2001: A Space Odyssey

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

I thought it would be a good time to announce the publication of my new novel, The Bigger Picture. The link to Amazon is: https://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Picture-Augustus-Cileone/dp/0997096284/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527711220&sr=1-1&keywords=cileonea

All of my earnings will be donated to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. It is a mystery for movie lovers, like its prequel, Out of the Picture. The new story deals with the double sexual standard and sexual abuse of women.

One thing that must be kept in mind when approaching this 1968 movie masterpiece is that director Stanley Kubrick is a satirist. He attacked the war machine and tyranny in Paths of Glory and Spartacus. In Dr. Strangelove, possibly the best film satire eve made, Kubrick not only skewers the male/sexual connection in waging war, but also goes after technology as something that facilitates the drive for destruction. It is in 2001 that the director takes on the idea of progress being measured only by technological achievement.

The opening sequence, “The Dawn of Man,” shows us earth’s beautiful, but imposing land vistas. These scenes dwarf the individual creature. In a way, this appears to be the first “space” humanoids encounter. Add the howling wind of the soundtrack to the intimidation of the size of the terrain depicted and Kubrick triggers the primal response of fear in the audience. The ape-like ancestors that we now encounter are also frightened by this environment. At one point a leopard leaps onto one of these unsuspecting creatures, emphasizing the danger in this prehistoric time. They huddle together at night, watchful of threatening surroundings.

When one group tries to drive away another from a watering hole, they scream, howl, and jump up and down. The scene is comical. But, isn’t Kubrick saying that things haven’t really changed over the millennia, since we still do a great deal of posing and threatening as we try to take over the land of others? Do these early humans remind us of today’s politicians? One of the ape-ancestors wakes up and sees a mysterious black monolith. He, as are his companions, is afraid to approach it at first, but then, human curiosity takes hold, and they all touch it. After that, the ape-man looks at the monolith, and we are given an upward shot of the object and the sky above it. He then realizes that he can use a bone as a tool. The irony here is that the first bit of mechanical advancement is a weapon. The ape people can now kill animals and those of other groups of their kind to take the land they want. After the conquest of the watering hole, the ape-man throws his bone/weapon into the air. We then jump centuries into the future as the bone segues into the image of a spacecraft. But, the appearance is similar to the bone, and thus Kubrick implies that we may not have advanced as much as we would like to think. We hear Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube as we see a variety of spacecraft move through the blackness. “Craft” is the operative word here, since we are talking about something made from a skill, but the music is art, which is an imaginative talent that transcends technological invention. Kubrick does not show us humans dancing to the waltz. Instead, it is our machines who have replaced us, and in a sense, we now have a world that is dehumanized.

Dr. Heywood Floyd arrives at the space station amid rumors that there is an epidemic at the Clavius colony on the moon. On his trip, a flight attendant wears grip shoes to deal with the lack of gravity. This footwear makes her lurch, and she appears to move like one of her ancient ape-like predecessors, again undermining human advancement. He has a short meeting with fellow scientists who press him about the true story concerning the outbreak. Floyd feigns ignorance and then says somewhat slyly that he can’t reveal anything. This scene is somewhat reminiscent of the watering hole episode in the first part. One of the scientists looks over his shoulder as someone passes by, appearing suspicious of a threat, like the ape-man. Heywood is the dominant creature here, as the others try to draw him out. In the background we see that there is a Hilton Hotel, and an AT&T logo, along with one for the restaurant chain Howard Johnson. Kubrick is saying that although this is supposed to be the “enlightened” future, corporate greed is forever, with the drive for profits advancing into outer space. Floyd makes a video phone call to his child, played by Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian. This new technologically advanced world has not brought people together. Floyd can’t even be home on his daughter’s birthday. He can only contact her through a technological instrument. When he asks his daughter what gift she would like to receive, she at first says a telephone. In a way that request makes sense because it is the only thing that lets her connect with her father. This scene shows that in this future all we have are tech gadgets, but no real closeness to others. One could say here that this film is quite prescient, given our current withdrawal into computerized social media. The accepted argument is that technology is supposed to make our lives easier. But Kubrick shows Heywood looking baffled by the numerous instructions on how to use the anti-gravity toilet. The more we move forward, it seems, the more our basic human drives and functions have become encumbered.

