The Concept of Time in 2001: A Space Odyssey
by
Rishi S. Ramnath
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
December 2003 Copyright by Rishi S. Ramnath 2003 The Concept of Time in 2001: A Space Odyssey
by
Rishi S. Ramnath
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Oliver Buckton, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of A11s and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree of Master of Arts.
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hy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters ...... -.~4£
Division of Research and Graduate Studies Date ABSTRACT
Author: Rishi S. Ramnath
Title: The Concept of Time in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Oliver Buckton
Degree: Master of Arts
Year: 2003
The concept of time in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey is examined from social, biological, psychological, and spiritual perspectives. In Arthur C.
Clarke's novel, his version of the film, he treats the nature of time as a cyclical process.
He eventually explains that the notion of physical time is non-existent or an impermanent illusion. While Clarke's novel interprets time, the film projects and manipulates the nature of space and time, which spectators may experience as reality. Time's direction can be viewed or experienced as a cycle from an Eastern philosophical perspective.
However, a Western interpretation requires a compromise between two separate directions of time, one as a cycle, the other as linear. The film and novel ultimately negates the direction of linear time through the appearance of the mysterious monolith, which transcends and reincarnates human beings. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter l: The Cycle of Biological, Psychological, and Evolutionary Time .... 1
Chapter 2: The Illusion of Cyclical Time ...... 11
Chapter 3: Clarke, Cycles within Cycles and the Void ...... 17
Chapter 4: Time's Origin as Vibrati on and the Mind Outside of Time ...... 22
Chapter 5: The Objective and Subjective Nature of Time ...... 26
Chapter 6: Artificial and Rhythmic Time-keeping ...... 31
Chapter 7: Linear Time and the Western Perspective ...... 35 The Concept of Time in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Chapter 1: The Cvcle o(Biological, Psychological, and Evolutionary Time.
Interpretations on the nature of the cosmos vary depending on culture, religion, and individual. Many cultures and people thus have similar yet different interpretations on the concept of time. Aristotle first raised the issue of whether time exists without consciousness. In the eleventh century AD, the Persian philosopher A vicenna doubted that physical time existed, arguing that time exists only in the mind due to memory and expectation. In the eighteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that time and space are forms that the mind projects upon the external things-in-themselves. By the twentieth century, Einstein argues time and space are united into a four-dimensional space-time, and the observer's perception of
"space" and "time" depends on his or her state of motion. Modern physicist Steven Hawking's theory suggests that the curvature of space-time is infinite, thus everything exists in one singular point - Singularity. Religion and culture also attempt to define space and time. Eastern religions/cultures such as Hinduism and Taoism view time as cyclical and illusory while western religions such as Catholicism and Christianity conceptualize linear time, in which all things have a beginning and progress to an end. Both eastern and western cultures also suggest that God or the Absolute exists outside a/the temporal world where time holds no meaning. The human concept of time is a complex mix of innate and learned. To operate in civilization, individuals must coordinate three time-worlds; the biological one they inherit; the psychological one they experience, and the cultural or social one they live in. While science, philosophy, and religion seek to define time, the arts attempt to express it. Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001 : A Space Odyssey expresses time through camera movement and shot duration amongst many other
techniques. The medium of cinema allows Kubrick to create and manipulate his audience's
spatial and temporal experience. When examined closely, the film mimics and expresses time as
cyclical. A scientific and spiritual perspective is also imposed by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
who wrote the novel "200 1: A Space Odyssey," which is his own version of the film based on
the co-authored script. The cyclical notion of time and its non-existence (void) in the film may
be understood from a western or eastern view of time, though a western interpretation requires a
compromise between two separate directions of time, one as a cycle, the other as linear.
Before exploring the film's meditation on time, it is important to define what is meant or
implied by the word 'time.' A dictionary tells us that time is a system of measuring the passing
moments of our existence (Webster, 239). Time is then a measurement of our waking,
conscious, sentient, and mental experience of the world spatially evolving. When time and space
are linked as space-time (four dimensional) cinema becomes a medium that reflects and
manipulates our experience of the physical world of space-time. Albert Einstein wrote that space
has three dimensions/measurements: height, length, and width. The universe of space and time
(fourth dimension) are inseparable and together form the continuum of space-time. Since time is
relative or in other words, elastic then space-time is, too, and the continuum expands and
· contracts throughout a finite yet unbounded cosmos/universe (Constable, 58). The cinematic
apparatus projects film at twenty-four frames per second, which creates a flicker fusion of light.
The retina in our eyes receives the light so quickly that we interpret the twenty-four frames as a
unified image (sense of realism) rather than twenty-four distinct images. This then places
spectators in a spatial and temporal illusion, which we often interpret as reality.
2 The impression of realism is further manipulated with the convention of continuity editing in cinema. In Susan Hayward's Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, she defines continuity editing as a strategy in conventional film practice that ensures narrative continuity and creates the perceptual illusion of cinema. In editing, the filmmaker avoids attention being drawn to the way in which the story gets told. The editing appears invisible, and as such offers a seamless, spatially and temporally coherent narrative (Hayward, 57). This is accomplished through match cutting, point-of-view shots, sound bridges, movement, proper lighting, fades, and various other techniques of conventional filmmaking. This practice in cinema gives the spectator an impression of realism or a sense of unitary vision (film world appears as reality).
Unlike conventional movies, 2001: A Space Odyssev is very patient and almost objective with how the audience experience spatial and temporal manipulations. For example, the film provides various long takes, that is, shots that last a lengthy amount of time. In one scene, a space pod performs the simple task of opening a spacecraft's door. Most conventional films would cut directly to the main action (opening of the door). However, Kubrick forces us to see the action in actual duration from beginning to end perhaps expressing the subtle and graceful movement of objects in zero gravity.
In another scene, we see the astronauts approaching a buried monolith below the lunar surface. The camera (hand-held) follows them from behind. The shot is uninterrupted by a transition (i.e. cut or dissolve) as Kubrick perhaps attempts to allow spectators to feel the real time impression of anxiety when approaching the mysterious. Unlike conventional/mainstream filmmakers, Kubrick doesn' t rely on the cut but rather allows his shots to dictate a closer sense of actual space and time rather than creating a cinematic illusion for the purpose of narrative realism. Kubrick has stated, "My intent for the film was to be an intensely subjective experience
3 that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does ... you're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film" (Kagan, 145).
Apart from technique, the film studies the subject of time from the dawn of humankind, our pre historic man-ape mentality, to our sophisticated modern space age, and infinitely beyond.
Kubrick covers the subject of time from biological, psychological, socio-cultural, and spiritual perspectives.
The film's pace of cutting, camera movement, tempo of movement within the shot, and classical soundtrack (Ligeti, Strauss, etc.) provides a cinematic universe that unfolds in a serene way. The overall rhythm seems to mimic the universe or nature's rhythm. Many shots throughout the film range anywhere from 10-20 seconds allowing objects in space to float, turn, and move at a graceful or harmonious pace. One shot of the main spaceship taking its course lasts about 20 seconds, which is very unusual in conventional filmmaking. However, Kubrick is more concerned about experimenting with the film medium spatially and temporally, attempting to perhaps ultimately reflect the idea of infinity or eternity. The cyclical notion of time may be interpreted in the film and novel, but Kubrick also leaves room for a western/linear interpretation of time's direction in one specific scene, which I shall discuss later.
