Don't Know How, But I'm...

...going to get through this...

Hey.  I'm back.  I've been just a shade busy with summer...and I directed two shows back to back.  Plus...

I hit the film in this...and I have a tough time committing the time this one requires.  BUT.  I did it.  I still can get through 100 in a year...but it's going to be tough.  I'm like 4 a week from here on out, but it can be done.

Latest in the quest to watch the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition) in a calendar year.

Film 31

31. "2001: A Space Odyssey" (AFI Rank #15)

I used to use drugs.  I used to use hallucinogens.  I'm pretty sure that the first time I saw this film, that is what I was doing.  I understand  that was a popular way to see the film on its initial theatrical release in 1968.  I've watched plenty of snippets of it since, but I always fall down towards the end.  Let's table that for now, and deal with the film in front of us.  This film is directed by Stanley Kubrick, a director who never won an Oscar for his work as a director, but one who gave us 4 films in the top 100.  This is the highest ranked one...

The opening sequence of "2001," what I'll term Act I, is a sequence about man's evolution from an ape-like creature to one who used tools, is amazing.  A lot of people don't care for its inclusion, and I can understand it.  However, the ultimate goal of the film, and the overwhelming theme, is evolution.  We see a group of apes, incapable of moving forward, but then...a mysterious black slab appears.  Termed "the Monolith," we learn nothing about it, save that the apes are attracted to it...and when it appears...they evolve.

The simplest way to say what happens to them is to acknowledge that they start to use tools.  We see one ape, studying the skeleton of a tapir, pick up a large bone from the skeleton...then smash the skull.  We see the seed of learning planted, and we watch the ape begin to figure out what his new toy is capable of.  It's a visceral experience, perhaps a touch heavy handed, but a wonderful moment.  Perhaps to drive the point home, we see that group of apes attacked by an unarmed group.  Of course, the armed group destroys the alpha of the unarmed group, bashing his skull in with the bone hammer.  We learn why the strong survive, and why those unable to adapt will be crushed, quite literally, by those with the right weapon.  Taken in context of 1968 geopolitics...well.  It's good stuff.  Not good.  Great.  Great stuff.  As the sequence ends, we see the ape hurl the bone hammer into the sky...which transitions us to...outer space and the future.

Act II of the film involves a scientist named Dr. Heywood Floyd.  Shrouded in a great deal of mystery, Dr. Floyd is headed to the moon, where a team of astronauts has discovered something.  As we come to find out by the end of the Act, what they found was the Monolith.  This is where we really feel the pace of the film.  It is obvious that we are meant to pay attention to EVERYTHING, because much time is spent on just about piece of action.  Whether a conversation with his daughter on earth, or a protracted landing on the moon, or a briefing by Dr. Floyd to a group of people that is never really identified...we are asked to focus on the moment, because Kubrick isn't letting us out of it.  This pacing continues throughout the film.  The space sequences are stunning.  You can see so much of what was to come in "Star Wars," and beyond, in this film.  The spaceships are gorgeous...they look real, and they move in a way that we believe.  I've mentioned the pace.  Watch how people have to walk.  Perhaps what Kubrick was showing in his pace is how slowed down everything is in space.  I know, because of my particular fetish for all things early NASA, that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong only spent 4 hours on the moon's surface, walking around.  Now, that's a pretty good day's work, but there was only so much work they could do because of the environment, and the natural pace of walking, etc.  Want to try it yourself?  Work construction.  Watch how much harder/slower it is to work when it's winter and snowing.  Bah.

Act II ends with us seeing the Monolith again, but this time it emits a piercing noise...

Which leads us to Act III, in which we settle for a while.  Like Shakespearean plays, a great deal happens in Act III...and doesn't...all at the same time.

Act III is where we meet our protagonist, Astronaut Dave Bowman, and his partner Frank Poole.  They are aboard a spacecraft headed for Jupiter, along with 3 other scientists, making the trip in a state of suspended animation, and a computer named HAL.  I'm doing a lot of plot summary, so I'm going to stop.  This sequence is simply...amazing.  Visually stunning at almost all times, well acted, taught when it needs to be, boring when it needs to be...it's an amazing section of film.  The tedium of being trapped in a steel machine as it heads towards a far off planet, with no one to talk to, except your partner and your computer is so well portrayed, so tangible, that we get it.

Of course, as Act III progresses, we learn that HAL, the computer that brags about never having anything go wrong with it...does have an error.  Like the petulant child, HAL doubles down on his infallibility, and suggests that perhaps whatever has happened is someone else's mistake, certainly not his.  The astronauts, faced with a sentient computer misguiding them, decide that maybe HAL needs a timeout.  Having this conversation in one of the shuttle pods, with the sound turned off so HAL can't hear them, they think they are safe.  What they fail to realize is that HAL's glowing red eye is watching all that they say...and reading their lips.  HAL determines that maybe the best thing to do is continue this mission without human interference, especially as it appears that they mean to question his competence, and sets upon a course to kill all the humans aboard the ship.

Act IV is Dave figuring out a way to survive, then we get Act V.  The part of the film everyone wants to talk about.  It's 20 minutes of film, with no talking...and it's highly symbolic, very confusing, and very "intellectual."  Look.  An astronaut is sucked into a star gate, and we get some amazing visual effects as he travels this span, then he encounters the Monolith, which is a communication device from a far more advanced civilization, in its "home" in space.  He slowly dies, but as he does so, he is evolved into a new being, the "star child," whom we see as he travels to earth, presumably to help it evolve.  That's it.  Or is it?

I'm not going to speak more about this symbolism.  I'm not sure I'm smart enough to get it.

So.  I've watched "2001" in its entirety, while sober, on an HD television.

Here are my thoughts.  Kubrick knows details.  He has full instructions written out about how to operate the space toilet.  He has the brains to make the exploding hatch into the emergency airlock sequence SILENT, as it would be in space.  He moves everything about the space languidly.  He gives us not one, but TWO long sequences of people breathing while in space suits.  We feel.  We get irritated.  We get bored.  We get excited.

It's a wonderful film.  I'm not sure that I can say any more, because I kinda think the point is that you should watch it yourself, and feel it for yourself.  You may hate it.  I can absolutely understand and support that position.  There is a fine line that this film walks, a risk of driving viewers away that is present almost throughout.  That risk, however, is precisely why it is such a compelling film for me.  Even though I get a little bored with Act V.

I'll be damned.  I catch the same things Ebert does, yet again.  I swear, I don't read these articles until after I write these.  I swear.

Watch it.  It's worth your time.

Glad to be back.