an antagonist to root for. The few depicted characters seem disconnected from one another, and their dialog is often irrelevant to expository action. Its pacing is slug slow, with excessive montage shots that while visually beautiful don't move plot points forward. If classical music seems an odd score choice itself, several pieces selected are often disturbingly postmodern, evoking not a soothing softness of the musical genre but chaotic and disquieting emotions. Finally, the final sequence, rather than a climax and resolution to some character driven conflict, seemingly comes from nowhere leaving more questions than answers. In almost every way this film should have failed. But it didn't. Instead, it's considered a great masterpiece. Why?
Three layers of message intertwined
A trite explanation is that for viewers it evokes feelings of transcendent human triumphalism. That even though it steps out of traditional narrative film structure, the ending suggests wish fulfillment for audiences who identify with the Star Child and thus assume this represents some desirable outcome. The musical score choice of Richard Strauss'
Also Sprach Zarathustra
appears to reinforce this emotional reaction. And yet there remains tremendous debate as to the meaning, for with every viewer there seems another interpretation. These differing viewpoints can be broken up by three layers of message that have been intertwined, often in contrast and not congruence, to evoke a powerful intellectual and emotional experience at the unconscious level, while remaining difficult to interpret rationally.
Realism:
The film appears to be a realistic depiction of events that span millennia. There is great attention to detail throughout that appears to suggest that the events on screen exist entirely within a physical and rationalist realm. Even the monolith, which is taken symbolically for extraterrestrial intervention, can be interpreted in positivist terms as a physical object that engenders a cause and effect relationship to those it molds and transforms. This seems to make sense until by the end, with the appearance of the Star Child, the film appears to have transformed from a documentary experience to something more surreal. Viewers are left confused as to the meaning, but having enjoyed a good ride nonetheless.
Philosophy:
Underneath this surface message depicting explicit realism of events is an implied philosophical message referring to Nietzsche's Ascent of Man thesis. Here, an eternal recurring cycle of development, stasis in consolidation, decay, and then radical change is proposed whereby man advances due to universal principles of existence. At the beginning, we see Moonwatcher and the apes transformed into the beginning of man. At the end, we then see man transformed into the Star Child. Each step appears to represent the beginning of this cycle.
Irrationality:
Upon multiple viewings, the documentary realism appears to break down, becoming less a depiction of linear events with a direct cause and effect relationship within the narrative, and more an aesthetic style that draws the viewer in to enforce preconceived rationalist notions that the filmmaker then dashes. A series of irrational implications about incommensurable supernatural forces outside human awareness are embedded within thematic repetitions, motifs, and the use of visual superimposition. This layer of the film appears to negate the message presented on the surface level.
The viewer is thus faced with the confusing dilemma of choosing which of these perspectives to use in forming an interpretation. Most take the documentary approach and assume the film depicts events with typical cause and effect relationships. Some perceive the suggested relationship to philosophical theory. But it takes many viewings to recognize repetitions that suggest by theme and motif a message that contradicts both the overt Nietzscean philosophy as well as preconceived notions of rationalism embedded within its documentary aesthetic.
Beyond the conceptual layers of Realism, Philosophy, and Irrationality, one must also consider the filmmaking and storytelling techniques used as well. There are several additional layers to consider: characterization of intent expressed by the actor's micro-expressions; visual and auditory themes and motifs suggested by repetition across scenes in the frame and soundtrack and musical score; and emotional contrasts evoked by the difference between Kubrick's often contrapuntal musical score choice in contrast to the imagery and situations presented. Examining all of these elements is necessary to understand Kubrick's intent.
It is from combining these perspectives that another interpretation for the ending emerges, one less triumphal for mankind. But one cannot see this by looking strictly at plot elements of action and dialog, for it's embedded within implications presented as repetitions within imagery, sound, and score choice, and not as explicit expository events within the narrative. Thus, underneath that surface presentation of a seemingly realistic imagery that flows across vast spans of time, Kubrick's use of sound, score, and repetition of imagery suggest theme and motifs often in opposition to a rationalist viewpoint. Instead, these choices seem to imply irrationalist outcomes, leading to an ambiguity of intent by the filmmaker.
This uncertainty for the viewer can be summed up by the question: Did Kubrick intend to create a 'hard science fiction' film, one where a depiction of believable technology is crucial to a linear cause and effect narrative? If so, why do many nonhuman element, such as the monolith and its makers, repeated celestial alignments at crucial plot points, and the formation of the Star Child at the end, appear to be supernatural plot elements? And why did he choose a musical score that seems to evoke emotions contrary to what's expected by imagery and situations? This essay will attempt to answer those questions with a detailed scene-by-scene analysis. It then ends with a review of cultural antecedents and reactions to the film to provide context of its lasting legacy.
As the Film Begins
2001 opens with blackness to Ligeti's
Atmospheres
, a postmodern composition meant to evoke the feelings of discomfort and disconnection to reality.