There are four parts to the film, each part dealing with a different aspect of time and evolution. The film covers pre-historic man, evolved man (space travelers), beyond the infinite, and higher or transcended man. While Clarke's novel builds a series of clear connections between six parts, the film version compresses the action of the novel, omitting expository scenes and narration, and creating, in effect, a series of ellipses. An ellipsis is a film technique that refers to periods of time that have been left out of the narrative (Hayward, 8 I). Kubrick wants his audience to fill in the gaps through a combination of visual attentiveness and
4 subliminal perception. He first uses an ellipsis by the end of the first part of the film ("The
Dawn of Man") as a transition from the pre-historic age to the space-age ("Jupiter Mission"). In the first shot, a man-ape releases a bone (primitive tool), letting it fly upward, spinning, turning, and then the direction and tempo of the white bone flying are matched by a cut to an orbiting white satellite. While four hundred million years of film narration is omitted, the two spliced images provide the idea that we have evolved from using primitive tools to more sophisticated instruments.
The opening part of the film titled "The Dawn of Man" tells us that we use the tool to create, sustain and destroy. The images that Kubrick cuts together attempt to portray a period in which earth's living creatures were in a dire struggle for survival. We see the life cycle of the man-ape: waking up, eating grass, scratching and chattering in groups, cowering from carnivores. In the dark a leopard, which earlier attacked one man-ape is seen guarding the carcass of a zebra with glowing eyes. The vegetarian man-apes are then seen huddling near caves with fear and insecurity as they rest for the night. Kubrick's desolate scenic shots provide the idea that on this continent, which is now known as Africa, the battle for existence is reaching a climax.
The film's jump cut from a pre-historic period to the modern space age links two different ways in which humans experience time. Prior to the appearance of the mysterious black monolith, which sparks the man-apes (Australopithecine) with intelligence to use the tool, evolve and gain control over their environment, time is expressed by the sun. Kubrick cuts away to images of the sun rising and setting over African landscape as the man-apes are seen sleeping and awakening in a struggle to survive. After the man-apes are sparked with intelligence and begin human's first evolutionary leap, Kubrick shows the once starving man-apes now eating an
5 abundance of meat and using the bone as a weapon to attack another tribe of man-apes. The tool
is thus a means to creating (food), sustaining (survival), and destroying (killing).
In discovering the tool, we have attempted to gain more and more control over our
environment. We now have digital clocks and calendars as instruments, which work to
coordinate the activities and events that take place amongst people in civilization. "The Jupiter
Mission" illustrates our social/cultural understanding of time in further detail, which I will touch
on later. However, it is first important to better understand how the subject of time is treated in
"The Dawn of Man" sequence.
Since this sequence deals with pre-historic humans, we can discuss the subject of our
primitive sense of time, that is our biological and to some extent psychological sense of time in
light of evolution. The Theory of Evolution (sometimes referred to as macroevolution) states that
all living things, all species, have come from a single ancestor through a process of natural
selection of descent with modification over a long period of time. Darwin proposed that kinds of
animals (species) should be classified on the basis of ancestry, in the form of a family tree. The
most recent species to evolve would be like twigs at the ends of ancestral branches. These
branches are attached to larger branches of still older ancestors, and then to a trunk representing the first living form from which all have evolved (qtd. in "Creation"). From an evolutionary
perspective, the man-apes may be seen as very weak and fearful, less evolved or like a dying
twig. Kubrick's crosscutting of the sun rising and setting or, more accurately put, the earth's
rotation of day/night hints that there is a continuous pattern or repeated cycle of man-ape's
struggle to survive.
In Anthony Aveni's Empires of Time, he says that in evolution, humans feel time not
only as an endless flow of metronomic beats but also as a kind of rhythmic surge, a reoccurring
6 pattern we can trace to our very origins, to an age before we could call ourselves human beings when we came out of the sea. Aveni also notes that it is well known that the life cycles of marine organisms respond to the ebb and flow of the tides, perhaps a universal rhythm. And, the words 'time' and 'tide' are derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root word, 'tid', meaning season or hour (Aveni, 13-14). In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick crosscuts the scenes of the man apes daily struggling with scenery of the sun rising and setting over the desolate African landscape to perhaps show that the sun is their only way of sensing time or change. The man apes response to the environmental change is poor, and Kubrick's crosscutting seems to hint that they are in need of some sort of awakening. Time is of the essence for their survival. And, time in this sequence represents our biological sense of time, that is, how we respond to our biological rhythms (eating, sleeping, breathing etc.) The sun and seasonal/environmental change was our only clock or way of measuring spatial-temporal evolution in pre-historic and earlier time periods.
The first appearance of the monolith (Doorway to enlightenment or higher intelligence) by the end of this sequence operates like an alarm clock that literally awakens the man-apes in the morning. We hear loud eerie sounds composed by Gyorgi Ligeti as the man-apes gather around its mystical presence. The monolith and eerie sounds also consciously awaken them as they soon learn better how to face survival.
In Empires of Time, Aveni poses the question, "How is the connection between life cycles (internal biological timer) and universal rhythm established?" (Aveni, 21). In one theory, he mentions that most biological rhythms are duplicates of nature's basic time periods-the day, month and year, all of which have their origins in the rotation of the earth and the movement of the sun and the moon. Every living matter has the capacity to develop its own internal,
7 chemically or elemental based timing system. Aveni goes on to say that this theory is sensible
considering that the theory of evolution teaches that mechanisms of natural selection favor the
survival of the organism that achieves an adaptive advantage. That is, every successful class of
living organism needs to inherit and further develop an accurate biological clock so that it can
know when to anticipate environmental change better than its competitors (survival of the
fittest). In contrast, another theory proposes that all biological timing depends on cosmic stimuli.
Organisms oscillate with natural geophysical frequencies because they respond directly to
changes in the forces of an all-pervasive environment.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the man-apes first respond poorly as they rely on grains for
food and fail to adapt. This response favors Aveni's second theory, which suggests that our
biological clock responds directly to environmental change. However, the monolith's spark of
intelligence soon allows the man-apes to gain great advantage and this favors Aveni's first
theory, which poses that every successful class of living organism needs to inherit and further
develop an accurate biological clock to survive. By crosscutting between man-apes life cycle and
the day/night cycle, Kubrick dictates that time in its biological sense follows a cyclical pattern
with species evolving and surviving by the spark of a greater force (The mysterious monolith).
Kubrick also expresses a sense of psychological time when one man-ape learns how to
use a bone as a weapon or tool. In this scene, a man-ape, the first awakened by the monolith, is seen rooting about some bones, which are the remains of an attacked animal. Kubrick interpolates a shot of the monolith, which appeared earlier as the man-ape's point-of-view when discovering the monolith. The shot is low-angle and captures the image of the sun, moon, and monolith aligned. We get the impression that the man-ape is remembering and aligning thoughts, or contemplating. The man-ape then grasps one of the skeleton bones in his hand and, in slow motion, brings it crashing down on the animal's skull before him. As he delivers more blows on the animal's bones, Kubrick intercuts shots of a live animal being felled by similar blows.
