The making of 2001: A Space Odyssey - Part 3

Part Two

Transcendent experience

By Richard Boyle

The version of 2001: A Space Odyssey screened at previews and the premiere ran to 160 minutes. Stanley Kubrick sensed the film was too long, so he prowled up and down the aisles during previews so that he could observe at what points audiences became restless. After the initial screenings he excised about 20 minutes. It took 30 individual cuts, which were made in a variety of scenes. These included the Dawn of Man prelude, the Orion III spaceship in orbit, a recreated village square inside the Space Station, the astronauts exercising in the centrifuge of Discovery, the exit of Poole's space pod from the spaceship, and Poole's 'breathing' sequence outside the spaceship.

Even trimmed down to 139 minutes, 2001 provoked extreme reactions among critics and the movie-going public alike. "There seemed to be no middle of the road response'', Neil McAleer states in Odyssey: The Authorized Biography of Arthur C. Clarke (1992). "There were some critics, however, who after seeing the movie a second time, changed their opinion from negative to positive. This was, if not unprecedented, at least rare in the world of film criticism. As Arthur C. Clarke declared soon after the release: "If anyone understands it on the first viewing, we have failaed in our intention.''

Perhaps this is why a fair proportion of the initial reviews were not always appreciative of the film's worth. Pauline Kael, writing in Harper's Magazine, was particularly scathing: "It's fun to think about Kubrick really doing every dumb thing he wanted to do, building enormous science-fiction sets and equipment, never even bothering to figure out what he was going to do with them. In some ways it's the biggest amateur movie of them all, complete even to the amateur-moving obligatory scene - the director's little daughter telling daddy what kind of present she wants. It's a monumentally unimaginative movie."

Meanwhile, Renata Adler, writing in the New York Times complained that, ''The movie is so completely absorbed in its own problems, its use of colour and space, its fanatical devotion to science fiction detail, that it is somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring.''

The Chicago Daily News critic, Sam Lesner, was one of those whose opinion changed after seeing the film again: "I have seen Stanley Kubrick's mind-bending, maddening, awesome, debilitating, demonical, dehumanizing, and miraculous extra-terrestrial fantasy-drama twice. At first, I thought Kubrick had flipped his lid. Now I believe he is a genius."

The benefit of hindsight is useful, as is demonstrated by Roger Ebert's more recent assessment of the film in the Chicago Sun Times: "Only a few films are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape,'' Ebert wrote. ''Most movies are about characters with a goal in mind, who obtain it after difficulties either comic or dramatic. 2001 is not about a goal but a quest, a need. It does not hook its effects on specific plot points, nor does it ask us to identify with Bowman or any other character. It says to us:

We became men when we learned to think. Now it is time to move on to the next step, to know that we live not on a planet but among the stars, and that we are not flesh but intelligence.

Ebert felt that what Kubrick had actually achieved was to make, " a philosophical statement about man's place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music, or prayer. And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it - not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it.''

At the Academy Awards for 1968, 2001 was nominated in the categories of Best Effects and Special Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, Best Director, and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the screen. In the end the only Oscar the film received was for Best Effects and Special Visual Effects. Arthur Clarke was understandably disappointed that the Oscar for Best Screenplay went to Mel Brooks for The Producers. Years later, when Clarke ran into Brooks, he complained: "Mel, you stole my Oscar!" Brooks replied diplomatically, ''You're a genius!'' and so disarmed Clarke.

2001's pioneering special effects, hardware, and cosmic subject matter make it an intensely visual experience. However, the film's sound design - its use of music, speech and effects - is just as important as its visual design. The soundtrack of 2001 combines the avant-garde contemporary music of Gyorgy Ligeti; with the contrasting classical waltzes and ballet suites of Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss and Aram Kachaturian. It combines simian grunts and snarls with pneumatic hisses and synthesised beeps, and rough human voices with the soft, mellifluous tones of HAL the computer.

Even the silent vacuum of space is filled with the invasive sounds of human technology, such as humming computers, circulating air systems and hissing doors. 2001 is alive with sound, most of it ambient. "I've become convinced that a great deal of the ambient revolution, now and for the past few decades, owes much of its impetus to the achievement of 2001," claims multimedia specialist, D. B. Spalding. ''2001 begins with a desert plain, and the sounds of wind, insects, vultures.....and ape-men digging in the dirt for a morsel of vegetation.'' Spalding continues: ''When a leaopard snarls and attacks the noise rocks the soundtrack. The film ends with Bowman breathing... then stepping into a room on the alien world (while weird deceleration sounds are heard outside), and finally himself as an older man, dining. Both of these framing scenes are made suspenseful not just by their slow pacing, but the eerie, subdued sonic matrix. The scene at the end is excruciatingly tense because Bowman keeps patiently scraping his plate with his knife and fork and then, suddenly, smashes his glass of water on the tiled floor. The sound shocks the listener like a cold shower.''

Another sequence that exemplifies this contrast is the one in which Bowman rescues the body of the murdered Poole. "The silence of space, through which Poole spins and falls to his doom is absolute,'' Spalding comments. "Where earlier the space walks were accompanied by the methodical breathing of the astronaut, here there is no breath, no life, no sound, only lifelessness. But inside Bowman's space pod, the radar tracker pings loudly, building in intensity. The juxtaposition of the silence of a dying man floating along in space with the annoying noise of the radar, is about as violent a contrast as one hears in the film."

Spalding draws the conclusion that 2001 is ''an aural assemblage greater than the sum of its parts,'' and is convinced that following 2001, film-makers became far more conscious of the revolutionary possibilities that effective sound editing offered.

