Black Monolith of Kubrick's 2001: An Esoteric Mystery(9/11)

[orz]

Not to be too nit-picky, but the proportions of the VHS tape (1x4x7.375) don't quite match the very specific proportions of the Monolith, at 1x4x9, the cubes of the first 3 whole numbers.

Oh totally, but it's a really nice visual pun nonetheless I think.

Anyone reading too much into the monolith's meaning should bear in mind that it was originally written as being a transparent block (and before that a tetrahedron) but they couldn't find a way to create such a thing despite several attempts at casting it in lucite etc.

[Luposapien]

Ah, touché! Actually, I thought it was pretty funny too, but I just can't help but be an ass about the little details sometimes.

Of course, if the purpose of this thought exercise is to run with the "Synchromystic" scissors, the fact that they were forced by circumstance into changing the original plans does not necessarily make the connections any less valid. Perhaps more so.

I honestly think these kinds of explorations tell us more about our own inner workings than they do about external ones. But, then again, "as above, so below" and all that jazz.

[MacCruiskeen]

Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick had more than mortal knowledge?

If that's too vague: Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick could see into the future?

[NOTE: I'm not asking whether he was smart or skilful or an artist. Clearly he was all those things.]

[Wombaticus Rex]

Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick had more than mortal knowledge?

If that's too vague: Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick could see into the future?

[NOTE: I'm not asking whether he was smart or skilful or an artist. Clearly he was all those things.]

I believe there is no real distinction between being a smart and skillful artist and being tapped into precognitive powers.

[compared2what?]

Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick had more than mortal knowledge?

If that's too vague: Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick could see into the future?

[NOTE: I'm not asking whether he was smart or skilful or an artist. Clearly he was all those things.]

I believe there is no real distinction between being a smart and skillful artist and being tapped into precognitive powers.

I'd be more comfortable if it were phrased as:

I believe there is no real distinction between the medium in which the mortal and the great work of art interact and an ordinarily inaccessible dimension unconstrained by the limits of time and space.

But in spirit, seconded.

[nathan28]

Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick had more than mortal knowledge?

If that's too vague: Does anyone here actually believe that Stanley Kubrick could see into the future?

[NOTE: I'm not asking whether he was smart or skilful or an artist. Clearly he was all those things.]

I believe there is no real distinction between being a smart and skillful artist and being tapped into precognitive powers.

I'd be more comfortable if it were phrased as:

I believe there is no real distinction between the medium in which the mortal and the great work of art interact and an ordinarily inaccessible dimension unconstrained by the limits of time and space.

But in spirit, seconded.

yeah, seconded with reservations... more later

[barracuda]

Since with each action we move into the future, the act of creation produces the future into which we step.

[FreeLancer]

8bit, I agree with you about 2001-- it's totally paradigm shifting and I'm sure that's exactly what he intended. I find Kubrick scary brilliant. His films work on so many levels. The term genius certainly applies in this case. I also believe that 2001 isn't only an artistic masterpiece-- I think it is an initiatory experience. I think the film itself is the monolith-- the original widescreen format is pretty close to the dimensions of the monolith-- not exact, but close enough. God, what a mind he had.

He also seems like he was pretty well steeped in the western mystery schools.

[8bitagent]

8bit, I agree with you about 2001-- it's totally paradigm shifting and I'm sure that's exactly what he intended. I find Kubrick scary brilliant. His films work on so many levels. The term genius certainly applies in this case. I also believe that 2001 isn't only an artistic masterpiece-- I think it is an initiatory experience. I think the film itself is the monolith-- the original widescreen format is pretty close to the dimensions of the monolith-- not exact, but close enough. God, what a mind he had.

He also seems like he was pretty well steeped in the western mystery schools.

Hell truth be told...I mean Ive seen all of Lynch's films, some pretty f'd up French dramas(like Irreversible), experimental films, ect. I have seen a lot of Kubrick's films, but for some reason never saw 2001.

So I popped in 2001, thinking "eh, it'll probably be lots of dated sets and some overhyped layered themes". Geez...I wasn't prepared for this movie. I dont even know what rating it was, but I have never seen a movie like that. I knew it was a "special" film when its pure black for over 3 minutes in the beginning.

