Director:Stanley Kubrik
Phew! That is what I told myself. This film is the perfect example how a good quality film just blows your mind. It is not difficult to understand why such an offering with so much of silence, dearth of dialogue and good old Johann Strauss II's Blue Danube orchestral music goes a long way to have an impact to its audience than all the marvel of pyrotechnics and nonsensical exhibition of flesh can do. This 1968 offering has a cult like following and conspiracy theorist have targeted Kubrik (the director and co-screenplay writer with Arthur C Clark) of having a hand to staging the televised screening of the moon landing that never happened!
This flick is indeed a classic with its cinematography far ahead of its time. The story is divided into 4 parts and for a good part of it is left to our imagination. This epic has been the precursor for many sci-fi movies to come after that, eg. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars and many more.
A good 5 minutes is spent on introducing the now legendary music score which is often used to indicate the climax of an event like the announcement of the winner of a competition, with the picture of the Sun emerging behind Earth as seen from space.
The next 15 minutes show how primates learn skills after holding a bone. They learn to hunt and also fight amongst themselves. They see a monolithic structure which emits a strong vibration and probably gives them wisdom. Soon after this, he learns to use a bone as a tool to attack. He throws the long bone in mid air and we are drawn into the next scene... a space ship (?nuclear warhead).
As if to denote evolution of these creatures, we next we see a space ship cruising in outer space to the soothing sounds of the Blue Danube.
Only after 25 minutes, do we hear speech. A flight stewardess struggles to walk the aisle of a commercial plane set-up like space ship in zero gravity environment. The vehicle then reaches its destination. As the passengers alight the craft, the computer verifies them by voice identification.A US investigator is sent to the Moon Base to investigate some strange occurrences. After much fanfare, the researches reach again a monolithic structure which emits high frequency sounds. The stone is apparently pointing towards Jupiter. Swish...We are into the third story.
A space ship is enroute to planet Jupiter with 2 astronauts, 3 astronauts in suspended hibernation and a known it all computer HAL 9000. The computer (which may have developed emotions) diagnoses that one of their radar may malfunction, so the astronauts go out to investigate. After finding that there is nothing wrong with the structures, the astronauts were 'lip-read' by HAL that he (the computer) was going to be shut down! HAL severs one of the astronaut's oxygen supply and locks out the other. The life support of the hibernating astronauts are terminated.
The remaining astronaut enters the ship via an emergency entrance and manually shuts down HAL. A pre-recorded message reveals the secret about the monolithic structure found on Moon 18 months previously. We then move on to the last story - Jupiter and Beyond Infinity.
The previous astronaut, Bowman, leaves the mother ship in a space pod towards Jupiter. He enters the atmosphere and is drawn into a dizzying kaleidoscopic journey of psychedelic hues into another dimension. He sees himself growing old progressively in a majestic white room with white piano, regal furniture and the works like the one in John Lennon's white room in the music video of Imagine!
He sees the monolithic structure again and he is transformed into a fetus encapsulated in a bubble gazing into planet Earth. The End.
The dearth of dialogue makes one's imagination go wild with interpretation of what is actually shown on the screen. The monolithic structure reminds us of the shivaling (shivalingam), the black stone that allegedly had fallen from the skies to land in Kailash at the foot of Himalayas which gives wisdom to Man. The evolution of Man is depicted (if you believe in the Theory of Evolution) of how from a brainless hominid, he evolved to gain simple living skills, to create Artificial Intelligence (which in turn controlled him!) and to explore beyond the stars. There is also a suggestion of reincarnation...
Maybe I can catch the sequel and learn more secrets..(2010: The Year We Make Contact)
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