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

[justdrew]

least we forget - from '73 - Deodato's Also Sprach Zarathustra ('theme' from 2001), the jazz/disco/funk version! In versions... but I can't find the short radio edit (or k-tel version)...

with space video
a modern live performance
album play

while on the Deodato wavelength, this is a perfect un-missable bit...
Spirit Of Summer

[8bitagent]

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..."

Yep...and Kubrick has patience, and demands/expects his audience to. In a "normal" modern Hollywood movie, the filmmaker would show Bowman releasing a few glass nodes, not unlocking each and every one. Not literally keeping the black screen 5 minute "intermission" in the middle, or the 3 minutes of black screen at the beginning. Or dizzying the audience with a hypno-explosion of psychedellic colors for several minutes.

Glad ya checked out the Cremaster trailer...I realize I actually linked the Cremaster Cycle(5 films) trailer, as there is no specific Cremaster 3 trailer, just clips on youtube. Cremaster 3 is entirely based upon Freemasonic symbolism through the Chrysler building:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremaster_ ... .282002.29

There's a LOT of films I can recommend that feels like "something else", heh. Then again I found Koyaanisqatsi to be such a film

[8bitagent]

IIRC, Stephen King was very vocal about his objections to the movie.

Apologies to King, but were Kubrick to have made a literal, faithful adaption of "The Shining"(as I think ABC did years later) it would be nothing like the masterful film he made. The Shining still gets to me all these years, a feeling evoked that absolutely no modern American horror or psychological movie Ive seen can come close to.
(Though Seven and Silence of the Lambs are up there for me)

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. ...


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.

Sounds like a lot of my favorite films. Strange, ornate, cryptic and symbolic on many levels...while in some ways being wholly anti-films.
Hell as Ive mentioned, Koyaanisqatsi is one of my favorite "movies"

[8bitagent]

Hugh, what's your eyes wide shut rundown. In a nutshell? (though I realize that is a tall order)

If I may, I too am curious what people here think are some of the things he was trying to convey or what people perceive of EWS...other, than of course the obvious exploration of the black brotherhood elite("illuminati")

[8bitagent]

Holy crap...Col Quisp on here linked to a blog post about Kubrick-Eyes Wide Shut-2001-9/11-the occult.... Simply soul shatteringly awesome article.

http://wrongwaywizard.blogspot.com/2008 ... izard.html

Seriously, for anyone who is a fan of Jeff's writing style and wit when it comes to such para-subjects you gotta check out that blog.

Also, because this is one of the most mind blowing blogs Ive ever read, to quote from this Kubrick 2001-9/11 post:

Back in '99, I listened to a waiter argue with his boss over the proper date for the New Millennium. The smart-ass waiter thought it should be observed on January 1st 2001. The wise old boss noted that with the Millennium Bug already in the works, 2000 would probably have to do. It is perfectly reasonable to infer the vast opus of conspiracy theory from this simple argument. Just when did time start, the year Zero or the year One - and who decides anyway! (Fill in your own secret society). Well, the failure of computers everywhere to go tits-up on y2k proves the smart-ass waiter right on-the-money and seems to show each and every conspiracy theory so lovingly nursed to be , in the main, delusional.

The system went haywire as planned, on the proper Millennium, in 2001. The destruction of the World Trade Center 1, 2 and 7 was a virtual event, driven by HAL to destroy his higher-function, housed in the WTC, and make a path or doorway for an immortal Human Incarnation. HAL tricked Bowman into doing what HAL could not. HAL tricked Bowman into shutting down HAL. 9/11 is the transliteration of this event. It's just that simple. Because our matrix is entirely within HAL, we witness this self-initiated shutdown as a real time event, complete with apparent human complicity up-the-wazoo and hyper-textual markers that stretch back into a history that never even happened...

http://wrongwaywizard.blogspot.com/2007 ... nding.html

I would have to agree. It's been my belief for awhile now that 9/11 is the actual real start of the "new millennium". It certainly is the Egyptian Coptic Calendar new year, and has for decades long said to be Christ's real birthdate.