Psychological time can be perceived in that the first shot of the man-ape is a present image in the film's world. The second shot of the remembered image of the monolith is the psychological past both in the film world and during viewing. Like man-ape, we remember the image. The following shots alternates between images of the present (man-ape bashing skeleton) with
images of man-ape's future (man-ape killing animals) and back to man-ape's present.
Linking past, future, and present, Kubrick achieves mimicking a sense of psychological
time, which also takes on a sort of cyclical pattern, in that we are always experiencing the
present, which is constantly becoming our past and future. The psychological pattern of
temporal experience is then: present, future, past, present, and so on in cycle. Our future potential
is unlimited considering Robert Anton Wilson's "Clarke's Law" that any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic. A technology thousands, millions, or billions of
years advanced beyond ours is possible considering the stars/suns we view in the night sky are
billions of years older than our local sun, which we use to measure daily, seasonal, and
astrological cycles (Wilson, 26). The only actual time in our categorization of time's various
cycles of evolution appears to be the present, which we experience as now.
According to Aristotle, if we allow that the now (present moment) is a part of time, we
are committed to the view that temporal stretches, e.g., intervals of time such as an hour or a day,
are made up of points. However, Aristotle argues (and here he exploits the analogy between a
temporal interval and a straight line) that a temporal interval is no more composed of points than
is a spatial interval, and for the same reasons, a continuous stretch is not pointlike (qtd. in
9 Bradie). The existence of time is put into serious doubt here. The past and future don't exist and the now, which does exist, is not a part of time. How, then, can time exist if none of its parts do?
Kubrick's cinematic universe portrays time as cyclical yet illusory altogether, that is, the physical universe of space-time only appears to be real. He accomplishes this mainly in the Star
Gate sequence by focusing on the eye as a sensory organ of perception and allowing the narrative's spatial and temporal world to appear discontinuous, therefore not measurable or point-like. Unlike conventional filmmakers, Kubrick tries to show that the nature of space-time is illusory. First however, we must note how the universe itself may be viewed as an illusion.
10 Chapter 2: The Illusion of Cyclical Time.
Plato argues that all of the objects of our senses-the world of space and time as we know it-are only imperfect, impermanent examples of pure forms that reside in a world of their own outside time and space. According to Plato, a line drawn on a page, even with a straightedge, is never perfectly straight or one-dimensional (since the pencil mark on the paper has some thickness). The only real line exists as an idea or an essence, from which all the lines humans make and see are imperfect copies. Plato also believed that every person carried innate knowledge of the other, time-less world of forms in "memories" from before birth, since each soul or consciousness resided in that perfect eternal realm before descending into a spatial temporal human lifetime (Constable, 40-41). As Peter Bowman's space pod dives into a blazing, wheeling carnival of light and motion, Kubrick crosscuts (alternates) between tinted images of landscapes full of crags, mesas, precipices, molten rivers, and close-ups of Bowman's eyes rapidly blinking. Throughout this scene, our sense of time becomes illusory for nothing appears to be real or continuous in terms of duration of images. Close-up shots of Bowman's pupils are seen in various tints of color and are juxtaposed with shots of canyons and mesas also in tinted color. Along with the tempo of cutting, which alternates between short and long durations spectators are not provided with the usual feeling of being in the film, that is, in the narrative's spatial and temporal world. In this sense, Kubrick provides that our eyes or sensory experience of space and time are ultimately illusory or an impermanent example of Plato's idea of an eternal realm.
The film proposes an ordering of the universe in which the mysterious monoliths have masters that are unexplained mentors, like the Gods the Greeks invented to replace the terrifying omnipotent unknown. Unlike the Greeks, Kubrick doesn't create attractive, companionable
11 Gods in man's image, however he can suggest a relationship of human to Gods, and even how humans may become Gods by making the monolith an advancement of consciousness and having Bowman reincarnate as a Star Child (divine entity). Kubrick frames the monolith from almost every angle throughout the film. However, on both occasions that humankind is enlightened (man ape with bone/tool and Bowman lying in bed), the monolith is framed from a low angle thus suggesting its strength and mystical powers. In this way, Kubrick achieves his own version of "the Greek Miracle," showing what humankind is and can be, making humans at least potentially the center of the universe (Kagan, 164 ). Kubrick emphasizes a sense of cyclical time, the transformation of human reincarnated into a God, back to human, back to a God again, and so on. Star Child is God-like in that he's at the center of the universe, ultimately eternal and humanity's savior. The notion that we are not already God-like in the present is therefore an illusion, which the monolith allows us to transcend.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick ultimately attempts to provide a space-time cinematic umverse, which operates like a giant hurricane with wind circulating within itself rapping around a calm eye at the center or like a spinning bicycle wheel, in which all spokes are unified at one point. We see various shots of rotating objects such as pod doors, satellites, Hal's eye, and the universe itself (i.e. whirling gases, galaxies, etc). The ultimate force behind this rotation/movement seems to be mysterious and Kubrick expresses the notion is illusory by implying that movement is perhaps actually still, that is, everything only appears to move, because of our relative reference point (earth) in an objective space-time universe. For example, in one scene, the camera follows an astronaut exercising as he jogs round a part of the spaceship, which resembles a gerbil-wheel. The scene shows that the human concept of space-time is an illusion. Though the astronaut/we appear to be making progress in space-time, in a sense, he/we
12 are not moving anywhere since Kubrick's viewers are unable to locate the astronaut's place on the wheel. We are unable to identify whether the wheel, the astronaut, or the camera is moving round.
In another scene, a flight stewardess is seen entering a round shaped rotating door. We see her walk from the lower to the top of the round door where she (now upside down) begins to enter another room. In the following shot, the frame appears upside down and gradually turns round back to conventional framing of the stewardess as she enters. Here, Kubrick emphasizes that the notion of up may be seen as down and down may be seen as up. Likewise, the past may be seen as the future and the future as the past.
Space-time may be viewed as cyclical yet not real in that we are subjects providing reference points within the curvature of space-time. The mysterious force that seems to tame this cyclical movement is what Clarke refers to in his novel as a void (i.e. like a hurricane's eye), which is represented by the monolith in the film. The void carries spiritual and scientific implications, which Clarke seems to unify. He also seems to visualize a universe in which time's real nature can be understood as eternal, that is, as cyclical yet simultaneously non-existent and without beginning or end (void). Before focusing more on Kubrick's cinematic techniques, it is important to understand how Clarke treats the notion of time, in the novel, which the film borrows from. Both Clarke and Kubrick attempt to say the same thing about the nature of time, however, they deal with two different mediums. While literature relies on narrative structure and verbal explanation, cinema may interpret, project, and manipulate the illusion of space-time.
