The next part of the film is a reenactment of the “Open the pod bay doors, HAL” sequence from the original film. Both Crippy’s lines are taken from there (37, 38).
In our case, after Crippy saw that Dave was interested by the possibility of deactivating him, he becomes neurotic and refuses to let Dave in (i.e. to log into the computer). Dave tries to catch the moving button, he tries some shortcuts. In frustration he relies on the emergency solution, as we’ll see tomorrow.
The tension building sequence was inspired by the cat lady’s death, from the Clockwork Orange (1:54 in the next video). I will not count it as a reference, because the result is completely different and serves another purpose.
You may be surprised to find out how many images are shown (subliminally) in the 2 seconds there (if you’re interested, you can find the detailed shots here, and the images themselves conveniently placed here).
Dave is suddenly curious about something that he sees, something that he ignored all the time because of laziness, or because he was in a hurry. Probably the annoying helium-like voice of Crippy sets him off. He considers deactivating the assistant; he reads the help popup related to this subject:
Help popup part 1
Help popup part 2
Bad move, Dave! Because Crippy saw you with his physical eye: the red webcam. And no Crippy 9000 has ever been deactivated. What will he think of it? We’ll find out in the tomorrow’s post! 🙂
There are some gems hidden in these shots. First of all, the modules diagram (34). It is made after the modules we can see in the original film, at HAL’s deactivation:
On Dave’s frontal shot (from Crippy’s point of view) we can see also the objects on the piece of furniture on the opposite side of the room (but we’ll get back to those in a few posts) and the mirrors, that suggest the shape of Discovery One (35)
Discovery One
Another thing borrowed from the original film is represented by the 3 shots with the webcam (36) meant to resemble the similar shots from the original film, at the moment when HAL killed Frank (0:42 in the next video)
It’s time to meet the second character of this film: the assistant. He might look familiar (if he doesn’t, think back to those Word ’98 years, when a similar character appeared out of nowhere very eager to help you), with his paper clip shaped body, and HAL’s eyes (32). In fact we gave him the name Crippy (but thought it would be an unimportant detail, so it didn’t appear in the film).
What’s unusual about Crippy is that he is like a gate-keeper, guarding something that resembles HAL’s core from the original movie (33).
The next main reference brings us further in the story of the Odyssey. On Dave’s table there is a sketch (29) resembling the one that original Dave showed HAL in the original film. So, we reached the third part of the film, we’re on board of the Discovery One spaceship!
The other two references are…. well… bonuses from the other films.
The first one is a box of tea (30), of linden tea (or, how true Kubrick fans would spell it, lyndon tea). It is meant to reference, of course, Barry Lyndon, from 1975, the film that is best known for being shot with a lens developed initially for the NASA, with a huge aperture, that allowed him to shoot the night interiors at candlelight… literally (which means no artificial light; that’s where Natural Product comes from).
The second bonus is a reference to The Shining (1980), and the famous backwards warning written by Danny on a white door. It’s a bottle of Red Rum (31) (in fact it was sour cherry juice). The maze is, of course, reference to the maze from the film (I didn’t have time to draw one identical copy of that one in the film; I would have, probably). Why double distilled? Hm… because I came across this hypothesis that I liked about The Shining: http://www.drummerman.net/shining/essays.html
What’s with the books, you might ask. Well… it’s actually very simple:
In the left we have the books that consequently became Kubrick films (with a small exception) and in the right we have the books that either were suggested to him, or he wanted himself to make movies out of them (with a small exception).
