I thought I'd stick my neck out to take a heretical swipe at a famous close-up from what many (myself included) consider a masterpiece, Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Namely, the cut that spanned a million years.
Our ape man ancestor, his mental abilities enhanced by an alien encounter, celebrates a violent victory over a rival tribe by throwing his new weapon, a large bone, into the air. We see it spinning upward, then fall back to earth.
Suddenly, the scene cuts to outerspace and a shot of something orbiting the earth while the "Blue Danube" plays in the background.
A few years after seeing the movie, I read "The Making of Kubrick's 2001" by Jerome Agel and realized that the objects circling the globe were supposed to be nuclear weapons.
While I was quite young when I saw "2001," I can't honestly say that I would pick up on this if I were seeing it for the first time today.My guess would be that eighty to ninety percent of those who view the movie wouldn't know exactly what the orbiters were supposed to be UNLESS they had read a book such as Agel's.
Am I alone in this opinion?
Sure, there's the "bone as weapon" connection. But, that could just as easily (and more probably) be interpreted as a link between the bone and advanced technology in general. A different idea. Subtle, yes, but different.
So, what’s the big deal? Okay, you didn’t get it. Does it matter THAT much?
Well, here’s my gripe: I can’t help but feel slightly cheated by the ambiguity because KNOWING that the Earth is surrounded by orbiting WMDs:
- TOTALLY changes the dynamic of the space ballet scene
- adds another layer of complexity to the lack of emotion exhibited by the human characters
- explains HAL's later murder spree a bit more (he’s our kid after all)
- makes Bowman's return to Earth as the star child THAT much more of a poignant and hopeful moment
For what it's worth, in Arthur C. Clarke’s book version of "2001" (the one he wrote while the movie was being shot, NOT his original short story, "The Sentinel", that inspired it), the star child detonates those devices (an ending Kubrick apparently considered but jettisoned because it was too close to the final scene of "Dr. Strangelove").
I realize that Kubrick wanted the audience to reach their own conclusions (that's why he decided against using a narration track). However, I submit that is a piece of exposition that could (and should) have been made a bit less obscurely.
Okay, rant over (I'll sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over).
7 comments:
I came across this bit of information a while ago -- probably in the same place where you found it -- and was equally baffled. There's really no way that anyone aside from a member of the Kubrick special effects shop could know that what we're looking at in orbit is a nuclear weapons platform.
If, in fact, Kubrick assumed everyone would figure this out, then this is one of the rare examples of his not being fully in control of the message he was conveying onscreen.
However, given Kubrick's manifestly control freak tendencies, I suspect he fudged the point on purpose. Just as having the Star Child detonate all the nuclear weapons would have reduced the scope of the film's vision (making it an anti-violence, anti-proliferation story, rather than a much more general meditation on evolution and what it means) identifying the orbital ship as a weapons platform would have limited the film to a somewhat lesser degree. Everything I know about Kubrick leads me to think that he had this idea originally and then, for whatever reason or reasons, abandoned it during production or postproduction, to the movie's enrichment.
If, on the other hand, it's just a detail Kubrick uncharacteristically failed to put across, I consider it a lucky mistake, because it makes the movie deeper and richer because of its open-endedness. It's like Ridley Scott's apparent failure to definitively put across the idea that Rick Deckard was a replicant in "Blade Runner." In my opinion, if that point weren't confusion/ambiguous, the movie would be much neater and tidier, and far less haunting, and in my opinion, less worthy of contemplation.
You make valid points.
Upon reflection, it was probably the case that the nuclear platform element was something that Kubrick ultimately decided not to stress (rather than bad storytelling).
And "2010" certainly proved how two-dimensional an anti-proliferation story can be.
However, for me, the WMD angle adds an additional nuance to the story that works to the benefit of the movie.
After my first viewing of the film, I saw it as the bone being the "guide" leading these apes (or ape-like ancestors) to take the next step in evolution. And the spacecraft (not necessarily this specific spacecraft, but the spacecraft as a general concept) did the same for David Bowman, allowing him to become the Star Child.
Of course, when I later found out that the spacecraft we see is a weapon, that certainly changed things. I wonder if Kubrick expected most people who saw the movie to read Clarke's novel as well.
Anon...I don't think so.
According to Wikipedia:
Due to the hectic schedule of the film's production, Kubrick and Clarke had difficulty collaborating on the book. Clarke completed a draft of the novel at the end of 1964 with the plan to publish in 1965 in advance of the film's release in 1966. After many delays the film was released in the spring of 1968, before the book was completed. The book was credited to Clarke alone. Clarke later complained that this had the effect of making the book into a novelisation, that Kubrick had manipulated circumstances to downplay his authorship. For these and other reasons, the details of the story differ slightly from the book to the movie. The film is a bold artistic piece with little explanation for the events taking place. Clarke, on the other hand, wrote thorough explanations of "cause and effect" for the events in the novel. Despite their differences, both film and novel were well received.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
From the first time I saw the movie as an early teen I have always watched that transitional scene as going from the first tool ever really implemented to a direct cut of the most advanced tool or technology man was now using. I had zero idea that it was a WMD. I did in fact read the book(s) as well, but it has been over 15 years since I read 2001. Man, this post really got me itching to read it! Great site BTW.
I may have to go back and at least skim through Clarke's novel. It's been a while since I've read it as well.
I do remember for sure that the star child was destroying WMDs at the end. BUT, after doing some surfing, I'm not sure if Clarke characterized them as orbital or land based nuclear weapons.
I know from the Agel book that orbital weapons WERE part of Kubrick's vision for 2001 - regardless of how much he ultimately stressed it).
I'm glad you like the site.
I agree with many of your discoveries, but find that kubricks decision not to play up the nukes as a more optimistic vew of the future. Many of the films technologies never happened because of world politics. Anyways back to the nukes. Clarks original script(download it online)has multiple WMDs orbiting the world, China, Russia, USA. I feal this forward thinking seems very logical today, almost common place, but would of been somewhat heavy handed in 1968 with the vietnam war raging. The politics alone may have destroyed its box office success. The original designs of the orbiting weapons were very obvious, but kubrick changed them, and toned them down. Model builders would have known what they were building, there are missle openings on the orbiter in the film.
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