[ale] OT - 2001 At The Fox

Jeff Hubbs hbbs at attbi.com
Sun Aug 18 01:37:26 EDT 2002


I just wanted to pass along that Monday, the Fox Theater is supposed to
be running a 70mm print of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.  This film is often
said to be the greatest science fiction film of all time and is in fact
#22 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 American movies of all
time.  

Part of the reason I wanted to pass this topic to the group is that this
is without question the best way to see this movie and the opportunity
rarely presents itself - I attended a 70mm screening about 20 years
ago.  

Not everyone will appreciate it.  It is a very slow but very deliberate
film that covers a very broad scope.  It has what Roger Ebert calls the
longest flash-forward in the history of cinema.  One's mind tends to get
so fixated on the details (even with very, very little dialogue) that
the larger story is easy to lose.  Most people associate 2001 with the
computer, HAL, that turns murderous, whereas in fact HAL's presence and
actions in the film are somewhat secondary and incidental.  2001 is also
anything but cut-and-dried - there are many aspects to the story that
are simply unexplained - but the larger framework of what Stanley
Kubrick created (from Arthur C. Clarke's story) is as penetrating and
sublime as anything in any film in any genre.   

If you go see the screening, here are some things that I've made note of
over the course of several of my own viewings (CAUTION:  SPOILERS):

Kubrick and effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull went to great lengths to
give the audience a large-scale sense of spaceflight as a real
experience.  The wide shot in the lobby area of the orbiting space
station shows a floor that curves upward as it recedes away from the
camera, correctly showing the curvature of the space station's living
space.  

The artificial-gravity centrifuge depicted in the spaceship DISCOVERY's
interior was in fact made by building a ferris-wheel-like set that could
be started and stopped at will.  During the scene where actor Keir
Dullea descends a ladder from the center of the centrifuge down to the
rim, co-star Gary Lockwood, whose character Frank Poole is calmly eating
while seated at a table, was actually hanging upside down; as Dullea
reaches the bottom of the ladder, the set was rotated such that Lockwood
settled to the bottom as Dullea walked in his direction.  The camera's
stationary position gives the scene the seamless effect of the
centrifuge in continuous motion while in microgravity.  

Many, many SF writers have dealt with the notion of space travelers
enduring numbing loneliness and isolation.  Watch how Kubrick addresses
it by not addressing it during the scene in which Frank Poole receives a
recorded birthday greeting from his parents.  Watch Poole closely.

A telling clue to HAL's cognitive powers is his evaluation of Bowman's
sketches.  He is able to recognize hibernating crew members by name from
Bowman's sketch and even senses improvement in Bowman's artistic
abilities.  

After seeing the entire DISCOVERY section of the film play out, one
realizes that HAL planned the murder of the ship's crew in a fraction of
a second.  He asks Bowman a series of loaded questions about the nature
of the mission's preparations which Bowman more or less dismisses, and
then HAL interrupts himself with his "Just a moment...Just a moment..." 
Later, after Bowman foils HAL's attempt to finish him off and shuts HAL
down, a prerecorded message plays that explains the real purpose of the
mission and indicates that neither Poole nor Bowman knew anything about
the mission.  It then becomes apparent that the whole thing about the
AE-35 unit was a sham, designed to separate Bowman and Poole so they
could be killed without either one being able to save the other and so
that the hibernating crew could be killed without Bowman or Poole being
able to save them.  In that brief pause before HAL says "Just a
moment...", HAL concocted the whole plan, start to finish.  





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