2001ASO (2001 A Space Odyssey) is not a science fiction movie, it's a spy movie.
It was released in 1968 for people with a 1968 mindset, think of cold war, spies
at the very top (such as Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt & Cairncross)
and you have the mindset of the time. If you watch it with a 21st century
point of view, you're off your rocker and you won't "get it".
Stanley Kubrick made the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke so that his
futuristic vision of the future be realistic and as accurate as possible.
No silly lazer guns but just plain description of tomorrow.
The original soundtrack was made by Alex North. He attended the
New York premiere of 2001ASO (April 1968) and he was devastated to
see (and hear) his music had totally been flush down the drain.
It turns out the movie studio's bigwigs were as stupid as they were
greedy: they (MGM) insisted of telling Kubrick what to do. After
listening to North's score I was glad Kubrick sticked to his gun
and did what he did (disagree with MGM's idea to use Alex North's original
score). 2001ASO would not be
as great as it is without Kubrick's soundtrack choice.
The movie begins...
A group of monkeys are shown eating grass with other herbivorous mammals.
These monkeys get evicted from their water source from another group of monkeys
and are sometimes hunted by wild cats.
A monolith appears and gives intelligence to the first group of monkeys.
They invent the first tool: a club made from the bone of a dead animal.
The same monkeys kill other herbivorous mammals and turn into carnivores.
The carnivorous monkeys fight and win over the second group of herbivorous
monkeys to get back their water source.
A visual transition from a flying bone to similar shaped space ship (a tool
much more complex than a club!) is used to transport the spectators four million
years later.
In the 21st century of 2001ASO, space travel is as common as a plane flight,
IBM computers are used in the middle of planes' dash, AT&T have picture-phone
booth, Hilton's have hotels in space stations and so on...
The two groups of monkeys evolved into americans and
russians and their figthing is much more sophisticated:
politics, red herrings, fake emergency landings, fake epydemic;
all of this to fight over another hole. This time, the hole
is on the moon and filled with an extraterrestrial intelligent monolith
instead of murky waters.
The meeting explaining the cover story tells us the monolith is
the first alien species ever found and how important this
discovery is, important enough to do anything to keep
it secret. A powerfull magnetic field made them dig
and find the deliberately buried monolith, four million years ago...
So four millions years of human evolution between the original
fighting monkeys and the fighting Americans & Russians.
A powerful radio signal bleeds in their radio equipment while
they shoot photos. Those familiar with double and triple conversion
radio circuitry can understand on the fly it's just an overwhelming
radio signal bleeding in the circuits inside their space helmets.
Those not technically inclined can understand it later, when Dave
listen to the secret message that was to be revealed to the crew
when they reach Jupiter: the monolith was totally inert except for
one powerful radio emission towards Jupiter. You really need to
watch this movie over and over again to understand it.
Jupiter mission, Discovery-1, 18 months after the monolith radio emission.
Instead of using a silly narrator, it's the bbc news that gives
the spectator the basic informations they need to carry on with
the movie:
A five men team, three in hybernation before departure, a first ever,
and a computer as the 6th and most important member of the crew.
An interview with HAL9000, describe it as perfect, incapable
of error (which are only made by humans) to show it as too proud and arrogant,
this will be useful later to mislead the spectators in believing
HAL is an arrogant bastard willing to kill. The question
is bring to us if a concious entity like HAL is capable or not of real
emotions.
The chess game played by HAL and Frank:
This is the 2001ASO chess game in PGN format.
Although only the last few moves are seen, the beginning of the game
has been reconstructed here. Frank and HAL undoubtedly played the Ruy
Lopez-Morphy defense opening.
[Site "Discovery-1 en route to Jupiter"]
[Date "2001.??.??"]
[White "Frank Poole"]
[Black "HAL-9000"]
[Result "0-1"]
14.Qa8xa6 ... ;The film picks up the game at this point.
;Frank: "Anyway, Queen takes Pawn, okay."
14. ... Bh3xg2 ;HAL: "Bishop takes Knight's Pawn."
15.Rf1-e1 ... ;Frank: "What a lovely move. Rook to King one."
15. ... Qd3-f3 ;HAL: "I'm sorry Frank, I think you missed it:
;Queen to Bishop three, Bishop takes Queen,
;Knight takes Bishop. Mate."
16.Bd1xf3 Ne5xf3++ ;Frank: "Uh, huh. Yeah looks like you're
; right. I resign." HAL: "Thank you for a very
; enjoyable game." Frank: "Yeah. Thank you."
And if 16.h4!? Anyway, this is not a chess movie,
the chess game is a just a way to express the spectacular intellectual superiority of HAL
over humans.
Just after a bit of small talk about drawing improvements,
the turning point of the movie begins. This is where those
without a 1968 mindset get lost for good. It's normal to
fall for the trap set by HAL for Frank, Dave and the others
on earth, and by extention, the spectators too, but not
completly because unlike Discovery-1's crew you witnessed
the top secret meeting about the biggest secret of all
time: the discovery of a super intelligent alien species,
and the unavoidable politico-military consequences it causes.