The finale scene, with the old Bowman in this cryptic room, pointing at the monolith staring back at him...and the mind-f'ing hallucinary light show before it. Damn.

Also, The Shining is the most unnerving and frightening film Ive seen.
Most films lose their magic after repeated viewings(Ive seen Seven and Silence of the Lambs plenty of times) but not the Shining.

And man, what about Dr Strangelove? I saw that again in 2006, and thought it was the perfect parable to the neocon regime.

Clockwork Orange is a filthy trip...the Carlos score, the random depravity, the mind control themes.

And of course, Eyes Wide Shut. The tension, the minimalist score.
And I just don't believe Kubrick pulled the "mansion" rituals out of a hat. Im almost convinced Kubrick has intimate knowledge of aspects of the "black brotherhood"...the theme of elites and leaders we'd never suspect(or wouldnt want to) being part of that "illuminati" stuff...too much!

initiatory is definitely the appropriate description when it comes to his films

Btw, anyone heard of or seen Cremaster 3?(speaking of esoteric initiatory films)
trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTwt31GXOOw

[justdrew]

I just like to mention there's also this guy named Arthur C. Clark ...

but yeah, the film... The Film.

the zero G scene with the stewardess walking in the Velcro shoes 'seemingly upside down' around the direction change intersection on the Pan Am shuttle... that's where he really won the audience completely, from that point out, it felt as though he'd filmed it with a time machine, there was zero 'disbelief' every detail thought out and accurate. and the trip across the moon in the hopper... amazingly real seeming moment, the music works so perfectly. I actually had the glue it together model of the pan am shuttle, and the soundtrack early on. It's interesting how so many people see it as a man vs. insane computer movie, the meaning of the monoliths was often glossed over.

Now you'll have to watch 2010...

I've got all the Cremaster movies, but I've been saving them for the 'right time'

[Foote Hertz]

Most films lose their magic after repeated viewings...

If I may, here are a few from my cupboard. Try them. Their Magic stays crunchy in melk even...

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
Vengeance Is Mine
Walkabout
Viy
Saragossa Manuscript
Coup de Torchon
Andrei Rublev
Possession
Don't Look Now

Plenty more.


... last page of a good book ...

DESCENT

The rhythmic clapping resonates inside these walls, which are hard and glossy as coal: Come-on! Start-the-show! Come-on! Start-the-show! The screen is a dim page spread before us, white and silent. The film has broken, or a projector bulb has burned out. It was difficult even for us, old fans who’ve always been at the movies (haven’t we?) to tell which before the darkness swept in. The last image was too immediate for any eye to register. It may have been a human figure, dreaming of an early evening in each great capital luminous enough to tell him he will never die, coming outside to wish on the first star. But it was not a star, it was falling, a bright angel of death. And in the darkening and awful expanse of screen something has kept on, a film we have not learned to see . . . it is now a closeup of the face, a face we all know—

And it is just here, just at this dark and silent frame, that the pointed tip of the Rocket, falling nearly a mile per second, absolutely and forever without sound, reaches its last unmeasurable gap above the roof of this old theatre, the last delta-t.

There is time, if you need the comfort, to touch the person next to you, or to reach between your own cold legs . . . or, if song must find you, here’s one They never taught anyone to sing, a hymn by William Slothrop, centuries forgotten and out of print, sung to a simple and pleasant air of the period. Follow the bouncing ball:

There is a Hand to turn the time,
Though thy Glass today be run,
Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low
Find the last poor Pret’rite one . . .
Till the Riders sleep by ev’ry road,
All through our crippl’d Zone,
With a face on ev’ry mountainside,
And a Soul in ev’ry stone. . . .

Now everybody—

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

( it's all good )

edit: fixed botched GR quote - can't trust those OCR pdfs - but thanks just the same

[8bitagent]

I just like to mention there's also this guy named Arthur C. Clark ...

but yeah, the film... The Film.

the zero G scene with the stewardess walking in the Velcro shoes 'seemingly upside down' around the direction change intersection on the Pan Am shuttle... that's where he really won the audience completely, from that point out, it felt as though he'd filmed it with a time machine, there was zero 'disbelief' every detail thought out and accurate. and the trip across the moon in the hopper... amazingly real seeming moment, the music works so perfectly. I actually had the glue it together model of the pan am shuttle, and the soundtrack early on. It's interesting how so many people see it as a man vs. insane computer movie, the meaning of the monoliths was often glossed over.