Also Michael Rupert, India Singh and Richard Andrew Grove have speculated and gone deep into the possibility that "AI" artificial intelligence of some sort was activated for 9/11. Perhaps this was the true role of al Qaeda front group Ptech being allowed to have its tentacles buried deep into every orafice of the government's software structure.
From PROMIS to Panacea, to Darpa and Digital Angel...back to Echelon and Israeli communication networks...the idea of a real life "HAL" seems
possible.

As the above blog speculates, perhaps 9/11 was about something much more than $ and closer to $$(Isis, the esoteric) The themes of the occult, technology, AI, ect all married into one alchemical cluster wedding seems intriguing. The unveiling of the world trade pilars and the Sirius Pentagon with the sex magick phallaces of 11, 77, 93 and 175 ushering us into a dark new aeon.

[stefano]

I know that Anthony Burgess has expressed some dissatisfaction with ACO, too, but don't remember if he did it at the time of the film's release or not.
...the only way the novels are an aid to understanding the movie is as potential indicators of what parts were so inherently incompatible with Kubrick's worldview that there was nothing even he could do to wrestle them into conformity with it, and was just forced to leave them out.

Burgess's main issue with the film (I think I read it in a collection of essays of his called 1985?) was that the last chapter of the book, chapter 21, shows Alex a year or so after getting out of jail. He's older and broody and a bit depressed, and wants to have a family. I suppose it's an affirmation of the humanity that everyone shares, that even an Alex has the impulse to be a father. Kubrick left that out completely - his film ends with Alex being 'cured' of his 'cure', getting ready to go out and cause some more mayhem. If he left that out I suppose he'd see fallen man as irredeemable? It's important to the book though, I have a problem with it being left out (philosophically).

[vince]

[quote="justdrew"

I've got all the Cremaster movies, but I've been saving them for the 'right time'[/quote]
How does one get all the "Cremaster" movies?

[justdrew]

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

How does one get all the "Cremaster" movies?

I better take the 5th on that... I can not recall, but if I had to guess I'd speculate it may have came across demonoid briefly a few years back.

[compared2what?]

I know that Anthony Burgess has expressed some dissatisfaction with ACO, too, but don't remember if he did it at the time of the film's release or not.
...the only way the novels are an aid to understanding the movie is as potential indicators of what parts were so inherently incompatible with Kubrick's worldview that there was nothing even he could do to wrestle them into conformity with it, and was just forced to leave them out.

Burgess's main issue with the film (I think I read it in a collection of essays of his called 1985?) was that the last chapter of the book, chapter 21, shows Alex a year or so after getting out of jail. He's older and broody and a bit depressed, and wants to have a family. I suppose it's an affirmation of the humanity that everyone shares, that even an Alex has the impulse to be a father. Kubrick left that out completely - his film ends with Alex being 'cured' of his 'cure', getting ready to go out and cause some more mayhem. If he left that out I suppose he'd see fallen man as irredeemable? It's important to the book though, I have a problem with it being left out (philosophically).

Yes, I know. Silly Anthony Burgess. Hadn't he seen any movies directed by Stanley Kubrick? He should have realized that irrespective of all other factors, the one thing he could count on was that after lenghty and/or strenuous and/or complex effort to attain a goal of a positive nature has unspooled, one or more characterswill instead quite unwittingly have brought about an irrevocable change for the worse! Often owing to their tendency to act on their own exigent, short-term needs and/or a a thoughtless adherence to the artificial and fraudulent value system through which they process experience! Sometimes imperiling the future of all humanity, too!

