Originally published in South China Morning Post, January 2 2011
It’s fascinating to imagine cinema would be like without Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in the late 60s, it appeared at a time when the scientific community’s thoughts had naturally progressed from focusing on the origins of our species to exploring our universe and what lies beyond. At odds with this was science fiction’s reputation as a genre – reserved for B-flicks, it was used as either the means to a shock-twist end in shows like The Twilight Zone, or wedged in with the similarly disrespected horror genre in such schlocky “alien” monster movies as The Thing from Another World.
2001 changed all that – not only was its story and themes the first to tackle science fiction on a serious level, through its exploration of evolution, artificial intelligence and alien lifeforms, it also revolutionized the way people watched movies. Here was a film that looked and felt like a camera had been shot into space and recorded all that it could see – from its breathtakingly sleek special effects, said to have influence NASA, to its almost psychedelic final third that led audiences on a drug-free hallucination.
Split fairly evenly into three distinct but loosely connected sections, “The Dawn of Man” starts the film at our beginnings, a prehistoric look at humankind’s ape-like ancestors as they struggle to survive on Earth’s rough terrains. Dialogue-free and authentic in its depiction, its the setting for our first look at the black monolith, the recurring enigma that ties all the stories together. The section ends on that oft-parodied scene, man’s discovery of violent tools, with the triumphant bone thrown in the air match-cutting four million years into the future.
This is “Jupiter Mission”, the film’s most narratively traditional and thus, audience-friendly section, opening on that classic image of a waltzing satellite set to the sounds of Strauss. The question of artificial intelligence and the power it can assert and sometimes abuse was first questioned here, culminating in one cinema’s finest scenes, the harrowing point where the computer becomes self-aware, as an astronaut constantly pleads it to “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
It all leads to the most memorable part of the film, “Jupiter and Beyond Infinite,” a surreal visual journey across space and time that ends with what is possibly the rebirth of our universe. Since the film’s release, the section has confounded critics and audiences alike; is it about the search for God? The cycle of birth and death? A Nietzschean allegory about the potential of man? Clarke’s novel, released after the movie, is said to explain things in greater detail – but to enthusiasts, that takes all the fun out of things.
Great sci-fi is meant to be a place of great beginnings, a jumping off point for further thoughts and ideas. 2001 is in a league of its own in that regard. While it’s possible the film’s themes are better explored and questions better posed in more recent sci-fi efforts, it will always hold a place in the history of cinema as the beginning of a new dawn.