2001: A Space Odyssey, a flawed masterpeice

   
 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [D: Stanley Kubrick. Keir Dullea et al, and HAL-9000] A museum piece, instructive: what’s interesting is how limited Clarkes’ technical imagination was, and how his social imagination was essentially zero. Clarke could imagine technical progress, up to a point: he didn’t fully extrapolate the effects of the relentless miniaturisation of electronic devices. Fred Pohl had already written The Age of the Pussyfoot, which among other things imagined something very like a cross between a smartphone and a tablet PC, but much more powerful than what we actually have. Look it up.
     But where Clarke and Kubrick fail most is the social context. Beginning with the clothes, which are merely late 60s fashions streamlined a bit. Gender roles are still very 50s. The Cold War’s US-Russian rivalry is still going on. There is no awareness of the probable outcomes of the anti-racism movement of the 1960s. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, the year of this movie’s release, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was released the year before this movie. Not too late to affect the script, its ideas were very much part of public discourse.
     It was already clear than China and other Asian economies would eventually rival and even surpass the USA and Europe. The notion that the West would continue its supremacy in science and engineering was already undermined by the  achievements of Japan. All these things could have influenced the script, especially since so much of the movie displays the engineering achievements expected by 2001.
     The decor and ambience of the movie celebrate technology. Kubrick uses music to underline the joy and grace of beautiful machines. The long sequence of the PanAm space shuttle arriving at the space station is shown to a sumptuous version of the Blue Danube waltz. The scene in which Dr Floyd calls home on video phone is there to emphasise the wonderful technology of the future, as is the space station itself, the moon shuttle, etc. Clark’s faith in the saving grace of ever more magical tech is touching, now that we have become accustomed to it, and are beginning to understand the negative effects of overly-rapid change, aptly called disruption.
     But those are minor cavils. This is a pioneer movie. Not only in its visual effects, all done with analogue techniques utilising models and matte boards, and photographic manipulations. Its story, such as it is, is about work. There’s no character conflict, there’s only work to be done. What plot tension there is comes from the character’s attempts to work out what to do when HAL goes rogue.
     The story has five parts: the discovery of tools, instigated by the mysterious black monolith. The discovery of the monolith on the Moon. The expedition to Jupiter. The rebellion of HAL, and Dave Bowman’s destruction of the computer’s personality module. Dave’s arrival and stay somewhere in orbit around Jupiter. Bowman’s aging, and the appearance of  a fetus journeying back towards Earth.
     But there’s more to the movie than its story or its plot structure. It is a celebration of technology, of the Universe, of humankind’s ability to overcome obstacles, and an expression of a mystical faith in some barely imaginable future of humankind. Clark and Kubrick wanted to foster wonder and hope. Wonder at all that human curiosity and skill and art can achieve, and hope that ultimately humans will become better than the warring semi-apes that we are.
     Worth seeing again, despite its datedness and flaws. ****

John Cunningham. The Tin Star (Collier’s, December 4, 1947)

John Cunningham.  The Tin Star (Collier’s, December 4, 1947) The short story adapted for High Noon. As often happens, the movie retains very little of the original. In this case only three pieces remain:  a) the basic situation, in which Jordan, a released murderer returns to revenge himself on Doane, the marshal who arrested him; b) the marshal’s fatalistic acceptance of the coming fight; and c) Jordan’s arrival on the train. The rest is different.

     Toby, the deputy, wants Doane to leave. Doane is a widower, and his first encounter with Jordan occurs at the cemetery. Toby kills Jordan’s brother before the final fight, and kills Jordan while Doane is dying. Doane does not look for a posse. There’s no back story beyond the fact that Doane arrested Jordan, and Jordan wasn’t hanged. Doane tells Toby that being a lawman is a thankless job, a plot and  character point that’s given to the retired marshal in High Noon. But the theme remains: A man cannot run away from a fight, and must risk his life in order to destroy evil. That’s the essence of chivalric romance.

     The story itself is little more than a sketch, focussing almost entirely on Doane, his arthritis, his age, his fatalism, written in the usual pulp style. It’s quite effective, a good example of the quick-bite type of short story that magazines published before TV began to provide this type of light-weight entertainment. That Zinneman and his writers were able to extract its essence, add plausible variations and additions, and create a classic Western, demonstrates that Hollywood craft could rise to the level of art.  **½

The story is no longer available online.

Annie Proulx. Brokeback Mountain (1998)

     Annie Proulx. Brokeback Mountain (1998) Reprint of a New Yorker story. I read about 1/3rd of it and skimmed the rest. The style seems more important than the story, which delineates a homosexual affair between two drifters, both of whom end up loners, losing whatever connection to community they had when they abandon their wives (or vice versa). Raymond Carver I think does a better job of treating such themes. It may be that Proulx intends the story to show that unacknowledged homosexuality exacts a heavy price, but that’s a truism. It may be she wants to show that even among the ill-educated passion flows true and deep, and love hurts. Many New Yorker stories give me the impression, as this one does, that the reader is slumming, perhaps because they are set amidst ads for goods that the characters in the stories will never be able to afford (and may never desire) * (2004)
     Update: in 2005, a movie of the story was released, It won 3 Oscars.

End of the Line (Franzen)

     Jonathan Franzen End of the Line (New Yorker, 11 June 2001) The daughter of a railroad executive gets a summer job in the railroad office, filing signal circuit diagrams. She has a brief affair with an older man working there. The affair affects her less than it affects him; he wants her as much because she is daughter of his boss as for her youth. He and the girl’s father began at the same rank, but he reached his level pretty quickly, and has harboured a grudge against his former colleague ever since. The girl is shocked when he reveals the anger underlying his passion for her, but in the long run it doesn’t touch her. She is insulated from long term effects of his rage by her class and education, which is already equal to his, even though she is still a college student. And besides, she accepted his advances as much for pity, because she thought he needed sex, as for any any affection for him. Sad little study in American class structure. ***