One well known trick of the trade used by spies since... ever,
is "le mensonge défavorable". I'm not sure how to translate it,
bet let's go ahead with "the unfair lie". Let's pretend you are in
a bar an your hear someone drunk telling a chick he's got a
huge "viril member" that gets so hard even cat's claws wouldn't
get a hold of it. Now, if the same wino were to say
he's got a small one and has troubles to get it up, no one would
think it's a lie because it's not favorable to him. No matter how
crude and simple the "unfair lie" is, it works big time,
over and over again. The crew and the other computer on earth take
the bait just like a rookie takes the queen of a GrandMaster, only the realize later
it was un attrape-nigaud. Note, that much later, when Dave see the secret message,
he hears that, this information "for security reasons of the highest
importance as been known on board during the mission ONLY by your HAL9000 computer".
That's why the other HAL computer on earth was fooled and concluded HAL9000
was in error predicting the fault. An easily predicted and desired chess move by HAL9000.
So, if we get back at the beginning of the inquisition, HAL9000 probes Dave with
inside knowledge of the REAL mission:
Rumours of something being dug up on the moon.
The mission's preparations were under super strict security.
The three men in hybernation before the beginning of the mission had four
months of separate training on their own.
Then, right after Dave toss it away because he thinks HAL is doing
a psychology report, HAL makes his "unfair lie":
Just a moment, just a moment, I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
When you watch 2001ASO over and over again, it is so obvious!
Then they all take the bait and both Dave and Frank use a really lousy excuse
to have a private conversation inside a pod. At last, HAL can get to know what
they really think by reading their lips. Being the only one the authorities
can trust about the most important secret mission ever, HAL's turn off cannot be allowed
and the disposable crew will be disposed of... Later in the movie you'll see
the monolith is in orbit around Jupiter, therefore the three men survey team to find the monolith inside
the orbit of Jupiter is useless. All of this combined to the fact that Dave resisted to
talk about what was strange about the mission decides of their fate. With
Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt & Cairncross, you know moles can be anywhere, HAL
cannot afford to trust, he must be sure. Dave's resistance to talk about it really sinks him.
One of the most interesting theme is brought just after that. A chess game
is a closed environment with simple rules with absolutely no luck involved.
Real life is so much more complex that no computer will never be able to compute
everything and thus taking calculated risks is necessary. HAL9000 made no
mistakes whatsoever, all his moves were correct, but Murphy's law made Dave the luckiest
man in the universe. The unthinkable happens, Dave manages to get back
inside Discovery-1.
Can a computer have genuine emotions? Yes. Even if
as primitive as basic fear, a HAL9000 computer, probably like a primitive cold
blooded iguana, can fear for his life. Fear is the first emotion
HAL ever experienced in his life... when Dave began pulling his
memory modules. This is just like when the monolith gave the
first touch of intelligence to the monkeys. Men created and gave
the first emotion to a computer.
When HAL reboots, we learn he was created in 1992. HAL had more than
nine years of precious accumulated memory, what a waste. If Dave only
knew, he would certainly had kept HAL alive and try to extract secret intelligence from it, like
what were the specific secret orders HAL was given about the mission? But all of
this was gone when Dave pulled the plug... Only the pre-recorded breefing
for the crew was not on volatile memory.
Dave uses a pod to get closer to the monolith, and it pushes him at the speed of light very
far away on an unidentified planet. An interesting camera trick is used to
manipulated the spectator. To show the effect of visual distortions when
travelling at the speed of light, the camera show Dave's eye, then it shift inside of Dave
to show what Dave can see. You see Dave, you see what Dave see.
This back and forth goes on for quite a while and the spectators get used to it.
Then, on the planet, the effect is similar, except it's Dave who can see himself as an ellipse
to speed up the time scale. A flabbergasting experience the first time you
see it.
Dave ages and die peacefully. He is reincarnated as a newborn on earth.
The only way Kubrick could tell this without narration was a feotus.
End of story.
The themes used by Kubrick in this movie are rarely used in other
movies and some never used at all. A spy story projected in a realistic
futur with a super computer unvolontarily experiencing his first emotion while trying to
protect the biggest secret ever. I pull my hat to Stanley Kubrick.
An horological note here. Hamilton made special watches for this
movie. Does anyone know what happen to them, where they are, etc?
If you have something on this,
you can ping me at webmaster
marcchabot.com
If you have a lot of endurance, much more than I do, you can try this web site:
http://www.kubrick2001.com
If you find it as boring and as lame as I do,
tell it to his creator Graeme Thomas at
gt@kubrick2001.com
With this flash full website, you are supposed to get an understanding of 2001 A Space Odyssey .
Holly smokes!
I'm assuming you are using a french or english windows XP and your system cannot
properly display the japanese charset. Click on START, SETTINGS,
CONTROL PANEL, Regional and Language Options, LANGUAGES, then tick the
empty little square boxes for asian languages, insert your windows cd-rom, click APPLY,
then you'll have to reboot. After that, if you still can't see the page correctly, in your
Internet Explorer click on VIEW, ENCODING, then select a japanese charset or Unicode-UTF-8.
Et voila, c'est aussi simple que ça.
Sur ce site web français iconoclaste fait par Anthony Stéphan,
les otakus en prennent plein la gueule, c'est vraiment comique!
Unfortunatly it's only in french and no automated translation tool will ever make
you understand how comical this website is if you don't truly master the french language!
marcchabot.com