Ligeti's Atmospheres
As Ligeti's music ends, the first image we see is a celestial alignment of the sun the earth and the moon as Richard Strauss' exhilarating
Also Sprach Zarathustra
begins. It's critical to note that
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
is also a novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. This musical choice thus signals that the film deals with the same central issues in this book.
In that novel, man exists as a mid-way point between lower animals and the Übermensch, a fully self-actualized super man, the next level in human evolution. The Übermensch exerts his own superiority over others not just due to greater strength or superiority of intelligence, but because it is an eternal law of nature that the expression of power is itself righteous. In that expression, a triumph of will over adversity is achieved.
Zarathustra, also called Zoroaster, was the prophet of the Zoroasterians, an ancient pre-Christian religious order from Persia that barely survives to this day. But Nietzsche did not depict the value set from that religion, instead, based on his other philosophical works, he inverted it. The novel depicts the philosopher's themes of eternal recurrence, or repetition of events throughout the infinity of time; the will to power as a fundamental aspect of human nature; and antipathy and loathing toward religious and communal sentiments of pity, compassion, and mercy; or "God is Dead". Thus, for Nietzsche, to be called 'kind' is to brand one with a four letter epithet.
In Donald MacGregor's short essay and review of the film, he notes several of the same themes that are implied by the use of Strauss' music:
In the Kubrick films, the idea of primitive man can be found in 2001 and A Clockwork Orange. 2001's depiction of primitive man is in the segment "The Dawn of Man" that opens the film. This segment depicts primitive man gaining the instinct to kill, which is symbolized with the appearance of the monolith. In the novel, 2001, the main ape-man (named Moon-Watcher) after gaining this instinct and killing another ape-man is described as master of the world and thinking "he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." [7] This is a clear illustration of primitive man as a creature of action and of the moment, a Dionysian spirit. [...]
In the journey from primitive man to superman, the monolith on the moon in 2001 marks a major moment. In the scene with the moon monolith, the sun is pictured directly overhead when the monolith emits a loud noise (perhaps to signal the arrival of this moment). This moment is described by Nietzsche as "the noon when man stands the middle of his way between beast and superman...a way to a new morning"[11], the first morning of the superman. [...]
The superman is reached at the end of 2001. In the final scenes, the astronaut, David Bowman, lies on his deathbed. He wills the superman into existence before expiring. " 'I love him who willeth the creation of something beyond himself and then perisheth' said Zarathustra."[12] This idea is also well expressed in another work of Richard Strauss, a tone-poem called Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration). Writing about this work, Strauss said it was "to represent the death of a person who had striven for the highest artistic goals...The fruit of his path through life appears to him, the idea, the Ideal."[13] Remove the word "artistic" and interpret the "person" to be mankind, then this accurately describes the Nietzschean idea, that mankind is striving for an Ideal, called the superman, to be willed into existence by man before he perishes.
Here we see a traditional Nietzscean explanation for the film, which this essay will deconstruct to form an opposing perspective.
Opening Sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There are three named segments to the film: The Dawn of Man, Jupiter Mission, and Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. After the exuberance of the music in this opening, the film begins with a title shot for the first segment.
The Dawn Of Man
This segment is an exploration of a prehistorical ape species who are clearly humanity's ancestors. We follow one starving tribe, lead by an ape Clarke named, "Moonwatcher." They scurry about for roots in an arid and sparsley vegetated landscape, eking out a below subsistence existence. Yet, wild boars that show no fear of the apes litter the area in abundance. Thus, there is easy prey to catch and eat but the apes cannot see this sustenance in their presence.
As if hunger were not bad enough, the apes face predators. One particularly fierce leopard, is depicted roaming the landscape killing apes. And, to make matters worse, another small tribe of apes battles Moonwatcher and his band over a crucial water hole only feet wide. The discerning viewer must conclude that here is a species wholly unsuited to the environment these apes inhabit. Moonwatcher and his tribe cling to life by but a thread, with extinction looming and ever present.
But then a nonhuman intelligence, personified by the Black Monolith, intervenes in the fortunes of our tribe.
As Ligeti's
Requiem
overwhelms the senses, blotting out every sound but the music, this object of transformation - in some unstated way - changes the members of Moonwatcher's tribe as they reverently touch and stroke it with their hands. It's as if they were worshiping a religious idol. Yet Kubrick's score selection is not a soft Christian hymn. Instead, it is chromatic chants, chorus and orchestra, sung in polyphony. Though beautiful, its dissonance evokes a disturbing sense of disquiet; conflicting sounds that are both eerie and inhuman. One might compare the listening experience to something like the buzzing of flies used in William Friedkin's
The Exorcist.
Legiti's Requiem, it'll send chills down your spine.
Looking up from the bottom of the monolith, there is the second image of celestial alignment, implying that what is happening now is in some way related to the celestial alignment that had been depicted during the initial opening of the film.