2001: A Space Odyssey is most concerned with presenting movement in space and its duration. The film reflexively explores the necessary coordinates of cinematic creation (space and time), within a modernist conception of narrative. That is, it is less reliant on the word and
13 offers a dedramatized presentation, visual abstraction, unconventional characters and performance styles, and no narrative closure (Falsetto, 49). Characters all seem to be focused on logic and show very few human emotions. While tanning, in one scene, Frank Poole pays no visual attention to his parents wishing him a happy birthday on a picture-phone. In addition,
Poole and Bowman are always in agreement and their conversations primarily deal with operations and duties. The only genuine human-like interaction takes place between the characters and HAL (a computer). In one scene, Poole thankfully compliments HAL after an intense game of chess during one of his breaks. The monolith's mystery at the end of the film leaves us with an open-ended narrative. Therefore, the merged viewer/we are left with a feeling of perpetual duration and lack of closure. Clarke's novel, on the other hand, explains the nature of the monolith's mystery, therefore, an inner temporal experience is verbally translated to the reader and narrative closure is provided.
Bowman who reaches a final destination and becomes triumphant provides the novel's closure. Clarke writes, "Now, at last, the headlong regression was slackening; the wells of memory were nearly dry. Time flowed more and more sluggishly, approaching a moment of stasis: as a swinging pendulum, at the limit of its arc, seems frozen for one eternal instant, before the next cycle begins. The timeless instant passed; the pendulum reversed its swing. In an empty room, floating amid the fires of a double star twenty thousand light years from Earth, a baby opened its eyes and began to cry" (Clarke, 291). Bowman's experience of the cyclical nature of time through translation doesn't allow readers to directly experience what the character experiences, the incessant and cyclical flow of time. Though Bowman's destiny is triumphant as he is left with unlimited power, readers are left with an interpretation of time rather than the actual inner experience.
14 In the film version, Bowman (as an old dying man) penetrates the monolith and screen thus the monolith's inner darkness (void) comes outward to our next shot of Star Child (embryo, womb, or sun/star) next to earth. Bowman (human) is now Star Child, that helping hand to a fallen consciousness (humans). The embryo framed near earth is a brilliant image because the
Star Child is a human embryo (us). Therefore, earth/we and Star Child are one in the same; the only difference is level of consciousness and place in time. Through skillful editing, Kubrick translates Bowman's inner experience of duration and transformation directly to his audience who merge with the images on screen. Bowman's mental experience of time is evident mainly through Kubrick's use of point-of-view shots, camera-stills, and movement.
In Mario Falsetto's Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis, he mentions that in the Star-Gate sequence, swirling gases and colored oils create abstract patterns within the frame. The shapes bend and shift in slow but constant movement. It is difficult to determine how much of the movement is within the frame and how much is the result of the moving camera
(Falsetto, 50). Kubrick heightens our sense of space-time for we can't determine whether we/Bowman or the images in space are moving. Time/duration becomes purely subjective for the viewer. We are free to experience the images and gradual movement/change as we wish.
Viewers and Bowman can't place points in space-time, because the images we see do not appear as "earlier" and "later" but rather as unidentifiable locations in outer space. The film's language absorbs us into Bowman's inner state of consciousness and his experience of time.
The radical nature of Kubrick's achievement stems in part from the idea that spatial and temporal ambiguities and movements in space are fascinating to view on their own, with little narrative purpose. The film's 141-minute running time contains little more than forty minutes of dialogue. Overall, the film has a narrative, but one that is completed through spatial/temporal
15 recognition by the v1ewer, and the triumphant closure of Richard Strauss's Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.
16 Chapter 3: Clarke, Cycle within Cycles and the Void
In Ancient Greek mythology, time was viewed cyclically and the Greeks had faith in
"eternal recurrence," that every event that had ever occurred, and that every life that had ever been lived, would take place over and over again. Friedrich Nietzsche defined eternal recurrence as the great dice game of.existence, in which one must pass through a calculable number of combinations/events. In infinite time, every possible combination would at some time or another be realized; more: it would be realized an infinite number of times. And since between every combination and its next recurrence all other possible combinations would have to take place, and each of these combinations conditions the entire sequence of combinations in the same series, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world is a circular movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game in infinitum
(qtd. in McDonald). Clarke's Star Child returns in time to a place he was before. Therefore,
Clarke implies that the past may be returned to. He writes, "He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies-and history as men knew it would be drawing to
a close" (Clarke, 297). From the subjective view of humans on earth, time is coming to an end.
For star child (higher consciousness), he has retuned in time to save the present moment. In this
set up, 'eternal reoccurrence' and consciousness are tied together, thus Star Child and his place
in time are also tied.
This is further evident as Clarke goes on to write, "A thousand miles below, he became
aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The
feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky.
Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though
17 he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something" (Clarke, 297). The scientific-poetic meaning of "200 1: A Space Odyssey" is a concept of evolution, with an extraterrestrial intelligence or higher consciousness appearing to give a helping hand whenever humans seem to be at a dead end, by making a basic change in consciOusness. Since Bowman is reincarnated into Star Child, the two are the same consciousness therefore part of a continuous experience of time (eternity).
The end of Clarke's novel provides a verbal explanation as to what eternity appears to be.
He writes, "And here he wished to be, on the far side of the chasm in the sky, this serpentine band of darkness, empty of all stars. He knew that this formless chaos, visible only by the glow that limned its edges from fire-mists far beyond, was the still unused stuff of creation, the raw material of evolutions yet to be. Here, time had not begun; not until the suns that now burned were long since dead would light and life reshape this void" (Clarke, 295). The "Big Bang
Theory" implies that there was a beginning to the cosmos, that all of matter exploded in the beginning from a concentrated super-atom (Ronan, 179). We then ask, "What came before the big bang? And, did space and time exist previously?" In an eternal cosmos, such questions are nonsensical considering 'eternal' is without beginning or end. The void from a scientific view represents a mysterious force behind a universe that moves within itself. In Richard Lehan's The
City in Literature, he says that the universe has been constituted from a primordial particle willed by this force. The particle has expanded to the outer limits of the universe, from which it has the tendency to return inward to its source (void). As the universe expands, it experiences growth; as it collapses into itself it experiences unity (Lehan, 171 ). Matter thus desires its own entropic destruction: everything is wearing down to a final unity, which may be understood as a void.
18 The void in which Bowman resides consciously is discussed by Swami Prabhupada in
Bhagavad-Gita as it is. Prabhupada explains that apart from the separate existence of the soul, the material elements remain un-manifested before creation. From this subtle state of non manifestation comes manifestation, just as from ether, air is generated; from air, fire is generated; from fire, water is generated; and from water, earth becomes manifested; and from earth, creatures are manifested. Both in the beginning and at the end, all elements remain on manifested (eternity/void), and only in the middle are they manifested (Prabhupada, 53).
Bowman can see the unused stuff of creation or raw material of evolutions yet to be because he is in the void, which Clarke says can be reshaped. Clarke's second to last chapter titled
"Transformation" explains Bowman's reincarnation and the cyclical nature of time. He writes,
"Star Child scarcely noticed as he adjusted himself to the glow of his new environment. He still needed for a little while, this shell of matter as the focus of his powers. His indestructible body was his mind's present image of itself; and for all his powers, he knew that he was still a baby.