We hear at a briefing on the space station that the rumor of a contagious outbreak on the moon is a cover story. The truth is that another monolith was found on the moon, placed there about four million years in the past. Heywood visits the place where the monolith thrusts out of the surface of the moon. Kubrick mirrors the scene of the prehistoric human touching the object as we see Heywood do the same, and we are provided the same upward shot of the monolith and the sky above. We have different celestial bodies, but the same action, again shrinking the time difference and questioning the so-called progression of the species. Heywood and the others don’t have a clue as to the immense significance of the find, and instead use the moment for a photo-op. The monolith lets loose a high-pitched, pain-producing noise, almost like an angry alarm clock, telling the humans in front of it to pay attention to what they are experiencing.

We then skip ahead eighteen months, and we see the Discovery spaceship on its way to Jupiter. The spacecraft looks like the vertebrae of a spinal column with the brain at the front. This image reinforces the bone - to - tool connection made earlier, and also stresses that although we have advanced technically, our humanity has not moved that far forward. The film introduces the two crew members who are not in hibernation (three others have been placed in suspended animation). There is Commander Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood). The nonhuman member is the HAL 9000 computer (the voice provided by Douglas Rain). (As Michael Benson points out in his book, Space Odyssey, Bowman's name refers to Odysseus who must bend a bow and shoot an arrow as a test to claim his wife after his travels). The movie again demonstrates our dwindling humanity when Kubrick echoes the happy birthday call via video phone, this time with Poole’s parents calling their son. They show him his special day cake, which he can’t consume because of the distance between them. We may feel revulsion at the ape-people eating raw meat, but it appears more like food than what these astronauts have on board the Discovery, which is pureed mush. When Heywood eats sandwiches with others on the moon shuttle, it is said that the food is something like chicken, and that they are working on the substances that substitute for real food. Obviously, in this future, culinary delights have not progressed. The gulf between Poole and his father and mother is not just physical, but is also emotional. Poole demonstrates no response to the communication from his parents, not a smile nor a tear. Actually, all of the dialogue by the so-called advanced humans in the film is lacking in any originality, humor, or wit.

The entity that sounds and acts more human that the real people is, ironically, the computer. HAL (you probably have heard that the letters are one position above the letters IBM in the alphabet) shows pride in his generation of computers. (Benson notes that HAL's camera eye is a nod to the cyclops, a monster, in  The Odyssey). He uses the evocative human word “silly,” and later says “he is afraid” and says, “I can feel it” when his higher functions must be deactivated. Unfortunately, his actions show the negative side of his human programming. His paranoia about people messing up the mission, for which he may be blamed, and which his pride cannot tolerate, causes him to lie about the malfunction of some equipment, and then uses the extravehicular space pod to kill Poole. (In Benson's book, he notes Kubrick's admiration for filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. The chess game between Poole and HAL echoes the match between the knight and Death in Bergman's The Seventh Seal, and foreshadows Poole's demise at the hands of HAL Kubrick put in a false move in the game to hint at HAL's malfunctioning or deceptive strategy). The pod looks like a human turned into a high tech monster, with its mechanical arms reaching out menacingly at us as we view it from the victim’s position. It appears to be Kubrick’s way of saying that the machines we have produced can be our undoing. The people in hibernation are also killed. Bowman goes out to retrieve Poole’s body, but must abandon that plan because HAL tries to leave him stranded outside the ship. Bowman comes in through an emergency hatch, even without his helmet. While he renders HAL harmless, the computer sings the song “Daisy,” with the funny line, “I’m half crazy,” in it, reflecting its own mental state. But, the lyrics also talk of the nostalgic “bicycle built for two,” which refers to an antique, fun mode of transportation, again letting us know that our advanced spaceship takes us far away, but the technology is not the end-all of life.