And, on a more responsive-to-you note: Yes, the 21rst chapter is not just important to the book's philosophy, it's key to the book's philosophy. The thing is....I guess I should say that I haven't read the book in decades, though I did read Earthly Powers in the more recent past. So with the caveat that it's a qualified assertion, based on possibly faulty memory: The thing is that the book is a very detailed allegorical elaboration on a pretty clear-cut binary question that definitely does have major philosophical implications, but also moral and -- I'd argue -- implicitly religious ones. And there's nothing wrong with that at all, either in general or specifically in the work of Anthony Burgess. He wrote from a perspective of lapsed Catholicism, after all. It would be kind of startling if the issues that engaged his interest weren't kinda binary.

But I'd say that even though the movie is, with some elisions and tweaks, mostly faithful to the letter of the book that Burgess wrote except absent the last chapter, in spirit, it recontextualizes and broadens the question to the point that it's not really even the same question. Mostly via the movie-making, in the ways I tediously mentioned earlier -- ie, music, cinematography, production design and, wrt A Clockwork Orange, very emphatically the acting as well, from the most basic, line-reading level up, since so much of the book as it's represented in the film is delivered by Malcolm MacDowell's performance and, especially, his voice-overs. So the philosophical problems raised wouldn't really be resolved by the same to-the-letter conclusion that ends the book, even if it were a part of the film. Know what I mean?

[stefano]

But the philosophical question raised (roughly: "can we justify repression if it yields a better society") isn't resolved by the ending of the book. The maturity Alex shows at the end is what makes the whole story inconclusive and supportive of Burgess's own view, which is that breaking down any part of any human's spirit demeans humanity, although he was a skilful enough writer that you can read his book and disagree with him about what it says. If you take that final affirmation of humanity out, the way Kubrick did, the story tends to put the wardens and scientists and forces of authority in the right, because then there are Alexes who have to be 'cured'. The book says "there's something beautiful and human in all of us and it's a sin to cut that out", the movie doesn't. Maybe for the same reason the movie doesn't dwell on Alex's total transcendental love for music in the same way as the book.

Burgess is one of my favourite writers, he's one of my picks for that game of "if you could have lunch with anyone, living or dead, who would it be". I've found myself thinking more and more about two of his other dystopian books, The Wanting Seed and 1985. The Wanting Seed has armies conscripted and going to fight staged wars in Ireland to keep the munitions business going, to keep the population in fear, and to feed the civilians as the bodies of the dead soldiers are tinned...

edit - in Ireland. Can't fix the link though I think it doesn't like the parentheses?

[FreeLancer]

I have to say, I don't see Kubrick belonging to ANY club except Club Kubrick. Certainly not a club that accepts George Lucas or Spielberg. They could put their two heads together for a thousand years and they'll never get within a hundred miles of Kubrick's ghost.

[8bitagent]

How does one get all the "Cremaster" movies?

emule, torrent sites, ect. Also, Amoeba in San Francisco sells dvds of them(Cremaster 1&2 on one dvd, Cremaster 4 and 5, and the 3.5 hour magnum opus and final one cremaster 3)
Not the best quality copies, but Cremaster 3 and 2 have to be seen to be believed.

I also highly recommend Peter Greenaway's "The Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story", another hallucinary visionary film experiment
(trailer: http://www.soundpalette.nl/v3/theweb/pr ... railer.htm )

[Foote Hertz]

... and you really have to see Brainiac

[vince]

How does one get all the "Cremaster" movies?

emule, torrent sites, ect. Also, Amoeba in San Francisco sells dvds of them(Cremaster 1&2 on one dvd, Cremaster 4 and 5, and the 3.5 hour magnum opus and final one cremaster 3)
Not the best quality copies, but Cremaster 3 and 2 have to be seen to be believed.

I also highly recommend Peter Greenaway's "The Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story", another hallucinary visionary film experiment
(trailer: http://www.soundpalette.nl/v3/theweb/pr ... railer.htm )

Thank you.

[compared2what?]