So he would remain until had decided on a new form, or had passed beyond the necessities of matter" (Clarke, 295). Here, Clarke seems to say that the mind is always in the present and matter is like clothing for the mind. In this sense, the creation of matter makes the mind perceive time, that is, change. This particular theory provides possible worlds in which we could reincarnate into ethereal/spiritual beings on spiritual planets, as creatures again on earth, as an unknown form (aliens) in this or other universes, or apart from matter all existing simultaneously in no time.
He goes on to say, "And now it was time to go-though in one sense he would never leave this place where he had been reborn, for he would always be part of the entity that used this double star for its unfathomable purpose" (Clarke, 295). The manifested stage of elements (one
19 side of star) in the Bhagavad-Gita is bound to space-time-evolution, which is perhaps entropic
(perishable) for matter is forever returning to its original source, the on-manifested phase (other side of star) where it awaits an evolution and rebirth. In this sense, the concept of time is both real and unreal. In a physical universe of motion and change (time) appears to be real.
However, Bowman/our higher mind (soul) are shown to exist outside of time in a void.
In ancient Vedic literature of India, the origin of creation is said to have been neither being (Sat) nor non-being (Asat). There was no death or immortality. Darkness was hidden within deeper darkness and this was all a sea without dimensions. This sea without dimensions, light, space, or time is referred to as a void. The void holds unformed what is potential (think of a seed or the number zero). The Upanishads of ancient India went on to say, "there are assuredly two forms of Brahman: the formed and the formless. Now that which is formed (universe) is unreal (or not fully real); that which is formless (void) is ultimately real (Noss, 87-88). Time is considered to be an illusion (not real), a creation of the human mind, which is bent on dividing, categorizing, and misrepresents time's real nature. Enlightenment (meditation) in Hinduism means among other things, escaping from the illusion of time. Clarke's ending reveals the mind as transcendental. He writes, "He seemed to be floating in free space while around him stretched, in all directions, an infinite geometrical grid of dark lines or threads, along which moved tiny nodes of light-some slowly, some at dazzling speed. Once he had peered through a microscope at a cross-section of a human brain, and in its network of nerve fibers had glimpsed the same labyrinthine complexity. He knew-or believed he knew-that he was watching the operation of some gigantic mind, contemplating the universe of which he was so tiny a part"
(Clarke, 289-90). Clarke can't translate Bowman's mental experience, but he suggests that the mind is a fragment or part of the whole (void), which ultimately transcends space-time.
20 Fred Hoyle has proposed that energy (consciousness) whether at the level of the ultra
small or at the ultra large, travels in every direction. On this view a single center of the universe,
whether original or final, is inconceivable. Energy /space-time condenses at an infinite number
of points, creating local space-times (Lefebvre, 13). Each conscious manifestation in this set up
would be but temporal expressions and experiences of an eternal supreme consciousness forever
channeling into forms on various levels of consciousness and forever searching, only to find
itself with thought as Star Child discovers when returning to earth. Clarke ends the novel, "Then
he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he
was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next, but he would think of something"
(Clarke, 297). Rene Descartes famous statement, "Cogito, ergo sum" or "I am thinking, therefore
I am" reminds us that we are conscious in thought. And, thought provides action, which shapes
and in Clarke's view perhaps ultimately reshapes life experience. Our thoughts therefore, are part
of an eternal reoccurrence in consciousness.
Clarke also explains that our memories are eternalized. He writes, "He was retrogressing down the corridors of time, being drained of knowledge and experience as he swept back toward his childhood. But nothing was being lost; all that he had seen, at every moment of his life, was being transferred to safer keeping" (Clarke, 290-91 ). His cosmology suggests that we have thought a thought before because our current life experience is always happening over and over or in other words, every moment and lifetime are eternalized and only emerge/appears as local space-times.
21 Chapter 4: Time's Origin as Vibration and the Mind Outside of Time.
Apart from consciousness, we also experience an unconscious state, which is what we experience in deep sleep or what the astronauts experience in hibernation (no sense of time). In one scene, Bowman and Poole discuss what it's like to hibernate with a news interviewer back on earth. Poole says, "Hibernation is sort of like sleeping except you don't dream ... you lose sense of time. You breathe once a minute when hibernating and your heart beats 3 times per minute." In Hinduism, the symbol and chanting of "AUM" represents four states of mind: Our waking state, dream state, eternal state (deep dreamless sleep), and the transcendental state, which is also known as nirvana/pure consciousness (Noss, 89). What the hibernators experience in dreamless sleep (no sense of time) is the nearest analogy of the void or fourth and highest state of mind, which connects all realities outside of space-time. Kubrick's editing is often used to communicate an idea or narrative action without dialogue, therefore, 'ideas' are shown to be a creation of the mind, which we interpret through cinema as reality. This is the case with the idea of death, which the film transcends through the notion of a fourth state of mind on two occasions.
In one scene, we see an extreme close-up of HAL's red eye. In the following shots, we see his point of view of the astronauts in hibernation. We then get close-ups of an electronic monitoring chart flashing the words, "Life Functions Critical." We again see close-up shots of
HAL's eye, which alternates with shots of the chart's heart monitor. Finally, the chart reads,
"Life Functions Terminated" as the sound track goes silent. The sequence presents an emotionless murder, with no verbal or physical contact between HAL and his victims. Kubrick allows his audience to interpret the idea of death through editing (mechanical process) rather
22 than by verbal explanation. HAL's idea to kill derives from human's creation, the reaction of a mechanical mind, which interprets the world as evolution and survival.
In another scene at the end of the film, Bowman is seen waking (first state) out of sleep/dream (second state) noticing the monolith before him. He then reaches to touch it
(eternity or third state), and then finally he/we transcend/penetrate the monolith/void (fourth state) becoming a higher being. Bowman's mind doesn' t die but resides outside of time in the void and voids may be detected as the source of our sensory organs (i.e. pupil, ear drums, etc.) that organize and interpret the material world, which in science is said to be nothing but a web of dancing energy. In this way, the mind may be understood as the origin of time in all its interpretations. By showing that humans may transcend the notion of death, Kubrick implies that like HAL's mechanically operating brain, we also have brains like a mechanical apparatus that measures and interprets an end of time through the idea of death, which the fourth state of mind transcends.
Earlier when man-ape first discovers the monolith, he is shown waking (first state of mind) from dream/sleep (second state) to its eerie strange sound (eternal vibration or third state).
In this sense, the monolith's power to provide enlightenment derives from its mysterious sound as well as mysterious origin (fourth state). Shiva among Hindi deities is depicted as the cosmic dancer following eternal rhythms, that is, the very vibration or force that sends forth and reshapes the cycle of space-time evolution from the void (nothingness) where the mind holds like a seed infinite potential or power. Shiva may be interpreted in science as waveform or sound, which Kubrick relies heavily upon in the film. He edits his images to accompany a classical soundtrack perhaps proposing a melodic universe based on vibration and rhythm.