The monolith soon disappears. After this intervention, Moonwatcher recognizes that bones can be used as striking tools and soon kills a boar, feeding his entire tribe. But then the most important change occurs. During a conflict over a crucial water hole, he fights an opposing tribe of apes. Grasping a bone, he strikes a deadly blow against the leader of this opposing tribe who falls to the ground. The rest of Moonwatcher's tribe mates follow, beating this unfortunate ape to death. The opposing tribe retreat in response, allowing Moonwatcher and his kin to to take control of that precious resource. This killing is the central point of the film's first segment.
The change brought about by the Black Monolith did not make our forefathers more peaceful or spiritual or loving, it turned them into cold hearted killers. And in that newfound ability to murder, they gained evolutionary advantage over both land roaming animals for food and nearby tribal competitors of life sustaining resources. The water hole exists as a demark point. In the foreground of the frame are the apes who will survive; in the background, beyond that water hole, are those retreating and vanquished apes who lost this battle, to fade into the obscurity of extinction.
This fits in perfectly with the Nietzschean ideal, suggested by the musical selection at the introduction of the film.
Let us admit to ourselves, without trying to be considerate, how every higher culture on earth so far has begun. Human beings whose nature was still natural, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey who were still in possession of unbroken strength of will and lust for power, hurles themselves upon weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races ... the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their predominance did not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of the soul - they were more whole human beings (which also means, at every level, "more whole beasts").
-Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, "What is Noble", Vintage Books, 1966, Pg. 201
Thus the viewer must infer that tribal warfare, political dominance, even outright murder, is the
essential nature of this transformed ape.
And by extension, this creature -
an Überaffenmench - is whatwill become
mankind
.
Space, a Boring Frontier
The ape then throws his killing bone into the sky in exhilaration at this new discovery and power. In a match cut, the bone becomes a satellite orbiting Earth. Then a series of satellites follow. What's not clear from the shot, but is clear if you read into literature about the film itself, is that Kubrick and Clarke intended those satellites to represent orbiting nuclear weapons platforms.
The transformation of bone cudgels to thermonuclear destruction represents a mere nanosecond of time. Nothing much has changed except the relative complexity of the tools which the near-hairless apes of the modern world carry in their grasp.
-Bizon, Piers. Filming the Future, Arum Press Limited, Copyright 2000, Pg. 2
Furthermore, in
an analysis
presented by Rob Ager, he offers several blow up shots showing what appear to be nationalist insignia on these satellites.
Thus, the essential nature of man had been extended across millennia from the use of bones as tools of war to nuclear weapons. But weapons of mass destruction are not like mere clubs, swords, or even guns. They kill indiscriminately, and represent not the means of ascent for great and powerful leaders, but outright global annihilation.
This begins a theme that depicts humanity at another terminal evolutionary state. One, that - like those apes before - humanity had reached a point whereby its own nature hindered rather than promoted growth. Man could no longer engage in that central nature of his being, tribal warfare for dominance, for to engage in violence during this modern era of nuclear weapons meant a new form of extinction; one by his own hand.
But this disturbing revelation is quickly soothed and pacified by a lighthearted waltz, Johann Strauss'
The Blue Danube
. A long montage scene follows, where a space plane is shown dancing with a huge rotating space station in orbit around Earth that uses centripetal force to imitate gravity on board. As the plane approaches to ultimately dock, an implied sexual mating of impersonal technology is evoked.
Strauss' The Blue Danube.
Interspersed in this montage, Dr. Heywood Floyd is introduced; our first character of the modern era. On a nearly nearly empty Orion III space plane, we see him strapped into a seat and sleeping in zero gravity as his pen floats in mid air nearby. A flight attendant walks along a velcro carpeted isle, her 'grip shoes' the only means by which she stays affixed to the floor.
On the one hand, the music and realistic imagery imply that humanity has begun on the path toward technological mastery of space. This comfort and commonality of space travel is something that could one day become almost normal. That, from mere club made of bone, man has through intellect transformed tool-making to extended his reach all the way into outer space. Thus, by technological achievement, human society might one day gain dominance over this inhospitable environment, making it as much our home as Earth itself. The soothing music bolsters this assumption.
As if to reinforce this view of space travel as perfectly common, on the space station Heywood Floyd is escorted down a white tiled isle with the typical comforts of a future traveler. A Hilton Hotel, a Howard Johnson's restaurant, and a video telephone booth. Once again, the viewer is treated to common every-day sights of urban and suburban life. Except it's not.
A Lie by Any Other Euphemism Would Tell Just as Bitter
In the first sign that things might not be as normal as had been originally assumed, Heywood Floyd stops to make a video telephone call home. In the background, through a window, we see the earth careening around and around his head, spinning uncomfortably as if we were on an amusement park ride. There is no up or down. The spinning background performs two functions simultaneously, first it reinforces documentary realism; this is exactly how space scientists envision the creation of artificial gravity. But second, it also suggests a disquieting difference between the planetary environment where humanity had evolved, a place where the comfort of knowing up and down is clear, and this careening and confusing place, where we don't even know that the place we plant our feet is down and look up is above. It's the second indication that man's technology, like with nuclear weapons, had taken him to a place evolution had not intended.
