(by
Stanley Kubrick)
Looking at this film, the answer might come out obvious. Kubrick uses fiction to reflect upon life and upon Man, his afraid, his problems, like unknown or outside his dimension, maybe to solve his eternal problems: essence of man, provenience and final destiny.
A slow atmosphere: here everything looks as enlarged, sometimes seeming unreal. Sometimes situations, aspects of life seem to wide, other times to contract, leading to a different dimension, in another space and another time.
A travel to Jupiter. Or, maybe, “beyond the infinite”. Beyond our limits, we believe like “physical” ones, but looking inside ourselves, we notice that we can cross over them.
A travel beyond knowledge barriers, beyond what we believe as safe, but that, here, appears not so sure. A travel to understand, really, who’s Man, and which are his deepest wishes.
A magical experience. Here, noises, sounds, voices appears unreal, maybe absurd ones. But, changing our perspective, lights, colours, may appear superb.
A travel in the Space. Or, maybe, inside ourselves, inside our deepest problems. A stimulus, for us, to experience new horizons, new ways of being, of feeling, flying to other Worlds, experiencing, everyday, that our ways are only an idea, ad we easily cross over them.
So, a travel to Jupiter is only a ploy to travel inside Man. Especially in the last sequence, in an incredible explosion of sounds, lights, images where we can loose every perspective, and the arrival point. Maybe, images we can see, are only an interior travel. In fact, everybody alternates joy and sorrow, peace and movement: some opposites are into ourselves, sometimes at a time. The final sequence shows us a plot of images that swap several situations, sometimes opposite, sometimes parallel. Leading beyond our imaginations. No problem: reality always goes ahead of fantasy, aren’t you?
Time: “times” runs in a circular way. This perspective upon life can join past, present and future in one experience, in one harmony.
In fact, images of the prehistory of the Man are not detached from the ones of space ships. Monolith, the main symbol of the film, whose origins are mysterious, might represent Time, in his circularity, where everything finds its rule. We pass from Prehistory to Space like in a “continuum”.
A strength of this work. Nothing breaks down, but everything flows.
Everything flows in the Music too. The one of Ligeti: dissonant, mysterious, the Music of Richard Strauss: rich of evocations, of significances, till Johann Strauss, with his “Blaue Donau” waltz, giving us a pure harmony sensation in listening to it looking at Orbit Stations, and this long sequence is far from being boring!
Everything is cyclical in this film. The same Space Ships, turning and moving at the waltz rhythm, make we think of something that evolves to come, after, like it was formerly. But waltz itself is a cyclical piece!
Something looks as unreal, maybe magical. Perhaps a dream, far away but closely next at a time. Like everything it the Human Life.
Space, infinitive, running to unknown. In this way, the sensation of Space is very similar to the Sea one. And, in this approach, David Bowman, Chapman of Space Ship, might be similar to a modern Ulysses coming back to Itaca. But, here, Itaca is only an hypothetical goal, an exreme, maybe asymptotical point of knowledge, something where we go without reaching it.
Or, perhaps, a near destination, where only a thin barrier separates it from us. But this one is, sometimes, for us, impossible to cross over. For our ideas!
This mythological sight is not incredible. Some elements are for it. Like the Music by Richard Strauss and its title, and the Computer Hal 9000 itself, whose eye reminds us to Polyphemus.
By the way of Hal: its name should formerly be Athena, Wisdom God. And this enforces Mythological hypothesis, but also the idea of the travel inside Man and crossing over his limits.
Circularity again: in Hal’s eye, but also in final scenes: everything flows to come back to its origin point. Also in this way we can see the famous physical idea: “Nothing creates, nothing destroys but everything transforms”. But here we can change it to “But everything transforms, to come back to its origin, nevertheless changed”. This is plain in the final scene: David, dying, indicates Monolith, and here he finds himself like a baby. Birth and death are, here, joined by a line. To say to us that nothing is over. An hope shout for Man. No end, no death. They’re only illusions. In the reality, everything flows, changing to a better condition. Again a “Nothing creates, nothing destroys but everything transforms”. And, maybe, Monolith is a representation of it.
Nothing is a case, in this work. Hal name Itself. If we change each letter of it with the former one, we obtain “IBM”. Everything knows who’s it! Another interesting element!
In fact, everything seems perfect. Also a final that, for some times, caused discussions.
The effect of this film, nowadays, in 2001, is different from the effect it might cause when it was produced (in 1968). Nevertheless it’s still a film that may astonish, wonder, cause reflections.
Above all, he can allows us to try to understand something about Man. Recognizing that some limits we consider are only our ideas, and maybe a little effort (also if, like Kubrick say, this “little effort” might be “an enormous effort”) to fly to new dimensions and wonderful “Worlds” of Life.
Sergio
Ragaini