23 In science, all things-bodies, planets, absolutely everything-are waveforms. Dimensional levels are nothing but differing base-rate wavelengths. From this perspective, the only difference between this dimension (universe) and any other is the length of its basic waveform. It is just like a television or radio set. When you turn the dial/remote, you pick up one wavelength from simultaneous broadcasts. If we were to change the wavelength of our consciousness, and in doing so change all our body patterns to a wavelength (station), different from this universe, we would awaken/appear in an alternate universe or cycle of time-evolution. The universe, that is, all stars and atoms are going infinitely out and infinitely in forever at a base wavelength of about
7.23 centimeters. This 7.23-cm length is located throughout our bodies in various ways because we are emerged within this particular universe, and it is embedded within us (Melchizedek, 44-
45). At both times we hear Richard Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra; human consciousness is enlightened/transcended in the film. Man-ape learns to use the tool and later Bowman/Star Child learns the nature of his eternal mind outside of time by consciously returning to a place he had been before. The first enlightenment occurs at the beginning and the other at the end of the film implying a cyclical pattern. In this sense, Kubrick's universe is based on a particular vibration/sound, which sends forth space and time allowing conscious entities to incarnate into form. For Kubrick, music/sound is significant to this union of consciousness enlightenment and time/body-place. Since the film's images and structure is cut to classical music, the viewer's space-time cinematic experience follows the gradual change and movement of classical music, which dictates the feeling of the film's rhythmic temporality. Perhaps Kubrick is implying that our sense of time and its origin is analogous to music.
In Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger, he says, "Humans perceive an orange as really orange, whereas it is actually blue, the orange light being the light bouncing off the actual
24 fruit. And, everywhere we look, we see solid objects, but science finds that objects are in essence atoms, and the 'matter' that they constitute through their cohesive groupmgs, are vibrations at different frequency rates" (Wilson, 28). The monolith's frequency rate vibrates so powerfully that man-apes are seen covering their ears when it first appears. Later, the astronaut's radio signal goes crazy when the monolith suddenly emits an enormous sound.
Kubrick seems to ask, how are we to understand the nature of time or space when we cannot see beyond our evolution? His answer remains in the mystery of the monolith, which perhaps represents a climax and completion of evolution and experience, the ultimate vibration frequency.
25 Chapter 5: The Objective and Subjective Nature of Time
We can discuss 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of subjective and objective time. As
Bowman loses sense of time, Kubrick takes on the challenge of defining/expressing time apart
from the subjective character. Kant's Prolegomena discusses the objective origin of space and
time. Kant claims the actual subject (person), who is an object (body) in the objective (physical)
world, exists somewhere in space and in a given time. It moves, i.e., it changes its position. It
consists of juxtaposed organs and its experiences exhibit a definite succession, each act having
its own definite duration. In this way, time and space may be called subjective, because the
objectified subject finds them a priori in itself, but their ultimate root lies in the domain of objectivity, and we can therefore call them objective, because they are the forms of the objective world and originate in the subject only because it is an object belonging to the objective world
(Carus, 225-26). By the final sequence titled "Star Child," we are given the metaphor of body/soul or object/subject when Bowman as an older man knocks over, breaks, and spills a glass of wine. The glass (body/object) contains wine, which is formless (soul/subject). Whereas the body can break apart, the soul does not, but rather seeks new form. The concept of time in the last sequence begins to define itself as Kubrick implies that time and existence takes on a cyclical pattern (reincarnation). Bowman is reincarnated into a Star-Child or higher being. While the first three sequences deal with evolution, science, and mystery, the fourth sequence seems to pose possible answers to the nature of the cosmos and time. The subjective (spiritual) and objective (physical) realms begin to merge.
In Hinduism, Brahman is said to be all that is subjective, the whole inward world of reason, feeling, will, and self-consciousness, with which the innermost self is identified. This is known as the atman, a word used philosophically to denote the innermost and unseen self of a
26 person as distinct from the body, sense organs, and mentality; that is to say, it refers to the transcendental self, not the empirical (objective) self. The atman (consciousness) and Brahman or Krishna (pure consciousness) are said to be ultimately one. Our attachment to material nature causes desire, which causes suffering, and amongst other reasons concerning the physical world, this is what spatially and temporally/temporarily separates the atman from the supreme consciousness (Noss, 87-88). In this respect, eternity (Brahman) and the consciousness (entity) are one if realized. Bowman (Humankind) in the film and novel is attached to the physical/material in that he/we are shown as being reliable on machine/the tool to expand our understanding of the vast universe. In becoming a Star Child, Bowman breaks his attachment from machine by disconnecting HAL, and then goes through a transformation-the monolith/void/no-time. Bowman's ability to reincarnate favors the Eastern view that time and evolution are cyclical and that consciousness may reincarnate into infinite forms if we are attached to material nature, that is if we have the inner desire to project an outer reality or dream, which is subject to the effects of an illusion. Though Bowman breaks his attachment from the material/objective world by disconnecting HAL, as Star Child, he is left with the choice between taking form (objective realm) and remaining in what appears to be the pure consciousness
(subjective realm).
The sequence title: "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" implies that there is that which is beyond the infinite perhaps the eternal. Whereas subjective time (present moment) can be associated with infinity (the future and forever), eternity can be associated with objective time, that is, all of time: past, present, and future ... no beginning and no end or as 'no time.' Objective time is perhaps best defined by Stephen Hawking who argues that the curvature of space-time is infinite thus everything exists in one place and in no time (Singularity). We live in a "no
27 boundary" universe, which means there are no boundaries marking the end of space or time, even though the universe as a whole has a finite size (Filkin, 274). Think of earth, a balloon or sphere. Hawking's theory suggests that the physical/objective universe is finite, but infinite from a subjective standpoint. For example, the earth (viewed from the moon) would appear finite, but from a traveler's perspective on earth, it would appear infinitely round. This theory or example raises questions on our perspective nature as subjective, spirituality and transcendence.
In Mario Falsetto's Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis, he argues that in this sequence, the reflexive eye imagery with Bowman in deep outer space presents an editing between macro and micro views of the universe encouraging a melding of individual subjectivity with the objective world. The combination of cosmic dusts, clouds, stars etc. with Bowman's eyes confounds viewer's understanding of space, time and notions of interiorized and exteriorized (Falsetto, 51-52) Spatial and temporal ambiguity becomes the subject of this sequence. The pulsing eye becomes the universe or is the image of the universe the image of an eye? Falsetto says it makes no difference, because viewers merge with the images on screen.
Here, Kubrick uses the temporal and spatial illusion of cinema as an act against itself, exposing our eyes as an organ and vehicle of perception.
Einstein's theory of relativity helps to clarify the notion of our mental-subjective experience of time. In Jeremy Bernstein's Albert Einstein: And the Frontier of Physics, he quotes
Einstein on relativity, "The experiences of an individual appear to us arranged in a series of events which we remember appear to be ordered according to criterion of "earlier" and "later," which cannot be analyzed further. There exists, therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time. This in itself is not measurable. I can indeed associate numbers with the events, in such a way that a greater number is associated with the later event than with the earlier one;
28 but the nature of this association is quite arbitrary" (Bernstein, 11). In other words, our relative experience, our point-of-view in space-time is subjective and ultimately immeasurable. In this sequence, Bowman is the sole survivor of the crew and Kubrick relies on his point-of-view as a representation of subject. Since viewers identify with Bowman, he is the 'I' subject in the film.