But Floyd ignores this strange sight behind him as the call connects and his toddler daughter endearingly answers. In this exchange between daddy and toddler, the child contorts and sways like a real little girl rather than like child-actor giving lines written by adults. Thus, more realism is depicted. But then a crucial exchange occurs. Floyd asks the child to remember to tell her mother that he will try to call again tomorrow. This is important, for it's the first overt lie told in the film. It sets up a repeating theme where lies and deception becomes the principal means for humanity to contain and control our innate need for aggressive and violent conflict.
But that isn't the only lie Floyd tells. After the call he meets with several Soviet scientists. He knows one of the group of four Soviets, Eliana. She introduces him to two other women and a man and they sit down for a seemingly friendly chat. That is until Floyd reveals that he will be traveling to the US moonbase Clavius, whereupon the man, Andrei, directly asks Floyd about 'strange happenings' there.
He lists several oddities. The phones are out of working order and have been for almost two weeks, which tips us off that Floyd will be unable to call his wife. Floyd shrugs this fact off as an equipment malfunction. Then Eliana interjects to explain that a Soviet ship had requested an emergency landing at Clavius, which was illegally refused - contravening an international treaty. Floyd feigns concern and asks if the crew survived which Andrei confirms.
Andrei then leans forward to Floyd and peeks around, as if to feign the assurance of privacy, and directly asks an uncomfortable question. According to 'reliable Soviet intelligence reports' there is an epidemic outbreak on Clavius Moonbase. He asks if this is the case. Eliana's expression suggests severe discomfort at this breach of etiquette. Floyd first feigns ignorance and then calmly refuses to answer.
It is here that we begin to see another kind of dance between these characters, one of a diplomatic nature. There are lies and counter-lies as the group tiptoes around an international incident that have dragged collegial scientists into the web of international intrigue and intelligence. Getting nowhere, Eliana interrupts and offers a drink to diffuse the situation.
It's extremely important to note the polite manner of their conversation. Yet, underneath those polite expressions of careful word choice remains the aggressive threat of tribal warfare hidden by a veil of subterfuge and secrecy. These people may be personal friends, willing to go on outings together, but so too are they also geo-political enemies. What was once ancient tribal divisions has been extended to nationalist rivalries.
Humanity's technology may now transcend the limits of our little globe, but our inner psychological drives are no different than those that had formed millions of years ago. Here we see the beginning of a thematic depiction about an inner conflict within man, that of socialization to constrain our inner aggressive drives and the Nietzschean values that extol the acquisition of power through violence. For if those apes fulfilled Nietzsche's virtues of raw power through violence, by socialization modern man must instead embody those sentiments of pity, compassion, and mercy the philosopher loathed.
Sigmund Freud dealt with this problem in
Civilization and its Discontents
, published in 1930. He proposed that man's base sexual and aggressive instincts at the individual level exist in conflict with group socialization. That is, while we derive personal happiness from freely expressing our licentious and violent nature, this behavior tears apart the values which bind collective society together.
In an earlier age of low technology weapons of spears or swords, this psychological conflict was held in balance by limits to the carnage of war. But given the nature of modern warfare today, this conflict between uninhibited pursuit of our base individualist desires versus those communal values that constrain and thereby bind communities together us could lead to humanity's ultimate extinction. Freud recognized this situation after the mechanized conflict of World War I, still fifteen years before the advent of nuclear weapons. Even then, it was clear that mankind's weapons technology had surpassed the constraints our religious and social values had imposed upon us. The book concludes with a warning to mankind:
The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.
-Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents, W. W. Norton Co., 1961, Pg. 120
But Freud's perspective is in direct conflict with the Nietzschean value system that extols the virtue of unbridled individual expression of violence in pursuit of power. The two cannot be rectified by some Hegelian synthesis to a newly unified philosophy. Which presents mankind with a dilemma that mere technology can't resolve. Thus, in an ironic twist to the presumptive theme that technology represents some grand triumph over the inhospitable environment of space, instead technological advance has dehumanized man from his essential aggressive nature. For one might ask, if technology can't resolve our innate aggression how could it be expected to make normal this place in outer space we've never evolved to survive in?
In Disorientation, We Spin Downside Up and Stand Upside Down
A repetition of spinning, combined with the difficulties of meeting biological necessities in space, bolsters this theme of disorientation. It's representative of a disconnect between our technological achievement and evolutionary maladaptation
to this environment. In a jump cut to a space ship, the Aries lb, travelling to the moon, music from
The Blue Danube
returns. Once again in zero gravity, we see a montage of flight assistants watching sumo wrestling as they sip from food trays with only photographs of items like corn, cheese, carrots, peaks and coffee as mere indicators of what they might be consuming. A flight attendant then picks up trays for the pilots, and we see her walk up a round wall along a velcro carpet until she's upside down.
If the prior spinning background of Earth on the space station set up a theme of disorientation, man out of place without firm ground to stand upon, here we see that repeated again. But there's an added twist, the food provided here doesn't resemble anything like what humans were evolved to eat. It's a mush, sucked down like baby-food through straws. And when it comes time to fulfill yet another biological necessity, Floyd is presented with a baffling ten point instruction list.
The visuals and music seem to suggest two contrary messages. On the one hand there's the wonder of man's technical achievement depicted in beautiful visuals with realistic documentary panache. From this perspective, Strauss'
The Blue Danube
runs parallel - or is complementary - to the visuals. It evokes feelings of fanciful glee and wonder at the amazing technology on display. But on the other hand, as the film progresses, there appear more and more examples of disorientation and discomfort for those who try to survive in this harsh environment. It seems as though the further away from planet Earth we travel, the more difficult sustaining a desirable life becomes.
Still, at this point in the film, a sense of ambiguity about any consistent relationship between music and imagery remains, which almost suggests this combination of visuals is meant more for light comic relief than intended for deeper meaning. Even a discerning viewer would have a hard time arguing thematic consistency in music selection, given the emotional variations evoked between Richard Strauss'
Also Sprach Zarathustra,
Ligati's
Reqiuem
, and Johann Strauss'
The Blue Danube
. It's still a tenuous position, requiring additional evidence to sustain.
Lies, Damn Lies, and the Bureaucrats Who Sit Around Conference Tables
After this ship lands, the montage and music end to a jump cut of a conference room. A group of people sit around a large table that's arranged in a U, pointing toward a central podium. In this arrangement of people stationed to view Floyd, there is the suggestion of what Siegfried Kracauer called a Mass Ornament. That is, people who have been stripped of their humanity and turned into a mass of body parts to be rearranged into an visual ornament for audiences.
Kracauer used the dance group, The Tiller Girls, as an example.
One need only glance at at the screen to learn that the ornaments are composed of thousands of bodies, sexless bodies in bathing suits. The regularity of their patterns is cheered by the masses, themselves arranged by the stands in tier upon ordered tier. (Pg. 76) ... Viewed from the perspective of reason, the mass ornament reveals itself as a mythological cult that is masquerading in the garb of abstraction. Compared to the concrete immediacy of other corporeal presentations, the ornament's conformity to reason is thus an illusion. (Pg. 83) ... The role the mass ornament plays in social life confirms that it is the spurious progeny of bare nature. The intellectually privileged who are unwilling to recognize it, are an appendage of the prevailing economic system have not even perceived the mass ornament as a sign of this system. (Pg. 84-85)
-Kracauer, Siegfried. The Mass Ornament, "The Mass Ornament", Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1995
In this case, the body parts of people are not rearranged into spectacle. Yet, like Kracauer's mass ornament, they are not placed around that conference table merely for the purpose of presenting information, but are also a group ornament presented to reinforce a central authority. Each member is lined up to face the central figure in lines of political and bureaucratic power.
In that way, though they are not dehumanized by separating body parts from a whole in performance, they are dehumanized by having individual will stripped from their person in subservience to bureaucratic organization. This can be interpreted as a recurrence of Leni Riefenstahl's use of a mass ornament in miniature with her visuals from
Triumph of the Will.
In Riefenstalh's use, the ornament was a large crowd gathered in ornate and perfect lines and organized so as to point in subservience to Adolf Hitler.
If The Tiller Girls represented an ornament made of body parts each stripped of individual humanity by economic constraints, then
Triumph of the Will
presented a similar condition structured by political circumstances. This is what Susan Sontag called in her essay
Fascinating Fascism
, "...a grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure of force." Floyd is that leader in microcosm. And above Floyd, are leaders of "the council" whom we never meet.
There's another way that this meeting mimics a Mass Ornament, and that is in how audiences react to the spectacle. For, like those audiences who viewed
Triumph of the Will
, all sitting lined up in a theater as a mass ornament to those performing the spectacle, audiences attending
2001: A Space Odyssey
face the same situation. Spectators become an ornament to a spectacle about power relationships, and in so doing join in subservience by identification to the authority figure.
Yet there's one crucial difference. For while Riefenstahl's work promoted the power structure of Nazi Germany as an act of propaganda, extolling that nation's presumed greatness, Kubrick's use of this technique seems more a critique of blind follower-ship; another example of human limitation. As Freud noted, we need socialization to constrain that innate destructive force of aggression to pursue an overwhelming urge for violence in self-interest. Yet so too, can this socialization drive us to support abuses of power to those we offer our loyalty. Instead of suggesting greatness, Floyd's speech ultimately diminishes the power structure.
Floyd is brought to a podium at the far end and after polite applause he gives a short speech. The cover story of the epidemic is quickly revealed to be yet another lie as Floyd tries to sooth the staff over the political necessity of their deception. He feigns discomfort over the communications shutdown, noting that the importance of this discovery requires complete security.
Floyd is asked by a member how long this 'cover story' will have to be maintained and he replies that it will remain as long as 'the council' deems it necessary. He notes that they've 'requested' security oaths in writing and then offers to forward any views or opinions on the matter from the group. In typical bureaucratese the leader seems to be saying to his flock, "shut up and follow orders." The meeting ends to more feigned applause.
In this sense we learn how the Nietzscean ideal of striving for power has transitioned from overt use of deadly force into hierarchical social control for those among the 'in group'. Whereas, those in the
'out group' face polite relationships based on false pretensions and overt deception. Meaningless nationalist lines of borders on Earth remain drawn even on the moon. The ornament of people sitting in a meeting is a microcosm of vast boundaries of human authority which bear little relationship to reality this far out into space, especially given the universal relevance to humanity of the discovery they've made.
This Harsh Mistress Doesn't Like Us
If we've seen that space travel disorients man from basic notions of up and down, divorces us from biological necessities man has evolved to expect, and the further out we go from Earth it even distances us from basic notions of human partisanship along nationalist lines, then what happens next is as utterly incommensurable to man as it was to ape.
We see a jump cut to a small excursion vessel travelling just over the moon's surface. Ligeti's
Lux Aeterna
plays. Latin for 'eternal light', the music is a soothing and yet harrowing piece that evokes the emotion of a floating detachment from reality. As this vessel hovers through lunar valleys, above craters, and over the moondust of a distant land, emotions contrary to any sense of wonder at human technical achievement are evoked. It's a reminder that the musical score seems to have significance beyond just the visuals presented across each particular scene. It forces the viewer to reconsider prior musical accompaniment through the lens of consistent - if contrapuntal - theme.
On board this ship we see Floyd and two cohorts from the meeting chit-chatting irrelevant banter. Dressed in space suits, one takes a container containing square artificial sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, which look to have the consistency of soft crackers with a dollap of creamed liverwurst squirted inside. They seem less appealing than unsavory Twinkies, and yet the group jokes about how much 'better' the food has gotten over time.
As they eat, one verbally back-slaps Floyd, telling him that he's really improved base morale with his
shut-the-fuck-up-and-do-what-we-say
speech. They're only too happy to oblige to the demands of the leadership council Floyd represents. In both cases, the unsavory food and ridiculous submission to blind authority suggests more than mere lying to Floyd, but self deception as well.
The relative importance of this to all humanity is contrasted against the group dynamics of a leader politely interacting with subordinates as they pursue a mission. It's fraternal but not close. These aren't friends, they're colleagues at best. Any emotion expressed is feigned, and underneath is the tension of personal values and opinions that have been suppressed to fulfill the wishes of the nationalist power structure that Floyd represents. Behind that is an implied potential conflict with an adversary personified by people like Eliana, that Soviet citizen who's family vacations with Floyd and his family when they aren't lying to each other about state secrets.
Yet beyond the reality of these unremarkable social divisions, from the exterior of this ship we see an inhospitable and barren landscape devoid of life and entirely outside the realm of human habitability. This is a different reality. One of a place so inhospitable that life cannot possibly exist and where human beings are the least bit evolved to survive. It is as far from our prehistoric home on the savanna as can be. Though technology might provide a slim margin of life support, this is no place where humans were meant to live.
The ship arrives and the group descends into a pit where a black monolith has been dug up. There, with a photographer shooting pictures for posterity; people forming themselves into human ornaments for the camera once again. Yet without realizing it, so too do they pose before the monolith, which represents an incommensurable power structure entirely outside their understanding.
The the group hover around this strange object, a strange elephant on the moon. Then, mirroring the apes millions of years back, Floyd touches the monolith with his gloved hand.
As if to remind humanity of their place in relation to the monolith, out of nowhere a screeching noise pierces out and everyone grabs their helmets, attempting to cover their ears, and stumbles about disoriented from the noise. And the shot jumps to another celestial alignment of the sun and earth from the vantage point of below the monolith, replicating the image seen by those apes all those millions of years back. This is the third repetition of celestial alignment in imagery, thus forming an overt motif that must represent some important element to the film. We will explore that in a future repetition.
Is There a Consistent Theme to the Score and Narrative That Unifies This Segment?
Many have called the division between the ape tossing a bone into the air and the transition to modern life a separation between two separate segments, as if Kubrick had simply forgotten to add a title shot, or had foregone consistency in order to use that match-shot of the bone to satellite. But if one assumes there is meaning to this lack of a title, then a different interpretation follows. For what appears on the surface to be two stories is really one story that mirrors itself both by events and score selection.
To total blackness, as an introduction, we hear the disturbing modern classical piece Atmospheres by Ligeti.
To a celestial alignment we hear the triumphal trumpets of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.
To the otherworldly black monolith, as mere apes are transformed into human by means of teaching them violence, we hear another distressing modern piece by Ligeti, his Requiem, evoking both feelings of awe and discomfort. This ends with another celestial alignment.
To the beautiful visuals of a space plane dancing with an orbiting space station, to ultimately mate, we hear the Johann Strass' waltz, The Blue Danube. After a period on the station, where the narrative focuses on the matter of human deception, this music is repeated again during the trip to the moon. Here, the narrative focuses on the difficulties of space travel to human occupants.
To the harrowing wails of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna, we see imagery depicting the harsh and unforgiving environment of the moon. This is contrasted with more narrative about deception in socialization and dehumanization from our biological needs.
To a modern incident with the black monolith, we once again hear Ligeti's disturbing modern work Requiem. This ends with another celestial alignment.
Thus, depictions of the apes eking out a bare minium existence on the plains of Africa
mirrors
man's difficulty crafting technology to survive in space. Images of apes ignoring abundant food as they scrounge for scarce roots
mirrors
the horrible food served in outer space. The discovery of the monolith by Moonwatcher and his tribe
mirrors
the discovery of that same object on the moon. That point where Moonwatcher throws the bone into the sky and it turns into a satellite is thus merely a reflective surface.
A viewer might at first assume the score choices hold no consistent thematic meaning, their selection simply function of evoking parallel emotion in support each scene's individual imagery. But, by the end of the segment, this amalgamation might be interpreted instead to follow a contrapuntal pattern, one where emotion is consistently evoked contrary to the message of narrative and cinematic visuals.
To explain, by opening the film with Ligeti's
Atmospheres
to a black screen, a warning to the viewer is offered that the musical selections in the film might evoke disturbing emotions. It readies the audience for what will follow.
Richard Strauss'
Also Sprach Zarathustra
is akin to Johann Strass'
The Blue Danube
, where emotional triumph in one is matched to feelings of joy and exhilaration of movement in the other. Yet in both cases, the narratives present examples of mal-adaptation to each respective environment for the characters involved. Thus, a contrapuntal feeling evoked in contrast to the narrative.
Ligeti's
Requiem
is akin to his composition
Lux Aeterna
in that a disturbing reverence in one and an eerie floating sense of disquiet in the other match in the discomfort they evoke. In this case, we see these emotions compared against the alien black monolith and a harrowing depiction of a bleak and inhospitable moon landscape. If the black monolith transforms apes and man into some super-being, why such strange music? Furthermore, if man's development of such amazing technology has taken him even to flying over the surface of the moon, why not music that evokes this triumph? The score yet again evokes contrary emotions to each scene.
In
Theory of Film,
Kracauer discussed the difficulty in choosing a complimentary score with film that holds a theoretical message, rather than a simple expository narrative:
...at least one type of plot stubbornly refuses cinematic treatment: the "theoretical" story. One of the reasons why this story does not lend itself to the cinematic approach is that it has, so to speak, an ideological center; whenever it materializes, mental reality takes precedence over physical reality. Supposing now a film narrating such a story has a musical score which complies with its structural obligations to the full, thereby enhancing the theatrical character of that story; then this score is precisely because of its dramaturgic perfection as inadequate to the medium as is the story itself. In giving the latter its due, it inevitably highlights contents and meanings remote from camera-life.
-Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film, Princeton University Press, 1960, Pg . 143
From here, an obvious pattern emerges in narrative and score. In this sense, Kubrick's score selection "...highlights contents and meanings remote from camera-life" precisely because its contrapuntal evocation of emotion is entirely at odds with what's presented on screen.
The only example that does not match is that of the monolith transforming the apes, which is not repeated with mankind at the end of the Dawn of Man segment. Yet, if the first act of a play is meant to set up a problem that demands resolution by the story's climax, the second act typically repeats that problem in a new setting. It is the third act where we see that final repetition of transhuman transformation that leads to a resolution of the cycle.
Jupiter Mission
This is the segment of the film everyone remembers. The principle characters are mission commander David Bowman, his assistant Frank Poole, and the creepy yet soothingly voiced computer HAL. There are three other characters asleep in stasis. Their names are stated but thoroughly irrelevant, as they exist merely as props to further plot development.
It opens with a section from Aram Khatchaturian's
Gayane Ballet Suite
, a somber and morose musical selection that evokes feelings of loneliness and despair. It's a Russian work from the Soviet World War II era that was written in nationalistic pride. It tells the semi-tragic story of an Armenian woman named Gayane, who discovers that her husband has committed treason against the state. It was originally staged before Stalin in 1942 to mild success.
But its history is less important than the implications and emotional evocation of the choice. For if Ligeti's
Lux Aeterna,
presented during the moon flight sequence to the monolith, evoked question of man's technological triumph that had been expressed by
The Blue Danube
, then Kubrick's use of
Gayane Ballet Suite
presents an ironic answer: This nationalist quest in space is more hubris than deserving of exultation, driving a stake through the heart of unwarranted pride.