The sound design also influences the dialogue of the film - or rather lack of it, for it is extremely sparse. Most of the characters only make small-talk: speech is rarely profound. It is often evasive and deceptive, and generalities abound. ''2001 is in many respects a silent film'', Roger Ebert declares. ''There are few conversations that could not be handled with titled cards. Much of the dialogue exists to 'show' people talking to one another without much regard to content. Ironically, the dialogue containing the most feeling comes from HAL as it pleads for its 'life' by singing Daisy.'' This lack of dialogue defies the conventions of the science fiction movie genre. Unlike films such as those in the Star Wars and Star Trek series, (and not forgetting Jurassic Park), where dialogue is as important as what is seen, in 2001, words are mostly irrelevant to the visuals. Kubrick uses dialogue in a way that is similar to Fritz Lang's sparing use of inter-titles in Metropolis (1926), his classic science fiction movie of the silent era.

While he was filming 2001, Kubrick had played classical recordings on set to create the right atmosphere. Various composers had been considered by the director for the final, original score. Mike Wilson suggested Pierre Arvay, A Frenchman who was working exclusively for films and film libraries. Wilson claimed that Arvay was ''very interested in the basic subject matter of the film,'' and even sent Kubrick on of the Arvay's LPs containing a piece called La Planete Noir.

But Kubrick had already commissioned a score from Alex North who had written the music for Kubrick's Spartacus in 1960. Meanwhile, he used the classical recordings as a temporary soundtrack while editing the film. Unfortunately for North, Kubrick was so delighted by the effect of the recordings that he decided to keep them. The composer subsequently released his original score as "Alex North's 2001."

It is a workmanlike effort, but, as Roger Ebert points out, ''would have been wrong for 2001 because like all scores, it attempts to underline the action - to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists 'outside' the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime: it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.''

Ebert gives as an example the use of Johann Strauss' ''Blue Danube'', which accompanies the elaborate process of the docking of the shuttle with the Space Station. "We are asked in the scene to contemplate the process, to stand in space and watch. We know the music. It proceeds as it must. And so, through a peaculiar logic, the space hardware moves slowly because it's keeping the tempo of the waltz. At the same time, there is an exaltation in the music that helps us feel the majesty of the process."

Despite its brilliance, 2001 suffers from cer tain scientific errors - albeit minor ones - in addition to the niggling continuity mistakes that bedevil every film, whatever the budget. Some if not all of these errors are excusable on the grounds of the general lack of experience in space at that time. For instance, moon dust does not billow. (Remember that 2001 was made several years before the first manned moon landing.) The Earth is more colourful from space than indicated in the movie. Stars in the background should not drift slowly past the spaceship when the viewpoint is fixed in relation to the ship. And the Earth should appear closer to the horizon at Clavius than at Tycho, not vice versa.

On the other hand, most of the continuity mistakes are due to the oversights that are inevitable on a frenetic film set. Consider these few: In the lunar transport en route to Tycho, the photo that Floyd is looking at switches suddenly from colour to black and white. During this sequence, the phase of the Earth changes repeatedly.

After Bowman takes his food out of the dispenser on board Discovery, two of the containers on his tray exchange positions by themselves. When he leaves the space pod to replace the AE 35 unit, he is holding it in his right hand so he can use his left hand to control his thruster backpack. But in the next shot, as he manoeuvres towards Discovery, the unit is in his left hand. Then there is the matter of Poole's air-hose, which miraculously switches sides just before he is hit by his space pod...

2001 even has situations that are incorrectly considered as goofs. Probably the best example is when Bowman exposes himself to vacuum when re-entering Discovery. There is a belief that exposure to the vacuum of space is necessarily fatal. Arthur Clarke was shrewd enough to realise that when the film opened there would be protests about this scene, which was bold enough to assert that vacuum was survivable. So he decided to pre-empt criticism by writing an essay on the subject - impishly titled ''A Breath of Fresh Vacuum'' - as part of the pre-publicity material for the film. In years to come, 2001 will perhaps be known (apart from other distinctions) as the movie that dispelled the misconception that astronauts explode if their spacesuits should suffer a tear. There are some curious trivia relating to 2001, in particular to HAL. For instance, if, alphabetically, you advance each letter of 'HAL' by one you get IBM! Arthur Clarke claims this was unintentional. Incidentally, HAL's voice was going to be performed by Martin Balsam, but Kubrick decided that he sounded too emotional and so gave the job to Douglas Rain. Both the novel and the screenplay give HAL's birthday as 12th January, 1997, but the date given by HAL on-screen is 12th January, 1992.

Roger Ebert believes that 2001 has not dated in any important detail: "Although special effects have become more versatile in the computer age, Douglas Trumbull's work remains completely convincing - more convincing, perhaps, than more sophisticated effects in later films, because it looks more plausible, more like documentary footage than like elements in a story." Roger Caras echoes this sentiment: "Everything we've seen since with special effects was born in 2001'', he claims. "No one dreamed that a film production could go to such heights of technical brilliance."

If 2001 were to be remade today, the only aspects of the visual design of the film that would need to be altered are the furniture and clothing. No less a sartorial guru than Hardy Amies designed the costumes, but the fact is that fashion, with all its whims and idiosyncracies, is difficult to predict in the long-term. It is remarkable that during the 30 years since the release of 2001, Kubrick has completed only four films - A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). Earlier this year, amid unprecedented security and privacy, Kubrick began filming his latest project, Eyes Wide Shut, with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

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