Kubrick's use of color tinting and disorienting shot duration of what Bowman sees (abstract space, valleys, hills, mesas, etc.) further abandons narrative convention in favor of a more abstract and avant-garde like approach. This allows the film's spatial objective world to unfold according to our anticipation and interpretation of narrative time, which is experienced according to our organization of the external abstract images that Kubrick provides.
Aristotle argues that time is subjective in that we make up the points and intervals. We anticipate change (future) while remembering the past. The present is experienced subjectively therefore points in time (past, present, future) are inscribed by our mental experience ( qtd. in
Bradie). As Bowman travels through space at an infinite speed, any mental notion of points in time are erased because Kubrick suggests that at infinite speed, time stops.
According to Einstein, nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light.
He insists that if a human being traveled at the speed of light (186, 272 miles per second), the clock would dilate or slow down and eventually time would stop altogether standing still. In the same way, distances would appear to shrink: a yardstick projected at extraordinary high speeds would get shorter as it traveled (Constable, 57). In Norman Kagan's The Cinema of Stanley
Kubrick, he describes what Bowman experiences. He writes, "Bowman watches as he plunges faster and faster, seemingly across an infinitely wide, distant floor and ceiling glowing with luminescent schematics in burning dayglo colors as they rush past" (Kagan, 158). We see
Bowman's face shaking and his solarized eyes amazed, as Ligeti' s musical score grows more
29 intense. In the midst of what appears to be Bowman reaching infinite speed, Kubrick inserts still shots of Bowman's face in awe. The juxtaposition of still shots (Bowman's face) with the movement of exploding stars, gas clouds, and all sorts of psychedelic images implying infinity certainly visualizes Einstein's notion that time stands still at infinite speed.
30 Chapter 6: Artificial and Rhythmic Time-keeping
Artificial-biological/psychological and conventional timekeeping is evident in the space age of 2001. And, these human-made creations prove to fail humans when HAL (human's ultimate machine/tool) eventually attempts to kill all the astronauts aboard the ship. In "The
Jupiter Mission" (modem/future space-age), we must note that the tool/weapon has now evolved into space vehicles, clocks, a HAL 9000 computer, hibernation device, and various other technological advances that deal with time and space travel.
In Norman Kagan's The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick, he argues that Kubrick's man-apes see the world as mechanical, a fatalistic environment that they can't control. Likewise, the spacemen see a world of cause and effect without purpose, feeling, or meaning; to the ultimate form of life. Humanity is blind to the monolith's blinding chaos, which is not meant to understand (Kagan, 165). Kubrick's spacemen rely on HAL who is programmed to open and close doors, operates pods, keep the spaceship on course, keeps track of earth time, and watch over other astronauts who have been sealed m refrigerated hibernation. HAL is also programmed to mimic most of the working of the human brain including speech and psychological time. He is the brain and nervous system of the miSSIOn. The machine here interprets and orgamzes the chaotic nature of cyclical time, which exposes mechanical timekeeping as an abstract measurement. In one scene, Dr. Floyd has a screen conversation with his daughter nicknamed Squirt inside a picture-phone booth. He wishes his daughter a happy birthday and tells her that he'll see about getting her a "bush baby" doll. In a later scene, Frank
Poole also receives a message from the picture-phone, which is a recording of his parents wishing him a happy birthday. Both scenes tell us that the space travelers are still in coordination with earth time.
31 This is also apparent when Dr. Floyd addresses the space-crew on the latest information about the mission. They discuss questions such as how much longer will the report take and when should we announce the news about a mysterious black monolith below the lunar surface?
Again, Kubrick shows that the space travelers have adapted to conventional timekeeping. They live by the clock/calendar (tool/instrument), which is overseen by HAL.
The astronauts in hibernation remind us of the importance of biological time, that is, our innate sense of keeping tune with the rhythm of nature. In Henri Lefebvre's The Production of
Space, he examines social, physical, psychological, sound, bodily and other types of space.
Subsequently, he also covers temporal issues such as biological rhythm. In chapter three, he mentions that the body's inventiveness needs no demonstration, for the body itself reveals it, and deploys it in space. Rhythms in all their multiplicity interpenetrate one another. In the body and around it, as on the surface of a body of water, rhythms are forever crossing and recrossing themselves upon each other, always bound to space-time (Lefebvre, 205). Though HAL is not human, in this sense, he is the result of our rhythmic nature. That is, he is deployed in space by our body's own inventiveness. Our body carries internal rhythms, which become external by the nature of space. In this sense, rhythm is time, that is, the movement of objects in space.
Lefebvre goes on to mention that such rhythms have to do with needs, which may be dispersed as tendencies, or distilled into desire. Some rhythms are easy to identify: breathing, the heartbeat, thirst, hunger, and sleep. Others, however, such as those of sexuality, fertility, social life, or thought seem to spring from hidden/obscure depths (Lefebvre, 205). In the film, the astronauts are in hibernation in order to achieve the maximum conservation of our life support capabilities, mostly food (hunger), water, and air (breathing). Their natural, easy to identify rhythms of sleeping and heartbeat are minimized. And, their efforts won't be utilized
32 until they approach Jupiter, so in an attempt to conserve energy, their innate sense of biological time is altered by artificial biological time (hibernation). The crew in hibernation are not in control of biological time, HAL, the machine is.
Lefebvre's analysis also reflects HAL and his artificial-psychological sense of time.
Unaware of what has transpired while he was making an effort to reclaim the body of Poole, who
HAL disconnects from the ship and sends flying off into infinity, Bowman attempts to re-enter the spaceship. "Hello HAL, do you read me?" After not responding for a while, HAL finally replies, "This mission is too important for me to jeopardize it. I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me and I can not allow that to happen." When Bowman shouts back,
"Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL? The computer replies with a sense of finality, "This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good-bye." Earlier in the film, we see a point-of view shot of HAL observing the lip movement in a conversation between Poole and Bowman who discuss possibly disconnecting HAL.
We discover that HAL thinks and makes conscious-like decisions based on memory of the past and situations in the present. He kills Poole, the crew in hibernation, and attempts to also kill Bowman. His decision derives from his psychological sense of time. He knows that for the mission to proceed, he must disconnect the crew who attempts to disconnect him. And this social decision, this thought, seems to come from inner/obscure depths that Bowman cannot fathom. Kubrick shoots this sequence in a shot-reverse-shot style indicating that HAL, like an actual human being, is a conscious entity that communicates feelings.
Though not a natural rhythm, HAL's thought and decision to kill becomes an artificial mirror of man's natural inner rhythm (tendencies). HAL like man-ape kills in order to survive.
As Nelson puts it in Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze, "The outer space of 2001: A Space
33 Odyssey represents a mmor universe m which humankind shrinks infinity/eternity to the measurements of mechanical form. Rather than toys, machines here become human's children, ones that inevitably grow to gargantuan proportions and turn on humans in acts of self sufficiency" (Nelson, 121 ). Time, tool, and evolution begin to merge in this sequence for machine's artificial-psychological/biological time becomes a means to developing thought and instinct to kill and thus survive-evolve.