Against the backdrop of this music, we see the United States built
Discovery One
space ship on its way to Jupiter and already 80 million of miles away from Earth. And yet, this ship has traveled only a slim three weeks to its destination on a nine month voyage. It's so far from home that a radio message takes seven minutes to transmit and receive. Like ships of yore sailing across vast oceans, space is an empty tomb where man ekes out a bare minimum existence in almost eternal solitude. This combination of music and scenery strongly reinforces the prior message that humanity is not remotely suited to even travel between planets in our solar system, much less beyond. For the viewer must know that this trip represents a mere blot in contrast to the incommensurable expanse of space.
Gayane Ballet Suite: Could Kubrick have chosen a more depressing score selection?
After shots of the ship traveling the expanse of space, a montage follows of Poole jogging and shadowboxing around a centrifuge within
Discovery One
. Like the orbiting space station, this smaller wheel rotates to create a zone of artificial gravity within the ship, a rational explanation for the curious set design. Yet it's also is suggestive of a rat's exercise wheel; always spinning yet going nowhere. Kubrick uses oddly framed shots to once again highlight disorientation in this strange environment.
In This Reflection, Eye Merge With You
In a cut to HAL's eye, before he's even been introduced as a character,
Gayane Ballet Suite
shifts to an ending fugue, noting a distinct change in subject matter. Here, a quick two second shot unfolds that sets up the first of three repetitions forming a motif relating HAL to Bowman. Reflected off the lens is Bowman, also before introduction, who passes through a door on the far end of a cylindrical hallway, and as he enters he rotates around and around and upside down, carefully treading through the center of that centrifuge.
This merging of both images by reflection might be considered a use of superimposition. Typically meant to imply spiritual or other nonphysical occurrences on the frame, the technique has a long history in film. Bazin wrote a critique of its use in 1946, where he argued that it is limited to depiction of dream-like states where the supernatural intervenes in reality, and thus has no place in film that attempts to portray realistic verisimilitude. Coming from the perspective of realism as a desirable aesthetic choice for the serious artist, he did not argue against portraying a supernatural event in spectacle material. Simply that such a technique had little utility beyond film crafted for mass appeal.
Here, Bazin discusses techniques such as slow and accelerated motion, lens choice, and superimposition used to evoke dream-like qualities in film:
From Méliès's Les Hallucinations du Baron de Münchhausen (1911) to Marcel L'Herbier's La Nuit fantastique (1942), the dream remains the epitome of the fantastic in film. Its recognized form has always included slow motion and superimposition (sometimes shots in negative, too). In Tom, Dick and Harry, Garson Kanin preferred to use accelerated motion to indicate when Ginger Rogers was daydreaming; he also distorts the appearance of certain characters by means of an optical effect that recalls the distorting mirrors of the Grévin Museum. [2] But above all, he built the drama of the dream sequences according to the tenets of modern psychology.
In reality, the devices that have been in use since Méliès to denote dreams are pure conventions. ... Slow motion and superimposition have never existed in our nightmares, however. Superimposition on the screen signals: 'Attention: unreal world, imaginary characters'; it doesn't portray in any way what hallucinations or dreams are really like, or, for that matter, how a ghost would look.
And yet here, we see Kubrick use superimposition across three meta-layers within the mimesis of the frame. In this shot we see three themes at work simultaneously, evoked by the technique of superimposition: first of HAL's gaze upon Bowman as he enters the central hallway of the centrifuge; the second, a repetition of disorientation in the zero gravity of space as Bowman spins within; and finally, by that reflection off of HAL's eye lens, an implied merging both Bowman and HAL, as if they were spiritually one and the same. In this way, Kubrick visually implied a combining of depicted physical space with the nonphysical essence of these two characters while never stepping outside the aesthetic of the real. It's as if Kubrick were challenging Bazin's central thesis not with new filmmaking technique, but in the expression of visual narrative.
Daniel Morgan, writing in
Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife
, makes a similar point of an extension of superimposition beyond mere unreal depictions of the supernatural. Speaking to Jean-Luc Godard's eight part video essay
Histoire du Cinema
(History of Cinema), Morgan refers to a montage of Hitchcock's films where Godard used superimposition as a means to express not a supernatural fantasy element within narrative, but a comparative across several films of similarities and differences between psychological states and circumstances of Hitchcock's characters.
...we can see in Godard's use of superimposition the logic Bazin originally objected to when he looked back on Swedish cinema [of ghost stories]. Because traditional superimpositions are unable to integrate the two levels of reality, they deal a blow to diegetic coherence. But it's precisely this berate in diegesis that Godard wants. Where Hitchcock seeks to narrative superimposition, and Bazin wants it to be integrated into the world, Godard uses it to create what he calls, quoting Pierre Reverdy, an image: "[that] cannot be nor from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two or more less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be." When Godard sets out here the possibility of simultaneous, disjunctive montage, he is, in a sense, taking up the terms of Bazin's criticism while reversing the judgement.
-Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife, Ed. Andrew / Joubert-Laurencin, "The Afterlife of Superimposition", Daniel Morgan, Oxford University Press, 2011
The point is not that Kubrick's and Godard's use of superimposition is similar in intent or outcome. But that, as Morgan notes, Bazin's thesis that the te