As Bowman approaches his destination, the last segment is entitled “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.” The satire part of the movie now ends. There is another monolith floating in the space near the large planet, and Bowman, in his space pod, enters what appears to be a wormhole. He (and we) experience a dazzling light show, as it appears we see the birth of star systems, and witness the grandeur of “the Infinite.” The monoliths can be evidence of a super extraterrestrial race, or as Benson says, substitutes for the gods in Greek mythology. They also may be symbolic evolutionary markers we must reach to move forward. But, technology can only take us so far. Bowman’s journey ends, in a surreal sequence, in a bright white bedroom with Louis XVI furniture. He has aged, and he sees himself in stages of aging, and becomes the elderly versions of himself. When he is in his death bed, the monolith appears at the foot of the bed. He reaches out his hand toward it, reminding one of the Sistine Chapel where God’s finger touches Adam. He is reborn as a star child, a heavenly fetus, who then floats by earth, contemplating his origins.

The movie starts and ends with Richard Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra. Of course this hearkens back to Friedrich Nietzsche’s work. If nothing else these allusions speak of transformation. For Kubrick, and his co-scripter, Arthur C. Clarke, true progress through evolution is not just by way of what is built, but in what is perceived and imagined. The star child at the end of the film may represent the hope for reaching a state of higher consciousness. Perhaps that is the real reason why the spaceship is named “Discovery.”

The next film is Straw Dogs.

Inherit the Wind

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

This 1960 film from producer/director Stanley Kramer based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial conveys its relevance to the present in the title, which comes from the Bible. In Proverbs, it basically says that he who troubles his own house shall inherit the wind – that is one gains nothing. The movie implies that the United States is the “house” in this story, and the trouble comes from the split between fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, and Darwin’s theory of evolution. The war between science and religion has been waged recently, with the attempt to place Creationism as an alternative to Darwinism in school science classrooms. This movie also echoes our current state of political polarization which springs from entrenched ways of thinking in both political camps.

The film is not subtle, but it is not as one-sided as it appears at first glance. It takes place in the community of Hillsboro, where teacher Bertrand Cates (Dick York) presents the theory of evolution to his high school students. Men walk to the school to arrest him for his educational actions. The audience sees the blurring of the separation of church and state immediately: one of those accompanying the legal authorities is Reverend Jerimiah Brown (Claude Akins). The law itself does not respect the Constitution’s separation of church and state because it prohibits teaching Darwin since it contradicts the words stated in Genesis about how man came to be on the earth. The Rev. Brown has no shades of gray – he is a fire and brimstone, scripture quoting cleric, who would even condemn his own daughter, Rachel (Donna Anderson), for being engaged to Cates. He says that he loves God and hates his enemies – not exactly what Jesus taught. He tells his daughter that Cates is dangerous, which she should know, being a teacher, because he says it is easy to mold young minds. Of course, because he sees his beliefs as the only true ones, he does not realize the irony in how he has shaped those same young minds into his way of thinking. Many of the townspeople share the reverend’s outlook. We see the force of the community on the noncompliant individual when one of the women of the town scowls at Rachel and gestures that she should join in with the singing of “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” which is the song which accompanies the opening arrest of Cates.

Reporter E, K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) now enters on the scene. He is modeled after the real journalist, H. L. Menken. Hornbeck is at the other extreme of the belief system. He believes in nothing, a cynic about any redeeming characteristics of the human race, who sarcastically skewers the bible-thumpers. He has some effective lines showing his disdain for Hillsboro, such as when he says it is “the buckle on the Bible belt.” He effectively sums himself up when he says, “I’m admired for my detestability,” concerning his fame as a newsman. He gives dubious support to Rachel when he says, “I may be rancid butter, but I’m on your side of the bread.” He makes a good argument for the role of a questioning free press in a democratic society when he says its job is “to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comforted.” Hornbeck revels in his negativity. He secures Cates’ defense, bringing in lawyer Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy as a character based on Clarence Darrow), but it almost appears that he wants the man to lose so he can suck people into his black hole of hopelessness for humankind. He says at one point to Drummond, “Henry, why don’t you wake up. Darwin was wrong. Man is still an ape.” Drummond at the end pities him, saying, “When you go to your grave, there won’t be anybody to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You’re all alone.”

