movie time!

C and I went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Astor today.

Two of the stars of the film, Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, were there for a Q and A and they were signing stuff. They weren't really the draw card, I have to say. It was more to see it on the big screen. And may I say, wow! But them being there kind of added a "this won't come around again factor".

Somewhat surprisingly C enjoyed the movie. Although she's spent the greater part of her social and dating life hanging around with nerds, sci-fi geeks and sundry other film buffs, comic book fans and "cult-following" types, she'd never seen 2001 and has only reluctantly sat through Star Wars and the like! But I digress.

General spoiler warning, if by chance you, also, have never seen it!

Firstly, the music. Well, the sound in general, really. Such a mood is created that you could pretty much follow the film with your eyes shut. Naturally, the big anthemic pieces most associated with the film are powerful. I've posted earlier about my love for big, bold orchestral pieces. When the sun rises over the Earth at the very start and the boom kicks in! Very cool. I'd never heard that piece over the big speakers before. It's quite moving.

But there is also the silence. The shots of the Earth* and the emptiness of the deserts. The way its framed somehow fills the scene with tension. It's not a peaceful day we're looking at. The notion of survival is somehow drawn out of what is essentially nothing more than a series of still shots of a rocky canyon-like environment. Such tension that one is not remotely surprised when the cat comes from nowhere and attacks the ape.

The silence in the space scenes is also telling. And realistic, too. Seeing metal objects bump and crash into each other and make no sound is offputting, especially as we've been so conditioned by our earthbound experience and unrealistic films where space explosions make noise! There are scenes, when Bowman and Poole are EVA (spacewalking) and the only sound is their breathing. C was left feeling claustrophobic! As I said earlier, you could watch much of the film with your eyes shut and not miss that much.

Of course, there is that seminal moment when it dawns on the ape that this bone can be used to break things. It's probably one of the most famous moments in film history and for good reason. Right there in that almost accidental discovery is the whole human condition and the strongest possible statement in support of evolution.

What follows, though, is something I'd never noticed before and is rather more disturbing. We see an ape teaching its off-spring to employ the bone as a weapon. That really struck me this time.

The moon scenes, ironically enough, are a fairly innocuous part of the film. I say ironic because that is the only part that is actually based on Arthur C Clarke's original short story, The Sentinel. In that short story, they find the monolith on the moon and, as in the movie, it emits a signal which is presumed to be some kind of message to whoever placed it there. Keir Dullea described it today as a kind of cosmic alarm clock, which is a good analogy. I guess it's kind of stating the obvious a bit, that the monolith was placed somewhere we could only find it when we'd advanced enough to be of interest. I've always been a little confused as to when it was placed though. I get the impression from the Earth scenes that the apes woke up one morning and it was there, so were the Moon and Jupiter ones placed at the same time?

The short story leaves the question open as to who is receiving the message that the Moon monolith emits, whereas the film follows the signal to Jupiter and beyond. Although by the end the question is no less answered for the journey, which is for the best.

You can take the rest of the film any way you like, really. From a simple story about a malfunctioning computer and a film director on serious hallucinogens. Right through to, oh, whatever you like, really :) The power of the film lies in what isn't expressly shown. In what is left to the imagination. That may be in part in deference to Clarke's original story being so open ended, or Kubrick's preference for doing the same. Perhaps its both. Perhaps that's why the two were such a good fit.

C actually made more sense of the trippy lights at the end than I ever have. Now, she wasn't aware of the foetus at the end. Even though it's on the posters and so forth, but as I say, she'd never seen it. But, even without that knowledge she'd spotted birth, rebirth and creation type themes through the light show. Apparently some of the images were rather phallic and others rather gynaecological. In her words, Kubrick was in part a dirty little boy who was continually amazed how much he was able to get away with!

Dullea had some interesting things to say about the scenes in the room at the end. He felt it was something this alien intelligence had picked up from his mind as preferred habitat. Whereas, of course, that wouldn't have been his habitat, perhaps his character had been to the museum recently and that's what they'd picked up on. In other words, it was their attempt to make him comfortable while they did whatever they were doing.

Anyway, we had a good time I think. But one comment on the appearances of Lockwood and Dullea. While they had their well rehearsed shtick going on, as I watched them sitting at those tables, signing autographs and posing for photos, I have to say they looked rather sad. Imagine having such long and successful careers as both performers have, but all anyone wants to talk to you about is one role from 40 years ago. I couldn't imagine anything worse!

So that was my day. Hence very little sleep. Hence (again? can you roll one hence on top of another like that?) I'm a little bit tired at work tonight :)

* It's easy to forget that one doesn't need to specify prehistoric Earth to make clear the scenes involved. There are no contemporary scenes set on Earth in the film.