Now you'll have to watch 2010...

I've got all the Cremaster movies, but I've been saving them for the 'right time'

Well on the subject of "machines taking over" re: HAL 9000, thats certainly a topic worthy of its own. For some reason, that black monolith is like those Burger King commercials where the "king" just shows up in random places. Creepy. (or, the gnomes of south America)

Oh, Cremaster 3 and 2 youve got to see at least. Those are the two "real films" of the series. Cremaster 2 feels like a Lynch film gone really off the deep end, and Cremaster 3...well, thats something in and of itself.

[Foote Hertz]

No 2001 collection is complete without Jack Kirby's rendering of the story (71MB download), probably dismissed by Kubrick and Clarke as kid stuff. Baa.

You'll want a viewer, like FFView (Mac) or CDisplayEx (Windows)

[FreeLancer]

Man I just watched that Cremaster 3 trailer.... it gave me the same feeling I had when I first saw Kenneth Anger's stuff. Like, this isn't just a film... it's something else.

Speaking of Hal 9000-- I think one of the most heartbreaking scenes in cinema is when Hal starts singing "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer please..."

[compared2what?]

I just like to mention there's also this guy named Arthur C. Clark ...

but yeah, the film... The Film.

the zero G scene with the stewardess walking in the Velcro shoes 'seemingly upside down' around the direction change intersection on the Pan Am shuttle... that's where he really won the audience completely, from that point out, it felt as though he'd filmed it with a time machine, there was zero 'disbelief' every detail thought out and accurate. and the trip across the moon in the hopper... amazingly real seeming moment, the music works so perfectly. I actually had the glue it together model of the pan am shuttle, and the soundtrack early on. It's interesting how so many people see it as a man vs. insane computer movie, the meaning of the monoliths was often glossed over.

Now you'll have to watch 2010...

I've got all the Cremaster movies, but I've been saving them for the 'right time'

Well on the subject of "machines taking over" re: HAL 9000, thats certainly a topic worthy of its own. For some reason, that black monolith is like those Burger King commercials where the "king" just shows up in random places. Creepy. (or, the gnomes of south America)

Oh, Cremaster 3 and 2 youve got to see at least. Those are the two "real films" of the series. Cremaster 2 feels like a Lynch film gone really off the deep end, and Cremaster 3...well, thats something in and of itself.

Well....with the ready concession that interpretation is nothing if it's not subjective:

I'd say that the meaning of the monoliths is not so much glossed over as it is an issue that can't be very meaningfully spoken to directly. It's a metaphorical object, and its meaning is elaborated on by everything in the entire movie. That's the fundamental way in which it's not really a movie version of the Arthur G. Clarke book beyond having a substantially similar plot. To the extent that it even has a plot. Which it barely does.

I'd further say that the movie's meaning (in the conventional sense of the word "meaning") isn't primarily in the conventionally cinematic-meaning-bearing parts of the movie, or at least not in any free-standing or straightforward way. To whatever extent it's a movie that does do any straightforward story-telling, it does it with the music, cinematography, production design, etcetera.

And....while I'd also say that it is, in part, a comment on the traditional received wisdom of the machines-taking-over and/or man-vs.-insane-computer narrative, I don't think that it's just serendipity that the only character in a very long, virtually character-free movie whose humanity you come to know intimately, fully and poignantly enough to feel for him is HAL. Whose fate is to go the way of all human flesh, so to speak. And the proximate occasion of whose demise is pretty much exactly the same as that of the prehistoric human whose death occurs toward the end of "The Dawn of Man," leading to that mind-blowing and meaning-laden match-cut, and the addition of "The Blue Danube"=connoted themes to the "Thus Spake Zarathustra"-connoted themes.

But, you know. That's just what I'd say. And even I would prefer to get my meaning from the movie rather than from what I say.