There are characters who are not so one-sided. The sheriff lets Cates out of his jail, treats him respectfully, and good-naturedly plays cards with him. Cates’ students greet Drummond and offer their support of his defense of their teacher. Johns Stebbens (Noah Beery, Jr.) puts up his farm as collateral to get Drummond out of jail when the attorney is charged with contempt of court. He makes this offer because the drowning death of his son brought him and Cates to question the existence of horrible, unfair events under the watch of a supposedly benevolent God, and because Reverend Brown said the 13-year-old boy would burn in hell because he was not baptized before his death. Bertrand Cates, the defendant, appears to be an idealist when he says that he can agree to uphold what he considers an unjust law, but that would mean “I let my body out of jail if I lock up my mind.” But, he is also a pragmatist, because he sees that to Hornbeck he is a headline and to Drummond he is a cause. And, he realizes that his town’s version of religion isn’t the only viewpoint, and acknowledges that the Christian religion is without such extremism elsewhere. He also shows how rigid he can be because he gives Rachel an ultimatum when it comes to her father: “It’s your father’s church or our house, you can’t live in bother.” Even the prosecution’s main lawyer, Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March, playing the William Jennings Bryan character), despite his fundamentalist bombast, chides the Reverend Brown when he condemns his own daughter before a prayer meeting. It is Brady who delivers the “inherit the wind,” quote, saying that being overzealous can cause one to destroy what someone is trying to save. Drummond campaigned for Brady when he ran for President because the man championed suffrage for women and a better life for the common man. Kramer uses the camera to emphasize different points of view by focusing on a character at any given moment by placing him or her in the foreground, while others are in the background.

As for Drummond, he argues for the progress that science brings to our understanding of the world. He says that without new ideas to loosen up the stranglehold on the mind that comes from untested self-righteous beliefs, harm is inflicted on others with a different meaning system. As he tells Cates, the teacher is treated like a murderer because he is trying to kill one of the community’s ideas, and some people consider that a threat to their way of living. He worships the individual mind, and says that “an idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.” There is a scene where Brady and Drummond sit on a porch, each swaying back and forth in rocking chairs. It is significant that the two chairs do no go back and forth in tandem, stressing the different views of the two. Brady says that common people are “looking for something more perfect than they already have. Why do you want to take that away from them when that’s all they have?” Drummond tells a story about how much he wanted a hobby horse when he was young that was gleaming and fancy on the surface, but collapsed when he sat on it because it was poorly made. He makes the analogy to what Brady espouses. “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate I say the hell with it.” However, in the courtroom he admits that there is a price to pay for progress, too: “Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it.” He admits that we lose the wonder of the birds when we fly in airplanes, and we fill the air with the smell of gasoline. He says we can have the telephone, but we sacrifice privacy. He also concedes that technological advances are not worth much if not used properly: he voices disdain for the radio microphone when what he wants to say into it will be censored.

Drummond appeals to Brady’s ego by getting him to take the stand as an authority on the Bible. It is in his grilling of Brady that the audience sees the danger of mixing religious belief with factual science. Brady, as do other fundamentalists, believe in so literal interpretation of the religious texts that they use it as a scientific instrument to measure the age of the earth, which totally contradicts how old fossils really are. Drummond eventually gets Brady to concede that the seven days that it took God to create the world were of indeterminate length. By so doing, he undermines a strict interpretation of scripture. Drummond warns of the dangers of rigid thinking when he says, “fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding.”

Drummond, unlike Hornbeck, doesn’t want to wipe out religious thought. He says Brady, who dies in the film right after the verdict and sentencing, had greatness in him, but sought God too far away. He argued that science, instead of destroying religion, could be used to better understand God’s creation. That is why he leaves the courtroom after holding both Darwin’s book and the Bible together. He earlier said that right and wrong have no meaning for him, because of their subjective absolute nature. But, he said that truth was important. It is significant that the song sung at the end of the movie is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and we hear the words, “His truth goes marching on.”

Perhaps the words of Brady’s wife, Sarah (Florence Eldridge), to Rachel sum up the need for not thinking in terms of absolutes. She says to her about Rachel’s impression of Brady at first as being a saint who can only do no wrong, and then as a devil, who can only do what is wrong. The truth lies in between, as in most things. All we can do is believe in something based on experience, and fight for it. But, first we must rely on ourselves, not others, for belief. She says to Rachel, but also to the audience, “What do you stand for? … What do you believe in?”

Next week’s movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey.