Cloud Atlas Link

Haskell Moore: ..... No matter what you do it will never amount to anything more than a single drop in a limitless ocean.

Adam Ewing: What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?

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This instantly struck me as the central Kubrick theme of ASO, by ref to what he said to Playboy re "beyond the infinite" [to use the crass expression].

KUBRICK: I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but
not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in
any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can
construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept
the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy
alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are
approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given
a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a
few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the
interaction of a sun's energy on the planet's chemicals, it's fairly
certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It's
reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of
such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some
proportion of such life developing intelligence are high. Now, the sun
is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic
age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the
universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man
but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still
where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of
us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made
in a few millennia -- less than a microsecond in the chronology of the
universe -- can you imagine the evolutionary development that much
older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological
species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal
machine entities -- and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge
from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and
spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence
ungraspable by humans.

At what he calls the basic [Clarke] level the movie shows a "long" advancement of man's "evolution" from ape to spaceman, and it seems most subscribe to that level, especially with the sudden appearance of Starchild like a Catholic Confession to "wipe the slate" of all the EVIL we see.

But the Kubrick level says that was just "a single drop" and logically there are "forms" out there [ie the God thing] that are so advanced that we can not possibly understand them [kinda following Darwin's attempt to explain the conception of time to the finite and limited human mind].

However Kubrick is saying it is not all doom & gloom and we must TRY to advance ourselves no matter how tiny that may be AND pass it on - hence the Zarathustra connection.

His quote is

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

The break in the [eternal recurrence] chain during that one drop is cleverly shown by Moonwatcher making an incredible scientific system [a la Stonehenge] to predict solar eclipses AND passing it on to ape junior [a la Ishango] and finally passing it on to man via the "mutating bone" scene.

Then we see man get it totally wrong where a mission is concocted based on fraudulent evidence and it is [maybe thankfully] not passed on to any "space partners" and ends up a complete waste of space with good old Dave "dying alone, 100 years ago".

But then Kubrick throws in the Starchild with a new burst of Zarathustra to say "OK it was a huge stuff-up but at least America TRIED to supply its own light - just that egos and politics got in the way."

"God is Dead - Man Killed Him"

What Nietzsche was complaining about here with this statement was the complacent German masses at that time in 1880s or so.

What Kubrick has done in this movie is to AGREE with Nietzsche, but Fast-Forward the whole deal some 100 years to the American version of Ultimate Man, the entity Nietzsche complained about in rejecting his Übermensch concept.

So this movie takes the "God substitute" of the American Culture which is Space Fantasy [see my post here on Great God Gun - same horse folks] and creates a Jesus figure in Dave and simply has him "die for our sins".

 More to come!

How Cultures Die, with a Whimper

When Coppola made Apocalypse Now, we are all aware of the long line of associations, nods etc back to Conrad, Conrad back to Dante and all the others that fitted in along the "long journey up a river".  Coppola obviously saw a very close association to the T. S. Eliot 1925 poem The Hollow Men and had his Kurtz choice of Brando read it in full, while blending in the modern words and music of Morrison.

So who better than Jim himself to set the vibes of what is going on here.

"Unless we face and accept and transcend The Horror we will always be eaten by its shadow. Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now presented this macarbre and filthy yet heroic and beautiful journey in a fearfully intense way and Eliot's poem The Hollow Men, rendered with tender menace by Brando in Apocalypse Now (but cut back in the final version) absolutely stuns me and always has because it speaks to the very real fear we – unless life was very loving and sheltered – will have to face up to and go beyond – or be constantly weakened by this lack of dealing with it – or worse become shallow deniers…the nice are usually the worst! The strange thing is it makes me feel immensely calm and secure – that someone makes this that is so real, yet so ungraspable,  for so many – explicit and hauntingly beautiful! j.m."

But in 1969 Kubrick had already done his own version of How Cultures End [the American one]

So here is the Utube I used as the audio, which has the words as well.  It is amazing, same as the playing of Kurtz, how Brando can give such feeling to words without neeeding to understand the meaning - eg nobody told him "rose" was a noun.

Of course the poem is very much directly related to Apocalypse Now, but I wonder just how much inspiration Coppola got from 2001 A Space Odyssey, ie being able to see THROUGH the Clarke space candy facade [rat's coat?] of the "basic level" as Kubrick calls it, and as Morrison says above "ungraspable for so many".

I don't think it is any coincidence that the Brando reading and Hollow Dave's "Last Supper" in ASO were the same length, saving me any editing to speak of.  And maybe I got lucky that the "supplication from a dead man's hand" happens just as Red Dave becomes Black Dave and sits down under the picture of his own "crucifixion" hanging from a tree with wailing women stretching their hands up to him as if HE is The Monolith [raised stone images].

I could go on for a long time about the other associations but suffice to say "The Shadow" is the key to understanding the main concepts, explaining WHY the shadow from the eclipse of the sun which Moonwatcher was ABLE to predict with more accuracy than HAL is the "main item" of the movie.  So please watch and listen to get the vibes of what this all means "in the real world" as Penny Lane would say.

Using the Music to Convey the Story

We hear a lot of twaddle about what a genius Kubrick was because, eg, he films exactly down the center of a corridor, spaceship or whatever, when in fact HTFE would you do it?

For mine his genius is in both his music selection and then in the way he uses it, and in 2001 ASO we see this from the very start with the black screen and "black music" to set a black mood.

But then from his vast musical knowledge he selects what was to that time an almost unknown piece of music, ie the initial "fanfare" called Sunrise from Also Sprach Zarathustra, which he repeats twice more in the movie AT appropriate times.

The music has two "false starts" or "yes, this could BE it" statements followed by a third conclusive statement of "this IS it" joining into the triumphant statement to end the piece.

Watch the sequence in the movie if you will, after the initial darkness is punctuated by the MGM announcement.

The music STARTS at the exact moment the Moon slides down from top of screen and the FIRST statement is also exactly as BOTH the Earth and Sun begin to appear, showing the perfect alignment needed for an eclipse.

Then the SECOND statement heralds half the Sun exposed (behind a Waxing Crescent Earth) and the disappearance of the Moon totally from the bottom of the screen.

The Final statements have the full Sun separating from the Earth.

Now one might say (most do) that it is all just "artistic" but IMHO there are some most important "things" going on here (especially compared to the next instance of the music with MoonWatcher) but that is the subject of a far more detailed post.

My point here is to appreciate the expertise required in getting all that "sound & vision" to line up in space and time, and maybe I am more focused on the difficulty having tried to do some similar editing in MovieMaker.

This is the "Trailer" for my new App about The River Thames in England at Thames 'N All and uses the same music to introduce Old Father Thames to the viewer - after a bit of Conrad/Coppola lead-in.

The Great God Gun

On first seeing this movie at about age 65 I was totally UNDERwhelmed by the laborious detail of American "space candy", knowing how Kubrick despised such matters, SO I was taken back to 1961 doing my final High School exam in English [subject] in Australia and the Essay The Great God Gun, but try as I may to Google it I got nowhere.

But just now I finally managed to find it here

The academics who decided how to "learn us culture" back in 1961 had found a collection of essays but had decided that most were in fact not Essays but Articles, so the exam paper question we were primed all year to answer said:

1.  The "Collection of Essays" contains many entries that might be better classified as Articles.  Discuss, giving examples, the difference between the two literary forms.

We were primed as to best example of an Essay being The Great God Gun, and as you read it you will see why I had the flashback when watching this movie, reinforced by the general opinion in forums that the great majority of "sheeple" [or Ultimate Men] did NOT see any deeper meaning than the "basic" Clarke [Darwin ascribed] version of "dumb ape gets smart and becomes man and man goes to Jupiter".

But I had not remembered [after 50 years] that the author had continually reverted back to the comparison to "the savage", so having just now read the Essay again I am even more firmly convinced that this is where Kubrick got his inspiration to put this movie together in the way he did, with two DISTINCT "sides of the fence".  I see this as an example of the same style Kubrick uses to invite ridicule of his apes but at same time agreeing with Nietzsche that the DUMB one is man.

"The savage, we are told, is misguided enough to "bow down to wood and stone." Poor savage! If we could only take him, with his childlike intelligence, into our temple to see the god that the genius and industry of civilised man has created, a god so vast that a hundred men could not lift him, of such incredible delicacy that his myriad parts are fitted together to the thousandth, the ten-thousandth, and even the hundred-thousandth of an inch, and out of whose throat there issue thunders and lightnings that carry ruin for tens of miles—how ashamed the poor savage would be of his idols of wood and stone! How he would abase himself before the god of the Christian nations!"

Stations of the Cross

Sorta goes with Phases of the moon.

However when I first saw this movie 2 years or so back I was immediately taken back 65 years to when, being taken to church [Catholic] by my father [who art in Heaven] I was fascinated by the Stations of the Cross down both walls of the church.  They were of the "carved" type [ie not just paintings] and were quite impressive.

So when I woke from the boring Timothy Leary psychedelic LSD sequence and saw Dave [now in black] seated under the picture of a man in red seemingly hanging from a tree, the "burglar alarm" [if you will] that was ringing loud and clear was that this was a Kubrick version of The Last Supper, and of course it further developed that way, right down to the Judas spilling of the salt.

 The one I had in mind was Station #12 which I called the wailing women, and here is a typical depiction:

 Note the outstretched arms of the distressed woman, and if we compare to ASO we see:

 We have the same type of wailing women and outstretched arms.  The man is in the same plane but is clearly 3 feet higher and his head is slumped forward as for someone who has been hung.  And when we first see Dave in black here his head is slumped right down towards the table as if he is already dead.

I will try to add some video but the issue is these 4 paintings line the side walls of the room as for the Stations of the Cross.  They are based on the idea Kubrick got from the Dorchester Hotel with 4 paintings.  So IMHO he has adapted painting #4 into the one above which is where Dave in red walks towards, sits down and becomes Dave in black, as his life "passes before him" Lester Burnham style.

About Skulls and Eclipses

Please see this video re the Ape segment of Part 1

Comments to follow [if needed]