Clean Break by Lionel White [The Killing] (11)
Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb [Paths of Glory] (12)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov [Lolita] (13)
Red alert by Peter George [Dr Strangelove] (14)
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke (this one is the exception; it was written rather while working at the script) (15)
Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess [Clockwork Orange] (16)
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray [Barry Lyndon] (17)
The Shining by Stephen King [The Shining] (18)
The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford [Full Metal Jacket] (19)
Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler [Eyes wide shut] (20)
The Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig (21)
Natural Child by Calder Willingham (22)
Blue Movie by Terry Southern (This one was the exception; Terry Southern wrote this after Stanley Kubrick refused his project of making a pornographic movie that would reinvent the genre) (23)
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss (which became AI – a project that Kubrick passed on to Spielberg) (24)
Before making a film, Stanley Kubrick was avidly reading everything related to the subject. They say that, before the Napoleon film project (that was in the end cancelled because another film on that era – Waterloo – was released and proved to be a commercial flop) he had a cabinet with little drawers, and there was a high chance that if you asked Stanley where Napoleon was in a particular day of his life, he would have opened a drawer, take a little piece of paper from there and answer. Yep. That was Kubrick like. Not me, apparently. In the next reference it seems I misspelled a name, just because I assumed it was written in a certain manner. 😦
I’m talking about the “main character” of the next detail shot: the album cover (9):
Heywood Floyd (not Haywood, apparently) is the scientist that went to the moon station, at the place of the discovery of the monolith in the second part of the film. Being also a Pink Floyd fan, it didn’t take much for me to create the connection, and to make the graphic of this fictitious rock album, replacing the prism with the monolith and the light spectrum with a sort of colored sound spectrum (thinking about the sound that the monolith emits at the end of the second part towards Jupiter). Little did I know that Pink Floyd were contacted for the soundtrack of 2001, but couldn’t do it because of previous engagements. It seems (although the members denied any intention towards that) that when played during the stargate sequence of 2001, Echoes (released in 1971) it compliments quite well the images. Well, in fact, you can see/hear for yourselves
Under the album, you can see other 2 albums. The two bands had nothing to do with Kubrick (as far as I know), but their names helped me with the next reference: together they form the name of Kubrick’s second feature film: Killer’s Kiss (10).
P.S.: It seems the dimensions of the monolith are in a ratio obtained from the first 3 integer squares (1, 4, 9). I made the soundwaves of the 7 colors of the rainbow using ratios obtained from the next squares (16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81 and 100). Just for the sake of the game…
Okay, the mood was set, we know the main character, we know where he lives. It’s time for some action, right?
Well… not so fast! Why not explore the space? Why not know the character better, by observing (coldly and nonjudgmental, as Stanley often did in his films) better the objects around this character? And why not have some more fun with some fresh references? 😀
Yep, that’s right! That is a clockwork orange (5). But, from my point of view it’s not the main character in this shot. Neither is Napoleon (6), one of the figures Kubrick admired most (and, by the way, on which he wanted to film “the greatest film ever made”; unfortunately for commercial reasons the project was stopped). No. The main thing (in focus) are the two carnival pictures, in which we see Dave as a monkey and as an astronaut. Why this association? Well, to reference the “million years cut” that Kubrick made in the Space Odyssey, the one between the first part and the second part: the weapon of the first men (the bone) and the weapon of the modern man (the battle ship).
That is the association playfully referenced here (if you notice the banana exits the frame approximately where the rocket enters the other one) (7).
P.S.: If you really want to know how obsessed I became with this referencing game, you will be happy to hear that I tried to set the clock to 19:53 (as Kubrick;s first feature film – Fear and Desire – was released in 1953) (8). Yes! *That* obsessed!!! 🙂
In the second shot, we take a step back, just enough to meet the (human) main character (let’s call him… um… Dave) and the space in which the action takes place. But that’s not all. There’s a gesture that Dave does, in that same Kubrickian playful manner: he shuts the soundtrack by turning off the radio (3). And if you don’t believe that this gesture is Kubrickian, well… you will have to, because the gesture is downright taken from Kubrick himself. More specifically from the intro of Eyes Wide Shut. You still don’t believe me? Watch Tom Cruise at 1:48, then:
Some of those who have a keen eye might have also noticed the way the frame is constructed. I don’t have a keen eye, and I didn’t notice this in Kubrick’s films (although I’ve seen some of them for more than 5 times; I really really don’t have a keen eye…), but there was a video on vimeo that did literally open my eyes
It seems it’s called one point perspective, and, thank to Kogonada from vimeo, I tried it also in the film (4), in the beginning, long before the conflict rose.
The monolith with crescent (2001: A Space Odyssey)
There’s no better way to meet the monolith than on Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (1), is there? That’s what I thought, also, and that is why I chose it for the soundtrack.
Moreover, the shot itself (2) was meant to resemble a similar shot from the Space Odyssey (that you can see above) .
The shot was constructed so that it will be clear from the beginning what film is this one based on (stylistically, that is, because, probably, it was already clear from the title) and what is its relation with the original. That is why it mimics the well known shot, only to surprise the viewer in the second part by distancing itself from the original: the monolith is just a PC, the sky is the ceiling of a room and the crescent is a glow in the dark shape (that is generally used in children’s rooms).
Thus, the film seeks to be a playful re-adaptation of the original, and not to mimic it. You can laugh if you want: it isn’t a self-important film. On the other hand, it doesn’t roll over the floor to make you laugh. Its humor is meant to be subtle, and a smile is more than appropriate. It might sound elitist, but I feel that a simple parodic reinterpretation wouldn’t have fitted with Kubrick’s impeccable style.
Alt-space Odyssey 