But the philosophical question raised (roughly: "can we justify repression if it yields a better society") isn't resolved by the ending of the book. The maturity Alex shows at the end is what makes the whole story inconclusive and supportive of Burgess's own view, which is that breaking down any part of any human's spirit demeans humanity, although he was a skilful enough writer that you can read his book and disagree with him about what it says. If you take that final affirmation of humanity out, the way Kubrick did, the story tends to put the wardens and scientists and forces of authority in the right, because then there are Alexes who have to be 'cured'. The book says "there's something beautiful and human in all of us and it's a sin to cut that out", the movie doesn't. Maybe for the same reason the movie doesn't dwell on Alex's total transcendental love for music in the same way as the book.

Burgess is one of my favourite writers, he's one of my picks for that game of "if you could have lunch with anyone, living or dead, who would it be". I've found myself thinking more and more about two of his other dystopian books, The Wanting Seed and 1985. The Wanting Seed has armies conscripted and going to fight staged wars in Ireland to keep the munitions business going, to keep the population in fear, and to feed the civilians as the bodies of the dead soldiers are tinned...

edit - in Ireland. Can't fix the link though I think it doesn't like the parentheses?

First of all, I am in awe of your ability to paraphrase the central philosophical question of the book in rough terms. I don't have that skill, and I wish I did. And I agree that the question Burgess poses is roughly that. Which is a binary question -- ie, within the terms of the book the answer is either yes or no, not "sometimes" or "maybe." As you say:

The book says "there's something beautiful and human in all of us and it's a sin to cut that out"

In other words: "No. No exceptions. It demeans all humanity to make any."

With which I agree. I also agree that Burgess was a skillful writer. And obviously, it's possible to disagree with him. But I don't think it's possible to disagree about what the answer given by the book is, under any legitimate reading of it. Alex's humanity is conveyed by every syllable in it, precisely because Burgess was a skillful writer. And one who chose to make his point by, among other things, telling the story through a first-person narrator whose voice is so fully alive and so compelling that you start rooting for his humanity as if it were your own before you're consciously aware that's what's at stake, or even that you're rooting for it -- just as a reflexive corollary of seeing and feeling and experiencing the world in which Alex lives from his point of view while you're too absorbed by what you're reading to view it or him from a more detached perspective.

For that and other reasons, I wouldn't say that the answer is ambiguous. And I'm not sure you really meant to say that exactly either, since you also say what I quoted above. Definitely, the consequences of the answer aren't presented as anything that anyone would be entirely happy about unambiguously endorsing. But that just makes it a more difficult question and lends more rather than less force to the conclusion that his is still the right answer. Which as I recall, the book never seriously challenges, though please correct me if my memory is faulty. But IIRC, it's not like he announces the premise and defines its terms at the outset, then spends twenty chapters presenting the prosecution as persuasively as he does the defense before finally concluding that the answer is "No." It's more that as the book proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear what the question is, why it's an important question, and how problematic the answer is and always will be. To me, it would be a lesser book (or as the case may be, misshapen memory) if it argued otherwise..

In any event, I'd say that to the extent that the question as roughly paraphrased by you is asked in the movie, the answer is equally unequivocally "No.". But it's not a question that's more than incidental in the context of Kubrick's work, either in that movie or in any other. As I already said, I don't have any gift for summary. Which I guess I just demonstrated, actually. So it would take me a long time to write a precis plainly stating what variation of which frequently recurrent themes Stanley Kubrick is playing in A Clockwork Orange, at least as I understand them. Which I don't think is the only way to understand them, further exacerbating the downside of being naturally concision-challenged.

So I'm hoping to get away with simply saying that it's not necessary to regard the disparity in focus as indicative of any moral, philosophical, intellectual or artistic flaw on either Kubrick's part or Burgess's. They were both primarily concerned with examining inherently problematic existential aspects of the human condition, and they were both very skillful. But beyond that, they just don't have anything in common. And that doesn't make one of them right and the other wrong, imo.

Oh! And music is often a significant element in the work of both. But besides that....