34 Chapter 7: Linear Time and the Western Perspective.
The third sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey titled "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" provides the scientific essence of what Kubrick attempts to say about space-time. Through visual and audio experimentation, spectators are placed in a realm of changing colors; abstract images, silence, deep sounds, stills and motion, which all reflect a sense of infinity or eternity.
However, when Bowman suddenly appears later in a strange room, shots of his eyes transition from changing colors back to his normal blue eyes. Perception is therefore "back to normal."
Eternity is viewed as a concept belonging to a world outside of time. And time, in this particular scene, appears not as cyclical but as linear.
Bowman's pod stops in a large green and white room, decorated partly in delicate Louis
XVI, partly in modern. Falsetto argues that this sequence upsets the audience's understanding of space/time and cinematic rhetoric to such an extent that we cannot understand how to read a series of shots. In one shot, Bowman (in spacesuit) sees himself eating with his back to the camera (POV shot). In the following shot, we see a close up reaction of Bowman watching his older self. In the next shot, we return to the first shot's point-of-view, only now, Bowman (in spacesuit) is not present, and thus it's now the spectator's POV. We therefore merge with the character in space-time.
The concept of how to read a point-of-view shot has been challenged. It is no longer clear who is doing the looking, though Bowman is the only visible participant. Even this proves to be false; there is more than one Bowman in this sequence, since the character splits into several selves in space-time as Kubrick repeats this technique (Falsetto, 122). Similarly, we are split into several selves in time. The idea that we are split into several selves implies that time and we are experiencing beginnings and ends. Every twenty-four frames in cinema represent
35 one measurable second of our existence. Kubrick's technique shows that aging like consecutive
frames is but your destination through different points in time/frames, that is, a sort of linear
time, which favors a western view of time.
Judea-Christian and Catholic belief is that God had created the heaven and earth "in the
beginning." Thus time clearly had begun; it had not existed forever. "The world and time had both one beginning," Augustine once declared. "The world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time." And, there would be an end to time, at least worldly time, when
Christ returned to raise the dead (Constable, 41-42). This is an expression of the western concept of time, in which all things have a beginning and progress to an end with the results being eternal entry into heaven or hell. Time is linear, a sort of ruler on which all events can be marked in a straight progression. This is opposed to the film's overall notion of cyclical time in which the past, present, and future are ultimately taking place in no time or one place. However, an eastern view of time is similar to the western view considering both argue that God or the Absolute exists in no time (eternity).
The word 'genesis' means "origination" and every genesis myth begins with a sense of time. In Biblical Genesis it states, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters (Aveni, 46). A time scale lies embedded within biblical stories. As in most early myths, it is not the absolute time bar of our modern geology and astronomy that is discernible in terms of millions or billions of years. What matters rather than length of time is the order of events and the rhythmic harmonic overtones that characterize the cyclical flow of time through space, which Lefebvre touches on when examining our spatial body. 2001: A Space Odyssey shows that early humankind falls then restores itself, evolves
36 (space-age), falls again (machine overtaking man), and ultimately masters its world (Star Child
framed near earth). The head of time's arrow points to the tail. What happens once happens
again, though things are a little different the second time around. Cain falls; Cain is restored; but
he is different the second time around (Aveni, 50). The temptation of Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, Noah and the Flood, and Jesus returning to raise the dead all illustrate a
repetitive rhythmic temporal pattern, a sense of tension followed by relaxation.
However, in the second day of Genesis, God separates heaven from the waters, thus time's direction is ultimately linear. Linear time has for a long period been the traditional ordinary conception of time, which is a result of Aristotle and Judeo-Christian teaching. Most
traditional theories of time-share the idea that everything is "in time." To be "in time" means to
be within an irreversible process in which things are brought into and taken out of existence.
When Bowman touches the monolith as an old dying man, the camera (Bowman's POV) moves
through the monolith's dark surface/void momentarily wiping out the film's spatial narrative. If the film were to end this way, the film could not be considered a conventional narrative without
its proper closure. Nietzsche's theory of time differs from linear time in that for Nietzsche "there
is no end." There is no finality of time; time is infinite. There is also no beginning to time.
Nietzsche' s time follows a cyclical pattern, non-linear, bent round in a circle (qtd. in McDonald)
The purpose of the film's unconventional narrative, which explores cinematic space-time, is to
have the audience travel through an infinite notion of space but ultimately coming full circle,
only by the end, we are more enlightened, at least, about spatial and temporal ambiguities.
Lefebvre and Nietzche's worlds are in a constant state of flux like a great body of water,
chaos. All that we see, the materialistic and mechanistic, supervenes on this vast sea of
fluctuation. For Nietzsche this sea is composed of quanta of energy, or force centers. Science
37 continues to break matter down into smaller components from atoms, protons, particles, to quarks, etc. One can conceptually break matter down farther and farther until there is no substance left, just chaos of pure energy (qtd. in McDonald). Kubrick does the same thing throughout the film, breaking down humanity to its essence. Man-apes break down (struggle), the astronaut's space mission breaks down, HAL's mind is broken down and disconnected by
Bowman, and the glass of wine breaks at the end. The monolith, which reincarnates Bowman, represents the essence of humanity. All interpretations of space and time seem to originate from chaos or at least a more abstract realm of consciousness.
There is a major difference between the eastern and western notions of time. From the western view, eternity is spent in heaven or hell and purgatory/earth is temporal thus you have one life. From the eastern view, eternity is an Absolute state and one's life may enter various forms in various heavenly, hellish, or purgatory-like worlds. Bowman's incarnation into Star
Child may be interpreted from a western view in that the Star Child is like an angel or Jesus-like entity from heaven arriving to save the world. The eastern view seems to take on more significance to the movie and novel considering that Kubrick and Clarke do not place
Bowman/Star Child in heaven or hell, but rather back in time, and in Kubrick's vision as an embryo.
From an eastern framework, Kubrick's humans are compound beings simultaneously experiencing two worlds, inner and outer. Each person's present life-experience (outer) is but a minute portion of what was witnessed by the eternal individuality (inner) in previous incarnations. Thus if men and women assiduously search within themselves, they can recover a vast heritage of knowledge spanning a-eons of time. Kubrick's focus on Bowman's eyes is a metaphor of enlightenment and the universe of space-time as it appears is perhaps but a mirror
38 reflection of itself. In cinema, the flickering of light upon a screen is what creates filmic illusion.
The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey resembles a black/dark screen (void), which represents that which is closer to being ultimately real from an eastern philosophical perspective. Kubrick's monolith thus perhaps implies that what is real is certainly not the light projecting off a screen.
His vision as well as Clarke's certainly unifies itself with that of Greek, and in particular Hindi philosophy, that time and space are cyclical and illusory by the nature of energy. The Rolling
Stones' Paint it Black, which Kubrick used in the closing credits on the soundtrack of his later film Full Metal Jacket, also exemplifies this myth. The monolith's dark surface perhaps represents Kubrick's vision of an eternal void state in which nothingness gives birth to everything including light, darkness, colors, consciousness, dimensions, and time.
39 \Vorks Cited
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